Gifts From the Sea, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl
Batfam Bingo 2019: AU: Zoo
Chapter 2 - Forbidden Friendship (rough draft 2)
The next morning, Bruce prepared as best he could and then felt a little fluttery with apprehension and excitement when he left his apartment.
No one greeted him when he arrived, and he got cold glares from anyone who deigned to look at him at all. Bruce's tentative inquiries about the merboy were rudely brushed off without being answered.
He was pleased but very surprised when it was made known to him that he was expected to help with the merboy's medication again. He took his place, everyone standing slightly but noticeably apart from him. The net team got ready and began to move.
Just as before, the calf was dragged struggling and screaming to the surface, and Bruce's heart ached. He was already crossing the platform before he was aware of what he was doing. The little mer was dragged closer and closer. Then he flipped over and caught sight of Bruce.
The change was immediate. His screams paused, and his eyes widened. Then he reached out as much as the net allowed and started shrieking again, this time in desperation. "B'SSSS...! B'SSSS...!"
Bruce was on his knees on the very edge, stretched out, reaching. As soon as the calf was close enough, Bruce seized him in his arms and rocked back. Dick squirmed in his hold and then latched onto him tightly, sobbing into his shirt through the net.
"I've got you, Dickie, I've got you..."
The others pulled Dick away in order to tie down his tail, which set him screaming again, his arms stretched toward Bruce. Bruce managed to take hold of the calf's clawing hands in one of his and then sat there, stroking Dick's hair as the merboy wept against his leg. "It's okay, Dickie, it's just the same thing as last time...we're going to put some medicine on your tail and then wait a few minutes to give it time to work. You're okay, Dickie, you're okay, I'm here...
After several long minutes, Dick finally stopped crying and stared intently at his tail and at the timer. At one point, he suddenly started biting Bruce's leg, but the armor held. "Dick, no. No. No biting."
The merboy stared up at him apprehensively, then, after it was clear that Bruce was not going to punish him, did his little "Pet me" headbutt.
"I'll only pet you if you don't bite me. If you try to hurt me again, I will stop petting." Bruce resumed his gentle stroking, occasionally reaching into his pocket to swipe more mer-safe oil onto his fingers from the container he'd tucked there. This time, his slick hands slid across Dick's equally slick skin, and the mer actually relaxed a little bit. "You're a good boy, Dickie...a very good boy..."
When the timer went off, Dick started to struggle again, and Bruce had to hug-restrain him until they'd gotten the tail straps off. Then he opened his arms and Dick started flopping to freedom, but not before seizing Bruce's leg and starting to drag him into the deeper water.
Bruce immediately grabbed onto Gustav, and everyone started yelling and seizing either the vet or Bruce. The little merboy soon gave up and dashed away.
"Wow," Bruce said, realizing that he had to set the tone before anyone else could figure out how they felt about a human nearly being dragged into deep water by a mer, "he is the most amazing thing I've ever seen."
Shoulders relaxed slightly, and expressions changed from panic to contempt. It made Bruce relax a little as well. "Yeah, real amazing if he'd drowned you," someone snapped.
"He didn't, though. More like testing boundaries, or something," Bruce said.
"It's not fair!" Amanda exclaimed in clear frustration. "We've had him for weeks, and all he does is hide and freak out when we get near him; then in two days, he gets clingy with the newbie and cries and makes responses other than screaming?!"
Bruce wondered if it had ever even occurred to any of these people to treat the little mer like a child instead of an animal. Perhaps many of them might have, if the attitude of the leadership had been different, but Bruce had found that people tended to fall in with herd mentality pretty quickly. "He was calling for me, wasn't he," he realized. "Yesterday. That's why I'm not fired." Likely the only reason he wasn't fired.
No one really answered, just gave him dirty looks as they all started to clean up and disperse.
For the rest of the day, Bruce was given the most undesirable jobs, and found himself cleaning quite a lot of scum-encrusted tanks and equipment. He never said a word of complaint, though, knowing that this was the price for getting to stay with the fascinating little merboy.
For his first fifteen-minute break, he quietly made his way to Dick's pool and sat down at the edge, watching the blob in the corner.
After a long moment, the blob slowly began to grow as the boy drew closer and closer to the surface. Then there he was, the little dark head peering out of the water, still safe in the corner where no one could reach him without a net.
"Hey there, chum," Bruce called, trying to make his voice carry enough for the calf to hear it, but not loud enough to attract human attention.
Dick slowly swam closer, though he stopped again well out of arm's reach.
"Just taking a break, and thought I would come see you," Bruce chatted. "Nice to spend time together when I don't have to pin you down, right?"
Dick slowly swam back and forth, as if trying to see Bruce from different angles, always staying out of reach.
"You have very pretty eyes. You always hear writers describing eyes 'like sapphires' or other jewels, but in your case, it's not an exaggeration, they really do look like-"
"Wayne!" At the sharp voice, Dick vanished beneath the water, though he remained close enough to see the human figures at the edge of the pool.
"I'm on my break," Bruce said calmly, raising his watch-covered wrist. "I set a timer. I'll go right back to work as soon as it goes off."
"You can't be in here without permission."
"It's easier to develop a relationship with him when neither of us are under pressure."
"You're not here to develop a relationship with an animal!"
Dick was looking out of the water again, his expression intent and alarmed.
"I'm here to assist you all in your work, and if I can keep the animal calm and comforted so you can more easily treat its medical condition, then that is a form of assistance."
"Get out of here!"
"...Fine," Bruce acquiesced, already planning to make a note of Paul's schedule so he could sneak in at times when he'd be less likely to get caught.
However, when he got up and started to leave, Dick shrieked. He rocketed across the pool at an alarming speed and leaped onto the dry concrete, then hauled himself toward Paul with fierce eyes and bared fangs.
Paul shrieked and fled, screaming into his walkie-talkie.
"Dick!" Bruce, alarmed at the sight of blood starting to streak the ground, practically flung himself to his knees and put his hands on the mer's shoulders. "Dick, stop, look! You're hurting yourself! Look, Dickie."
Dick paused and stared at him, then, finally, at where Bruce was pointing. At the sight of the blood, he whimpered as if finally feeling the pain and gingerly shifted to his side, revealing the new scrapes on his tail. Dislodged scales littered the floor.
"Oh, God," Bruce exclaimed in horror. He put his arms around the calf and carefully lifted him up, then carried him into the office and set him in the rolling chair. Dick sat there, trembling and whimpering, tail working restlessly, as Bruce broke into the locked medicine cabinet and started sorting through the tubes and bottles. The usual bottle was for something different, but right next to it was one with the words 'antiseptic' and 'for marine specimens' on the label, so he started applying it to Dick's scrapes.
When he noticed the calf's fearful trembling change to shivers of cold, he paused long enough to pull off his own shirt and started to put it on the merboy. Dick shrieked and jerked back, swiping at him, so Bruce immediately stopped trying to clothe him properly and simply draped the shirt around the mer's shoulders. With their size difference, the garment nearly covered the calf's entire torso.
Dick stared for a minute, then held the shirt snug around himself with one hand and picked at the fabric curiously with the other, no longer bothering to watch Bruce resuming the treatment of his injuries.
Bruce finally exhaled and sat back on his heels. "Okay. We'll give that a minute to sink in, and-" He became aware of Dick's hand gripping his hair and that the calf's eyes were fixed on something behind him. He had no idea how long the mer had been in that position. Bruce looked over his shoulder and found quite a lot of people crammed in the doorway, staring.
"What did you do?" Mark demanded, sounding angry, amazed, and resigned all at the same time.
"He jumped out of the pool and scraped his tail. It was okay to use this, right?" Bruce held out the medication.
"Why is he so CALM?!"
Bruce looked back at Dick. The merboy didn't look at all calm to him, but he supposed that tense and frightened was 'calm' in comparison to the screaming and wild struggling everyone else was probably used to. Also, sitting in a desk chair with a garment wrapped around him, the calf looked far more human than he did when he was naked in a pool.
"Don't let his tail dry out," someone remarked, and there was some shuffling as someone else went to wet a towel. However, when they tried to approach to apply it, Dick shrieked and clung desperately to Bruce, who stepped in front of him. "I'll do it."
Dick spared a few anxious glances at Bruce as he wrapped the tail, but for the most part, but merboy kept his terrified gaze fixed on the other humans, alert for any threatening move.
"It's okay, chum. No one will hurt you."
Bruce used his phone to try to entertain Dick while they waited for the medication to sink in, though the calf wouldn't give enough of his attention to it until he'd pulled hard enough for Bruce to be positioned directly in front of him, between him and the other humans.
Bruce started out showing him ocean videos, but the calf, catching on quickly, started tapping on suggested videos himself. He stared in great confusion at a video of human 'mermaids' performing at a club. A few suggested videos later got him to one that was completely unrelated to the ocean, and Dick gazed at the colorful, glittery, singing dancers so intently that he didn't even seem to notice the timer going off or Bruce unwrapping his tail.
He did notice Bruce trying to take the phone out of his hands. "Okay, chum, I'm going to need this back now-"
"Screeeeeee!"
"Finish this one video and then that's it."
Dick still got violent when the video ended and the phone was forcibly confiscated, but in a way that reminded Bruce of a child throwing a tantrum. Bruce pinned the calf's hands and scooped him up. Dick, yelling and growling, started to whip his tail in a rotating motion so quickly and powerfully that Bruce nearly dropped him. "For God's sake..."
Mark and Gene held the merboy's tail, and between them and Bruce, they managed to get Dick back to the pool and toss him in. Instead of darting off immediately as usual, Dick bobbed in the water and screeched angrily for a while, his eyes on Bruce. Then he dove down to his corner.
Bruce stared after him. "...He still has my shirt." He looked down at his chest, which was now only covered by the armored under-layer.
"Bruce," Mark sighed, "I don't think you realize what a can of worms you opened the other day."
Bruce was given a new shirt and then sent back to resume scraping scum. About twenty minutes later, Amanda came to get him. "Bruce," she said, "I think you're gonna want to see this."
He followed her to the downstairs portion of the mer pool, where a large section of the tank wall was transparent. A small crowd of employees, most of them recording with their phones, watched Dick play with Bruce's shirt.
The calf would fling the shirt up and watch in fascination as it drifted, often swimming around it and experimentally poking at it to send the folds of fabric in slightly different directions. He dragged it, watching it stretch out after him through the water, and eventually discovered that he could partially curl up inside it. Though he shied away from the neck hole, Bruce was so much bigger than him that three quarters of the calf's body fitted into the shirt, and once he'd bundled himself inside, he started to twirl, propelling himself with the end of his tail.
Everyone was so spellbound that they lost track of time as they watched. Bruce finally asked, his voice soft, "Has he ever had any toys?"
"We gave him a ball," someone mentioned.
"One that he could take down into the water with him?"
No one answered, perhaps not wanting to acknowledge that a ball that kept shooting up to the surface wouldn't be much fun for a creature that spent most of its time hiding in the depths.
Dick finally seemed to notice that he was being watched. Clutching the shirt, he swam right up to the tank wall and stared at Bruce. Bruce stared back and found himself stepping as close as he could get, as if the mer's intense sapphire eyes were a line drawing him in. They stared at each other for a while, Dick slightly above Bruce's eye level.
Then the calf's gaze dropped, and he tilted his head as he studied Bruce's chest critically. He turned back to his stolen shirt and spread it out in the water, looking back and forth between it and its former owner, comparing the way Bruce was wearing his replacement shirt. Then Dick wriggled into the garment again, this time struggling with the various holes, ending up with his head through one sleeve and his arm through the neck hole. He glared at Bruce in displeasure.
"Turn it around," Bruce said, trying to gesture the instructions.
Dick frowned harder and curved sideways in the water.
"No, the shirt-" Bruce took off his shirt and put it back on the way Dick was wearing the other one, though Bruce was too big for most of his head to fit through the sleeve. He waved demonstratively, then slowly righted the shirt again and popped his head through the neck hole. "Like that."
Dick was staring, wide-eyed.
"The neck hole has a collar, see?" Bruce said, flipping his own demonstratively. "The sleeves just have hems."
Dick turned his attention back to his own shirt and squirmed out of it, inspecting it carefully for a while. He played with the collar and looked back and forth between his shirt and Bruce's. Then he struggled inside it again, making a couple of attempts before managing to put it on correctly. He swam in a small, experimental circle to get the feel of the garment and then pressed both hands to the side of the tank, looking at Bruce with a close-mouthed smile.
"Very good," Bruce praised, smiling. "Good job." It suddenly occurred to him to try it in sign language, since the merboy obviously couldn't hear him through the tank and the water. "Good," he said again, this time with both his hands and his mouth.
Dick pushed back a little, made a motion that was like sweeping his hands from his chest upward, then swam away, arms out and oversized polo shirt flowing around him.
The employees burst into excited chatter, sharing all the pictures and videos they'd just captured. None of them paid any attention to Bruce, who slipped away and went back to work.
o.o.o
Bruce went to the mer pool on his lunch break, sitting a prudent distance away from the edge so no food or trash would have a chance to fall in. After a while, Dick's head rose above the surface of the water.
"Hello, Dick." After a pause in which the calf made no move or response, Bruce continued, "I thought I'd eat lunch here, just hang out with you a little. I think you're the only one in this whole place who doesn't hate me."
The one-sided chatter went on for a while. Dick eventually ventured very cautiously to the side of the pool and put his little webbed fingers on the edge.
"Please don't jump up on the concrete again, remember how you hurt yourself last time."
Dick may not have understood the words, but he remembered the incident from that morning. He set his palm on the concrete and patted experimentally, frequently lifting his hand to check for blood. So far, so good. He spent a while inspecting the concrete and lifting his eyes to check on Bruce.
Then, before Bruce had time to do anything other than gasp an aborted, "No-," Dick heaved himself onto the concrete.
"Dick!" Bruce hastily shoved his half-eaten lunch back into its container and zipped it up. Then he got up and marched toward Dick, who was dragging himself across the concrete carefully enough to avoid injury. As soon as the calf saw the man marching toward him, his eyes widened in alarm and he scrambled backward, dropping back into the pool just as Bruce reached him. He swam toward the center, and Bruce relaxed. "I want you to stay safe, okay, chum?" Bruce sat down on the edge and folded his legs.
They watched each other for a while. Then Dick approached again, angling around from the side. Bruce grew more and more wary, then finally raised his hand and commanded, "Dick, stay in the pool."
The merboy paused, calculating. Then he slowly started moving along the edge of the pool, toward Bruce. Bruce tensed in alarm and a bit of excitement, but stayed still and alert.
Dick veered away before coming within arm's reach and circled in front of Bruce, to his other side. He reached the edge and paused. Then he gripped the edge.
"Dick, stay in the pool."
Dick made a displeased hissing sound.
"You need to stay in the pool. You hurt yourself earlier when you came flopping all over this rough concrete, remember?"
Dick sank down until just his eyes and the top of his head were above the water. They watched each other for a while. Then Dick slowly approached, still mostly submerged.
"Hey, chum," Bruce murmured.
The merboy's eyes flicked around, but the pool was deserted except for the two of them. He came just short of arm's reach and stopped.
"I've been thinking about what sort of toys to bring you. Nothing too small, or that will be too hard for us to retrieve. I wish I knew what kinds of things you liked."
A small, dripping hand started to reach out. Bruce got a little nervous and scooted back a little. There was a pause, then Dick rose an inch and smirked. "B'ssss."
"We have legends about mer dragging us into the water to drown us, you know. Not sure I trust you 100% yet, chum."
Dick tilted his head. "JJumm."
Bruce's eyes widened. "Ch-um," he enunciated. "Chum. It means 'friend.' Well, it means something else, too, but in this context, it means friend. Chum."
"Jjum."
Bruce chuckled a little. Then, enunciating and pointing, he said, "Dick is my chum."
The merboy's eyes widened a little, and he rose farther out of the water. "Ti'ck?"
"Dick. That's your name. That's what we call you, anyway, in our language. I am Bruce, and you are Dick."
"Ti'ck?" He made a series of clicking sounds. "B'ssss c-c-c-c-click Ti'ck." He made a couple of strange motions, like drawing Bruce to himself and then tossing up his forearm, the hand bent far back for a moment.
Bruce's phone alarm went off, and Dick heaved backward in alarm. "It's okay, chum, it's okay, that just means my lunch is over. But hopefully I'll see you later, all right? Goodbye." He stood up and waved. "Goodbye, Dick."
"B'ssss?"
"Goodbye. I will see you later." Bruce went to scoop up the strap of his lunch bag and walked away.
o.o.o
'Mer can talk.' Bruce thought about this obsessively until his last break of the day, mulling over the implications and wondering if it was just mimicking or genuine communication.
Obviously pronunciation was difficult with a mouth and throat that weren't quite the same as a human's, and especially for a creature who'd spent the first eight or nine years of his life using a different form of communication. But the intelligence was quite possibly there, and Bruce thought he had been on the right track with ASL. It had worked for primates and dolphins, after all, so why not mer?
He came into the pool area during his break to find Mark and a couple of others on the slightly submerged ledge, calling coaxingly to Dick as they held out fish. The mer was at the surface, but all the way at the other end of the pool, hissing.
"What are you trying to get him to do?" Bruce asked.
Gene glared, and Mark looked for a moment like he had swallowed a lemon, but then sighed and said, "We just want to test some things, now that we know he can do more than we thought. Harmless stuff, matching colors and listening to music and the like." He paused, then held out the fish and said, sounding like he was forcing the words out through gritted teeth, "Why don't you try?"
Bruce cautiously approached, took the fish, and held it out toward the merboy. "Dick, come here! Look what I've got-"
The mer vanished beneath the water.
Mark and the others exclaimed in surprised disappointment (and maybe a bit of envious relief).
Bruce thought a moment, then walked along the edge of the pool until he was a significant distance from the other humans. He sat down, waiting, and set the fish aside when he realized he was still holding it.
After a long time, Dick surfaced again, low and suspicious. "Hello, Dickie," Bruce called, waving in a deliberate way.
Dick cocked his head.
"Will you come here, Dick?" Bruce asked, signing as he spoke.
Dick's head dropped beneath the water and he slowly approached, then surfaced again, closer but out of reach.
"Hello, Dick. It's good to see you."
After a long pause, Dick's eyes moved to the fish, then to Mark and the others, who were holding their breath some distance away.
Bruce scooted away from the fish. Dick fixed his eyes on it for a while, then very cautiously swam to the edge of the pool and picked up the fish. He stared at it intently.
Then he hurled it away and lurched backward, watching Bruce in apprehension.
"It's okay, Dickie, I'm not angry. You don't have to eat the fish if you don't want to."
"...Ti'ck? Ti'ckie?"
"Yes, 'Dickie' is an affectionate nickname for 'Dick.' Which is, itself, a nickname for 'Richard'... I'm sorry it's confusing."
Dick cocked his head. Then he pointed at himself. "Ti'ck? Ti'ckie?" He made a soft clicking whine.
"You are Dick or Dickie. Either one."
Dick pointed at him. "B'sss."
"That's right. I'm Bruce."
Dick did that close-mouthed smile. Then he held out his arms and turned a full circle in the water, as if showing off his outfit.
"Yes, you are wearing a shirt. That is a blue shirt," Bruce confirmed, pointing and signing. "Shirt."
"Hsssh't."
"Shirt," Bruce confirmed. Then, softly, "You're amazing."
Dick, for the first time, moved carefully just within arm's reach. Bruce just as carefully stayed still and kept his hands visible. "You just did something to show you trust me a little, Dick, and I treasure that."
After a long moment, Dick pointed toward Mark and the others and made a short whooping sound. They eagerly started forward, taking it as permission to approach, but Dick hissed and backed away. "Maybe he wants another fish?" Bruce guessed. The bucket had been sitting at their feet.
"Do you want a fish, Dick?" Mark crooned, taking one out and offering it.
Dick lowered 97% below the water in his suspicious way.
Bruce went over to take the bucket and bring it back to Dick, whom he offered a fish. Dick stared at it again. Then he picked it up and set it right beside Bruce's knee, looking up at him expectantly.
'Oh God,' Bruce thought. He could eat raw fish, but not when it had been sitting dead in a bucket for hours. (It suddenly occurred to him to wonder whether mer actually found it appetizing, either, or whether they simply ate it because fresh food was not provided.) "...How about this, chum." He took a package of crackers out of his pocket and showed it to Mark. "They're all-natural, no preservatives or additives." Once Mark had inspected the list of ingredients and given the okay, Bruce opened the package and ate a cracker, then held out another one to Dick, who had retreated again at Mark's approach.
Once Mark backed away, Dick warily swam closer and took the offered cracker. He stared at it for a minute, then put it in his mouth. He made a face and opened his mouth again, letting the soggy cracker dribble back out.
"Not a fan, huh?" Bruce remarked, eating another one just to show that it wasn't poisoned or anything even though it wasn't to the mer's taste. "I like them, though. They're not very filling, but they're tasty and nutritional, at least for humans."
Dick came close again and reached for Bruce's leg. The man warily backed away, still sitting. Dick heaved himself out of the pool and lay there on the concrete, running curious fingers over Bruce's leg hair. "You've never gotten to take a good look at human legs before, huh." It occurred to him that he ought to have kept the armored layer on, whether he'd expected to have any physical interaction with the mer or not. 'Next time.'
Bruce's fifteen minute break stretched out over half an hour as Dick, in growing fascination, stroked his legs and played with his feet, especially his toes. Bruce had to keep a sharp eye out, scolding and jerking back whenever the mer looked like he was about to bite. Although Dick tensed when Mark approached to lay wet towels over his tail to keep his flesh hydrated, he didn't flee. It was only when he finally seemed to get bored and a little woozy from the sun that he started making attempts to heave himself away. He seemed sluggish and weak, so Bruce carefully picked him up. Dick chittered anxiously at him.
"I'm just going to put you in the water, chum. Right here, don't worry."
The water seemed to instantly refresh him, and Dick darted in a happy circle. He popped his head up for a minute to look at Bruce, then gestured with his arm and turned away to dive. "Bye, Dick," Bruce murmured. "I'll see you later."
Mark, the only observer left, shook his head as he approached. "I am insanely jealous of you, Wayne. We've gathered more data on Dick in the past couple of days than we have in all the weeks since he came to us."
"He's a good kid."
"You're anthropomorphizing him."
"Well, maybe that's what he needed to come out of his shell," Bruce challenged.
Mark frowned and walked away without answering, looking deep in thought.
Bruce's shift ended at closing time, and he went to pay his young friend one last visit. "Dickie," he called, slapping the surface of the water.
A minute later, a dark shape came rising up and surfaced a foot or two away from Bruce. Dick clicked and then waved clumsily in imitation of Bruce's greeting. "Just wanted to see you one last time before I leave. I'm going to go home, all right?"
Dick copied Bruce's signing. "Go home."
"Yes. You will stay here, and I will go home. All right? Good night, Dick."
"Good night?"
"It was fun spending time with you today."
As Bruce was walking away, he heard the splashing sound of water being displaced over the pool's edge. He sighed and walked back. "Dick, get back in the pool. I'm leaving."
"B'sss."
"No, Dick, not right now. You can play with me again tomorrow, but right now it's time for me to go home." He went to shut Gate A, then came back to pick up Dick in his arms. The little merboy had been dragging himself after him, and now set his hand on Bruce's chest, staring up at him as if trying to decipher him. "I'm going to put you back in the pool."
He walked past Gate A to the part of the pool that only had a narrow walkway all around. He tried to set Dick back in the water, but the merboy clung, wrapping his arms around Bruce's neck and his tail around the man's waist.
Bruce sighed and held him close for a minute. "I know, Dickie. I don't want to leave, either, but I'll see you tomorrow. I promise." He kissed the top of the calf's head, cuddled him a moment longer, then straightened up and said briskly, "Finished. Goodbye, Dick."
There was a brief struggle, then he managed to detach the calf's arms long enough to throw him in the pool. Dick shrieked angrily and reared up, then aimed for the edge of the pool again, but Bruce was hurrying through the side gate and shutting it behind him, ensuring that Dick could not follow even if he got back out of the pool. The mer swam to the closed water gate and hissed.
"Tomorrow," Bruce promised. He left, this time successfully.
TBC
