The pool stirs ominously, the small, natural daily rippling tides growing larger by the second. Yifan stares down at the water’s edge, waiting. There isn’t a peep coming from Minseok’s room. There’s no one else on this floor, but everyone is rather sound asleep upstairs. It’s the dead of night, and tomorrow will certainly be one busy, hectic day. Only Yifan is awake. And also, whatever is in the water.

The water convulses once more near the portal. Air bubbles streak to the surface and a dark head emerges from the water. It’s streaked in purples and violets, damp from the salty, ocean water, and Yifan has seen that face before. Just a few days ago.

Kyungsoo.

Yifan holds his position, watching the mermen shake his head above the surface and get his bearings. To his knowledge, this is only the second time this particular mermen has come into the facility.

The merman finally sees him standing there, and he freezes in the water. Then, after a few tense moments, he swims towards the side. Two small, pale hands grip the edge of the pool and Yifan finds himself moving towards him. He stops but a meter away, and squats.

Cautiously, softly, Yifan whispers a single word. “Hi.”

Baekhyun has never seen the island in such a bustle. Not even before the storm was there so much activity. But then, as now, there's an urgency about everyone's tasks, and underlying that—calmly controlled panic.

"What do you want me to do?" he asks Chanyeol, to whom Jongdae assigned Baekhyun to help. There's almost no place for him elsewhere. Jongdae is locked away in his office, Amber is running everywhere. Tao took Wendy with him to scour all the other islands in case something was left behind there that might give them all away.

"Help me pack these. Just throw them in the boxes, it doesn't matter how."

Baekhyun hasn't seen Sehun in a day. The merman and Yixing were immediately dispatched to their clan to warn the other merfolk to keep a low profile. No one is to ascend anywhere close to the surface until the all-clear is given, no one except them.

"Where are we going with these?" Baekhyun starts throwing all of Chanyeol's books and notebooks into giant open boxes.  The shelves are starting to empty, row after row of bare space. A thin line of dust marks where each of them had sat and the space behind.

"They need to disappear. All this work, everything, anything that could lead to what we do here."

The only books remaining are general studies about the ocean, textbooks and other publications too mainstream to contain anything about myths or mermen. The rest of Chanyeol's collection, over half of his office, including all the binders where he keeps his work files, are loaded away.

"Are you taking them off the island?" Baekhyun asks.

Chanyeol grunts. Ten minutes later, Jackson and Jongin arrive to help carry them down the stairs. It's then that Chanyeol begins to look glum. He lets the younger men including Baekhyun carry the boxes. Sweat pours off his brow when the last one sits lands on the ground, but they're nowhere close to the dock as Baekhyun expected.

They stand around the boxes in an open clearing, behind the ridge line of the bay and far enough away from any of the buildings. Jongdae comes down, and Amber, even Yifan and Lu Han. Each of them carries their own stack of boxes, countless publications, files and notebooks inside. It's not until someone lights a match that Baekhyun realizes what's happening.

"No!" he shouts on impulse.

Chanyeol holds him back, long fingers tightening around his arm while Jongin adds kindling and branches to the pile.

"You're burning it. Everything. You're burning everything!" Baekhyun cries.

It takes a while for someone to answer. Jongdae looks across the fire, small tendrils lapping at the boxes, and grimaces. "We have to."

"We can't leave even a trace," Chanyeol adds.

"But your books, your library. All your work." All the handwritten files and notes of countless generations of mermen that have come through their system. Names and births and behaviors, stories and anecdotes, history and culture, the research painstakingly gathered over the years, passing hand to hand down the line until this one moment, when it all goes up in flames.

"They're just books, Baekhyun. Just paper. Nothing we know can truly be lost. They can be compiled again."

But in spite of his words, nobody is cheered. They stand there for a long time. Minseok comes out and puts his arm around Lu Han's shoulder. Jackson sits down a little ways away and stares at the fire. Amber has tears in her eyes, Yifan's gaze is hard. Chanyeol disappears halfway through the ordeal, after one of the boxes collapses, sending a shoot of sparks into the air.

The smoke burns Baekhyun's nose. Jongin pulls him farther away, and together they stand by a cropping of trees and watch as it dies down. Only Jongdae stares at the bonfire impassively, as if reminding himself repeatedly every second that this is the right thing to do.

Baekhyun is the youngest person here. He shouldn’t even feel so invested, not like the guys who have been here decades longer. It hurts Baekhyun to see everything go, how much more would it be to see your life’s work go up in flames? Yet he feels it. Maybe because he doesn’t understand why, why this has to be. Why now. He was just starting to feel comfortable here, and now this.

Hours pass. There are probably more productive things they could be doing. Yet no one leaves the pit, not even when the ashes are low and the fire burns cold.

Baekhyun shivers. The sun is low in the sky, already hidden by the ridge, and a cool evening wind blows across the remnants of the fire. He hadn't even realized when Jongin left his side. Not until someone lays a jacket over his back and sits down beside him.

Sehun is there. Shirtless, as he isn't cold, he leans against Baekhyun's shoulder and hums noncommittally. There's nothing to be said. Sehun must know the extent they're going to protect his kind, his family, his clan. Maybe it was spoken somewhere, written in the fine print of all those documents, that when it became necessary... everything would disappear. All for the sake of the mermen is everything burning.

"I'm cold," says Baekhyun. An understatement. He can't see Sehun's expression in the twilight, other than his head turning towards him.

"You can go inside."

"I don't want to go inside." It's depressing, the thought of all that empty space in everybody's offices. On everybody's desks. How much knowledge have they lost here tonight...

He wonders what Sehun and Yixing would have told their clan. Did the other mermen realize the danger they were actually in? Would this be it, the conclusion of their program, the Exchange. Or just a temporary blip on the landscape that could be restarted later, after the crisis is over. If they passed it all in one piece.

"But I thought you said you were cold."

"I don't want to go inside," Baekhyun repeats. "It's sad in there. Everyone is so, so sad."

And tomorrow will be another day of prep work and hiding and absconding with evidence until no hint remains.

"I'll go with you."

"What?" Baekhyun looks at him, shocked.

"I'll go with you inside."

Baekhyun's brains reels and turns. "Do you not have somewhere else to be?" he asks.

"Not tonight, no."

Not tonight...

"I'll stay with you tonight," Sehun insists quietly. "If, that is if you want..."

Morning dawns grey and cloudy. Even with the shutters open, Baekhyun has to blink his eyes and check the clock. It’s early, before when he needs to wake up, but something has already caused him to shift.

Sehun.

The merman is passed out beside him, beneath Baekhyun’s blanket, and it’s only by virtue of them sharing two separate comforters that they’re not lying together with skin-to-skin contact. At least, that’s how they started last night.

‘What do people sleep in when they go to bed?’ Sehun had asked, and Baekhyun had believed in his innocence when he gave multiple answers.

‘Pajamas. Underwear. Sometimes nothing.’

It’s not like he hadn’t seen him before. Many times now, in fact. However, it’s different when you’re together, alone, in a bed. And somehow, in all those candid conversations of theirs, Baekhyun has never gotten around to asking Sehun about… se- stuff .

Surely merpeople did… stuff with each other. Baekhyun read about it in Chanyeol’s files. Merpeople chose mates and had children, sometimes they were everlasting bonds, and sometimes temporary. Like humans, they had their peculiarities and their desires and one couple might look vastly different from another.

But Baekhyun has never asked Sehun specifically. And he doesn’t know what they have. The last few weeks have been extremely enlightening in terms of merman-human bonds, and the double-option of being their go-between from ocean from land has been weighing heavily in his mind.

Is that all Sehun wants, needs him for? To be that option if he ever wants to leave?

It’s almost laughable. Here, all this time Baekhyun thought the relationship was mutual, but probably more beneficial on the human front. They’re the ones who learn, who research, benefiting economically and thus financially while all the mermen receive is a certain knowledge of the world. What if Sehun has seen it differently? What if he’s been flirting with Baekhyun, instead of the other way around, to gain an advantage?

Baekhyun’s heart rate bounds inside his chest as these thoughts draw him awake. To the situation, to this room, to their circumstances. To the merman sleeping peacefully beside him, skin damp from natural perspiration, glistening eerily in the grayish light of the cloud-blocked sun.

Why is he here? What does he want?  To comfort Baekhyun because his world was spinning into chaos?

If Sehun still wants the ultimate dream of living like a man, he won’t be getting it now. Baekhyun can’t take him home. He’s not ready. The company isn’t ready, not with the exposure they’ve taken on and the strangers approaching. It’s too risky, and Sehun must know it.

Which means, Sehun might be here now for an entirely different reason.

Baekhyun pokes his cheek. The merman doesn’t stir, and it’s enough to verify he’s indeed still sound asleep. Someone in the room next door is awake. Through the thin barricade of a wall splitting his and Lu Han’s bedrooms, he hears the other man rummaging through drawers, probably packing. They’ve all been packing. Not to leave, but to conceal.

The sounds doesn’t wake Sehun. Lu Han shuffles around for a few more minutes. Then the door to the hall opens and shuts loudly behind him. Baekhyun trails his finger down Sehun’s prominent jawline and stares wordlessly at his body. In this light, it’s impossible to see the gill marks on his neck. Even in broad daylight it’s a difficult task, and you have to know exactly what you’re looking for.

Human, he looks so incredibly human. It’s only through touch, and because Baekhyun recognizes that alien feel, that he knows Sehun is not. The dampness of his skin, sweat to the untrained eye, is one such sign. More so than humans, mermen are made of water molecules. The moisture is always there, always bubbling, inside and out.

‘The longer I’m out of water, the more I get like this. It’s not serious. Nothing ever happens. I just… get wet.’

Baekhyun had laughed. Awkwardly, almost hysterically because of course Sehun wouldn’t know why Baekhyun thought that was funny. He didn’t think it worthwhile to share inside secrets of his overly-rated and hormonal mind.

Why are you here? Do you like me this much? He wonders to himself.

“Sehun…” He whispers aloud instead, softly.

No response, but it’s nearly time for Baekhyun to wake him up. Half of Sehun’s blankets have fallen off his body, and one leg somewhere in the night decided to free itself. It’s sticking out now diagonally along the bed, overlapping with Baekhyun’s. And Baekhyun may have gone to sleep in his boxers, but he has a tendency to toss and turn until his bed is wrecked. Thus, he has one nearly hairless thigh draped over his own, and the sensation is becoming agony.

“Sehun…” he whispers a little louder into Sehun’s ear.

The merman squirms, but his eyes remain shut. His leg moves though, the one Baekhyun particularly wishes would stay absolutely still.

“Please… wake up,” Baekhyun pants. His voice is nearly gone. “Sehun, it’s time to get up.”

Finally, after what seems like an endless amount of minuscule movements, the merman opens his eyes, turns his head sideways, and smiles.

“Good morning.”

Baekhyun’s heart drops to his stomach, and he tries to smile back. “G-Good, morning.”

Sehun’s smile rolls even wider, this time his eyes joining the expression. “I always wanted to say that to someone.”

“What? ‘Good morning?’”

“Yes.”

Sehun beams, and Baekhyun looks aghast. Mostly because Sehun in the morning is brighter than sunshine, and it’s more than a little intoxicating.

“Where I usually sleep, we don’t see the sun like this, in the morning.”

“It’s barely even out today. You should see what a real sunrise looks like,” says Baekhyun.

Sehun hums. “I have. Many times. But never with you. We should go sometime.”

It’s too much to deal with. Baekhyun forces himself to remain silent, even biting his lower lip to keep from saying something stupid or else groaning in frustration. Unfortunately, that doesn’t do anything to fix their physical proximity. Sehun rolls onto his side, and the blanket slips even lower to the top of his hip, and still there’s a bare leg brushing entirely too close to Baekhyun’s skin.

Whatever happened to the Sehun who was embarrassed by his ? Who covered himself up when Baekhyun first saw him, not because he was shy but because Baekhyun was. Where, in the past few weeks, did that Sehun go? Because the one in front of him now is looking at him with steady eyes that, possibly, took a nosedive downwards to gaze over Baekhyun’s lips, maybe even his collar bones. Hopefully not any lower than that.

“Baekhyun?”

Baekhyun answers so fast. “What?”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“M-maybe…” He tries to tease.

“You told me once, that you liked someone before you came here. A human. I mean, of course they were human. But… what happened, exactly?”

Does he have to ask these questions while they’re in the same bed?!

“What, do you mean by ‘what happened’. I told you. I liked someone and… I thought maybe they liked me, but I was wrong. I got it all wrong.”

“You said that, yes. But tell me more about it? Who did you like? What were the signs you liked them. It was a girl?” The relaxed posture Sehun effects during this string of questions don’t really help Baekhyun’s excitability. “I mean, what did you say and… how did you confess. Or, was it not a girl? I know that can… happen, in your society.”

“How, how do you know?” is the only question to which Baekhyun can respond.

Sehun reclines his head back onto Baekhyun’s pillow and lazily smiles, his eyes panning upwards to the ceiling. “Yixing told me. Actually… Yixing says he knows, how it… works.”

Well of course it would be Yixing. But now it’s Baekhyun’s turn to be flabbergasted. “What do you mean he knows, how it works?”

Baekhyun is aware that he isn’t answering any of Sehun’s questions. But somehow, they’re not important. Or rather, they’re not as important as driving into the source of Sehun’s fixation.

“Don’t you know about him and Jongin? I thought it was obvious to everyone. Especially to me. I’ve seen them… on the beach.”

For one split moment, Baekhyun really hopes Sehun means, he’s seen them… playing volleyball on the beach. Somehow though, he thinks that’s wrong. And he doesn’t know how to address it.

“You’ve seen them…” he repeats with a deadened tone.

“I just wondered. Is that how it always is between us?”

“Us?”

“Between our species,” Sehun clarifies, although Baekhyun needs no clarification. His heart rate has resumed its beating, a sure difference for the few times this morning that it has stopped completely. His temples are sweating, and Sehun’s leg is still touching his.

“I… I don’t know. I mean I only know you, and Jongin and Yixing.” He manages this without stuttering too much.

“So you don’t know if that kind of… relationship is typical?” Sehun’s words are even, measured, probing, and Baekhyun knows exactly what he means.

Baekhyun shakes his head, an action so minute that he can almost believe he’s denying this entire conversation is happening.

“What happened to you, before you came here?” Sehun asks again.

And this time, Baekhyun has to answer. “I… liked a person I wasn’t supposed to. A boy. His name was Sungjong. I thought he liked boys too. I thought he liked me. But he was… or rather, I was wrong.”

“Why didn’t he like you?”

“Because he thought I was disgusting.”

Baekhyun has never said that out loud before. The words leave his throat before he can think about them, a hollow, emptying feeling that actually feels kind of good. Except he’s telling this to another man, a merman yes, but a man, who is currently occupied with tearing down Baekhyun’s inhibitions while laying beside him , and has already confessed to watching other men doing… stuff on a beach.

He shuts his eyes, half-reveling in this confession, half panicking. The bed shifts, and Baekhyun’s panic doubles. Sehun, when he opens his eyes, is leaning closer to him, one elbow propping himself up, the other seeking Baekhyun’s forearm.

“You didn’t let that hurt you did you?”

Baekhyun gulps. “Maybe.”

It had been awful. Sungjong’s reaction, and that incredible sinking feeling of having made the worst mistake ever. Baekhyun hoped it could be contained. At the very least, maybe no one would hear about it. Another false hope. Sungjong, so worried about his own honor, had told everyone, laughing while he did so. And it was that casually thrown sneer, hidden behind fake mirth, that caused Baekhyun’s world to fall apart.

“You’re not disgusting,” says Sehun.

But that’s not what people said at the time. The rumors made it around the university. His family even found out. His mother didn’t know what to say. Baekhyun took her silence to mean she hated him too, and he threw that in her face. Maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe she just needed time. But Baekhyun didn’t give it to her, he was too afraid of facing a possible worse truth.

“Thank you.”

“Hey, Baekhyun?”

“Hmm?” He’s barely paying attention to Sehun’s words, too caught up in the past, too caught up in trying to leave the past behind that he misses completely the look in Sehun’s eyes.

“Would you think it disgusting if I kissed you right now?”

That shocks his system all right. His eyes fly open, Sehun is so close to his face, and there’s hesitation in his gaze, but also a resolute desire to remove the distance. Baekhyun doesn’t think. His breath fails him, but his head shakes no, and somehow he gets out a few words.

“I… wouldn’t, no.”

All of the past is wiped away the moment Sehun presses his lips to his. He gasps at their touch, warm and moist like the rest of the merman’s body, salty and fragrant. The hand on his forearm slides up his body, around his shoulders and around the curve of his back. Without removing his lips, Sehun is caging him in, rolling over his body until Baekhyun is completely on his back.

And maybe he doesn’t know the difference between a simple kiss and something more, but it’s a full blown make-out session within seconds. Baekhyun doesn’t bother with slowing it down. His lower half is still covered in blankets, but Sehun’s slips off entirely as he brings his knees around either side of Baekhyun’s hips until he’s crouching on all fours, elbows and knees and his mouth still on Baekhyun’s.

Baekhyun groans at the first taste of tongue. He parts his mouth wide, Sehun greedily takes his breath. Nostrils flailing, Baekhyun gasps and Sehun returns the action. For one second, the merman withdraws. It’s barely enough space for each of them to resume breathing, and Baekhyun’s eyes shoot straight open. Sehun is staring at him. His tongue runs along his upper lip, chest heaving slightly. He looks like he might draw away, but then Baekhyun retrieves one of his shell-shocked limbs and reaches up, drawing the other man back to him. In the moment before Sehun’s body stutters and collapses, he looks down and gets an eyeful of toned, tanned abs, a narrow waist and a half-prominent , but then all that weight falls on top of him, and he can’t find it in himself to complain.

Sehun kisses him through the panic, sometimes tenderly, sometimes hungrily. Baekhyun keeps his hands up high, too afraid of where this might go if he lowers them any farther than the small of Sehun’s back. Even with all that skin on display, Sehun only asked him for a kiss. And the merman, despite going above and beyond, hasn’t reached any lower than Baekhyun’s chest either.

It’s a lot of think about. Even in the back of his mind, even though his body has taken over most of the functioning of his brain, there’s an awareness here that Baekhyun is currently kissing a merman passionately in his own bed, and surely there are consequences to this?

He lifts his head when Sehun tries to draw away, a murmur of protest already passing through his voice when Sehun only falls to the side, now pressing his lips against the side of his neck.

Where does this lead? How far does it go? And Baekhyun doesn’t just mean right now, but today. Tomorrow. The day beyond that. With so much tension racing across the island as they await the consequences of the leak, where does Sehun fit into that? More importantly, where do Baekhyunand Sehun fit into that?

Sehun whimpers, and Baekhyun notes that it’s because he’s finally stopped kissing his throat. His breath is still hot against his skin, and his entire body is a furnace. It’s a match to Baekhyun’s too, but all he can do at this moment is let gravity have its way and sink onto the mattress with half an additional body on top.

“Th-that was more than just kissing,” Baekhyun laughs, half-wheezes. He feels Sehun’s lips form a smile into his skin as well.

“I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be.”

“Because you liked it?” Just using his lips to speak has them brushing, tickling Baekhyun’s throat.

He squirms playfully. “Yes.” Maybe if he pretends this was just a fun little reprieve, Sehun won’t notice that his crotch is on fire and beneath his blanket, his is rather hard.

“I liked it too.”

An understatement too if the state of Sehun’s arousal is anything to go by. Baekhyun can feel it against his leg even through the blanket, although he’s determined not to say anything. Not unless Sehun brings it up first, and of course there’s a tiny hope that maybe the merman won’t.

It’s going rather fine, each of them lying together, breathing together, calming their bodies down. Until Sehun tries to move, and when he does, he stops, all too painfully aware, as Baekhyun guesses, of their mutual problem.

“Uhmm.”

Baekhyun covers an arm over his eyes and chuckles. It’s the only thing he knows to do in a situation like this where he’s pretty sure they don’t need to make any further major leaps in their relationship. ‘Kissing’ is all very well, but he’s not ready to explore everything that Sehun has ‘seen’ Jongin and Yixing doing on a beach.

Unbidden, he wrenches Sehun’s former blanket out from the strewn tangle and hands it to the merman. Sehun takes it gratefully, and when Baekhyun dares to look at him again, there’s a sheepish grin on his face.

“I’m not sure what to do right now,” he says, squirming under Baekhyun’s gaze. Baekhyun has to look up, but surprisingly he feels like he has the upper hand in this. Sehun is the one who kissed him, Sehun is the one who attacked him, who rolled on top of his body and put them in this situation, but now… he looks cutely out of his element.

“Don’t tell me you don’t know what to do about… that.”

Sehun cheekbones tense, and his skin colors slightly, but he bites his lip and attempts to look mature. “I know how it works. In two forms, thank you very much.” His bite is cold, but his smile two seconds later says otherwise. “I’ll give you some privacy.”

Dragging the blanket around his body, he makes to stand up.

“Wait!” Baekhyun cries out, unprepared to say his goodbyes so soon. Who knows what’ll happen today. What if Sehun plans on disappearing again. What if Baekhyun gets so busy that they don’t have time to meet. What if the company reps choose today to show up and Baekhyun never gets to see him again. He already had one terrible goodbye with the last person he liked. He won’t let it happen again, and especially not in these circumstances.

Sehun stands up, but he pauses, waiting.

Baekhyun sits up, drawing the covers over his lower half. Now he doesn’t know what to say. He takes his time, stares at the floor, at Sehun’s human toes that don’t even exist in another dimension of magical ocean-to-land convenience. Baekhyun scratches his neck, feels the place where Sehun pressed slow, intimate kisses against his throat, and mumbles.

“Will I see you again today? Where are you going?”

He doesn’t just mean now. He means, for the whole day.

“Home, for a little while.”

“But you’ll be back?”

“Of course.” Sehun’s voice is a little shaky, like he may not believe his own words. “Soon, if I can.”

Baekhyun can’t say anything to that. It’s not his place to demand where or where not Sehun is supposed to be. His first duty is to his family, to his clan. After all, preserving their safety is why everyone on the island is going crazy. It’s selfish of Baekhyun to want Sehun around all the time. And right now, it’s also extremely dangerous.

“Stay close, if you can. Please.”

Sehun doesn’t falter. Standing tall over the bed, he smiles. It’s the most reassuring thing he’s done all morning.

“I will.”

Half an hour later, after Baekhyun has taken care of his little domestic problem, he showers and finally shows his face in the kitchen. Breakfast is usually a free-for-all affair, and today is no different, except that everyone is visibly more nervous.

They don’t know when the boat will arrive. They don’t know how long it will take for ‘somebody’ to make their way to this distant atoll in the middle of the ocean. All that uncertainty shows in everyone’s faces. They eat nervously, quietly. All normal routine chatter is dead. Instead, it’s hushed conversations about what they need to get done today, and was Tao’s sweep of all the islands yesterday completely thorough?

“Chanyeol. Wendy. See me, please, in five in my office.” Jongdae’s voice booms loud from the hallway door. Everyone looks up, but their boss is already gone. He’s looked gaunt ever since they received Soojung’s message.

“What do you think he wants?” Wendy asks Chanyeol. The older man shakes his head, although Baekhyun suspects he knows at least part of what’s going on.

When they exit, Jongin confirms his suspicions. “When Minho gets back, Jongdae wants them to leave straightaway. Before the others get here.”

Baekhyun nods his head as Jongin goes on, but he already knows what he’s going to say. Chanyeol had hinted as much the day before. Their physical records have all been destroyed, but there must be back-up records to ensure that not everything is lost. It’s their evacuation plan. What information they want to preserve will be snuck out with Chanyeol. What working experiments they don’t want to lose will be snuck out with Wendy.

“What happens to the rest of us?” Baekhyun asks aloud.

He feels almost like they’re being left behind as some sort of sacrifice. Although of course it can’t be that bad. Nobody is coming here to kill them, Baekhyun hopes. They just need to… maintain some semblance of operations to justify their occupancy of the atoll. Jongdae promised everyone instructions today. Baekhyun has a wild guess they’ll assign him First Researcher of the rare island lizard species that nobody as yet has bothered to name.

He looks around the tables in wonder. The only ones left by that point will be him, Jongin, Tao, Jackson, Yifan, Lu Han, Minseok, Amber and Jongdae. Soojung is already gone. Chanyeol and Wendy will be gone soon. Baekhyun didn’t realize it, but he’s going to miss Chanyeol. Half of what he knows about mermen, Baekhyun learned from him. But soon, they won’t have any mermen around. Not until—not unless—they make it through this hurdle.

He wonders where exactly Sehun has gone. Did he dive into the water with a hard-on? Would Baekhyun be quite as attracted to him in merman form as he is over Sehun’s human skin. How weird would that even be…

A few people trickle out, their breakfast done. Baekhyun is the last person in there with Jongin when the other man says quietly, without insinuation, “Sehun stayed with you last night?”

Baekhyun stares at his plate and clears his throat. “Uhmm.”

Jongin chuckles. “I could never get Yixing to actually stay overnight. He likes his human form, a lot. But never for so long.”

Still, unable to respond, Baekhyun says, “Oh.”

He’s thinking about what Sehun must have seen. What Jongin is correctly assuming Baekhyun already knows.

“When was the last time you saw him? Yixing?” he asks instead.

“Two days,” Jongin replies, and he sounds about as wistful as Baekhyun feels.

“You really like him,” Baekhyun says. It’s not a question, not with the way Jongin’s emotions are bleeding through.

When Baekhyun first got here, he used to think Jongin was embarrassed by the merman—or man, as Baekhyun originally thought he was. Now he realizes that Jongin was probably embarrassed by Yixing’s public attention. Less so privately.

“Do you know he has a child?” Jongin shocks Baekhyun completely.

“What?!”

Jongin is nodding sadly. “Yes. A boy, should be around two years old. His mother is mermaid called Yoona. I try not to be jealous of her. They’re not in an official relationship. At least, that’s what Yixing says.”

“I-I didn’t know.”

Jongin makes his pronouncement sound almost like a funeral.

“Yixing wanted to go to the mainland with me. When I first got here and befriended him, he was so excited. It’s all he would talk about. But the laws of the clan are strict. For every merman who wants to leave their tribe, they must leave behind something of their seed. So he had a baby…”

But… Baekhyun can almost hear Jongin saying that word.

“Now he doesn’t really want to go anywhere. I guess it’s understandable. You don’t know how attached you’ll get to a child of your own, I suppose, until it happens. I guess it’s also a good thing that I don’t really want to leave here either. Or well, I don’t know what’s going to happen now… but I was kind of satisfied, being here. Close to Yixing.”

He makes it sound like everything will soon belong to the past.

“Have, you ever seen his son?”

Jongin huffs. “Not likely. Like their mermaids, children born to the merpeople won’t ever come to the surface.”

“But some do…” Baekhyun insists. By now, everyone has heard how Baekhyun nearly died at the hands of an equally frightened mermaid, yet everyone agrees that was the most extraordinary event.

“That’s quite rare. And anyways, I was happy to share Yixing in whatever way. We’ve only… become close recently.”

Baekhyun falters. So all this time, Jongin was undergoing his own private romance, full of its own private woes, and Baekhyun never noticed because outwardly they are so casual.

Jongin jolts, like he’s suddenly realized how mopey he sounds. He pats his own leg twice and gives a sideways smile in Baekhyun’s direction. “We’ll get through this. It won’t be so bad. Can’t be all that bad.”

When Baekhyun leaves a few minutes later, he chances upon Amber in the hall carrying a stack of manilla files. She looks rushed and stressed as usual, but her face lights up in reprieve at Baekhyun’s apparition.

“Baekhyun! Are you heading pool side? Can you take some things down for me?”

He doesn’t contradict her. Not a minute later he’s knocking on Minseok’s lab with a sealed envelope for delivery. It takes longer for them to answer. Minseok opens the door with a haggard look, takes one look at Baekhyun’s envelope and accepts it without a word. The door shuts in Baekhyun’s face before he can even smile. It echoes across the pool. Baekhyun steps back, feeling almost wounded. He knows everybody is overloaded with worry, but that was rude even for Minseok’s nature.

Yifan is staring at him from across the room when he turns around. Normally the doctor/vet just looks at him with a sly smirk or grimace of superiority. Now, however, his expression is completely blank. Almost contemplative. Baekhyun sees him glance once towards the portal opening, but only briefly. He bristles a little when he sees Baekhyun looking back.

“Need anything?” he says, when Baekhyun walks around the pool.

Baekhyun shakes his head and sees the tension slowly relieve itself from Yifan’s postured shoulders. He’d offer to help the man with anything, but doubts Yifan would accept it. Ever since the first time they met, Baekhyun has felt nothing but closed-off cynicism. It frightens him. Without the few friendships he’s tentatively developed since arriving here, that could very well be him in a few years’ time.

Who was it that said, everyone on the island is here because they’re running from something. They stay, because they’d rather be here than anywhere else.

What’s Yifan here for then? What’s his story, why does he relegate himself to this kind of living. For that matter, why is Chanyeol here? Other than his love of studying the mermen, he couldn’t have possibly known what he was getting into when he arrived. Like Baekhyun, everyone probably flew and sailed out here in a daze, not knowing what exactly they were doing, or where they were going. Did Jongdae ever suspect he’d be leading a covert operation aimed at the complete cover-up of a supposed-mythical species?

So many possibilities, so many stories, none of them known. And somehow they all ended up here, and in spite of that, here they are happy. Even Yifan, when he thinks no one is paying attention, seems content in his work.

It’s a retreat, a last resort, a haven for misfits like Baekhyun. A paradise for the guys who like only sun and sand, like Jackson and Tao. An adventure, a challenge, for Soojung and her endless mission to court the mermaids. A hideaway for the quiet ones. Like Minseok and Lu Han, always holed up in their lab.

And now it’s all about to be jeopardized.

“Are you sure you don’t need anything?” Yifan asks again, more gruffly this time. His eyebrows are furrowed, like he wishes Baekhyun would leave already. Baekhyun has been thinking all this time, without moving. He hadn’t realized.

“No, no, sorry. I’m good.”

He’s not actually. But everyone already knows that anyways. None of them right now are ‘good’.

Two days later, Baekhyun’s sitting on the dock, waiting.

Chanyeol and Wendy left this morning with their most prized research data. Suddenly, there’s no more ‘work’ to be done. The task of the day, every day, until their visitors come is to bolster the facade of their cover-up operations. Minseok and Lu Han are working only on plant-based research. Jongin and Baekhyun have been given a crash course on monitoring the health of all nearby reefs, something they usually oversaw anyways but with help of the mermen themselves. Jongdae and Amber still oversee the entire facility, Jackson and Tao still do all the maintenance and odd jobs. Yifan is just a doctor. Baekhyun hopes no one will look too closely at his credentials and see he’s not actually a doctor of humans. Everyone has been thoroughly mock-interrogated to make sure they don’t crack under fire, and Baekhyun knows it was a good seminar because even Jongdae almost made him cry demanding he tell all he knows, and still Baekhyun didn’t crack.

It’s cloudy again. Lu Han says there’s a chance for rain, but so far there’s nothing except a slightly more troubled sea. The waves crash against his bare toes, then retreat. He numbers each crest out of boredom until he loses count.

Yixing came back this morning, all smiles and winks for Baekhyun—Sehun probably told him everything—before bounding off to find Jongdae. Baekhyun watched Jongdae hand Yixing an envelope and whisper something in his ear. Then he and Jongin disappeared together and no one bothered to follow them.

Sehun will be back though. That’s what Yixing said.

That’s why Baekhyun waits. Because he has nothing better to do than sit around waiting on a merman like a lovestruck loser.

What if when Sehun comes back, he will have thought about things? Could he regret giving away his kisses so freely? Or maybe he didn’t mean anything special by it.

The longer he waits the more nervous he gets. Every abnormal ripple in the surface of the ocean gets his heart beating loud and his breaths growing weak. Each time, it’s not Sehun. Not yet.

The wire Minho brought them included a cryptic remark about the status of their company execs. Jongdae translated it as giving them two days. Two more days until… what. The end? No one knows.

Baekhyun stares far out into the horizon, almost willing himself to see what will happen in the future.

He misses the change in the water, misses completely that hand that yanks on his ankle and drags him down into the water. No time to scream, because he’s underwater and halfway panicking, but all around him is the sound of mirth. Eyes shut and blind, he kicks his feet and flails his arms, looking for the merman who did this to him.

He gasps once when his head breaches the surface, immediately treading water to the rhythm of Sehun’s laughter. The merman grabs him from behind. He fears he’s about to be pulled under again, but Sehun just hugs him to himself. The scales of tail fin are sleek and just a little bit prickly against his legs, but the arms that hold him are strong, and the nose pressed against his nape is gentle.

“Sehun… Sehun …” Baekhyun splutters, still coughing salt water. He can’t actually be angry though.

“Miss me?” the merman asks loudly over Baekhyun’s splashing. He’s having a hard time trusting that Sehun won’t drop him and let him sink like a rock. His feet want to kick, even though he’s being held.

With a supreme act of willpower, he forces himself to calm down and only then does he look over his shoulder and say, “No,” rather haughtily.

Sehun doesn’t believe him, but that’s okay because Baekhyun knew it was going to be a lost cause.

“Where were you?” Baekhyun asks instead.

Sehun chuckles. “You always ask me that, and I can never tell you.”

“It was worth asking,” he teases.

“Hmmm. Hey, want to go for a swim?”

“Like this?! You’re not carrying me like this out into the ocean.”

“Why not, don’t you trust me?”

Baekhyun does of course, but he doesn’t trust himself not to flail all over the place due to proximity, and this time it has nothing to do with a body. It’s the intimacy of Sehun’s presence all on its own. It’s his hands, one of which is wrapped around Baekhyun’s waist dangerously close to his elastic swim trunks, and the other which is skirting his upper body, several fingers grazing close to what’s beginning to be an extremely sensitive .

“Fine. We can do other, more boring things,” Sehun concedes.

Baekhyun tries not to choke on his frightened laughter.

He wants to talk about it, them, all that scary stuff they didn’t really get around to the other day. Like, was the kissing a one-time experimental thing, or does Sehun really like it. As in, really, really like it?

As soon as his feet touch sand, Baekhyun crawls out of the water on all fours until he can stand up. He turns around, expecting Sehun to transform. Instead, all he sees are the merman’s eyes shining brightly, caught up in something that’s got him so fixated, Baekhyun turns around to look.

There’s nothing there.

It’s him Sehun is looking at.

“What?” he asks, for lack of a better response.

Slowly, the merman pulls himself onto the sand, sitting there with all his bluish scales sparkling, even in the muted cloudy light.

“You know, Joonmyun told me about meeting you. And Taeyeon too.”

“Oh?” Baekhyun whispers nervously.

“They said they liked you.”

“Even the-the mermaid?” He feels awkward saying her name like they’re somehow best friends. He kind of remembers her scaring the out of him, and vice versa. To get a glowing seal of approval was not something he expected.

“Well, she said you were kind of scary, but that was probably because she tried to talk to you. She just wanted to say Hi, you know. Once she realized she couldn’t communicate without you passing out, she got really sad. I don’t think she’s ever tried to talk with a human before.”

“Why was she here then?”

“Looking for Sulli. Looking for Kyungsoo, who was looking for Sulli. Our kind, we get kind of desperate when we lose someone.”

Is he talking only about them, or did Baekhyun just detect a deeper emotion.

“Sehun?” he says tentatively.

The merman hums.

“You won’t lose me, you know that, right?”

And who knows if that’s a promise he can keep. But it’s one he definitely has to make. Anything to put a smile back on Sehun’s face and keep it there for good. For as long as Baekhyun can.

“Thank you,” he says simply in reply.