a/n this came out angstier than i intended lmao sorry

enjoy anyway!!

“It’s sunny and it’s raining.”

Delighted, the nymph coos happily as raindrops fall into his open, waiting palms, as the sun beats down on him despite the leaking of its surrounding clouds. “I love sunshowers,” he giggles, the sound light and airy and tinkling as Yifan watches him through squinted eyes, the nymph’s pale hair rustling in the breeze. 

“What does it mean when there is a sunshower?” Yifan asks him. “If, when it rains, it means that a nixie is sad, and if, when it is sunny, it means that a nixie is happy.”

“Well,” the boy says as he pokes at the puddle that has pooled in the cavity of his palm. “Usually, we say that it means a nymph has become self-aware - that is to say, the two most common explanations of that being that perhaps they have used up each of their biological five chances to mate and are now beginning the cycle toward cell deconstruction, or perhaps they have finally crossed the threshold between platonicity and love. Sunshowers mean a nymph has had an emotional epiphany of sorts.”

Beside him, the human lets out a short hum, as though a confirmative noise, and before the boy even knows it, there are warm arms winding around his waist from the back, and his pulse jitters as the human buries his face in the boy’s hair, planting a soft kiss on his head and squeezing him gently. “Does that mean that you’ve fallen in love with me?” Yifan mumbles suggestively next to his ear.

“It might,” the nymph giggles, and Yifan’s arms loosen just slightly as the boy turns his head to meet his gaze. “Would that be okay with you if I did?”

Warmly, Yifan chuckles. “You know I could never complain about that kind of thing. Besides, who else is going to go on long walks on the beach with you? Collecting seashells with you, sleeping in bed with you, leaving footprints in the sand with you.” 

Looking down, the student smiles to himself at the differentiating shapes of their footprints in the soft press of the damp sand, trailing behind them as they go, and Yifan doesn’t think he will ever truly grow tired of how precious he finds the difference in size between their prints - the nymph’s small and childlike, and Yifan’s large and long. With each step, Yifan likes to think of it as another threshold that they have crossed and another obstacle they have overcome - or even, perhaps, another day to be together, and if that were the case, Yifan would walk miles in each direction until his legs could no longer work.

“Yifan,” the boy says, and Yifan grins and his head, simply -eating and gaudy at best. “I will be waiting for you the same way that you will be waiting for me, for I am holding you to your promise to stay until you fall in love with me. Remember - you promised. You can’t back out now, human.”

“Who said I was going to back out?” His boyfriend asks kindly. “You said I was your one and only remaining chance at mating, right? Of course, that only means that I have to make good on my word and prove to the universe that I am the one you deserve, because - after all, I am the one who decoded all of your little riddles.”

Giggling, the nymph stops where he’d been walking among the froth of the seafoam, his little webbed toes sunken into the soft plush of the wet sand and dusted with individual particles that glimmer in the sun, and takes one of his boyfriend’s large, soft hands, turns it upside-down to present to him a broad palm, and dumps the little shells that he’s collected into his boyfriend’s hand. When Yifan glances down at what he’s been gifted, he sees that he’s been handed several small, pretty tellins, each one peachy-pink in color and relatively the same size, and as he jostles the shells around a little bit, he also sees a few mollusk shells as well as a medium-sized clamshell. “Are these mine now?” He asks with a cheeky little grin, and the boy’s cheeks freckle beneath the summer sun. 

“Not quite,” the nymph grins at him, a content little expression that exemplifies pure self-peace. “I want to convey something to you, Yifan. The tellins are each a part of me - my body, my soul, my mind, and my heart. The mollusks represent my lives - four of them, each one having passed before I found you - the clamshell, which represents you. Large enough to hold all of these parts of me and to have room left over even after that. You, Yifan, are my captor and my new home, and for that, I thank you, and thereafter, I would like to tell you that I love you.”

Far too philosophical for his heart to take, Yifan’s countenance cracks, softening and weakening, for he is not strong enough to resist delivering care to such a wholesome being. Absolutely lovelorn, Yifan rushes forward and gathers the boy in his arms, thankful to the very bottom of his heart to have found such a wonderful partner. “You’re so ing cute, Tao,” he whispers close to the boy’s ear, which pinks beneath the heat of his breath, and he feels comforting pressure on his sides as little hands embrace him, in turn. “I promise, for as long as I live, that I will never let you run away again. I’ll always be here when you have nowhere else to go. I promise.”

Overjoyous and content, the boy smiles kindly and lays his head on the man’s shoulder, nuzzling his cheek into the soft swath of his partner’s sweater, wholesome and warm as their hearts connect. As they embrace, the delicate showers finally let up and the sunlight begins to lighten, bearing warmth and heat down on affectionate shoulders. “You’d better stop being so happy,” Yifan comments softly where the boy is wrapped into him, his head on the man’s shoulder and his thumbs on Yifan’s side, “or you’re going to cause a drought.”

Finding the statement humorous, the boy giggles and leans back to press a soft kiss to his partner’s waiting lips, and Yifan finds himself not minding if their town were to drop into exponential drought as long as he got to see the nymph smile. 

One day, Yifan decides to invite him out to a picnic. The nymph, being a long-time spirit of the water and only such, had never even heard the word picnic before.

Naturally, he gives the boy the option of choosing where they will have their midday brunch picnic, and naturally, the boy opts to have it on the breadth of the beach where he resides. Considerate by nature, Yifan chooses not to ask him which foods he often enjoys, for the nymph probably has little, if not absolutely no experience consuming and enjoying popularized human cuisine, and decides that rather than make it a guessing game, he will have to have the boy try new things and from there, make his own biases about which foods he likes and which foods he dislikes. 

So, as the boy watches him from a comfortable proximity, Yifan stretches out the plaid blanket that he designated as their base sheet to eat on, and the nymph realizes a little too late that the wind is having none of it, and lurches forward to begin to weigh the corners down with nearby rocks as well as Yifan’s lunch basket. Then, deeming the blanket immobile enough, the boy makes a spot for himself on the left half of the space, crossing his legs beneath him as his chestnut tunic pools over his upper thighs and over the little black shorts that stop above his knees. Yifan quite likes the way he matches what he wears, for everything he wears seems to match the little black mollusks in his hair, as always, and although he had never previously found tunics to be all that attractive, he begins to not be able to see them without thinking immediately of the nymph and his icy eyes and his mollusk-decorated hair that smells commonly of sea salt. 

“What are we doing?” The boy asks him with a genuine childlike curiosity, and Yifan offers him a kind grin as he begins to remove containers of food from his lunch basket and thereafter, a set of silverware cloth-wrapped for cleanliness. 

It does not come as a surprise that the nymph has likely never had lunch, nor ever heard the word lunch before, but Yifan is impartial and does not at all mind introducing him to the commonality of human life. “We’re going to have lunch,” Yifan tells him with a sweetened simper, and the boy’s lips round in curiosity. “Lunch is what we call our midday meal. So, we are going to eat.”

Now that he thinks about it, Yifan has never really seen the boy eat before, so he is therefore unsure if the nymph eats three balanced meals the way humans do, or if perhaps he doesn’t need to eat much at all - which, in that case, Yifan would love to know how the boy’s metabolism works, if it runs more along the lines of that of a human or perhaps is slower akin to that of hypernatural hibernation mammals, such as bears. Nevertheless, the boy’s eyes brighten at the mention of food, and Yifan safely assumes that he does, in fact, eat. 

Meticulous, he uncaps each container of food that he had brought and allows the boy to gaze at all of them with widened eyes, likely never having seen cooked food before, and it brings a smile to Yifan’s face as he then hands the boy a bottle of water to drink a napkin for his messes. “Don’t be shy,” he tells him encouragingly. “You can dig in.”

Yifan, as it turns out, has far too high of expectations for someone who had never thoroughly been exposed to human mannerisms, as he watches in surprised dismay as the boy immediately digs in - literally, at that, as he reaches forward to dip his fingers into the container of pan-fried shellfish laid in a sweet, spiced sauce, and Yifan’s jaw drops as the boy messily brings one of the prawns to his lips and bites down with sauce-soaked fingers.

Right. Water nymphs probably don’t use modernized utensils. 

Chuckling, Yifan reaches out to stop him, moving forward with a clean napkin as the boy les the remaining sauce off of his fingers, and delicately pulls his hand away from his mouth and begins to clean it off with the napkin as though he were teaching an infant to wipe their hands. “Okay, well,” Yifan laughs, smiling wholesomely, “not like that.”

Embarrassed, the boy’s irises dull as Yifan cleans his hand off, and it becomes evident that this animalistic, unmannered nature of his is the only thing he knows, and Yifan gives him plentiful pity. “Can I not eat?” The boy asks, and Yifan is comforting as he hands the boy a bamboo fork and spoon.

“We use these to eat,” Yifan explains, and the nymph’s eyebrows furrow as he analyzes the items in his hands with delicate, pale fingers. “It’s a lot cleaner and more sanitary, too. Here.” Helpfully, Yifan reaches forward and straightens the fork in the boy’s left hand, and delicately wraps each of his fingers over top and beneath the handle of the fork so as to show him how to hold it, his thumb pressed against the long ridge. “This is a fork,” he says, and the nymph’s eyes go big and bright as he stares at the pronged utensil. “So, when you want to eat, you take it - and you press it down like this.”

Amazed, the nymph watches with flushed cheeks as his partner guides his own hand to press the prongs of the instrument into one of the sauced prawns, before lifting it into the open air for the nymph to see - and with an impressed coo, the nymph analyzes it closer. How did he get the prawn to stay on the little pegs like that? How does it not fall off if he were to tip it sideways, or even upside-down?

“It’s a lot cleaner than eating with your hands,” Yifan grins as he intakes a spoonful of seasoned rice. “Go on - try it.”

Bravely, he does, and he quite likes it, and Yifan discovers that the nymph has quite a taste for prawns and chili oil, finishing the entire container all by himself and without so much as even a flinch over the spice. Impressed, Yifan kisses him on the temple and resumes eating. 

“I never did get to ask you - where do you get your clothes if you’re, like, half-water fairy and half-merman?”

The boy is sat on Yifan’s bed with two of his nautili traversing slowly and timely across each of his palms, one in each hand, and he giggles airily as their little legs tickle his tender skin. “They wash up,” he says with a curled grin as the crabs make their way to his inner knuckles and it really begins to tickle. “Often times, clothing doesn’t necessarily deteriorate in saltwater if it’s newer, so sometimes I find them and I bring them to shore and dry them off so I can wear them. Then, when I find a style that I like, I can actually siphon discarded cells on the clothing from whoever may have worn them, and replicate them from other pieces. Like magic, I guess.” 

Lips pursing, Yifan nods, for it does make sense for clothing to get lost in the ocean. Plus, it makes even more sense as to why the boy’s shirts often meet his upper thighs, but Yifan has never before had an issue with such. “Sounds very convenient,” he nods his head, deciding to sit down on the bed next to him with ample space between the two of them, unsuggestive and merely peaceful. “You don’t really dress the way someone from this generation would - I thought you were a peasant or a merchant the first time I saw you.”

“Oh,” the boy comments softly. “That’s just my preferred way of dress - I like tunics and tie-pants, for I think they’re roomy and comfortable.”

He supposes that someone like him, who had never had a need or a reason for human paid labor, would not have their own boudoir or their own collection of clothes, and that the nymph as a frugal being, likely discards of or hides the clothes he has worn and is done with. “Is that why you don’t wear things like jeans?” He asks, and the boy nods beside him. 

“I think they’re too tight and too heavy,” he complains through pursed lips, reaching out for one of his partner’s hands and very delicately aligning their fingers so the small crab will traverse from his knuckle onto the soft of his boyfriend’s fingers. Although peculiar, Yifan has no complaints about the boy’s taste in clothing, for his trousers often hang wide-legged and low and his tunics often rise in the daytime breeze. 

“Speaking of washing things,” Yifan mentions after a few moments of letting the small crab trickle its way across the curvature of his palm. Smoothly and slowly, he stands from the bed and turns on his heel to look down at the boy, bright-eyed and curious as to why his partner had stood up so suddenly. Then, the man reaches out and takes the second crab from the boy’s webbed fingers and adds it to his occupied hand, as well, and allows the two crabs to intermingle as he says, “If you’re going to live among humans, then you should probably learn to bathe like humans, too. I’m gonna give you a shower.”

Soft-minded and inexperienced, the boy’s lips round at the mention of the new activity. “A shower?” He asks. “What’s that?”

“It’s something we humans do in order to get clean,” Yifan explains gently. “It involves getting undressed and washing in some water, which means you are going to need to take your friends out of your hair.”

Then, the boy’s eyes dull and Yifan watches as they go glossy when he raises both of his small, slightly-webbed hands, and trails jittering fingertips along the salted locks of his hair where the miniature creatures comfortably reside like beads along woven threads. “But,” he pouts, whining softly with a haze of misunderstanding along his waterlines, “but my crabs.”

As though parting with a long-time friend, the nymph looks heartbroken, his eyes sallow and his eyebrows curved at the thought of having to part with the nautili, and it occurs to Yifan that the boy may never have removed them from his hair once before in his life and quite possibly does not understand that parting with them is simply temporary. Considering that Yifan has nowhere to put the creatures without having them dehydrate and starve, void of the boy’s spiritual nutrients when detached, he can’t exactly blame him for not understanding. 

In the end, Yifan buys him a fish tank-style saltwater aquarium to keep his nautili in and lines it with beach sand so they can efficiently burrow and stand without drowning. Additionally, in the end, Yifan learns that the nymph does not particularly enjoy showers as they remind him far too much of the summer rain, but that he does, in fact, enjoy bubble baths, and that he is especially ticklish along the webbing between his fingers. 

Good to know, Yifan thinks to himself as he hides a satisfied grin and gently massages the nymph’s scalp as he soaps up his hair. Good to know.

“Fan-di,” his sister says as she knocks on his door before entering, and Yifan glances up from his book where he’s prostrate on his bed as the nymph snuggles into his side instinctively, worried that at any given moment, Yifan’s sister would suddenly be able to see him. Nevertheless, her eyes remain stoic as she leans against the truss of Yifan’s door frame. “Yuan-di and I are going to the market while dad goes to work - did you want to come with?”

Yifan, with a shy little water nymph unmated and therefore invisible nestled against his left half where he had been listening to the man read his book softly to him, shakes his head, then, and the book slackens. “I have plans today already,” he tells her with a placid expression. “I’m going out today with a friend.”

As though not having expected that Yifan would have friends, Bingbing’s place on the doorframe straightens and her hands linger aimlessly against the wood as her lips round. “You are? Which friend?”

He has to stop himself from replying immediately out of habit as the name Tao flashes at the forefront of his tongue, for he’s absolutely certain his sister has neither heard the boy’s name from Yifan’s lips nor has she given him even so much as a of belief that Yifan’s imaginary friend is more than they seem. “I’m hanging out with Kevin,” is what he decides to go with, a smooth lie along the soft of his tongue. “We’re seeing a movie later because his girlfriend dumped him a few days ago, so I offered to hang with him to help talk to him about it and make him feel better, and also to give him some company.”

It’s not a total lie, for his best friend Kevin had been dating a girl named Hyoyeon for several months now, and although never having met her, Bingbing has heard about her from Yifan’s own stories regarding hanging out with his best friend, as Kevin had been quite infatuated with her. Nevertheless, their break-up had never occurred, a heat-of-the-moment lie to excuse why Yifan has last-minute plans. 

“Hyoyeon really dumped him?” His sister asks with surprise in her eyes, widening them as they gloss over. “Oh. That’s such a shame, Kevin is really a sweet guy. Okay, well, do you want anything from the market while Yuan-di and I are there? We can pick you up something.”

“I think we need more skirt steak,” Yifan tells her casually, and the nymph glances up at his partner curiously, surprised at how calm he is managing to remain. “Mom made the last one the other day. Oh, we also need dark soy sauce and oyster sauce while you’re out. I think we need vermicelli, too, and scallions.”

“I have vermicelli and scallions on the shopping list already,” she says. “Alright, I’ll make sure to get extra skirt steak just for you, Fan-di, but you can’t eat it all in a week, you glutton. Tell Kevin I said hi, too, alright?”

Yifan agrees and waves her off as she leaves his room and closes the door behind her, clicking softly back into place in the doorframe, and the nymph’s shy little hands move along Yifan’s shoulder as he lets out the breath he had been holding.

“How are you so good at that?” The boy asks him quietly, and Yifan looks down at him where he’s nestled against his arm with his cheek pressed to the round of the man’s shoulder. “The lying, I mean.”

“I live with siblings,” Yifan snorts. “Lying comes naturally when you have siblings because they’ll try to frame you for things you had nothing to do with just so they can get themselves out of trouble. Besides, I’m not really hanging out with Kevin today, and he didn’t really break up with his girlfriend, either. I needed an excuse.”

Lips rounding, the nymph’s eyes brighten. “Really? You don’t have plans today?”

He knows very well that the nymph has no qualms against spending a day at home with him, simply curled up in Yifan’s bed as though there were no better place for him to be, yet he does, additionally, very much enjoy walks on the beach with him in bare feet beneath the warm summertime sun, so the way the boy’s words suddenly begin to lilt as though in hope does not come at all as a surprise, and the inflection makes Yifan grin. “No, I don’t have plans today,” he grins, slipping his bookmark into the inside of the pages before setting his book down on the bed and wrapping an arm around the nymph to huddle him slightly closer. “Why? Would you like for me to have plans today?”

Bashfully, the boy’s cheeks flush rosy as his lips purse in the shadow of a pout before he says, “Well, I was thinking we could go down to the beach today. I want to show you something.”

Yifan is no stranger to the string of words I want to show you something, as each and every time they have come up in conversation, it often equates to the boy drenching him with more riddles in order to figure out more important information about him, akin to the way he had him guess his birthdate and additionally, his name. Yet the words could also mean more in terms of a slightly more shrouded topic, as though the boy wants to show him another feature of himself that would normally frighten or entrance normal humans. Yifan, on the other hand, holds only curiosity and tendrils of excitement as he says, “Oh? What would you like to show me?”

The boy tisks, then, laying a barely-there slap upon the thick of the man’s upper chest through his pigeon-gray sweater. “It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you what it was, now would it? Humans like you are so silly and so impatient.”

“Alright, alright,” Yifan laughs, leaning forward to press a soft kiss to the boy’s lips as fingertips trail delicately along the hollow of his cheek. “We’ll go to the beach. Let me get dressed first into something lighter, ‘cause it’s ing hot out.”

Snidely, the nymph smiles from his spot on the bed as Yifan stands and begins to rummage through his boudoir before the boy says, “You’re finally going to wear something other than a sweater and jeans, aren’t you?”

As a familiar, tinkling little laugh follows, Yifan sighs and rolls his head back in disdain, as his boyfriend makes fun of him and his commonplace method of dress. “Listen, it’s too hot for a sweater and jeans, okay? God, I’ll wear something different, sheesh.”

Silently, the boy watches him in his quiet and watches as he switches to searching his drawers, and the moment the nymph catches the sight of a pair of what Yifan calls underpants, he realizes that this is not what he had originally meant. “Wait,” he interjects, and the human glances back with his dark hair hanging handsomely along the sides of his forehead, having grown relatively quickly since mid-spring, and he drops the underpants onto the top of his dresser as the boy’s expression tenses. “Do you have any swimming clothes?”

Not expecting the question, Yifan’s brow knits. “What, like a bathing suit?”

Oh. Is that what humans call them? The nymph’s brow stresses for just a second as though not sure if bathing suit was the correct terminology that he had been looking for. Quietly, he nods his head, and he watches as Yifan shuffles over to a different drawer, presumably to look for a bathing suit. 

“If you wanted me to go swimming with you,” Yifan glances over with a content little smile, “all you had to do was ask. I wouldn’t have said no.”

It’s not exactly that, for the boy does still have a trick up his sleeve, or two. Yes, he supposes that they could call it simply swimming, for Yifan doesn’t exactly have to know what the nymph has planned before the time comes to actually announce it. “Bring swimming equipment with you, too,” he says, stoically pressing his lips together in a small grin as his partner bids him several parting words before he heads into his attached bathroom to change, which had long ago been disclosed as for the boy’s own comfort and privacy, as Yifan didn’t exactly think he would be extremely open about having someone that he had feelings for strip stark directly in front of him. 

Excited for their plans for the day, the nymph slinks from his spot on the bed and lifts his legs onto Yifan’s nightstand as he winds his hands around the lip of the man’s window, pulling it open in preparation to head outside while Yifan would be saying goodbye to his siblings. Although knowing very well that he could slink around Yifan’s house like some kind of poltergeist, it still grants him anxiety each time he does it, and for his own comfort, he enjoys using the window and additionally enjoys climbing up trees to reach it. 

When he successfully slides a leg over the ledge of the window, then, the man comes back into the room with a colorful towel thrown over his shoulder, likely to take with them to the beach should he want to rapidly dry off. Meeting those pretty blue eyes before the boy heads outside to wait for him to say goodbye to his family, the boy offers him a little smile, and Yifan’s cheeks flush rosy as he smiles back, visually smitten and as precious and handsome as ever, and the nymph’s heartbeat skips. “I’ll wait for you,” the nymph tells him. “I promise.”

Symbolically, it means a lot for nixies to promise things to humans, especially when in regards to the states of their being. As though knowing that very well, the human’s expression falters for just a split-second before he reaches out to gently meet the boy’s lips with his own in a wet little kiss, his thumb brushing the coarse, salted hairs at the boy’s nape. “I’ll come down when I’m done,” Yifan nods. “I promise.”

As though having linked together a pact or a lifelong promise, the nymph smiles, his cheeks pinking as he watches the human leave his bedroom with exposed legs and a colorful towel that flashes him with shades of fuschia and violet as well as shades of orange and scarlet, and lays a webbed hand on his upper chest as his pulse speeds.

“I want to show you something.”

Yifan, being the ever-curious fellow he is as well as the devout partner that he is, holds no qualms about being shown new things especially when in regards to the boy and his fancies. Knowing how much the nymph likely knows and has witnessed that Yifan would never be able to experience as a land-thriving human, he finds himself yearning to soak up new information about him like a dried sponge, as the boy pulls him patiently farther down the stretch of the soft sand and toward the frothing tide. The sun is hot today, beating do