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Kim is fishing in the harbor when he accidentally catches the merman.
In Kim’s defense, he isn’t trying to catch anything, let alone anyone. The fishing rod is just a pretense for surveillance work, a way for him to scout the harbor without arousing suspicion. If the apprehension of a murderer weren't on the line, Kim wouldn't even be here.
Honestly, when Kim feels a tug on the line, he isn’t even sure what to do. He admires the equipment of the sport, but fishing isn’t really his thing. Too slow, too monotonous. But the sharp yank on the fishing line that nearly hauls Kim off the edge of the boat—now that is a break in the monotony that gets Kim’s heart racing.
“Come on,” Kim grunts, leaning back to counterbalance the weight, sticking a foot against the side of the boat to keep himself steady. Whatever he’s caught, it’s definitely heavier than him, and leverage is the only tool Kim has to his name here. If he's thinking logically, Kim should probably just let go of the fishing rod, let the ocean keep it, and call it quits. He’s here to investigate, not to fish.
But even as his boat rocks treacherously, Kim doesn't let go, thinking, I almost have it…
On the other side of the line, a man bursts out of the water, dribbling water and blood from the gash in his cheek where Kim’s hook caught purchase. Neither the water nor blood prevent the man from letting out an ungodly howl of pain.
“Shit,” Kim mutters, looking around to make sure they haven’t caused a scene. He does not want to explain to his captain that this is how his cover was blown. “Sir, please calm down, I can help you-“
Any other words evaporate from Kim’s throat when he leans over the side of the boat to offer his hand. Because instead of legs, the man has a…a tail, a green, scaly thing that writhes in sympathy with the man’s curses. Kim feels his shock and wonder shift to the backburner as his detective mind takes over, cataloging the rest of this man's oddities: gills that flap uselessly at his neck, semi-translucent fins that skim his back and elbows, talons instead of fingernails. As Kim catches the creature’s hand in his own, he finds that he can’t fully lock their hands, impeded by slimy webbing that stretches across this person’s fingers.
This creature—this merman? —is also wearing a tie. For some reason, this is what Kim’s mind chooses to fixate on. In fairness, the tie is hideous, garish where its colors shine through and filthy where salt has crusted over them. Kim hates it.
The tie is also so out of place and so ridiculous that it is what helps snap Kim out of his cataloging and into action. Regardless of everything else, this man has been hurt because of Kim’s actions and is about to blow his cover. That must be addressed first.
“Come, hold onto the boat,” Kim says, leading the webbed hand to clutch the side of the boat. “Can you speak? Are you okay?”
“You...have to kill me,” the merman wheezes out.
Kim blinks. “Um…pardon?”
“Look, Jean is going to do it if you don’t,” the merman reasons, staring at Kim with wild eyes. "If I come back with a hook in me, he'll never let me hear the end of it. At least if you kill me I don’t have to listen to him yell at me. And you’ll get a meal out of it! My body will serve a purpose, and you get a free dinner. Come on, just kill and eat me already.”
“I’m…” Kim realizes he’s still holding onto the merman’s hand and abruptly lets it go, instead using his hand to adjust his spectacles—not that it changes the fantastical sight in front of him. “No, I’m not going to eat you. Or kill you. If you stop flailing around, I can help you get the hook out.”
“Are you a…what’s it called…’catch and release?’” Harry sounds out, like he’s quoting something or someone. “A fisherman that doesn't eat people? I thought that’s what most fishermen did.”
“No,” Kim says. “They don't. And I’m not really a fisherman anyway. I’m a policeman. Professionally speaking, it would be in extremely bad form if I were to eat people.”
Harry gives Kim a once-over as if to confirm the truth of his words. His gaze never grows less wild, but the intensity finally narrows in scope, turning from the world at large just to Kim. The singularity of such attention and scrutiny nearly makes Kim shiver.
“Hmm,” Harry ponders. “I believe you. But that’s really too bad. I don’t eat people either, so now we’re at a stalemate.”
Kim hadn’t been overly concerned about the possibility of being eaten, but glancing at the merman’s sharp teeth, he realizes that perhaps he should have been.
“Okay,” Kim says, rather than think about that too closely. “We’re not going to eat each other. Glad that’s settled. How about I help you get that hook out of your mouth? Perhaps that will address your 'stalemate.'”
“Yes, please,” Harry says. With a strong kick of his tail, he hauls himself enough on the boat so that his chest rests on the edge. “Jean might not kill me then. I can lie and say I got the cut from licking a broken bottle or something. My name is Harry, by the way.”
“Kim,” Kim says, trying not to startle at how close the merman is to him now. He could count the beads of water on Harry's cheek if he wanted to. For a lack of anything else to say, he clears his throat and asks, “Is licking a bottle really that much less embarrassing than getting hooked?”
“Sure. Who hasn’t licked a bottle? Humans put good stuff in there sometimes.”
Kim snorts and reaches for the boat's first aid kit. “Yes, I suppose we do like to do that.”
Despite how much pain he must be in, Harry doesn’t stop talking as Kim gets to work on dislodging the hook. He babbles about anything and everything: the different things he’s found in bottles, what kind of lie he could reasonable pitch to Jean about the cheek wound, and questions about Kim’s boat. By god, the questions—Kim can’t remember being this thoroughly interrogated since his exams. He finds himself oddly warmed by the conversation, as intrusive and odd as the whole situation is. It had been too quiet, too dull without a radio, crossword, or partner to keep him company on the boat.
The first aid also stills something in Kim that’d initially been disturbed by the appearance of a mythic creature. He's always been good at first aid, has always felt grounded by the fine motor skills involved. Yes, Kim has caught a merman on his fishing pole, but the surety and dexterity of his hands do not waver in the face of this situation, and so neither does Kim.
“What’s this?” Harry asks, trying to lean further into the boat to point at a coin on the deck.
“Stop moving,” Kim says, nonetheless twisting his body to accommodate Harry’s new position. He glances at the coin. “It’s a réal.”
“What’s a réal?”
“It’s a form of currency. Money.”
“Okay…What’s money?”
“I suppose merfolk don’t have that then,” Kim sighs. Lord is he not intelligent or politically motivated enough to teach a merman economics. “It’s…you exchange money for goods or services. For things that you want or need.”
“But what if you don’t have any?” Harry persists.
“Then you don’t get what you want or need.”
Harry makes a disgusted expression. “But that’s terrible! Why can’t you just make sure that everyone has money then? Or make it so that there's no money at all?”
“You are asking me questions that nations, politicians, and philosophers have been going to war over for centuries,” Kim says, cutting the fishing line so that he can more easily maneuver the hook out of Harry’s cheek. “I can’t say that I know.”
“I think human society may be corrupt, Kim,” Harry says seriously. “I didn’t know it was so bad up here. I mean, you put delicious things to put into bottles—I thought you were all doing really well.”
“Let me ask you a question,” Kim says, readying his first aid supplies. “You are of average or above average intelligence. You know what a hook is and that fisherman use them to catch and eat fish.”
"Yep."
“So how is it that you came to be caught by my hook?” Kim asks, raising an eyebrow.
Harry flushes, clearly trying to think of anything he could say other than the truth. But as soon as Kim begins to raise his other eyebrow, the merman relents.
“I was curious,” Harry admits. “I saw the hook and knew that the option was there , so I thought huh…I wonder what would happen if I did that. I wonder why fish like humans' bait so much; does it really taste that good? Admittedly, the outcome was more predictable than what I’d hoped for. But that's not always the case, so I had to try.”
“I see,” Kim mutters, not quite seeing at all, if he’s being honest. “And how was the bait?”
“Oh, god awful.”
“Well, glad to hear it was worth it then."
“It was,” Harry insists, staring—well, more like gazing— up at Kim. “I got to meet you, and now I know about detectives, and réal, and motor carriages. You’re cool, Kim. I don’t know a lot of people who would stop in the middle of what they were doing just to unhook me. I think they’d mostly just laugh at me.”
“Khm,” Kim coughs, averting his eyes at the intensity of Harry’s gaze—and at the abrupt pang of empathy in his chest. Kim doesn't think that he has anyone in his life who would unhook him in such a situation either.
“I suppose I feel partially responsible" Kim says at last, placing a hand on the hook. "Hold still, I am going to take it out now.”
Working quickly, Kim pulls the hook all the way through and out the other side of Harry's cheek, wincing internally at Harry’s whimpers. Kim carefully wipes the blood off of Harry’s face and inspects the wound for any complications—none, thankfully—before placing gauze over the gash.
“Here," Kim says. "Hold this there to slow the bleeding.”
“But won’t I get it all wet?” Harry says, wiggling his webbed fingers.
“…Right. I can hold it then.”
Kim presses the gauze against Harry’s cheek with a gentle pressure, repressing a shiver at the coldness of Harry’s skin. It feels like a perverse version of holding a lover’s cheek: the touch as cold as ice, their skin mostly separated by a thick sheet of gauze, blood seeping through the fabric until it stains Kim’s fingers red. Despite the chill of Harry's skin and the cool ocean spray lapping at his wrists, Kim feels his ears heat.
Then, Harry pokes at his cheek with his tongue, probing the wound, and Kim can feel it from where his fingers rest outside of Harry's cheek.
You can’t fantasize about fucking a merman, Kim thinks desperately. He could fucking eat you.
Somehow, the thought is more thrilling than terrifying.
“Tell me a secret,” Harry asks suddenly, looking at Kim with curiosity.
Kim clears his throat. “I already told you that I’m really not a fisherman. I’m pretending—as a disguise, to try to find a murderer who frequents the bay.”
“That’s not a secret. Your co-workers know that.”
“I could die if the wrong people knew it. It’s a secret from the people who matter.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” Harry promises. “Hey, why don't you describe the murderer? I hang out here sometimes, maybe I’ve seen him. I could be your informant. Your fish on the inside.”
“I don’t think my precinct would look kindly upon me having a mythical creature as my CI,” Kim says, but nonetheless describes his suspect. As it turns out, Harry has seen him skulking about, laying low near one of the inlets further off the harbor, the ones Kim had initially dismissed as not worth looking into until more obvious options were exhausted.
“Do you know what he was doing there?” Kim asks, writing down notes with one hand while keeping pressure on the gauze with the other.
Harry shrugs. “No idea. Not a lot to do on that side of the bay.”
"And what were you doing there?"
“Oh, the water gets really polluted around here, you can get a great buzz going. Plus, these Revachol— “ Harry rolls the r with a relish, having only recently discovered the city’s human name from Kim “—waves have the loveliest voice. This whole place sings to me.”
Kim blinks. Ah. A merman junky. A potentially crazy merman junky. Kim dimly realizes how out of depth he is as a human-merfolk ambassador.
"I've worked in the harbor for a long time and have never seen a merperson," Kim says. "How do you stay hidden?"
"Eh, I'm the only one who really comes out there. The other merfolk are always like, 'no, stop, pollution is ‘bad for you.'"
“It is bad for you.”
“Sure, but I haven’t died yet.”
“Despite your best efforts,” Kim says, peeling the gauze away and determining that the bleeding has slowed down enough for the next part of the process. He picks up his needle and some fishing line and begins his work, carefully stitching the gash close. His work is made none the easier by the fact that Harry still wants to keep talking throughout the no doubt painful procedure.
“I just think that you humans need to think about abolishing the concept of money," Harry muses. "It probably wouldn't be too hard."
“How are you so articulate with a needle in your mouth?” Kim interrupts him before he can reinvent Mazovian Socio-Economics. “I’ve never met anyone who could spout philosophy during oral surgery.”
“Oh, it's because I don’t communicate orally.”
"An interesting response,” Kim says dryly, “given that you have been doing nothing but since we met.”
Harry taps a slit in his neck that rests alongside his gills. “Electrochemical signals. I’m moving my mouth, but the part that translates it into words you understand is mostly pheromones. I could give an entire history of the second mer rebellion with a mouth full of fish. Judit hates it when I do that though.”
Kim glances at the slit Harry’s pointing at, noting how, unlike Harry’s gills, it’s faintly glistening with some sort of fluid. Dimly, Kim recalls his interview with a cryptozoologist earlier this week. The cryptid hunter had been in the area—hunting merfolk, which Kim now feels rather stupid for doubting him about—and, though he hadn’t been able to give Kim any information about the murder suspect, he had been keen to explain the electrochemical signals given off by sirens. To lure sailors to their death, he said. A sort of chemical mesmerism.
A mesmerism that, Kim realizes, he may have fallen victim to. After all, how else would he be providing first aid to a merman without blinking an eye? Is he being lured to his death?
No. You’re not blinking an eye because you’re Kim Kitsuragi. If Harry wanted to hurt you, he could have done it by now—and vice versa. No, t here’s no doubt that you’re entirely in your right mind now. If Harry is a lure, then his bait is simply the wet and curling fur of his chest; the sizable back muscles from a lifetime of swimming; the incorrigible curiosity about the world, about you. No chemicals necessary here. You just like him.
It really is too bad he isn’t here to eat you.
Kim’s ears feel hot. Thank god that the harbor has mostly emptied out and there’s no one to see him in this state. And thank god that Harry seems too preoccupied talking about philosophy to notice either.
“Do you think that my concepts and your concepts are the same?” Harry muses. “Chemically speaking, I mean. Like, my electrochemical signals provide a translation, but is it my original interpretation of my words that you end up hearing as the final product, or something that you impose your own meaning on?”
Kim clears his throat and resumes his stitching. “I don’t know.”
Face it, Kitsuragi. The last thing you want to do is talk philosophy with a merman. You want to fuck a merman.
What a dreadful ambassador of his species Kim makes.
“I wish I could hear your interpretation of my words,” Harry sighs. “I bet it’s fascinating. Maybe you could teach me some of your language to help me understand?”
“I would make for a poor teacher. I don’t have the patience for it,” Kim says, and closes the final stitch. “There. Done.”
“Thank you,” Harry says, beaming at him with a still bloodied, but freshly stitched up grin.
“Anytime,” Kim finds himself saying, and then coughs. “Though, perhaps that is not practical to say, given our different species and habitats.”
“You said you work around the harbor a lot,” Harry says. He probes his stitches with his tongue and then winces. “And I like to hang out around here anyway. We could meet up again.”
“With less hooks involved?” Kim says wryly.
“Sure, if you prefer.” Harry smiles slyly. “You know, I don’t believe you when you say you’re not patient—I bet you could teach me all kinds of things.”
“Like what money is? Or my language?”
“Yeah. Or, you know, sex.”
It takes the entirety of Kim’s resolve and composure not to choke at Harry’s words. Even so, he has to give a quick cough and turn up the collar of his coat to hide his burning ears. Though, perhaps hiding is a bit futile at this point, given Harry’s the directness of Harry's proposal.
“Pardon?” Kim asks, as though that could possibly clarify the situation.
“Human sex. We’re both ambassadors to our species, right?” Harry says, mirroring Kim’s thoughts in a way that only confirms Kim’s perception of his own depravity. “We should start learning from each other. Language, biology…sex is the perfect combination of those.”
The shy smile that Harry shoots at Kim is the only tell of his self-consciousness. It gives Kim a bit of footing, something familiar to work with.
“Diplomatic relations and education are not my usual motivations for having sex, Harry,” Kim says, leaning in close enough to Harry to smell the salt of his skin. Allowing himself to get physically close but letting his words distance them, prolonging this strange, silly game of catch and release.
It’s not enough to fool Harry. Harry’s eyes track Kim's every motion, and his smile quickly becomes less shy and much more self-satisfied.
He’d make an incredible detective, Kim thinks faintly.
“What about attraction then?” Harry murmurs. “That’s a great reason to have sex. You’ve never had a fantasy about fucking a cryptid before? Because I have.”
“I’m not a cryptid.”
“Sure you are,” Harry says. He draws a finger up the side of Kim’s boot before tapping the foot. “A bipedal cryptid. And I caught you, which makes me a cryptozoologist.”
Kim adjusts his glasses and confiscates the hand Harry’s using to caress his shoe. He draws a finger along the webbing of Harry’s fingers and says nothing, watching in satisfaction as the motion reduces Harry to shivers and doe-eyed longing.
Finally, Kim releases the hand only to place his own against Harry’s cheek, running a gentle finger along Harry’s stitches.
“If anything,” Kim murmurs. “I caught you. ”
Their lips catch each other’s, and they finally translate their verbal dance into something physical. No need for Harry’s pheromones here. The keening, echoing sound that comes out of Harry may be inhuman, but Kim understands it perfectly as urgent, zealous want. Kim gives him the same in turn, tasting blood and strawberries as his tongue grazes the side of Harry’s sharp teeth, as he licks the last of the blood of Harry’s wound from his cheek. It’s disgusting. It’s utter stupidity. Kim loves it.
Blood in the water, Kim thinks, his cock throbbing with the thrill of it all.
“You’re so warm,” Harry wonders, his chemicals able to communicate his thoughts even as his mouth is occupied kissing Kim's. “So soft. You taste divine. ”
Kim hums. Aside from blood, Harry tastes like sweet brine and oil, and suddenly Kim must know—what is Harry tasting? Do their tastes complement one another?
“What do I taste like?” Kim breathes, breaking the kiss.
“I don’t know,” Harry says. His mouth explores Kim’s neck, his face, his mouth, inhaling him as if he could somehow swallow the scent. “I’ve never tasted it before. It feels like an like an underwater vent. Hot and acrid, but in a good way. Magnetizing .”
“Cigarette smoke,” Kim sighs into Harry’s mouth. “You’re smelling cigarette smoke.”
“Give me more,” Harry says hungrily, surging forward to kiss Kim again. It’s not long before he begins keening again as he struggles to touch more of Kim from his awkward position half-off the boat. Harry pouts, and the immature gesture lights up something in Kim like a signal flare.
“Help me up,” Harry pleads, his voice low and laced with that inhuman keening sound. “Kim, help.”
“Mmm. No.”
“Kim,” Harry whines.
Kim stifles a smile and withdraws from Harry so that he can begin to unlace his boots.
“The harbor may be nearly empty, but having sex in a boat with a mythical creature is still a bit conspicuous, Harry,” Kim says. “I’ll join you in the water. We’ll just look like two swimmers.”
Kim undresses and takes a deep satisfaction in Harry’s rapt attention. That curious, intense gaze tracks every second of Kim’s slow and agonizing show: peeling off his socks; folding them and storing them safely in his shoes; and only then making his way to his trousers, taking his time to undo each button.
“Clothes take so long,” Harry grumbles, circling the boat like a shark—though Kim suspects it’s really in order to view Kim from every angle. "How do you stand it?"
“Funny, you seemed quite fond of clothes before,” Kim says, leaning over to give Harry’s tie a quick jerk.
“Found it on the beach,” Harry preens. “Like it?”
“Harry,” Kim breathes. “It is absolutely hideous.”
And then he jumps mostly nude into the harbor bay.
Even during the height of summer, the cold shock of the water is still enough to make Kim gasp and for his cock to soften. But then Harry’s arms and tail surround him, hold him close, and it isn’t too long before he grows hard again as Harry presses fervent kisses along his throat. Kim trails a hand along Harry’s lovely, soft stomach, fingers catching against scales as he moves to touch Harry's tail, in search of a source of heat and pleasure to torture Harry with. Though, in truth, he's having a bit of difficulty finding anything. Kim has been with and is confident with men with all sorts of genitalia, but he hasn’t considered the possibility that Harry might not have any.
“Harry,” Kim says, unwilling to articulate exactly in what way he needs help.
Harry only grins, besotted rather than amused at Kim’s efforts. He grabs Kim’s hand and guides him slightly lower.
“Ours is more subtle,” Harry says. With his free hand, he wraps his hand curiously around Kim’s cock, giving it an experimental stroke. “But yours is much more beautiful. It’s just out there, for everyone to see. Is that why you wear clothes? Because you know how glorious this is—how obscene? ”
Kim Kitsuragi is normally so composed that it takes his co-workers and friends years to learn any of his tells, if they ever do at all. It takes them far longer to learn how to use those tells—if Kim ever lets them at all.
But now, Kim gasps, flushed hot with the force of Harry's words. Within hours of them meeting, this strange creature has upended Kim’s understanding of biology, given Kim a lead on a murder case, and inhaled the smoke from his lungs. He’s made Kim feel exposed, vulnerable, obscene for the simple sin of having external genitalia. It’s horrific. It’s embarrassing.
It’s the most turned on that Kim has been in years.
Kim quickly finds the spot on Harry’s tail, a small but slick opening that makes Harry's breath hitch at the touch. Now this is something Kim can work with, something he can use to rebalance himself. He circles the hole with a fingertip, humming appreciatively when Harry whines at the teasing. The tail that had loosely been encircling Kim’s hips squeezes, drawing tighter around him as Harry lets loose a keening moan. Perhaps on another day, Kim would feel threatened by the squeeze of a predator’s body around him, but right now it only allows him to feel more secure in the water, lets him feel the flex of those powerful tail muscles against his skin.
“Y-you can put it inside me,” Harry stutters. “Your finger.”
“My pleasure,” Kim murmurs, giving a pleased him when Harry begins stroking Kim’s cock at a faster pace. He learns quickly—Kim adores that in a man.
Not to be outdone, Kim slips a finger into Harry’s hole, teasing the tip through folds of slick skin, exploring whatever he can find. It is, again, the work of fine motor control, of dexterity. There is little that Kim loves more, and he begins exploring Harry's genitalia with zeal. With a bit more stretching and coaxing, Kim can even push his finger deep enough to find something slightly more rigid, something that feels almost like cartilage to the touch. When Kim presses into it, Harry keens again, a rich, lovely sound that floods and stings at Kim’s ears.
“And I’m obscene?” Kim murmurs, his own cock thrumming with heat at Harry’s loss of words. “Look at you: your teeth, the strength of your tail. You’re supposed to be a predator. I could be at your mercy in the water like this. You could do whatever you wanted, eat me alive—but you won’t. You can’t. Not when I make you feel this good.”
“Kim,” Harry gasps, speech halfway between Suresne and whatever language is made by his strange vocal cords. “I’d never, I’d never-“
“Come on, Harry,” Kim says, pressing his finger into that spot again, firm and insistent. “You wanted hot sex with a cryptid? Then come for me.”
Harry’s hips rock up into Kim’s fingers, his scales rubbing roughly against Kim’s hips as he chases his pleasure. When he finally comes, he calls out in a guttural whine that does not seem to belong to either of their respective species.
Afterward, Harry practically deflates, his tail releasing Kim, his body relaxed even as it's pushed aimlessly around by the waves, as water crashes over his head. It would look almost as if he were drowning, if not for the rapid flutter of his gills.
“You’re incredible,” Harry breathes. “Wow. Sorry I didn’t do much there for a bit, that was—wow.”
“Well then?" Kim grins. "Are humans as depraved as you’d hoped?”
“Even worse,” Harry says dreamily. He finally lifts his head up and leers at Kim before swiftly swimming over to capture him in his tail and arms again. “Merfolk can be pretty bad too though. After all, we are predators.”
“Tough words for a man caught by my fishing rod,” Kim preens.
Harry grins wildly, smacking a kiss on Kim’s lips before dipping his head and shoulders beneath the water. His strong tail shifts to accommodate the new position, wrapping around Kim’s hips and keeping him steady and still even in the evening tide. Harry curiously noses against Kim's cock, clearly as delighted with it as he's been at every one of Kim's traits. Kim's cock throbs at the worshipful attention, at the touch of Harry's slick, webbed hands. Then, with the sudden motion of a creature pouncing on its prey, Harry slips his mouth over the head of Kim’s cock, his lips and gums carefully positioned to shield Kim from sharp and deadly teeth. Kim’s entire body jerks in Harry’s tail, and he moans as the muscles coil and soothe him back into place.
Harry glances up at Kim and gives him a cheeky wink before taking Kim to the hilt, encasing him in warmth. Kim almost chokes on seawater and surely would have without Harry’s tail keeping him afloat.
He doesn’t need to breathe, Kim realizes, gasping at the warmth of Harry's throat, at the feather-light tease of gills fluttering against his cock. He could do this for ages.
It does indeed feel like an age: an eternity of Harry’s warm throat and soft mouth, of the waves lapping at Kim’s chest and their chill turning his nipples hard, of the silky and teasing touch of Harry’s fins against his skin, of the rough glide of scales against his hips. Kim is shivering and his fingers are pruning and his clothes are soaked, but he’s harder than he’s been in years and it just keeps going. Harry keeps going, without breath or pause, until Kim reaches his peak and dips his head below the ocean so that he can shout his release without noise.
“Jesus, Harry,” Kim sighs when he surfaces, trying to catch his breath as Harry surfaces as well.
Harry licks his lips with a hum. “That part of you tastes good too, you know. A bit like fish.”
“Don’t compare my come to fish,” Kim breathes.
“Why not? Fish are good.”
Kim tries to squint at him through his glasses, but covered in water as they are, Harry's form is only a blur. Hmm, glasses are a complication that Kim will have to put more consideration into when he next decides to have sex in the harbor bay.
If you think you’re being sarcastic, Kitsuragi, you'd better check again. You definitely want to do this again.
“Help me get back on the boat,” Kim says. Harry happily obliges, swimming them to where the boat had drifted.
Kim pulls himself back onto the boat and begins what post-coital rituals can still be maintained after a quickie in the ocean. He cleans his glasses; cleans and towels himself dry; and carefully puts on his clothes, ensuring that no salt or dirt he may have accumulated from his swim will stain then. He grabs a cigarette and lights it, inhaling the smoke and—after a moment's thought—breathing it in Harry's direction.
Harry watches the whole procedure with a dopey smile that, for all of Kim’s composure, he could very well be mimicking.
“So,” Kim says. He clears his throat. “From one cryptid to another, that was…”
“Amazing,” Harry says, taking another lap around the boat in his giddiness. “Holy shit, I didn’t know that human bodies could do that. That’s so sexy.”
“Yes,” Kim says, unable to stop himself from giving Harry a small smile. “That’s an accurate summation of it.”
Harry gives the boat another lap, this one a bit slower as he clearly wrestles with some thought or another. Kim collapses into the deck, letting one hand dangle over the side of the boat—and snorts when Harry immediately begins to inspect it with cool, webbed fingers.
“Will you come back?” Harry finally asks, pressing a kiss to Kim’s palm.
Kim takes his hand out of Harry’s, but finds that he doesn’t feel like pulling it back into the boat. Instead, it finds a home Harry’s hair, tangling and exploring the curls there. He gives a pleased smile as Harry hums at the touch, and takes another drag of his cigarette.
“Of course,” Kim decides. “After all, I work here. And you must have quite a knowledge of the harbor. I bet you would make a useful informant, among other things.”
“Other, sexy things?”
“Mmm, let me buy you a new tie and we will see,” Kim says, laughing softly to himself when Harry splashes water into the boat in response.
The splashing, Kim’s demure responses—they both know that it’s only play, more catch and release. They both know that they’ve already been caught by one another’s lures and will be back in this same situation very soon.
Fuck it, Kim thinks, sitting up so that he can lean over the side of the boat and splash Harry back. Let’s have more cryptids then.