It was just a bit after six when they finally went back to Chanyeol’s. It was of course after they window shopped for an hour and took pictures in every photo booth that they could find. “I can’t believe you have money for all of these,” Sehun says in awe as he looks over all of the pictures that they took.”I mean, they aren’t expensive, but look at how many booths that we went to.”

“I’ve collected a lot of money over the years that I’ve been here, so spending all that was nothing really.”

Chanyeol’s subtle boasting goes unnoticed when Sehun notices an odd sound coming from beneath him. “What’s that sound?” The question isn’t really meant to be answered as he didn’t mean for it to be said aloud, but he hears Chanyeol answer it anyway.

“What sound?”

“It sounds faintly like water splashing.”

Chanyeol stops before dialing the local chicken place to listen for the so said [[[water splashing]]] that Sehun is hearing. “I don’t hear anything.”

“Do you have a basement or something?”

“Well, yes, but nothing is down there but some empty boxes and extra canvases.”

Sehun tilts his head to the side and clicks his tongue. “That’s really strange. I really could have sworn that I heard water splashing.”

“I mean, if it’s really bothering you that much, you can always go see for yourself that nothing is down there.”

At first, Sehun wasn’t going to bother because maybe there really wasn’t anything down there and maybe he was just hearing things. But then he heard a rather loud thud and he just couldn’t fight away his curiosity “I think that I just might do that.” So with the help of Chanyeol who points him in the right direction, Sehun ends up in the basement where all he finds instead of what he was expecting is just as Chanyeol had said. Nothing but empty boxes and extra canvases.

“See,” Chanyeol begins from behind Sehun, “I told you that nothing but empty boxes and extra canvases were down here.”

Shivers are sent running through Sehun’s body as Chanyeol was breathing against his neck and whispering incoherent things in his ear.  It made him uncomfortable, but he didn’t move away from him.

“It really sounded as if something were down here,” he says while rubbing at his arm that had goosebumps. And it’s when Chanyeol snakes a hand around Sehun’s waist and slides it under his shirt that causes him to move. “Man am I starving. Are you starving? We should go order that food now.”

Sehun goes to walk back upstairs, but Chanyeol stops him. “Why are you in such a big hurry to eat?” he asks as his eyes travel over every part of Sehun. “We have loads of time for that. Why don’t we just enjoy each other’s company for a while?”

“In the basement, though?”

“Why not?”

“There isn’t anything worth staying down here for is why.”

“I’m sure we can find something,” he says before leaning in closer to Sehun and placing his lips against his. And Sehun doesn’t move right away because he was too shocked by the sudden action to really react in anyway. But as Chanyeol pulls him in deeper, his tongue trying to slide past Sehun’s lips, Sehun shoves him away rather roughly and causes him to fall back against the wooden steps. He doesn’t say anything, but Sehun could clearly see the pain and anger in his face and he didn’t want to stick around after he caught his breath. So he moves quickly, but carefully up the stairs and grabs his things before leaving the building just as quickly.

•

As Chanyeol lies awkwardly on the steps, in pain and trying to catch his breath, he listens to the quickly moving footsteps above him and the slam of the front door. “!” he manages to spit out in the midst of pushing himself up and off of the steps. And when he is standing, he does so while he breathes through the throbbing pains in his back. “You can stop hiding now. He left.”

With that being said, the basement that had been nearly empty fills with the things being kept hidden, Zitao and his tank included. However, Zitao appears raging mad and just out of breath as Chanyeol currently is.

“Your sorry is lucky that I don’t have access to legs.”

“You’re the one that gave your bracelet away to someone out of the kindness of your heart, Zitao. Not I. I was smart enough not to care who it was and threw mine to the first person that I seen willing enough to take it from me.”

“I really don’t give a damn, Chanyeol. Just get me off of this floor.”

Chanyeol looks at him and laughs as if he just told a joke. “You do realize that you are as heavy as three sacks of rocks right?”

Zitao drops his head to the floor and curses under his breath. “I can’t very well put myself back in the gods forsaken tank you’re holding me in.”

Unfortunately, Zitao was right, and Chanyeol refused to let anyone else be aware of his presence if he got help. So even though he didn’t want to, he walks over to help Zitao off of the floor by snaking his hands under his shoulders and lifting him with the strength in his legs. Once they were at a suitable height, Chanyeol orders Zitao to put his arms around his neck while he managed to get the rest of him in his arms. With a grunt, Chanyeol hauls Zitao up and into his arms. “Did I mention that you are as heavy as three sacks of rocks?”

“Yes,” Zitao answers with a groan into Chanyeol’s shoulder. “You’ve mentioned one too many times already.”

Chanyeol carries him over to the tank and stands there as Zitao lets go of his neck to grab hold of the tank and heave himself over it with the help of Chanyeol. After successfully getting back into the tank, Chanyeol drops to the cold and wet ground. panting and watching as Zitao sinks down to the bottom of the tank. “How do you even manage to hold yourself up on the edge of the tank?” Zitao turns his head toward his captor and gives him a look as if he is questioning his smarts. “It was a rhetorical question, .”

♣

Sehun ends up running halfway back to Jinki’s house before slowing down to a slow paced walk. At this point, he wasn’t sure if his heart was racing because of exertion or if it was racing because of the incident with Chanyeol. Either way, he was just glad to be out of the situation he unknowingly put himself in. After minutes of deciding whether or not to walk inside, he curls up on the outside two seater sofa and looks out at the ocean.

Chanyeol had him confused more than he or anyone would know. His head hurt and the replay of it made him dizzy. But looking out at the ocean calmed him and tore his mind away from tonight's events.

•

Here he was again, in the same large body of water, floating in vast amounts of nothing. It was beginning to unnerve him. It was lost, his chances of ever ending up somewhere else in his dreams. But he went with this anyways because in the end, he would get to dream of Tao again, and it was always a nice thing to dream about. Except when he is yelling at him for hanging around Chanyeol.

“I don’t understand why it bothers you so much that I am around him.” Sehun says to him as he rests against the slimy semi-smooth surface of the underwater caves walls. “He seems completely harmless.”

“You aren’t a very good judge of character, Sehun,” Tao answers as he moves his tail slowly back and forth in the water. “I’m telling you, he isn’t a good guy.”

“I’m beginning to think that these dreams are more than just that.”

“And what if they were?” asks Tao as he sinks further down into the water, leaving only his head above the surface. “What if these aren’t even dreams, but things that I am wanting you to see, things I want you to hear?”

Sehun looks at him as if he has lost his mind. “That’s ridiculous. You’re just a hybrid thought up by the power of my imagination. You couldn’t possibly be real, or even have the ability to do what you are saying that you can.”

“But what if I could, Sehun? What If I am actually drawing these scenario’s inside your head just so that I can make you aware of the dangers that you are putting yourself through by sticking around Chanyeol?”

Sehun moves his feet back and forth in the water as he ponders on that. He didn’t see how it could be possible, though. He hasn’t ever met Tao or anyone even remotely close to being him. It was just a dream, wasn’t it?

But how can he explain how Tao knows about Chanyeol or how dangerous he is? How can he explain why Tao talks as if he has met Chanyeol before, knows him far too well?

If he truly thought about it, he couldn’t explain anything.

“Say this was something you meant for me to see,” Sehun begins, not fully believing Tao, but not completely denying it either. “Why are you so insistent that I stay away from him?”

“I can’t tell you that,” he answers apologetically. “At least not yet.”

•

“Sehun, you need to wake up before you catch a cold.”

Sehun wakes with an ache in his body and a chill in his bones. He slowly opens his eyes to find Hongbin staring at him with concern. “Why are you even still here?” he asks as he sits up, moving over slightly for Hongbin to have room to take the spot beside him. “I thought you’d be out with Jongin and those girls somewhere.”

“It’s only 7:20 in the morning, Sehun. No one is even up yet.”

“Why are you up then?”

“When you didn’t come back last night, we got worried and couldn't sleep. Jongin wasn’t in best of shape, his waist was being a pain, and Jinki hyung had to work, so I stayed up.” He sighs and hands Sehun a cup of coffee. “I wouldn’t have seen you out here had I not come out to see if you were walking back or something. Speaking of which, why didn’t you come inside? It is frigid out here early in the morning.”

“I was avoiding you guys,” he wanted to say, but instead, “I was just looking at the ocean for a bit before going in. It wasn't my intention to fall asleep out here.”

Hongbin has been friends with him long enough to know when something isn’t quite right with him. And it’s never the obvious things; the arms folded across his chest or how quiet he is being, none of that. It’s the lack of touching when he doesn’t need to be, secluding himself from everyone including Jongin and Yixing, two people he loves the most. It’s being distant from his friends, not talking to them when they share the most with each other. It’s those type of things that he notices that other people would look over. “Did something happen last night, Sehun?” he asks carefully, not wanting to upset him, but curious to know why his friend is like this.

Sehun didn’t want to talk about it, not because he wanted to hide it, but because he wasn’t sure how he should say it. So he settles with moving closer to Hongbin and resting his head on his shoulder. “Thanks for the coffee, hyung.”

♣

The waves are really active this morning, Jinki thinks to himself as he read readies his boat for the day's services. He looked up at the sky and noticed a cluster of dark clouds in the distance. He was sure that it wasn’t supposed to storm today, so why does it look like it is going to? “Should I cancel the boat rides today?”

He decides to go and check the weather again, just to see whether or not it’s safe to have people out on open water. As he make his way to his car, he is stopped by a gentle hand on his wrist. He turns around to face this person, startled, and relaxes when he sees a dripping wet Yixing. “What are you doing here?” he asks, hugging him instantly? It’s been so long, it seemed, since the last time he’d seen Yixing that he didn't care that he’s getting wet or the fact that Yixing is pressed against his body, entirely . However, it didn’t take him long to realize that Yixing walked around and he was quickly backing away to retrieve an extra set of clothing he keeps in the back seat. “You’ve lived on land long enough to build up some sort of modesty, Yixing. Why walk all this way ?”

Yixing slid on the shorts given to him and shrugged into the shirt. “I didn’t have time to bring something with me, Jinki. I have a purpose for this visit. I need a favor from you.”

Jinki looks at him with a frown, but nods anyway. “What is it about?”

“It’s about Chanyeol.”

♣

“Rise and shine, my dear friend. We’ve got a fun filled day ahead of us.” Chanyeol walks down the basement stairs, carrying some bacon in one hand and his phone in the other. He’d been working all night on something, something that will have Sehun racing back to his arms again and who better else to share it with than the one who cares for him most? “I’ve been working on something, and I want to run it by you first.”

When Chanyeol looks up from his phone, he notices Zitao resting at the bottom of the tank, unmoving, and far too quiet. It was abnormal for him, all things considered. So he walks over to the tank and kicks it gently. “Hey,” he says loudly. He kicks the tank a second time and finally gets a rise out of Zitao. He looks over at him, face emotionless, and blinks. “You have some nerve ignoring me, especially since I am older than you by far. What were you even doing?”

Zitao doesn’t respond at first, just stares, but then he flashes a grin at Chanyeol that makes him cringe. “What did you do?” He places his phone back in his pocket and drops the bacon on the ground. “What in the did you do, Zitao?”

♣

“So Chanyeol has Zitao?” Jinki asks Yixing as he drops a blanket around his shoulders. “How long has he had him?”

“He hasn’t made that clear in my dreams,” he answers. He holds the blanket close and leans into Jinki, who wraps his arms around him shortly after. “He’s only told me that Chanyeol had him and that Sehun isn’t safe. The way he was talking, it sounds as if Chanyeol is still holding a grudge.”

“Why? What happened?”

“It’s stupid really. But it stems from some land girl that he met when he started frequently coming on land.”

“Is she who is being painted all over town?”

Yixing nods. “See, back when I first came to land, Zitao had warned me to stay away from Chanyeol and anywhere he has been known to go. At this time, what had happened to him was still fresh and it was reported that he was--is rather, on a warpath. Multiple reports have been made of merfolk going missing, noble merfolk, and they are linking it back to Chanyeol. I came originally to investigate the situation, but have lost track of it for a while, until now that is. Zitao had been gone from our city since this past winter, and had been reported missing since Spring. I’ve been back and forth between China and Korea for the past couple of weeks now, trying to figure everything out and playing messenger for the law enforcement.”

Yixing shivers as a gush of cool winds blow around them. “Forgive my babbling. I’ve been without someone that I am comfortable talking with since I told Sehun, Jongin, and Hongbin that I’d come here with them.”

Jinki shakes his head and rubs Yixing’s arm. “I know how rough it’s been with you lately. But if you managed to work me into your busy schedule, is it rude to ask that you stay on the topic of your being here right now?”

Yixing shakes his head in turn and bows his head quickly in apology. “Zitao appeared in my dreams last night, frantically yelling at me to warn Sehun about Chanyeol. ‘I don’t know what it is that he is going to do, but I can promise you that it isn’t any good.’ He kept making me promise that I would warn Sehun about him, keep him away from him if I have to.”

“Why is it so important? Why is Chanyeol being made a threat?”

“Like I told you, he is on a warpath. This land girl, Juri her name was, had become someone important to him. He eventually fell in love with her the longer he spent his time around her. He would gift her things with the most poetic symbolism, paint her when she wasn’t looking, care for her when she became ill. Of course, at this time, he was still able to frequently travel to the city. So this first time he went back in a long time was also his last.” Yixing relaxes under the warmth provided by the blanket and Jinki. “He went before his parent’s and the council, to introduce Juri to them.”

“Wait,” Jinki interrupts. “Are you telling me…”

“That he gave up his legs temporarily just so that she could safely travel underwater?” Yixing asks for him in return. “Yes, he did in fact give his bracelet to her to use. But there is a reason, you see. There were two reasons.”

Jinki leans back, letting out a gush of of air. “She was pregnant.”

Yixing hums confirming it. “She was nearly five months, but didn’t appear to be with her belly covered. It was an absurd idea to take her down there and he should’ve known that it would never work.”

“But it sounds like he was doing the only thing he knew would give him a chance to keep her alive.”

“He would have had better chances at doing that if he hadn’t thought to take her to the city to begin with!” shouts Yixing who had pulled away from Jinki and got up to put some space between them. “He should have thought before he carelessly acted! Mermaids don’t show until they’ve reached full term. This being because they would be far too vulnerable to the sea creatures that would swallow us in one bite without a second thought if they swam around with a huge belly. It tends to weigh you down, you know?”

Jinki stood too, but didn’t make to touch Yixing or close the space between them. He just stood there and watched Yixing pace on the dock. “Maybe he thought that the risk was worth taking if there was a chance that she would be okay, that the babies would be okay.”

“You don’t know that danger that he put her through--them through to get to our city! There is a reason why he had to give her his bracelet, Jinki. Our city is hours away from this island and impossible to travel if you are human. He had to give it to her in order for her to survive the swim down there. It’s a damn wonder why they weren’t attacked. The hormones that she was emitting from her body would have been too great for something not to notice. And let’s not forget that the council would have immediately noticed that she wasn’t a true merperson. What with the bump on display and everything.”

“Why are you so worked up over this, Yixing?”

“Because they had her killed, Jinki!” he shouts again, face red and eyes filled with tears. “When they appeared before the council, and he introduced her to them, they didn’t even give him a chance to explain himself. They didn’t even let him speak. The elders of our species are hateful bastards. They love life, but refuse to accept that we were meant to be here in this world just like everyone and everything else. They feel like a higher power created us for people to laugh at like were were some kind of joke. So for one of our kind to create new life with a human, it’s breaking some kind of unwritten law. And the worst part is how they had her killed and who killed her.”

Jinki at this point didn’t care about the distance and Yixing not wanting to be touched.Yixing looked as if he was going to collapse under the weight of all that he was sharing with him. So he walked up to him slowly and reached out for him, curling his fingers tightly around some of the blanket. Yixing went quiet and watched as he slowly tugged him in his direction. “If you were going to get this upset over sharing this with me, you shouldn’t have told me to begin with.” Yixing dips his head in apology, something he had a habit of doing even when he didn’t need to. When Yixing stopped with his body pressed into Jinki’s, Jinki uncurled his fingers from the blanket and wrapped his arms around Yixing. “But I guess that there is no going back at this point, so please continue.”

Yixing nodded and moved a hand out from under the blanket to wipe his eyes. “Zitao isn’t apart of the law enforcement in our city, but the council refuse to let him be out of their reach. You know of the power that he has, but it’s not the only one that he has. He has another power that very little know about.”

“What is it?”

“His tail is a weapon, Jinki, his scales rather. And god’s forgive me, but I don’t think Zitao is being kept against his will.” He forces himself away from Jinki again and turns toward the water. “We need to protect Sehun, Jinki. Zitao hasn’t came to me in my dreams ever since I decided to make a life for myself on land. Now that he has, we can’t just sit by and ignore his warning.”

Jinki walks up beside him and takes his hand into his. “Okay. Tell me what to do.”

♣

“Why won’t you speak?” Chanyeol yells at a the tank, hands balled against the wet surface. The had been cracked from the force he put into pounding on it. Zitao turned his head toward Chanyeol and grinned so wide that it could have pained someone else had they been wearing it. This anger Chanyeol even more. “Have I been too easy on you, Zitao? Have I not made it clear enough to you as to why you are here?”

Zitao let the grin disappear from his face, lifted himself off of the bottom of the tank and swam to the top of it. He grabbed onto the edge of the tank and lifted himself up far enough to keep himself above the water. “You should really be wondering about why I’ve been so compliant with you thus far.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Do you really think that you could’ve captured me without my remarkable ability to comply with you, the enemy?” Chanyeol steps away from the tank, looking both sick and infuriated. Zitao laughs. “Of course you don’t because your are so blinded with rage that you can’t think or act clearly.”

It was Chanyeol’s turn to laugh this time. Although he still looked sick, he looked like he was the one on that pulled one over on the other. “It’s funny that you think that I haven’t thought about why you’ve been so quick to comply with my every action or demand. But you’ve been mistaken, Zitao. You see, I am not as mentally unstable as you would like to think that I am. I am thinking with a clear head and I act just as clearly. Like in the next thirty minutes for example.”

Zitao slips slightly, but plays it off as if nothing happened. “What are you going to do?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Chanyeol, what are you planning to do?” Zitao calls out to him as he heads back upstairs. “Chanyeol!”

•

Around three in the afternoon, well after Hongbin and Jongin left Sehun to go shopping for dinner, Sehun made his way outside on the beach with a sketch pad and a pencil. He didn’t make a habit of drawing, he just did it because his mother enjoyed the things he would draw. “Your drawing skills are too good to go unused, much less unseen,” she would tell him on days that he finds himself with nothing to do. So he made it a must to draw everything he felt that she would like to see drawn from him. Like the ocean view, for example.

She would be upset if he spent all this time here and didn’t comeback with at least one drawing of the ocean. So he flipped to a fresh page in his sketch pad and began to draw. It took him roughly ten minutes to draw every detail of the shore that he seen. Rocks, abandoned shells from the ocean, huge logs with the waves washing over them. Large amounts of rocks and the waves, too, crashing against them. He even added small crabs and starfish. What really took the longest was the water and all the green surrounding or amongst it.

“You draw really well,” comes a voice about twenty minutes later. Sehun looks up from the last of his unfinished cluster of trees and turns his head to see Chanyeol standing beside him with a smile that almost seemed stupid. “Do you draw often?”

Sehun shakes his head. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to apologize for whatever I may have done to upset you.”

“You know what you did and I refuse to accept your apology.”

“Oh come on… It wasn’t even that serious and I didn’t mean anything behind it.”

“People don’t upset other people if that wasn’t the initial intention.” Sehun picked up his eraser and sharpener and got up from his spot to head back to the house. “Please leave me alone.”

Chanyeol reached into his pocket and turned to follow after Sehun. “I’m sorry, Sehun,” he tells him, and uncaps the syringe filled with a sedative. He forces it into the side of Sehun’s neck and injects the fluid into him. “But I really cannot do that.”

Author's note:

So there is that. I haven't entirely edited this yet because all I have is my phone right now because I broke my tablet and I hardly ever have a computer to properly edit my fics, so I will try to do my best and edited as soon as I can. Sorry for the late update. I'm trying to update all my fics as quickly as I can.