A/N: I really should stop writing new stories and focus on my ongoing ones... yet, here I am, posting a new story. It's not a long story, just over 10,000 words, and it is finished, so there won't be any six month long gaps waiting for new chapters.

Welcome to an alternate universe in which Allen is a merman.

Warnings (AKA: things you might find offensive, off-putting, or be sensitive to): There will be a Yullen lemon. And there's some recreational marijuana use by a minor.

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In all honesty, Kanda would have found fault with anywhere Teidoll had chosen to move to, simply out of spite for being uprooted in the middle of his junior year of high school, but Southern California seemed to be a particularly poor choice. The sun and warm weather was bad enough, but his adoptive father had to go and buy a house right on the ocean, meaning that Kanda's once peaceful days in the middle of nowhere were now interrupted by a constant stream of beach goers - even inside there was no escape from the noise of their revelry. Not to mention the fact that Kanda hated the beach.

Kanda had never handled change well, and it pissed him off that the old man couldn't have waited two more years to "settle into retirement". If Teidoll had just waited until Kanda turned eighteen, he wouldn't have been obligated to move with him across the country and could have stayed in their little town with the few people he considered his friends. But instead, he found himself starting at a new high school with just three months left of the school year.

In some ways, school was better without Lavi and Lenalee around to pester him; he could be the loner he always wanted to be. But on the other hand, what was with people in California? Kanda had always known that he was what other people considered attractive, but he was very unused to being asked out, as the kids at his old school were all terrified of him, so it was extremely weird - and obnoxious - that the girls at his new school asked him out on a daily basis. And it wasn't just the girls. Quite a lot of the boys asked him for dates, and even a few teachers wanted to know when he'd turn eighteen. It made school quite unbearable, and senior year was even worse.

Which led to his discovery of the one good thing about California: marijuana was legal.

Granted, it wasn't legal for him, since he was still a minor, but the stoner crowd at school had no trouble getting their hands on it, and they gladly hooked him up whenever he needed it. He didn't smoke every day, as he couldn't risk Teidoll smelling it on him, but there was nothing like going down to the beach at three in the morning when it was quiet and lighting up a joint. He could be completely alone and just relax and forget about life for a while.

When high school ended, he let Teidoll bully him into attending the nearby community college. The old man had insisted that he go to university, and since Kanda didn't want to continue with school, community college was the compromise that they had reached. Kanda found the whole thing annoying, but at least Teidoll was paying for him to go to school; he wasn't going to come out of it with a mountain of debt. He also knew that he would have to find a job if he ever wanted to move out of Teidoll's house, and that particular community college had the best veterinary technician program in the area, which seemed like the perfect career choice for someone as antisocial as Kanda was.

It took a lot of midnight smokes, but he made it through school. He found a job with a vet that didn't care that he smoked, so long as he never came to work stoned, and he got ready to get his own apartment and finally move away from Teidoll. Except that this was California. Unless he wanted to live in a not-so-nice area of the city, or in a place that was so small that it made his home back in Japan look like a mansion, he would have to find a roommate. And none of those were pleasant options. As much as Kanda wanted to move out on his own, staying with Teidoll was the only option that made financial sense.

And it was that decision that led him to the beach that night.

He knew he had made the right choice, but it still stressed him out, and smoking a joint or two would help him calm down. The beach was a disaster area, full of seaweed and debris that had been washed ashore by the recent storm, and the sand was still more like mud than sand, but that just meant that it would be even quieter than usual, and Kanda easily found a good secluded spot where he wouldn't be seen from the house on the off chance that Teidoll decided to come looking for him.

Kanda was nearing the end of his first joint when he heard a frantic splashing sound coming from nearby. With the way he was seated, he could see the ocean, and the surf remained undisturbed, so he assumed that the noise was coming from somewhere in the distance, and it was simply carrying farther than usual in the clear night air. But as he reached the middle of the second joint, the splashing abruptly stopped. And it was immediately followed by the sound of someone cursing. Kanda couldn't make out the words, but he could tell that the speaker was frustrated. He could also tell that they were a lot closer than he had originally assumed. It was none of his business, so he stayed rooted in place, but after only a few more hits, anger got the better of him. He needed to find out who was disturbing his quiet time and give them a piece of his mind.

It didn't take him long at all to find the pool of seawater that the person was splashing about in, but his angry words died as he took in the scene in front of him. The pool wasn't very wide, but it was deep, and given that it wasn't there the last time he'd had a midnight smoke, Kanda could only conclude that it had been formed during the recent storm. The person in the pool was trying and failing to get out of it, but they halted in their efforts when they noticed Kanda watching. And as the figure stilled, Kanda saw something that blew his mind.

There, in that pool of water, was a mermaid.

Her long white hair floated majestically around her head, framing a face that was breathtakingly beautiful, with sparkling silver eyes that glowed in the moonlight, but what truly caught Kanda's attention was her tail. The scales were as white as her hair, each a magnificent pearl that shimmered and shone, and the way they were edged with silver just made them more captivating. Kanda couldn't take his eyes off them. The mermaid's tail vanished into the depths of the pool, so there was no telling what her fins looked like, but Kanda imagined that they were as gorgeous as the rest of her was.

Letting his curiosity drift to more sordid thoughts, Kanda trailed his gaze up the mermaid's tail to her slim and muscular torso, wondering what she used for a bra and if it was anything like what was shown in movies. But instead of seeing large breasts capped with seashells, what he saw was more of the mermaid's pale ivory skin. She wasn't wearing a top, but that was probably because she was so flat she didn't need one.

And if he weren't high, he would have reached his next realization a whole lot quicker.

That wasn't a female chest he was staring at. Those well-defined abs, muscular pecs, and broad shoulders belonged to a male. It was startling and Kanda returned his attention to the mermaid's face, only to finally see that despite the otherworldly beauty, that too was male. He hadn't found a mermaid, he'd found a merman.

The merman, who had been regarding him warily, was now lounging against the edge of his pool and smirking knowingly at Kanda. He broke the silence between them with a smile that seemed playful but still fully conveyed his ability to protect himself from danger. "How high are you right now?"

The voice was higher than Kanda expected - this merman was younger than he looked - but it was every bit as melodious as it needed to be to match his beautiful form. But then Kanda registered the question he had asked. Whoever this merman was, he knew enough about human culture to recognize when someone was under the influence of drugs, and that was impressive. Or it would have been if the underlying accusation weren't quite so true. "Shut up."

"Oh?" The merman quirked one of his perfect eyebrows into an expression that Kanda found immensely irritating. He didn't like being toyed with, and that's exactly what this brat was doing. "So you actually are high. But not so high as to think you're hallucinating."

Kanda prepared himself to spit out a biting retort, but the merman suddenly dropped the whole teasing act. He fixed Kanda with a nervous expression that meshed much more cohesively with his childlike voice than the deviously playful one had. "Do you think you could help me?"

The request for aid was genuine, but that just made Kanda suspicious of the brat. "With what?"

The merman sighed heavily. "I got caught in the storm and washed into this ... puddle," He practically spat the word in his disgust. "There's a rock pinning down my tail, but I can't reach it to move it. There's only enough oxygen left in this water for a few more hours of breathing, and while I can breathe air, that greatly increases my chances of getting spotted by humans."

Kanda couldn't resist making a jab after hearing that. "You've already gotten spotted."

The merman ducked underwater to hide his blush, and when he resurfaced, he was frowning. "Yeah... I'm really hoping that you're high enough that you won't remember this in the morning."

The statement was followed by an awkward silence. Kanda had no clue if he was stoned enough to forget this or if the merman was so beautiful that this night would be permanently burned into his brain. So he changed the subject. "Don't you have a human form or something you can change into? Wouldn't that free your tail?"

He may have shrugged nonchalantly, but Kanda could tell from the gesture that the merman was scared. "Maybe, maybe not, but my tail's quite a bit longer than my legs are. And if it's as injured as I think it is, I won't be able to swim in my human form. And I am not about to risk drowning as a human. That's one of the most embarrassing ways for a mermaid to die."

The idea of a mermaid drowning confused Kanda greatly. "But don't you have gills or something? You said earlier that there's enough oxygen in that water for a couple hours of breathing. Wouldn't-"

The merman cut him off brusquely. "Not in my human form."

Giving up on that approach, Kanda tried to make the merman see how ridiculous it was for him to be asking a human for help. "Look. If you can't do it, what makes you think I can? I can't even see to the bottom of that pool."

"Well, I can fix that. And between the two of us, that rock should be much easier to handle than it would be for either one of us alone." The merman closed his eyes and hummed briefly, and then his tail started giving off a phosphorescent glow, lighting up the entirety of the little pool he was trapped in.

It took a moment for Kanda to collect himself and not get distracted by how spectacular the tail looked, and when he finally focused on the issue at hand, he instantly saw what the problem was. That ethereal silvery white tail was indeed pinned down by a rock, one that didn't look like it would be all that hard to move, but unless the merman was a contortionist, he'd never be able to reach it by himself.

"Let me go find a stick. I'll be right back." And with that, Kanda disappeared into the night.