The Merman Boxset: Gay Merman Romance

by Aratare, X.

  We shall keep each other safe.

  Gabriel nodded. The Mer began to hum like he had the night before during dinner and the calming tune filled Gabriel’s mind. He turned off the shower and stepped out onto the fuzzy bath mat. He had brought his clothes into the bathroom so that no one could see his gills by accident. He grabbed a towel and dried himself off as thoroughly as he could before he threw on the T-shirt and shorts. His gills still fluttered at his sides, but they were settling down now. Soon, they would be invisible again. Gabriel touched the kalish, running his fingers over the shell’s fine lines. Touching it made him feel more secure.

  It is beautiful on you, Casillus said.

  Gabriel couldn’t help but smile, but then he sobered. Any more news on the settlement from the Mers? Does it have anything to do with—ah, us?

  No, I am sorry. The Elders are still silent despite what have I told them about your specialness.

  Once again, the feeling that the Mer was holding something back flooded Gabriel. This specialness you won’t tell me about in any detail is giving me a complex, Casillus. If it’s important enough that you thought revealing it would make these close-mouthed Elders release information when they don’t want to, maybe you should tell me more about it.

  Yes, indeed, you are right. After your time at the settlement, I will reveal all.

  All right. That sounds like a plan.

  I wish they would tell me why they are silent. Casillus sounded pensive.

  Gabriel ran a hand through his damp hair, arranging the curls as best he could. It’s just an archeological dig. Empty buildings. Sand. Students. What could possibly happen to me there? And yes, okay, that’s what everybody in a horror movie says before they’re chopped to bits, but really, it’s going to be fine.

  I suppose you are right, but still, I do not like it. Gabriel heard the swish of Casillus’ feet as he kicked them anxiously in the water. But perhaps it is because I do not like being away from you physically at all.

  Gabriel was smiling again, and blushing, too. That’s my line. But we’ll be physically together soon. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m looking forward to swimming again.

  Casillus swam in that happy, wonderful circle once more. I am so glad, Gabriel. I am looking forward to it, too.

  Gabriel jogged down the stairs, pushed open the front door and stepped out onto the porch. He relished the feeling of well-being he still had as a result of the shower. As soon as he stepped off the porch and into full sunlight he skittered to a stop. He had a momentary qualm that the good feeling wouldn’t last. It was so hot that it felt like he was breathing in magma.

  It will be all right, Gabriel. You still have time before you fully transition, Casillus assured him.

  Gabriel licked his suddenly dry lips and responded, Yeah. I have time. Three days. Three more days.

  You have time, Casillus repeated softly.

  Gabriel noted that he did not confirm that Gabriel had three days left. That number was only a guess. Gabriel was older than most people who transitioned because he had avoided the sea since his parents’ deaths. It could be that he had much, much less time than that. He swallowed.

  For one moment, Gabriel closed his eyes and saw what Casillus saw: turquoise waves and pink and white coral. He imagined how that water would feel wrapped around his body, quenching his thirst in a way that nothing else could and protecting him from the terrible heat.

  So beautiful. It wouldn’t be so bad to be there. Swimming. Forever swimming, Gabriel thought. He felt a thrill of desire to be out there in the waves with the Mer flow over him. The desire to be in the water was no longer as shocking as it would have been to him less than twenty-four hours ago, but then again, he hadn’t believed in Mers before all of this either.

  You belong here, Gabriel, Casillus said. The warmth of the Mer’s love wrapped around Gabriel just like the imaginary water had.

  I belong with you.

  Yes, my love, you do.

  Casillus swam in yet another happy circle in response. Gabriel grinned and opened his eyes. As scary as these changes in him were, Casillus made them seem exciting and positive. He took in a deep breath. At that moment, Corey called to him. Gabriel’s head turned towards the sound and he saw that his best friend was already sitting in the driver’s seat of the van.

  “Good to go, Gabe? I’ve got mondo amounts of water! I think some of it’s starting to boil, though.” Corey held up one of the crystal clear bottles and waggled it at Gabriel.

  Gabriel hurried to the van and slid into the passenger seat. He snatched the water from Corey’s hand and drank half the bottle in a single long swallow. Corey’s mouth opened in a comic “O” in response.

  “Thirsty,” Gabriel explained as he self-consciously screwed the top back on the bottle even though he really wanted to drink the whole thing.

  “I can see that. Remind me not to get between you and a bottle of water, okay?” Corey started the van. It hummed to life beneath them. Corey began reversing out of the driveway. “So where is the Morse Place?”

  “Just take the highway back the way we came here. It’s about one mile away. It’ll be on your left,” Gabriel said as his stomach clenched.

  Corey put the van into drive and started down the highway. His eyes flickered over to Gabriel then back to the road. He said too casually, “The Morse Place is where you—ah—”

  “Washed up after my parents drowned, yeah, exactly,” Gabriel finished for him. He swallowed. A carousel of images—the storm, the boat sinking into the deep, his parents disappearing—flashed through his mind. But he shook himself. Now was not the time to think of those things. He needed to be as strong as possible just to last through the visit to the settlement. So, anticipating Corey’s next words, he added, “And before you ask, I feel fine about going back there.”

  That was a partial lie, but what else could he say? In some ways, compared to everything else going on with him he was fine with it. But only in comparison.

  “You haven’t been back there since it happened, have you?” Corey asked.

  “No, I haven’t stepped foot there since,” Gabriel said. He wrapped his arms around his chest. “When I woke up on that beach, I remember …”

  “What?” Corey asked after Gabriel stopped speaking.

  “That I thought I was dead,” Gabriel answered with a soft, sad laugh.

  “Why did you think that?” Corey looked aghast.

  “Because it was the only thing that made sense,” Gabriel confessed.

  He remembered that moment when he had come to. His mouth had been filled with seawater. Salt had coated his tongue and his lips had been raw and bleeding. His skin was shriveled and it actually hurt where his cheek had been resting against the wet sand. The waves had been rocking his body ever so slightly against the harsh grains, slowly rubbing his skin down almost to the bone. Gabriel had lifted his head up and looked around him. The sea had been a stormy gray, and so had the sky. Where the sky and the sea met they became indistinguishable, a soft horizon. But everything else had been so terribly sharp and clear and alien.

  “I was alive and my parents were dead,” Gabriel continued. “I already knew that before—before making it back to land. I just couldn’t fathom how I wasn’t dead. I should have drowned. Just like them. But I didn’t. I was still alive.”

  Gabriel, I am so sorry, Casillus’ voice said, drifting through his mind. The Mer’s distress threaded through his voice, and it was like he was touching Gabriel tenderly.

  I knew back then that I shouldn’t have survived if I was human. He had almost said “normal,” but now he knew that what was normal for a human wasn’t normal for a Mer.

  Someone should have been with you. One of us, Casillus said.

  But you didn’t know about me then. No one knew.

  However, the way Gabriel remembered it was that he hadn’t been alone. Not exactly. The tentacles had been with him. Once again he told himself that they must have been a delusion, something h
e imagined as a result of not getting enough air, or the shock of losing his parents, or something born from the depths of himself as he had changed into his Mer form for the first time. His mind tugged at him, asking if it couldn’t have been the Mer Guardian his mother had told him about. But he quickly rejected that idea. How could anything like that have anything to do with someone as wonderful as Casillus? Gabriel once again didn’t bring the tentacled thing up with the Mer to confirm or deny either way. He locked it deep away so that it wouldn’t accidentally stream over their bond.

  “I’m sorry I brought it up, Gabe. Just forget I said anything,” Corey said after the silence had stretched between them for too long.

  Gabriel reached out and squeezed Corey’s nearest forearm. “No, Corey, I’m glad you did. It’s important that I remember. Sometimes the past isn’t really past, you know?”

  Corey glanced sharply over at Gabriel. “This thing you’re going to tell me—”

  “Has to wait until after our visit to the settlement.”

  “It’s something to do with the past, isn’t it?”

  Gabriel paused, but then nodded. “Yeah, it is, but it’s more about the present and the future.”

  “It’s big, too, isn’t it, Gabe? Big and important.” Corey’s hands tightened on the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. “Just tell me you aren’t—aren’t dying or something—”

  “No, I’m not dying.” Because I’m going into the water. Oh, my God, I’m going into the water because I’m a Mer.

  “You tensed up there before you answered me. It makes me think that maybe you are dying, because—”

  “I’m not dying. Corey, I swear it,” Gabriel assured him.

  “I know it sounds crazy, but you’ve been so sick, and last night … I don’t know. I could tell that you have some secret that you aren’t telling me about and I could only imagine that it was bad. Really bad,” Corey confessed.

  Gabriel lowered his head. A wave of shame went through him once more. He had hidden all this from Corey. There might have been an understandable reason for it, but still. It was Corey. He didn’t lie to Corey. And clearly, he had hurt his best friend by doing so.

  “I’m sorry, Corey,” Gabriel said, feeling like he was doing a lot of apologizing lately and hating having done things that necessitated it. “You’re right. I have been hiding things from you. First, it was just being sick and not knowing why and now I’ve found out why and I’m going to be okay. With your and Casillus’ help—”

  “Casillus?” Corey’s eyes went round as he said the unfamiliar name. “Is that the name of the mystery man?”

  “Yes, it is, and you’re going to meet him later today,” Gabriel said.

  Corey practically jumped up and down in his seat. “I can’t believe you found this guy in a day and I haven’t even met him yet.”

  Gabriel looked over at his friend affectionately. “The first part of your sentence explains the second part, you know?”

  “Yeah, I guess, it’s just … this feels momentous somehow.” Corey’s eyes were shining now with happiness instead of worry.

  “It is. Casillus is the one who explained what was going on with me. With both of your help I’m going to be okay. Maybe better than okay,” Gabriel said. He still couldn’t quite believe it, but a part of him felt that to be true.

  You are a strong and capable Mer, Gabriel, Casillus said.

  Corey has always been stronger than me. Always open to new things and ideas. He’ll love the fact that the Mer are real and I’m one of them, Gabriel said.

  Corey is very special. I see that through your eyes. You are opening up more of your thoughts and feelings to me. I am eager to meet him and join minds. I know the secret of the Mers will be safe with him, Casillus said.

  Gabriel refocused on the road in front of them instead of answering. “Take this exit, Corey. The Morse Place is—oh, my God!”

  “What? Whoa!” Corey exclaimed as he caught sight of the Morse Place just as Gabriel had.

  “I can’t believe it. When Grandma said that they had found a settlement here, I didn’t think …” Gabriel’s voice trailed off.

  “It’s huge. How could no one know this was here all this time? I mean how could something so big be hidden?” Corey slowed the van as he pulled off to the side of the road and finally parked.

  “Maybe because no one wanted it found,” Gabriel whispered, though he didn’t know why he had said it at all.

  Both of them stared out Gabriel’s window at the settlement. The Morse Place had been a small ranch home surrounded by acres of woods and a vast expanse of marsh grass that led down to the sea. Now it looked like a meteor had hit the area. There was no house. The lawn had been blasted away, leaving a crater of mud and sand that went down seventy-feet deep. The trees were long gone, not even evidence of their large root systems remained. In place of the trees, rising from the crater like a stone forest were dozens of structures. Gabriel could see that hundreds more were still mired beneath the sand, with only their very tops sticking out like broken teeth bursting through rotten gums.

  “Look at the middle building.” Corey pointed to the structure at the very center of the settlement. “That’s—that’s—”

  “The temple,” Gabriel breathed. He knew instinctively that the structure was the temple. It resembled a stepped pyramid from Mesoamerica in shape, but that was the only similarity. He suddenly felt like there was a string running from his chest to the temple. It was exactly the same sensation that he had felt with that spot in the ocean so long ago.

  “The stones … they glow,” Corey remarked about the stones making up the temple. “How could the Native Americans have built something like this? I don’t think we could build something like this now.”

  “I don’t think … I don’t think they did,” Gabriel murmured.

  The massive stones that made up the temple looked like they were made of ice with a liquid blue center. They shimmered as if lit up from the inside. Gabriel blinked and he suddenly saw a sudden vision of the temple in his mind’s eye. But the temple he saw was only half-built. His lips parted in shock as he saw one of the stones for the temple’s base, which must have weighed several tons, levitate up into the air and settle into place. The vision faded, but Gabriel still had to hold on to the van’s dashboard to keep from pitching forward.

  As soon as he recovered, he asked, Is this Mer architecture, Casillus?

  Yes, but it cannot be, Casillus sounded completely shocked.

  What do you mean? Gabriel popped open the van door and stepped out onto the dry ground. A puff of dust appeared around his sandaled feet.

  This should NOT be here. Not on land! The Mer’s feelings were a storm of emotions.

  So we have a really big mystery here, Gabriel murmured.

  Although the image of the temple being built was gone from him mind, the familiar feeling that had always accompanied the pulled-by-a-string sensation was once again rising up in him. Something was in the temple, waiting for him, waiting for years and years and years. He hadn’t been deposited on this beach by accident after his parents’ deaths. No, it had been meant. Whatever was in that temple was waiting for him, and whatever it was would be amazing.

  5

  NO CHOICE

  Corey got out of the car and joined Gabriel at the edge of the excavation. Both of them continued to stare at the temple. It was beautiful, but it was a terrible, cold beauty. It reminded Gabriel of how he felt the first time he had looked up into the night sky and realized that the stars were suns just like the Earth’s sun and that meant that the universe was vast and he was small. The temple was alien. It was other. It made him realize that there was so much more out there than he knew now. He was awed by it, but also slightly overwhelmed by it.

  So this is Mer architecture. This is a Mer temple, Gabriel said to both himself and Casillus.

  It is a special temple to a—a particular entity, Casillus said, his voice tight.

  What entity?
>
  The Mer did not answer, but instead murmured almost to himself, It should not be here! The only other one is deep in the trench and—and I do not understand why one would be here of all places!

  Gabriel could feel that Casillus’ body was tense. Instead of his normal fluid swimming, his movements were jerky. Gabriel could tell that the Mer was fearful about the temple being there. Casillus’ unease had ratcheted up hugely. Gabriel knew that the Mer truly wished for Gabriel to turn right around, get back in the van and head to the beach.

  But I have to stay here. The string that connected him to the temple tugged at him. Just like that day with my parents, I have to go where this connection leads. I can’t turn away from it. No matter what. Gabriel paused at that thought as a sense of unease crept over him. But isn’t that what got my parents killed?

  “The buildings seem like sentinels, don’t they?” Corey asked, breaking Gabriel out of his thoughts. “I just can’t imagine this as a place where living people talked, laughed and loved. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to be here.”

  “I know what you mean. This place … it doesn’t feel like anyone should be here,” Gabriel agreed. But a small part of him added, Except me. Gabriel stilled internally at the unexpected words. Me? Why do I belong here? There was no answer from that small part, but Gabriel felt like there would be if he waited long enough.

  To their right was a flight of stairs that led down into the dig. Johnson’s head and shoulders suddenly popped into view as he mounted the steps. Following close behind him came a young woman with short brown hair surrounding a round, cheery face. She waved as she caught sight of them. Johnson gave them a seemingly genuine smile as well.

  “Hey!” Corey waved back eagerly with a chubby arm.

  Gabriel gave her and Johnson a faint smile. His mind was focused on the temple that both drew and repelled him at the same time. He had no idea what was down there. He feared that like with what had happened the day of the sinking, something terrible—not amazing—would happen when he entered the glowing temple’s doors.