[Closed] @eidxiety🧜‍♀️🔬

[winterbolt]

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[eidxiety]

[Ain isn't all too sure if the blessing took hold or not, because Add doesn't immediately start swimming or say "oh hey what's up" and actually looks very very dead when Ain lets him go finally, and the Siren isn't sure what to think. He's been a bad boy, huh? He dragged his human into his tank and now his human is not only bleeding, but might not live in general...

He whines, then kicks off Add to check out the grate. He's not sure why it shut, and he's been very well behaved so far, but if Add melts because of the water then Ain has to save him before that happens. He swims close to it with Add in his arms, then carefully flattens four tentacles underneath where it latches into the wall... and finally pulls, pulls, pulls, until it eventually starts to shudder under his strength and be forced back. When the gap is big enough, Ain plops Add onto the landing whether he's awake or not, then crawls out himself and shakes dry like a dog. He can explain the grate if the blessing took, maybe. He'll probably be called a bad boy, but there are more important things... And it's not like he broke it, he just shoved it back!

Picking Add up again, they go downstairs, and Ain realises that he has to soothe that wound. Add's labcoat is as red as Ain's teeth right now, and looking at it makes him feel guilty, but he has to own up to his mistakes and fix it.

Sirens fix wounds much differently, though. After Ain takes the wet, cumbersome labcoat and tosses it halfway across the room, he puts the also very wet Add on the couch and starts licking the wound much like a dog would and like he did to himself when he got injured, licking and licking until the bleeding stops and the wound starts to partially close. Oftentimes he wishes his healing was better, but that's what he has being so young and kind of naive about things. Ain recalls that Add put some kind of white cloth on his hand when he got hurt, but all he finds in the desk when he gets up are a million average sized little sticky ones. Frustrated, Ain supposes these will do, sitting down and peeling the white backing off and sticking them carefully over the wounds, except Add's skin is wet and they don't want to stay and AAAAAAAAAH—

He whimpers and lays his head on Add's chest, thankful to still hear a heartbeat, but otherwise looking incredibly frustrated with himself. This is not the time to feel so very sad and forlorn, he has an Add to fix!! He shakes it off, gets up, and walks around looking for the towels... Add always said he didn't like the floors getting wet. Something about melting, Ain's sure, and luckily they're in the cabinets but the cabinets have been locked. Add locked them to keep Ain from thieving.

Ain is going to cry.

Ugh, how does he dry his human and keep him warm? Does he break the lock? That seems like such a waste since Add clearly doesn't want him in here but yeah he breaks the lock. It's actually incredibly easy for him to bend, snap, and access that cabinet. He's been — again — far too good for far too long, and now Add will know he's very capable of escaping and breaking whatever he wants and he hasn't solely because he's food and praise motivated and likes that he doesn't get hunted by sharks here.

He finds the towels folded up all neat, grabs six of them, and plonks his way back to the couch to cover Add in them.

...

Unfortunately Add is going to wake up burritoed, like, he will have to wiggle his legs to escape burritoed — and his arm has acquired several more sticky little adhesive bandages since Ain finally figured out how to make them work. The box is on the floor, and Ain has his head on Add's chest and is ringing to try to wake him up.]

[dyn4m0]

[Add had passed out briefly at some point between falling in and being given the blessing, the whole ordeal just enough of a shock to the system, one supposes. It makes sense, given that his human body really isn’t built to breathe underwater, so it’s a lot to acclimate to. To that end, in the throes of unconsciousness, he’d pretty much accepted that he was dying in that moment due to his own stupidity. What a way to go out, in the end. Either drowned, or devoured, or more likely both.

So imagine his surprise when he blinks his eyes open to the sound of his phone ringing, the whole room around him blurry, and feeling like he’s been buried alive and can’t move. He reflexively goes to inhale, only to immediately start coughing up the rest of the water that was in his lungs (gills? The gills aren’t there anymore, now that he’s outside of the water), but- for a mercy on Ain’s part- it’s the clearest sign he could have that Add is alive. He did not, in fact, dissolve in the water.

And Ain is here, laying on him mimicking the sound of his phone ringing.

Why…didn’t he eat him?]

Wh…how did I…

[He doesn’t remember escaping the tank. It was closed over, the alarm probably sounded, where are his colleagues? The answer is that Ain forcing the grate back probably broke something in their security system and now they can’t reach Add or view the cameras right now, meaning that they’re alone in this moment…at least for now.]

[eidxiety]

[His human!!!!

Ain sits up and stops ringing, earfins flapping, and chirps excitedly a few times. This is still Siren nonsense, but what isn't...]

Add!! Can you hear me? Do you understand me?

[Ain puts his hands on Add's face and squishes his cheeks, brushing under his eyes and over his cheekbones. Oh, good, he's warmed up a bit. Ain thinks, anyway. Maybe he hasn't.]

I pulled you out of the tank after you fell in. I'm sorry for biting you. I didn't mean to, it's just a really bad season for me... I was scared you'd melt in the water [ain] so I gave you the Siren's blessing so you could breathe. I don't know if it stops you from melting so I pulled you out. —Oh, I already said that.

Hi!!

[dyn4m0]

[Add is staring. Staring at Ain. Staring at him some more with wide unblinking eyes as he rubs his face with his wet little paws.

He’s talking. He’s talking to him. Add just kindof lets it happen, too bewildered at first to react.]

…I’m dead, right? I died and I’m hallucinating. Or I’ve gone insane.

[eidxiety]

Oh, good, I can understand you too! Haha, wow, that was difficult before, wasn't it?

[He's going to start unwrapping the towel-burrito that is Add now, at least his upper body, so he can show him the, uh... repairs done on his arm.

Look man he doesn't understand how humans do this, he tried his best with that box of bandaids okay? Okay.]

You didn't die. I pulled you out of the water, see? And I tried my best to patch you up, but I know I didn't do a good job...

[dyn4m0]

[Logically, being bitten and nearly drowned by Ain should be higher on Add’s priority list. Even now, he’s staring at his arm and turning it this way and that like he can’t fully comprehend what he’s seeing, or maybe moreso that Ain was able to bandage him on his own.

But besides that…Add is currently freaking out because he can understand Ain. Though he’s definitely still speaking in Siren tongue, he’s able to understand it, like English subtitles have suddenly been slapped over Ain’s every word.]

H-hang on! You said you gave me a “blessing”?? What’s that!? You need to explain this to me right now, Bluhen-

[eidxiety]

My name is Ain.

[Just by the way! Satisfied that his horrendous, patchwork job of fixing Add up has remained in place, he sits back on his calves with his tail plap plapping the floor. He looks so proud of himself, even though he's waiting to be called a bad boy.]

The Siren's blessing is something we can give to humans with a kiss so they don't drown. It lets you breathe underwater, and lets you understand us too. We don't really use it much... at least, this was my first time ever using it, but I doubt any of the other Sirens in the pod have either.

[To give Add an example, Ain starts acting like he's going to cast it again, which causes that bright green-yellow glow over his throat to reappear. He points to it like this is super obvious that That's what that means.]

Lots of us like humans. [He comments as it fades.] And I didn't want you to die... you're my human.

[dyn4m0]

…Ain?

[He speaks his name- his real name-!for the first time. The whole “you’re my human” thing he’ll have to unpack later. For now, he traces his fingertips over his wounded arm, looking still as bewildered as before. Ain…kissed him? Now that he mentions it, he feels like he has a vague memory…and also the distant taste of copper on his tongue.

…oh god his first kiss was stolen by a FISH.]

I. I don’t understand. If you could have done this all along to understand us…why haven’t you?

[eidxiety]

Were you ever gonna let me close enough to try in the first place? Besides, when I was growing up, I was told by our pod's shaman that we had to keep stuff like that a secret. Some Sirens don't want our worlds to overlap, and there's this fear that if humans understand the ocean, they'll try to conquer it... I'm not dumb. I know what your race has put in our oceans.

[Traaaaaaaash.]

But I really like humans...! It was more fun to try to learn your language than immediately cheat. I can only talk to you like this. I can't talk to the other humans... and I don't really intend to go around kissing everyone here. Not until I know I can trust them, at least, like I can with you.

[dyn4m0]

[…okay yeah Ain makes a very good point. A few of them, actually. While Add abhors what people do to the environment and would dismantle the government if he was in charge, he gets it. That simply isn’t the reality they live in, and the Sirens probably struggle enough as it is without humans getting directly involved. But even so…]

Us not being able to understand you means people are under the assumption you understand less. That you’re less…

[Well. Human. This facility has an implicit understanding of a Siren’s sapience and intelligence, but he knows not all of them do. Some treat them like animals, and though they do their best to try to respect their wishes, it doesn’t always come through.

I mean, they have a facility full of captive Sirens literally taken from their natural habitat right now, even if it was because they were endangering a local human population. Just who exactly got there first?

Ugh. This raises far too many questions when Add just got bitten and nearly drowned, though as he looks at his arm he’s surprised to see the wound isn’t nearly as bad as he remembers it. It’s bandaged up too, which must have been Ain’s doing…]

…I. Guess I should thank you, anyway. For saving me. I got too carried away.

[eidxiety]

My hunting instincts are strong, and during mating season, I tend to black out and lose myself... It's just a bad season to trigger that reflex. I never wanted to hurt you.

[He has been a very bad Ain. He points to the bandaid mess.]

I couldn't find the white cloth you used on me before, so I used the sticky cloth. I also broke the thing keeping the tall rectangle shut to get the soft squares for you. And I shoved back the thingy over the top of the water tank so I could get you out, but I don't think it's broken. I don't know why it shut on you.

Oh, but you don't have to thank me, haha. You're my favourite, so of course I was going to keep you alive. I get so sad when you're not here.

[dyn4m0]

[Okay but how does he get you to do that again because he didn’t hate it?? Like yeah it was scary but not enough for him not to want to test his limits a second time. What Add doesn’t realize is this is not just a weird fascination but it is, in fact, a fetish-

Add heaves a sigh, looking up at the ceiling with his brows furrowed.]

Me falling in triggered a safety mechanism that locks automatically just in case of an emergency. I guess we didn’t think about the possibility someone could fall in.

[So you know maybe they need to work on that.]

We need to get you back in the tank before my coworkers come breaking the door in. They’ll think you attacked me, but I can make up something believable.

[He just. Says this, suddenly, as he works to detangle himself from the towels. Is he not going to call Ain a bad boy…?]

That explains why you get so depressed when I’m not here. Since you can understand me, I am going to always come back, you know. And you shouldn’t get attached to me anyway. My colleagues will do exactly the same things for you that I will…seems they taught you more anyway while I was on PTO.

[eidxiety]

[But he's a bad boy... Ain gets up, though, and plonks his way over to the tank again.]

PTO...? Whatever, you can tell me later. And I'm already attached~. Oh, by the way, since I'm going back in the tank...

I don't like girls, haha.

[Big steppies upstairs... and then he will dive back into the tank and retrieve the fallen bucket for Add. And also eat the waterlogged meat that's been floating there, RIP.]

[dyn4m0]

[As Add watches Ain re-enter the tank in silence, he definitely feels a mini crash out approaching. Like, he’s actually talking to this Siren right now, who can understand him. It hasn’t even hit him yet he can breathe underwater now. He can SPEAK to these creatures they can barely understand, and he’s going to have to somehow be savvy enough to hide that from his coworkers. He will be able to understand Blu- Ain- but no one else can know. At least, not yet.

If it seems like he’s alarmingly calm right now, it’s mostly the shock holding it all back. It’ll come rushing in soon enough.

For now, he has to keep it together, because just as he gets Ain in the tank and the grate back overtop, the others finally break their way in with understandable alarm, to which Add is able to pretty quickly diffuse the situation. He explains that he was cutting the meat for Ain’s breakfast and accidentally slipped with the knife, hence the bandages and blood. They try to press him on what happened with the alarm, and he calmly lies that the grate got stuck when he was pulling it back, triggering a false positive. They all seem suspicious, but why would Add lie about this? He’s always fastidious and careful with recording every detail to the exact number, so…

Eventually, they leave, and Add is left standing in an empty room with damp floors, bloody towels everywhere, including his ruined lab coat across the room. He’s lucky they didn’t ask too much about where the water came from. Maybe they assumed Ain just splashed around in confused alarm when he cut himself.

Either way, Add is…tired, and just then his boss suggested he go home. Usually he’d refuse, but after what just happened? He thinks he needs it.

He wanders back to the tank, looking up at Ain.]

I’m going home for the day. I’ll be back tomorrow. Don’t cause trouble for me, got it?

[eidxiety]

[But Ain wants to cause problems so bad... he wishes he could understand the other humans that come in, but Add's the one he's magically connected to and not the others, so RIP him. He swims around for a bit, then puts his hands up to the glass as Add says bye to him.]

Okayyy... I'll miss you. I'll be good.

[Licks the glass (he wants to lick Add's face but he cannot).

The good news for Add is... Ain is still in heat, so that means as soon as the adrenaline and immediate danger is gone, he's back in his hide being horny and sad. This will be the rest of his day, unfortunately, so uh.

When Add gets back in the morning the reports are just "yeah still in heat" and "still not social".]

[dyn4m0]

[Yeah Add didn’t you actually learn what Ain’s problem was? He knows now he doesn’t like girls, but he was so overwhelmed he didn’t think to like. Ask him what exactly he meant by that, even though Add is smart enough to put two and two together. “But Sirens can’t be gay etc etc”. He’s had…a lot to think about, let’s just put it that way.

He also maybe went home and screamed into a pillow for a while, passed out for six hours, then woke up disoriented at like 10pm trying to remember if that was all a dream or not. The bandages on his arm say “no”, but…

He comes to work the same time the next morning, not really rested and a little apprehensive about coming into his office. Maybe…he really did just have a nightmare that felt really real. That wound could be from anything. So…he’ll come into the office and call out tentatively to Ain’s tank:]

Hey, dumbass. Can you hear me?

[eidxiety]

[And then Ain breaks down his sand wall in front of his cave again and zooms out to see Add.]

Why are you being mean to me? [Hi, Add, good morning.] I missed you. Did your arm heal? Do you want me to lick it again? I can help soothe the wounds more! I missed you!!

[Ain, you said that twice.]

[dyn4m0]

…Tch. So it wasn’t a dream then.

[But at least he isn’t going insane, that’s a plus!! Just, you know. Having no logical, scientific explanation for this is going to drive him insane for the rest of time nbd.

Add exhales slowly through his nose before he starts to get ready for the morning, putting his clipboard on his desk before preparing Ain’s breakfast. He’s having raw chicken thighs this morning dusted with his weekly vitamins.]

I’m not being mean. It’s…a term of endearment. Don’t think about it too hard.

[WHY would you teach him that.]

[eidxiety]

[Oooh... that word means something different in humanspeak. Got it. Ain's tail bobbins swing back and forth as he swims up to get his food, though he stays back until Add drops it in today. It is, again, a bad month for this.]

Ooh... okay. Thank you for the food, dumbass~.

[NO

Anyway, Ain will munch his chicken thighs and use the bones to pick his teeth, as always.]

So, did you want me to fix your arm for you? Or try to, again?

[dyn4m0]

[Yeah he walked the fuck into that one didn’t he!!]

D-don’t say that! Especially don’t say that around the other scientists, got it? Only I can say that.

[He has the right to completely ignore you, dumbass.

Once Ain’s been fed and the tank is closed up, Add has to…you know, actually try to do his job here. Which entails working on Ain’s situation, as it were. But since they can communicate, he can actually get information from
him he couldn’t otherwise…but at the same time, the scientists can’t know that.

Hm.]

My arm is fine, it’ll heal up fine on its own. If you just heal it outright, it’s going to be suspicious. And this is supposed to stay a secret, right?

[He absently touches the side of his neck where it burned so fiercely before, but it’s not long. He’ll go grab his clipboard after a moment.]

Anyway. We’re aware you’re in heat right now due to the mating season. We can placate the hormones artificially. Would you be okay with us doing that?

[Cause while Add himself could suggest putting a male in there…for some reason?

He’s trying to avoid doing that. Blatantly.]

[eidxiety]

...you can what?

[Sorry, Ain doesn't know what "placate hormones artificially" means.]

Sorry, can you tell me what that means? Placate the what?

[Add you're gonna have to be direct with him.]

[dyn4m0]

[Okay but what if he doesn’t WANT to be direct because it was easier to talk about this when you couldn’t understand him-

Ugh. Add drags a hand down his face, feeling his skin grow hot across his cheeks.]

We…can satisfy your heat without you needing to have a mate. Since you’ve been stressed out, we’d like to relieve that if possible.

[eidxiety]

It's because you put a female in my tank, and you saw me laying on my back waiting to be mounted, and then you nearly died. Yeah, I guess I am a little stressed.

[Ain floats in front of the glass, then does a spin and settles down into the sand to continue having this conversation.]

I guess if there's no available mates, that's fine, but I still don't know what you mean. Is it something painful? Like when you guys come at me with the pointy metal thing and stick it into my arm? 'Cause I don't want that.

[dyn4m0]

It’s not going to be painful. You’re not getting that kind of exam.

[No shots, so he doesn’t have to worry. God how does he put this though…

Thing is, there ARE available mates. They’re just male. And Add still isn’t mentioning that. Is it because he thinks his coworkers will think he’s insane for suggesting it, or for some other reason he isn’t disclosing?

Either way, he’s looking elsewhere as he explains. Also hang on Ain aren’t YOU the one who should be doing the mounting, wow yeah you’re gay gay-]

I…can stimulate you, the same way a mate would if we had one that was suited for you. We have a process for it when Sirens are struggling for whatever reason. The important part, ultimately, is to lower your stress.

[eidxiety]

[Yes he's gay did you miss this from the last three times he tried explaining to you he's gay.

Anyway, Ain doesn't know how much of a painful discussion this is for Add, and sort of swings his tail around and flops it in front of his eyes so he can clean the glowing bobbins off. He hasn't done his bath routine yet because he was eating, so it's time to lovingly clean his tail off.]

...so you're not mating with me, but you're kind of mating with me? [no,] That's fine, but do humans also lay eggs? I was told by my grandmother that humans don't lay eggs.