My Clearance Merman Proposed Six Times

I got a beatup merman at clearance price. The tag on his ear said No. 531. Seller said he was stubborn. Wouldn't sing. Wouldn't cry.

I looked at the merman who hummed to himself all day and cried about everything. Doesn't add up. Then he started pulling out his own scales and handing them to me. Anxious about it.

Like he didn't want to be with me. So once he healed, I let him go. The merman cried: Giving you a scale is how we propose. It's a PROPOSAL! You didn't set me free, you monster.

You dumped me! I found out later he gave me five, maybe six scales. Which means he proposed five or six times. I didn't catch a single one.

Chapter 1 They shipped him in a crate way too small for him. He was a mess. He was folded up inside it, arms pinned behind his back by a restraint strap.

A cheap muzzle covered the lower half of his face. A yellow ear tag was punched through with his number on it. 531. His tail should have been silver. It had gone dull.

I checked him against the paperwork and signed for the delivery. As of today, he was mine. I reached in to lift him out. His eyes opened and he growled at me, low, a warning.

Ice blue. Arrogant. Watching everything at once. My hand stopped in midair. That color. It was almost exactly the color of the merman I saw when I was a kid.

So when my best friend Juno sent me the listing, I didn't think twice. I bought him. I cleaned his wounds up, nothing fancy.

The second I cut the straps off, he slid into the pool on his own. Saltwater pool, mixed days ahead to the same salt as the ocean.

I took the salmon out of the fridge, walked to the edge, and kept it short. "Eat." He drifted closer and reached a hand toward me.

If I'd known the first thing about merfolk, I'd have known that's how they hunt. I found out when my arm started burning. My bracelet snapped and went into the water.

I was fast enough that it was only a scratch. Small. Barely bleeding. A few drops hit the pool and spread out. His nose twitched. Then he went still.

Watching him, I thought, maybe he hadn't meant to. Maybe human skin is just paper to something like him. I sighed and cleaned the cut.

To keep it from happening twice, I pulled up the digital care manual that came with the order. [Merfolk do not share a language with humans.

Communication requires patience.] [Merfolk can move on land but require water at regular intervals, plus additional freshwater intake.] [This species is naturally wary.

Domestication varies by individual. For owner safety we recommend tank housing for the first weeks, viewing through glass.

Direct contact is not advised.] [Some merfolk can convert the tail into legs.

The store is not responsible if your merman escapes this way.] [If you intend to keep him as a partner: there is no reproductive barrier between humans and merfolk.] [Please note: merfolk strength and stamina far exceed human levels.] That's it?

Fine. I messaged support. I sent over the order. They came back fast. [Hi hun! The listing does say it. This one's a clearance item.

Refuses to sing, refuses to interact, refuses to produce pearls, poor temperament.

Recommended for budgettier bedroom companion use only.] [If it's about the singing or the pearls, we don't take those back :)] Me: [A merman scratched me.] [Do I need to worry about Vibrio vulnificus?] Chapter 2 [Hi hun, no worries at all!

All our merfolk have been processed.] Processed. I looked at the pool. He had his face in the water. The only thing showing was the yellow ear tag.

I thought about it and typed again. [I'm feeding him salmon and he won't touch it. Does he have food preferences?] [Hi hun!

In theory merfolk can eat anything people eat.] [Could be the new environment. Could also just be that he hasn't warmed up to you yet :)] Warmed up?

Does the salmon need to be warmed up? Then what do wild merfolk do? Is there somebody out in the ocean heating things up for them? I didn't get it.

I went with it anyway. [How warm, exactly?] It took a while. [Kiki thinks mediumrare should do it :)] God. So somewhere out there is an ocean chef doing mediumrare.

Me: [Who's Kiki? Is that your fish expert?] [Kiki is me! :)] There was no tutorial online for salmon heated to mediumrare. I checked.

So I threw it in a pan and got it somewhere between rare and ruined. I went back to the pool, picked up a piece with a fork, and ate it in front of him. "You can eat it," I said.

He stopped in front of me, water just under his collarbone. His eyes were down. Water still hung on his lashes. He lifted both hands out of the pool.

That was when I saw what he was holding. My bracelet. Every single bead. He'd found all of them. He put it in my hand and gave me a small, wellbehaved smile.

Like a completely different fish. So I thought: Kiki was right. He really does like his salmon mediumrare. "Thank you," I said, and smiled at him. His tail swished.

He looked pleased with himself. I put the bracelet away, picked the fork back up, and held out another piece. He looked at me. He didn't reach for it.

He just opened his mouth and waited to be fed. I moved it closer. He bit down. A second later his eyes went huge and he jerked backward, the rims already red.

He covered his mouth with the back of his hand. His throat worked. Like he wanted to spit it out and didn't dare. The tears circled twice in his eyes before they fell.

Round pearls dropped into the water. Relations between land and sea had never been worse. "What is it?" I caught his jaw. "Open." He looked up at me, pitiful, and obeyed.

Tongue out. A merman's mouth isn't built like ours. There's something almost alien about how good it looks. The tip of his tongue was pink from the burn. That's it?

The seller said this one wouldn't cry. Seems pretty delicate to me. Getting burned was probably a brandnew sensation for him. Hence the drama.

The rest of it I let cool before I fed him. He seemed to like it fine. When he finished, I looked at the number on his ear tag. 531.

I'd already decided to let him go once he healed, so there wasn't much point in naming him.

But I don't like calling anything by a number. "Marlow," I said. "From now on I'm calling you Marlow." He tilted his head. He probably didn't catch a word of it.

He just swam to the edge, set his chin on the rim, and looked up at me. "Marlow?" So he can talk. Then I remembered. The manual said merfolk need extra fresh water.

I brought him a glass. He wanted nothing to do with it. He turned his face away and refused to drink. Then it hit me.

Since the day he showed up at my door, he hadn't had one drop of fresh water. Requires water at regular intervals. That line in the manual suddenly had weight.

Chapter 3 I went back to support. They told me merfolk get most of their fresh water from food in the wild. Live fish, specifically.

If the fish isn't fresh enough, their intake drops. But as far as a merman knows, water means seawater. Until he figures out that water can be fresh, he won't drink it on his own.

That, I understood. I got a cup of ice out of the freezer. I tipped the cubes into my palm and held it out to him. He came closer and lifted both hands out of the water.

He didn't take the ice. He took my hand instead, careful, like it might break. Holding it that way, he bent his head and picked up a cube with his mouth. His lips brushed my palm.

It tickled. Crunch. Crunch. The sound of ice breaking was very clean. Somebody could make a fortune putting it in one of those sleep videos. He liked it.

The cold seemed to settle something in him. There was one cube left in my hand, and my body heat was melting it. The water ran down the lines of my palm. Marlow saw it.

He acted like it was going to waste. He leaned in, put his tongue out, and took all of it. Then he followed the wet line up and kissed my arm. His mouth was cold from the ice.

His tongue, too. My fingers curled. He took the last cube and closed his eyes, happy. I handed him the cup. He finished every piece. "Marlow. Do you like it?" I asked.

He tilted his head. He thought about it for a long time. Then something clicked behind his eyes. He flipped over and dove.

A minute later he surfaced with both hands full of pearls and dropped them into the cup, one at a time. "Like?" He pointed at his own eyes.

Ice blue, waiting on me. "Like?" His tail moved, small and hopeful. I picked up the cup and shook it. The pearls knocked together and made a sound.

So that's what he thought it meant. Like. Something the same as ice, the same as pearls, the same as his eyes. Something beautiful and bright.

So he hadn't worked out what the word was for. He kept looking at me, waiting. I shook my head. "That's not what I meant." Marlow's whole face fell. His tail sank down with it.

Over the next few days I started teaching him words. "Wren." He got it out one careful piece at a time. "W… ren." I nodded. "That's right. I'm Wren. You're Marlow.

Marlow." He didn't repeat it after me. He said mine again. "Wren." Then his tail moved, like he'd remembered something good. "Wren. Wren, Wren." I sighed.

Communication skills below a grown Border Collie. Marlow could move around on land, and he kept trying to sleep in my bed, so I just bought him one.

A hydrogel bed made for merfolk, cool and soft to the touch. Press a finger into it and you leave a dip. Let go and it comes back slowly.

I called him over and demonstrated, lying down on it myself. "This is your bed." I stood up and waved him at it. He touched it with one finger.

The second it gave under him, his eyes lit up. There was still a dip in the surface where I'd been lying. It was filling back in. He put his hand on it and held it down.

Then he laid his face against it. Chapter 4 Marlow got the whole of himself onto that bed, pressed his cheek to the cool surface, and let his tail shiver with it.

Then he lifted his head, looked at me, and cleared a space. He curled his tail around it. He patted the middle of the circle.

Hurry up. "No," I said. "I have my own bed." Merfolk love that mattress. For me it's too soft. Nothing holds you up. I can't sleep on something that won't push back.

I thought I'd finally get a decent night. That night he stood by my bed anyway, exactly like always, looking down at me like the bestbehaved creature alive.

I tried reasoning with him. "You have a bed. You should sleep in your bed." He tilted his head like the words meant nothing. His tail swung, silent. The entitlement on this fish.

Everything in my house that a person could lie on belongs to him. I sighed. "Fine. Get in." He was up in one move, arms around me before I'd finished the sentence.

He rubbed his chin against the top of my head. His tail came over and closed around me, and then he let out a long, satisfied breath. He really doesn't understand?

Funny how he understands everything he wants to hear. Everything he doesn't, it's I'm just a fish, how could I possibly know what people are saying.

But his tail was smooth and cool, exactly the right temperature against skin. A cooling pad with a pulse. I let him have it. I don't know how long I slept. What woke me was heat.

I opened my eyes. The merman who ran cool had turned into a furnace. His cheeks were flushed. His mouth was open a little, and his lips were darker than usual.

When he saw I was awake he pressed closer, and his tail wound around my legs. "Let go. You're too hot," I said, with zero guilt about using someone and dropping them.

Marlow didn't let go. He reached up and took my face in both hands. His palms were so hot my skin went tight under them.

Then he leaned down, and stopped, close enough that I could feel him breathing. And touched his lips to my cheek. Then he caught my hand and pressed it flat against his chest.

Under skin that hot, his heart was going like something hunted. He looked up at me. His lashes shook. He was one second from crying. "Wren…" His voice had gone rough.

Then it came to me. I got one arm around his waist, one under his tail, and picked him up. Marlow looked lost for a moment. He got over it fast. He didn't struggle at all.

He put his head in the crook of my neck and settled there. I carried him to the edge of the pool. And threw him in. The seller did say it.

Merfolk can move on land, but they need water at regular intervals. He was running that hot. His voice had gone that rough. Obviously dehydrated.

In the pool, Marlow stared up at me like he couldn't believe it. When I didn't move, he swam a few fast, agitated laps. Dehydrated. Called it. Look at him.

One minute in the water and he's doing happy circles. In the end Marlow curled up in the corner farthest from me and started crying, quietly, into the water.

The pearls went down one after another until they covered half the floor of the pool. I nodded. Ha. Tears of joy. Morning.

I wasn't awake yet when something nudged the hand hanging off the side of my bed