Chapter 11: A Prince's Explanation
The low, clicking hum in Taichi’s chest was the only sound for a long time. Yamato’s face was still buried in the crook of his neck, breathing in the scent of salt and sex and that strange, clean burn. His mind was slowly reassembling itself from static. The frantic, desperate heat that had driven him was receding, leaving behind a bone-deep lethargy and a wet, intimate ache where they were still joined.
He carefully shifted, sliding out of Taichi’s body. The merman made a small, sharp sound at the separation, a flicker of tension returning to his limbs. Yamato flopped onto his back beside him, staring at the water-stained ceiling. The storm was just a murmur now, a soft hiss of rain on the shingles.
His own heartbeat was a dull thud in his ears. The question formed in the quiet, clumsy and blunt, pushed out on a breathless exhale.
“Why… why do you have both?”
Taichi was silent for so long Yamato thought he might not answer. He turned his head. Taichi was watching him, his amber eyes unreadable in the gloom, the slit pupils wide. The peaceful hum had stopped.
“Why does the tide go in and out?” Taichi finally said, his voice rough from use. It wasn’t an answer. It was a deflection.
“I’m serious.”
Taichi sighed, a sound like surf over gravel. He looked back at the ceiling. “Princes of my tribe are made to create life. However it is needed. To give. Or to receive.” He spoke as if reciting something learned long ago, his tone flat. “The design is efficient. My body can use what it is given, or it can provide what is required. It depends on the… pairing.”
Yamato’s brain, still fogged with endorphins and the lingering, buzzing effect of Taichi’s saliva, tripped over the words. Create life. Receive. Use what it is given.
His eyes went wide.
He bolted upright on the narrow bed, the rough blanket pooling at his waist. A cold, sharp terror speared through his gut, utterly obliterating the afterglow.
“Oh, god,” he whispered. The words were barely audible. Then, louder, frayed with panic: “Oh, god. Did I just… are there… eggs? Inside you?”
He stared at Taichi’s stomach as if he could see through the scales.
Taichi turned his head slowly. He looked at Yamato’s horrified expression, at the way his hands hovered in the air as if afraid to touch him now. A scoff escaped him, dry and utterly dismissive.
“Your human arrogance is astounding,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You think your seed is so potent it could spark a clutch just like that?” He clicked his tongue. “I am not in my fertile season. The water is wrong. The currents are silent. My body is not listening for that.” He paused, letting the reality sink in. “And even if it were… you are human. It is unlikely your… contribution… would take. It is probably already dead.”
The clinical, brutal assessment should have been insulting. Instead, it flooded Yamato with a wave of such profound, embarrassing relief that his shoulders sagged. The tension rushed out of him in a shaky breath, leaving him feeling hollow and stupid.
He collapsed back onto the mattress, the worn springs groaning. Heat flooded his cheeks. He turned and pressed his burning face into the cool, scaled curve of Taichi’s shoulder, hiding.
A low rumble started in Taichi’s chest again. Not the humming click of before, but a deep, genuine chuckle. It vibrated through Yamato’s skin, into his own bones.
“You are a strange creature,” Taichi mused, the amusement clear in his rasp. “You fear fathering a hybrid brood more than you feared my teeth at your throat.”
“Shut up,” Yamato mumbled into his shoulder, his voice muffled. The embarrassment was warm and strangely comfortable. It was simpler than the world-ending panic of a moment ago.
Taichi did shut up. His arm, which had been lying limp at his side, lifted. His hand, with its sharp, translucent claws, came to rest hesitantly on Yamato’s sun-bleached hair. The touch was stiff, unfamiliar. An experiment.
They lay like that as the cottage cooled around them. The metallic scent of the ocean seeped back in, overtaking the musk of sex. Yamato’s fingers found one of the newer, raised scars on Taichi’s ribcage—a gift from the fishermen’s nets. He traced its length gently.
“What happens now?” Yamato asked, his voice quiet.
“Now, you sleep. And I listen to the water return to normal.” Taichi’s thumb moved, just once, against Yamato’s temple. “Your heart is still beating too fast.”
It was. The aftermath of the saliva, the panic, the relief—it was all a riot under his skin. But lying here, with the weight of Taichi’s hand on his head, a different kind of quiet began to settle.
After a few minutes, Taichi spoke again, his voice closer to a true whisper. “The wood box in the corner. The one with strings. What is it?”
Yamato blinked. “My guitar.”
“It makes sound?”
“When I play it, yeah.”
“Play it.”
Yamato laughed, a tired huff of air. “Now? I can’t. My hands are shaking.”
Taichi didn’t insist. He was quiet for another long moment. “The music you make at the loud, smoky place. The humans throw metal discs at you for it.”
“The tavern. Yeah. Coins. Tips.” It felt bizarre, explaining his poverty to a prince.
“It is a sad sound,” Taichi stated, simply. “The music. It bends in the middle. Like a wound.”
Yamato went very still. No one had ever described it like that. They called it pretty, or melancholy, or background noise. Never a wound.
He didn’t know how to answer. So he didn’t. He just kept tracing the scar, listening to Taichi’s gills flutter, feeling the strange companionship of their shared breath in the dark.
“You will play it for me,” Taichi said. It wasn’t a request. “When the sun comes back. I will hear the shape of it without the smoke.”
“Okay,” Yamato agreed, his eyes growing heavy. The last of the adrenal buzz was fading, leaving pure exhaustion in its wake.
Just before sleep dragged him under, he felt Taichi’s head turn. He sensed those wild, amber eyes on the side of his face, studying him in the near-darkness.
The merman’s final words were so soft they were almost lost in the drip of water from the eaves.
“Your hands are kinder than your music.”
Yamato was already asleep, but the words seeped into his dreams, twisting through images of deep water and the brittle, splintering sound of a guitar string snapping.