The chill wrapped around his bones, firmly tugging him down into the sea. The salt burned his throat as he choked on the air his lungs wanted out, out, out. The light flickered over burnt orange scales and tan skin that followed him down. Hands wedged themselves under his armpits and he could feel his body being pulled up and up until warm night air hit his face and the brine drip from his mouth as he gulped in the sweetest air. He felt the rough texture of rope and a smoother shell where his felt met the person's wrist and it felt so familiar.

Opening his eyes, he was met with a face that seemed so familiar. The mouth moved, and between the ringing in his ears he could barely make out the lilt of questions being thrown at him one after the other. Squinting, he could now see other figures surrounding them in the water, large and disapproving and almost... afraid? But he was just too tired to stay awake... These hands would take him back home, he was sure, but why...

He twisted and smacked his phone's alarm off with bleary eyes. The sky was just turning the purple and pink of the sunrise.

That dream again. He'd had a few others like it- happier ones, where the mermaid- merman- merperson?- had played with him in the soft summer hours between day and night, some where they hadn't had the bracelet, some where they had. The bracelet was oddly important for something he could never quite recall. Sometimes he hoped it was a memory.

Oikawa Tooru rolled out of bed, yawning as he stumbled into the bathroom. It was just a Sunday, but it would be nice to jog in the sand before the team got there. He could nap when he got home.

Carefully closing the door behind him, Oikawa tiptoed away from the house with half a poptart shoved in his mouth and a gym bag slung over his shoulder. Oh, don't misunderstand, no one else lived in the house at the moment, but his neighbors had the most easily started dachshund he'd ever had the misfortune of meeting. And when it started barking, everyone heard- and everyone woke up angry at whoever had started poor Tema-chan.

Today he'd managed to sneak away undetected. Finally out of the neighborhood, he jammed his ear phones in and jogged to the beach. Things we looking up today~

'Huh? Is that splashing?' Glancing to his left he was started to see a bright head of orange hair struggling face down inches from the shoreline. 'Is- is he drowning?! That's basically the shore! Ah, hell, he might be stuck or something.' And so Oikawa decided to do his good deed for the day. Dropping his bag and his phone, he rushed over to the struggling figure.

"Oi, are you okay?" He asked, sneakers getting soggy as he waded in. The hair rose and suddenly a teary face looked Oikawa dead in the eye and mumbled something that sounded like "Health me..." while reaching for his hand. Oh. My. God. Grasping the boy's hand, he tugged and saw... was that an octopus? Seriously?! He dragged the boy to shore and just threw the octopus back into the sea. Honestly it wasn't that far- Iwaizumi probably could have thrown it a lot farther but eh. It worked.

Turning back the the boy, he finally noticed that the orange on his lower half wasn't from swim trunks, but were scales. 'Almost the exactly same shade as the ones in my dream,' he blinked dizzily, before choking. The ears were also wrong- the shell was lined with frilly ridges that were tinted a very light orange. They almost blended in with a wild mop of orange hair that was quickly drying and sticking in every direction.

"Th... thank you!" The merman croaked, eyes wide with gratitude. Oikawa barely noticed the smile on his lips right before the poor guy fainted. Okay... Well, he wasn't going back in the water anytime soon, especially not with that octopus being really weird. And it really wasn't a good idea to just leave a merman here to be kidnapped or something. So, crouching down, he wiggled his arms under the tail and his shoulders and lifted. Huh. Well, he weighed a lot for a fish, but he wasn't nearly as heavy as Oikawa was himself. Up close like this it was easy to imagine this merman was the same person from his dreams...

Eyes flicking to his wrist, he saw a bracelet. It looked like it was made of twine, and had two blue beads and an oblong shell. Probably a coincidence? Merpeople probably made jewelry too.

By the time Oikawa had gotten home, the sun had risen, but luckily no one else had. Maneuvering to get the boy, the bag, and himself inside the house without waking him or Tema-chan had been hard work, but he let out a small sigh as the door closed silently behind them. Making his way over to the couch, Oikawa started to grin a little goofily. This person was really pretty- a gorgeously dark tan, the beginning of abs just becoming visible, the way the light bounced off the scales... Haah, it felt like a crush.

The moment the merman was set down on the couch, he stirred. "Hnn... Wha?" Orange eyes flicked to Oikawa.

"Yaho~ You're awake, little guy?"

"Ah! You're from earlier!"

"Mm-hmm. I'm Oikawa Tooru." The boy smiled widely was that, eyes crinkled shut.

"Tooru..." Oikawa flushed at the way the boy said his name, hand rubbing the back of his beet red neck.

"Uh, yeah. So your na-" He stopped when a hand reach for his neck.

"Tooru?" Oh god.

"That's my name?" Was it just him, or was his voice getting softer?

"You're... Kind, and strong, and commanding, and male..." Male?!

"T-that's sort of... Well, you're not wrong, but-" The hand pressed against his neck, and the boy leaned up.

"Like a king. You should be my mate, Grand King Tooru..."

"Moving a little fast there, uh, see, I don't even know your name?" Oikawa babbled as he tried to lean away from the too-close face with dilated eyes and a soft pout.

"Me?" Those eyes constricted a bit, and glanced away. His hand withdrew and played with the shell on his wrist. Was that hurt? "...I'm Hinata Shouyou." Shouyou- so pretty. But also sort of odd- "to soar" for a merman? But then again, Humans were no more able to fly than merpeople were.

"Tooru?"

"Ah, sorry. Can I call you Shou-chan?" Hinata blushed then, just at the tips of his odd ears.

"Sure... That's what my childhood friend called me sometimes!"

"So there are other merpeople then?"

"Yeah, but recently there haven't been many of us left. It's getting bad." Hinata clung to his shirt and looked straight into his eyes. "So I need to have lots of sex to have lots of kids so th-!"

"O-kay! No shouting, the neighbors have a dog that's wake them up if you don't first."

"So you'll help me then?"

"Huh?!"

"You said you got it, so... Will you have sex with me?" What the hell? Was Hinata planning on raising them alone or something? Asking the first person to help him to sire offspring or whatever. Hinata looked male, anyway, so why was he so insistent on mating with Oikawa?

"That's not what I meant? Oh god."

"Ahh, I'm so happy~"

"You're not listening now are you!?" Oikawa groaned as Hinata leaned into his chest.

"Thank you~"

"Okay, you're not. But why are you so insistent on the "Male" part of it? Are you a girl or..."

"Merpeople as you call us are all... what's the word... hermaphrodites? Yeah." And there Hinata went, hand drifting to his upper tail and stretching two slits that Oikawa hadn't noticed. "Male in the top slit, female in the bottom. Makes it easy. And you're Male, so I guess we'll use the female parts..." Eyes drifting over to Oikawa's swaying form, Hinata lifted a hand to his face. "Right?"

Okay, so at this point, Oikawa was freaking out just a little bit. Hinata was- Hinata was really... Hot. And had both functioning sets of genitalia. And was basically asking to be fucked. Oikawa was losing his goddamn mind. And to make everything worse, the nipples were right...

No. Oikawa said "Later," and went to go get Hinata a shirt for the sake of his now half-hard cock. He had just met Hinata, he was not going to just fuck him- her- them? and dump 'em back in the ocean. Hinata was weird, but also like the summer sun and the incoming tide. Oikawa wanted to know the strange merperson that he had dragged back home long before children could happen. And no, he was not going to try and figure out how custody and living arrangement with what appeared to be a nomadic merperson would go until he absolutely had to know.