a/n; it's past my bedtime and i'm going away for the weekend bluhh

ill edit and/or rewrite this when i get back ok

I didn't like sleeping by myself. It was an unfamiliar and strange thing I had never encountered before. The ocean was big, but it was crowded and there was always something nuzzling up to me for warmth, despite its fear that I would eat it. I, myself, had never had to stoop so low. I had never inched close to my caretaker, even though he had told me many times that he loved me - it didn't fit the natural order. But it was only after I had shed the majority of his clothes from my body and onto the floor, and after I had crawled onto the futon with him, that I decided the feelings in my chest were definitely more than fear and respect.

I hardly feared him telling anyone about me, much less slaughtering me. Kaoru was soft and compliant underneath his lean muscle and put-off expressions. I respected that this was his place and I had no right to be here but he wrapped his arms around me when I joined him, even though he was asleep.

I touched my forehead to his, like I had so many times before - and I could feel Kaoru slipping into my mind just as I slipped past him and into his. He was screaming because now he knew the reaches of my subconscious well, more than I knew it, just as I was exploring and learning and knowing his.

We fell asleep.

His subconscious was dark and dusty, like he tried not to remember things, even when he was unconscious. It was odd, and I found it extremely unsettling how they were divided up into simple images and simple actions and words. They were usually in black and white - so I guess he didn't dream in color.

In a sense, his nightmares were just as scary as mine. His father had lashed out a few times, and that was what played fresh in his mind. His mother had many other children, most of them were his half-siblings. He wasn't happy. He had been happy, but that was a long time ago.

I coddled him when I could, I manipulated his subconscious and made it brighter. I stroked his cheek and pressed my lips to his forehead. I knew he was somewhere in my mind; probably having a horrible time. Maybe he was crying, but I didn't know. I felt him as he started to wake up - there was a wild shift in scenery and I could hear him speaking to me through his dream-state. "You're not supposed to be in here."

I didn't have time to apologize before I was ripped away, waking up and breathing like it was my first breath of air. His hair was in my face, and I could feel his breath, warm and soft on the sensitive gills on the side of my neck. He kissed them. I shivered from the cold and he clutched the fabric of the tank top hanging from my frame.

"Why do you do that?" he asked me, his lips still brushing by my gills. It almost hurt with how chapped they were now. Gills were sensitive, and generally not for touching, but I thought I should show him some trust; considering he didn't completely trust me.

"I wanted to make your dreams a little better."

"But your dreams are so... awful, Emil. They're terrible. I can't believe he did that to you." his fingers slipped under my shirt, cold and precise as they traced the edges of my dressed wound. I let him, and simply looked down at his hands while he did it. It felt like an intimate moment, so I put my hands on top of his and guided them to my cheek. He cradled my head and I inched closer to him.

"It seems like we're both whales discarded from their pods." I murmured. The human term for it might have been 'a fish out of water' and I remember it being referred to as 'black sheep'. But none of them had ever seemed appropriate to me.

Because I knew the whales, even though they hated me. I knew how they played with one another and protected and loved one another and if one was killed it was always mourned. But if they were left, that meant something was wrong with it. He was in this large house by himself, and I had been forced out of mine.

He didn't say anything in response for a long time.

Kaoru shifted and I saw his eyes in full-view for what felt like the first time. He looked at me differently this time, and I didn't know why. No one had ever looked at me the way he looked at me now - like the shadows underneath us were reaching up and pulling him away from me and I needed to grab him.

"If she asks who you are, you're a friend from school."

"All right." I said simply.

"You're a boy. Tell her that and she'll let you stay over. If you don't I'll get yelled at and I'll have to hide you." He was going to start rambling, now. He just kept gushing and gushing out all this dumb information.

"All right." I said again. I slid down and rested my head against his chest. He got the message and rolled over and on to his back. It was a little uncomfortable and I felt the gash on my stomach stretch and ooze as I flung my arm over him. His arm curled around me and rested on my waist.

The feeling that he could hurt me in any way he wanted, and how suddenly it came, was unavoidable. In that moment I felt how I imagined the little fish felt when they swam around me at night. I could've dug my fingers into their gills, and I could've ripped their fins off and shoved my nails into their cuts and their bruises but I hadn't. Kaoru could do that to me, and I hoped that he wouldn't.

"Please go to sleep, Emil. And stay in your own head this time."

"I'll try." I whispered as he relaxed underneath me.

It took a while for me to fall asleep. A light drizzle started outside and made quiet noises that left me restless. I'm sure he didn't appreciate it much; the way I moved and groaned because I couldn't fall back asleep.

At some point he got so fed up with me clinging to him that he actually got up and shoved a body pillow on the other side of the bed so he could sandwich me between it and him. When he did that it was unexpected, and maybe a little comical, and I felt a little threatened by it. One of his legs was between mine and his arms were wrapped around me loosely.

If one of my kind had been doing this to me I would've been consumed with unadulterated fear and bloodlust if I so much as scratched them. But humans were different - and I had never known one on this level. I had only known two beforehand. And they were dead. Dead like the still water on the seafloor, and dead like the feeling in my toes.

Humans were vulnerable when they slept - but not as vulnerable as we were when we slept. Most of the time I tried not to. Mostly out of fear that he would gut me, like he had wanted to earlier. I needed to stop thinking about it and comparing Kaoru to myself and my kind. We were very different. I was getting exhausted just thinking about it, so I leaned back into him and hugged the pillow to my chest. We fit together snugly underneath the sheets and I thought that maybe tomorrow would be a good day if I just got a good amount of sleep.