Ray has a certain liking for seashells, and although Daisuke doesn't really understand why, he'd do anything to please him with one of those. You're not getting the context for this AU as well.
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In this late afternoon, the sun was casting its warm light across the busy university campus, following the students on their way home or their internship room. Ray looked up from his work and glanced at the alarm clock on his nightstand. He could allow himself to stop studying for today.
All of his homeworks was done and the weekend was ahead so he could always continue revising when he got back home for two days. Thinking of what he could do next to relax, he pushed his books out of the way to make some room on his messy desk, almost shoving off the table one of his shells in the process.
He immediately catched it and sighed in relief, seeing it was intact, before carefully replacing it with the others. At the same time, he arranged his collection of shells a bit, looking at them with interest. They were displaced in a very precise order, from the largest to the smallest, and sorted by all different colors and shapes, iridescent and nacred.
Ray was pretty proud of them and was taking great care of it, unlike most of his other stuff. He couldn't really explain this fascination for these particular objects but he'd probably say that he saw in them fragments of marine life, magic of the ocean, and a link with mers. Things that were still a little unknown for him, and therefore intriguing.
He had been exploring the deep with curiosity to find shells for a few weeks by now since he found this mysterious necklace able to transform him into a mer. At first, he only wanted to tame his new form, but he quickly ended up bringing back memories with him that felt like treasures.
Carrying them everywhere with him became a habit, to the point he could consider them as lucky charms, and he was even bringing them to his university during the week. Their sight was kind of reassuring and helped him to wait until the weekend when he could go home to look for more.
"That's a lot of shells you got there."
Ray detached his attention from them to look at Daisuke. His roommate was sitting on his bed, back against the wall and had stopped reading his manga to see what he was up to. In Daisuke's hands was the last volume of Coroika, manga from the Splatoon game the two both enjoyed playing (together), but it wasn't this that Ray noticed first.
Daisuke's flirty glance and smirk sure wasn't leaving him indifferent and Ray was trying his best to hide the various feelings of admiration, affection and overall love for him rising in his chest at this sight. Ray has been having a massive crush on Daisuke for a long time, to the point it was kind of obvious and his fruity attitude towards him wasn't helping either.
"You have something to say about it ?" Ray replied instead, holding back from blurting something that was probably very gay.
"Nothing, didn't know you liked those this much." Daisuke lazily shrugged. "I was just curious."
"Well, now you do."
"But ain't gonna lie, you're gonna end up running a business with how many shells you have." He joked.
"They're not for sale."
"Then what are they for ?"
Ray paused, wondering about whether or not he could tell Daisuke about his pendant, and how he was visiting the ocean to see his mer friends and search for shells at the same time. After all, he already told him about his encounter with Anna and he always supported his opinion on improving the human-mer interactions no matter what.
Ray wanted to confess, in fact, he'd be glad to share his secret with someone, especially Daisuke. He may be awfully blunt sometimes but would never betray or hurt his friends, Ray perfectly knew that.
