Error Oneshots

Fishbird ( 1 )

Summary: Error Queen yearns for freedom, for his home, and along the way, unexpectedly, also for a human.

Category: M/M

Relationship(s): ??/Error

Additional Tags: Slow Build, Interspecies Romance, POV Alternating, Merman Error, Human ??, Possessive Behaivior, Referenced/Implied Drug Abuse

-

It was love at first sight.

The boy's parents had taken him to the beach when he was barely ten. It took only one second for him to become entranced and another for him to fall in love with it. In front of him, his first love, his only love, stretched infinitely and long. Immense and boundless. The boy's eyes could not see the ocean's end, even when his father carried him on his shoulders to try and find its border.

The ocean was beautiful, deep, vast, and wild. His mother said it reminded her of his eyes. The boy said that maybe that's why he liked it. He felt connected to it. His father laughed and called him a narcissist. At that moment, the boy didn't know what the word meant and pouted, angry at being called names.

Had he known the meaning, perhaps, he would have accepted it.

-

The first time they meet eyes, Error is behind the cold glass of his tank, and he is on the other side, looking at him as if he's the only other living creature in the world. He smiles at him with enraptured interest. His eyes, Error thinks, are as beautiful as his home—his true home, not this cage. They shine as bright as the sun reflected on the ocean.

The man is beautiful—unnaturally so. Humans don't look as ethereal as he does.

"Who is he? Why is he looking at me like that?" Error thinks self-consciously.

The man widens his smile, his features softening, almost as if—

"—as if he found something precious."

(Error doesn't know it yet, but the man just has.)

Error is surprised that, despite the evident interest, the man keeps his distance. Usually, people gather around the tank, touch the glass with dirty, careless fingers, and stare at Error with eyes full of clinical amusement. This man, though, remains rooted where he is, admiring him from a polite distance, almost with reverence.

It's the first time Error isn't looked at as if he is an insentient attraction. Instead, those eyes regard him as if they understand that Error is his own self. Error doesn't know how to handle it. It's been so long since he was treated like a living, thinking creature. It's a novelty that, despite its kind nature, Error can't help but find overwhelming.

He turns around and swims away as far as the tank allows, his long, beautiful tail waving like a red curtain. His heart thumps loudly in his chest, and his face grows hot under such raw interest. That man—that human—didn't need to do anything special for Error to lose his composure and hide.

It's not fear that floods Error. It's something gentler yet just as intense. For the first time in so long, Error feels no longer numb and emotionless, but alive. This man incited what no one else could while captive.

He piqued Error's interest and curiosity.

The man remains unmoving, admiring Error even when he disappears behind an artificial reef. He says something, but the words are lost and left hanging in the air, addressed to no one and far from Error's ears. A statement of sorts, a curse that will be repeated when Error tastes freedom again, for the last time.

——————
.
.
.
.
.

End of Part I~

Note: I bring you all a merman/human AU that has been on my mind for a while now. The big bang was the perfect excuse to write it.

Who do you think is the ocean eyed man?