Mermaids and Men [mlm]

9. Paint Me Like One of Your French Girls

It was Sunday and the group of friends decided to get together and practice their abilities. The full moon was coming up soon, and they wanted to be able to have some form of control over their abilities before that day came. It's not like having control would help during the full moon, seeing as once they look at it and go into a trance, all of that hard work at learning how to have control will just get thrown out the window. But still, it was nice to have a set date on when they should be better at using their powers, and they figured the day of the full moon would be a good marker.

They were currently at Alex's house, and Nicki couldn't help but agree when Alex once said his house looked like a shack. Still, on the inside, it was pretty homey, and there was a great view of the ocean from where the house was. There was also a fishing pier not far from Alex's house, just like he said, so just sitting on that pier also gave you a good view of the ocean.

They made their way into Alex's room, which was basically Nerd City, Nicki thought. There were lots of posters of mythical creatures, mostly having to do with the ocean. Nicki could see a major ocean theme going on here, and he understood. Alex had stated before that he wanted to be a marine biologist; he even had some lab equipment in his room, as he had once informed them, though he didn't have a lot of the stuff that they saw in science class.

"Have you started examining the scale samples we gave you?" Rose asked, plopping down in Alex's bean bag chair. "Not yet. I wanted to go ahead and get your blood samples, too. You girls pick who you want to get a needle to the arm, and I'll go ahead and get started on taking a sample from Nicki," Alex replied, sitting down in his spinny chair at his desk with all his lab equipment, then looking at Nicki with a smile. Nicki sighed and shrugged his shoulders, not seeing it as that big of a deal. "Fun. Let's do this," he said, chuckling lightly and grabbing a chair, bringing it over to Alex's desk. He took a seat and got comfortable, watching as Alex got all of his equipment ready. "Ready when you are."

Alex chuckled, then grabbed out a needle and a small tube to transfer the blood into. "Do you at least have unicorn band-aids? I wanna look pimped out," Nicki joked, causing all of them to laugh. "No, I don't. I have band-aids with spaceships on them though," Alex offered, smiling at him. Nicki sighed and tilted his head back. "That'll work," he mumbled sadly. Alex grabbed Nicki's arm and wrapped a band around the upper part to help him find a good vein, then used one of the alcohol wipes, which actually contained a bit of water, to disinfect an area just below the crease of Nicki's elbow where there was a vein. Nicki shot Alex a glare when he suddenly sprouted a tail after eight seconds, which actually surprised the man for a bit, not realizing it would have caused the transformation. "Oh shit! M-My bad, man," Alex apologized. Nicki shook his head, smiling a bit to himself as he reached his hand out to begin warming up his tail, which eventually went away. Once it was gone, Alex continued what he was doing, grabbing the needle and looking up at Nicki, waiting for confirmation to begin. The Siren nodded and looked away, prompting Alex to slowly bring the needle to the man's skin, "Okay ready? I'm gonna count down," he warned carefully. "One... Two... Three," the needle pricked into Nicki's arm, which didn't seem to elicit any sort of reaction out of him. Alex began drawing a little bit of blood, feeling like he didn't actually need that much. It was a good thing he was so good at doing something like this. "That should be more than enough, I don't need a lot."

Alex took the needle out and pressed a cotton ball to the wound. He removed the rubber band from Nicki's arm and turned in his spinny chair to face his desk, setting the vial of blood down for a second. Alex grabbed a sharpie and wrote Nicki's name on a piece of tape before wrapping it around the vial so that he would know which one would be which. He began digging through his desk drawer, pulling out a box of band-aids, and then turning back to the siren, shaking them in front of him. "Got one," he said, taking a strip out as Nicki removed the cotton ball, allowing the other man to stick it over his wound. "There--"