Canon: Remove if not applicable.Catching a mermaid wasn’t as great as it had seemed in the stories. First of all, he wasn’t interested in immortality himself, and second of all, not human or whatever still looked pretty damn human and while he knew that humans sold humans it wasn’t really something he was interested in. In the first place, how could people stomach eating them? It was partially cannibalism, eating mermaids. So honestly? It was more of an annoyance than anything else that he managed to catch on in his net one day.
It was still morning and Yami could not entirely believe that he was seriously staring at a mermaid. Merman? He supposed. Otherwise this was one flat chested chick. Didn’t sound like a woman either, once the person actually spoke. Though women could have both a flat chest and a deep voice. There were short-haired women around, too, though he’d never met anyone with a face that was messed up the way this person’s face was messed up. How did that happen in the first place?
Not that the mermaid or merman said anything right away, they just looked suspiciously at Yami, and Yami blankly looked back at them as he tried to figure out what to with this person stuck in his net.
“Alright,” Yami finally said, and he rubbed at his stubble. “Maybe I’ll just eat you after all. Might be easiest.” Or sell them...though he had no idea where one might sell a mermaid. Merman. He wasn’t really serious but the mer..person, merperson, he’d go with that though he thought it was probably a guy, he had never once heard anyone mention that mermaids could be guys, though he shouldn’t be surprised; the merperson still looked panicked and asked him to “please don’t” and other things like how he was definitely going to taste bad and that he probably would decrease his lifespan anyway and okay, wow, he didn’t have to look that scared, did he? Maybe he did. When Yami looked a little closer it looked like he had scars on his fin so maybe he had almost been eaten before at some point. “Calm down,” Yami urged eventually. “I’m not gonna do that. It’s too much of a pain in the ass anyway.” When the merperson started saying “so then you’re going to sell me,” Yami cut him off to tell him, “Though I could use the money, that’s an even bigger pain in the ass.” The merperson did not look entirely relieved, but they did calm down a bit. “Then what are you planning to do?”
Yami grunted, and he sighed. “First of all get you out of there, I guess,” he said with a shrug and the merperson looked startled, though that much should have been obvious that he’d have to do at some point no matter what he chose to do with them after. “Would you release me?” the merperson asked and Yami shrugged again and started working on the net. Thank the gods he was already thoroughly experienced with getting large fishes out of nets without cutting anything. “Why d’you think you’d decrease lifespans? You taste that bad or something?”
The merperson was quiet, and went very stiff, making it harder for Yami to untangle them from the net. Their knuckles went pale, paler than they already were, they clenched their hands so tightly. Apparently Yami had touched upon a sensitive topic, though the merperson was the one who’d brought it up initially. “No I’m, I don’t know but it’s not why...” the merperson finally said. Yami raised an eyebrow and lowered the other with a questioning sound coming from the back of his throat, and he watched the merperson scratch at the dark scar on his face. His expression was really self-conscious and uncomfortable.”What’s your name?” Yami asked once it was clear that the merperson wasn’t about to tell him what was really up. The merperson looked up at him, the hand scratching at his face frozen in the air, maybe, probably, in surprise. “William,” they said after a few surprised blinks of his eyes. Yami scowled at them. “Weird name,” he pointed out while he thought that it did not help in clearing up if this person was a mermaid or a merman. The merperson frowned at him, and any fear they had been showing seemed to be entirely gone with that. “It’s not weird, it’s a completely normal name in Clover.”
“Clo---the fuck’s that?” He didn’t know that word, it sounded just as alien as the name ‘’William’’ did.William’s frown deepened. “It’s where I’m from. Anyway, what’s your name then?” Yami untangled another bit of net and told him. William pointed out that it wasn’t exactly a common name where they was from either, but Yami focused more on the voices that he heard. He could see some other people in the distance, and he grabbed the coat he had discarded hours ago at the fore of his rowboat, and he dropped it on the merperson. The merperson looked surprised. “Wear this,” Yami told them, because they had so many scales on their upper body that it would be a dead give-away if anyone were to look, that they were a mermaid. Or whichever it was William was. William followed Yami’s look and noticed the humans at the shore, and William did as Yami had said and pulled the coat on. Yami draped the ends of it over William’s tail best he was able. The coat was pretty large on William, so it was easier than if it had been Yami’s lower parts that had to be covered up. Then he went back to untangling the net.
Eventually he only had the tail fin left, and as he worked on it, nearly finished, and finally completely finished and Yami sat down by the oars to take them further out so it would be harder for people to tell that he was dropping the merperson back into the water, William murmured, “It’s because I’m cursed,” and Yami looked over at them with a scowl, but without stopping rowing. “Cursed?” William nodded slowly, “Yes, since I was born. I don’t really know why.” Yami made a humming noise, and then decided, “Whatever, then at least you might get eaten less.” William huffed. Maybe not, then. Once out of sight from anyone else, around the coast tip, he tipped William over the gunwale and laughed at the startled yelp William made. “Really, was that necessary?” the merperson asked, and Yami grinned at them because William was making a hilariously unamused expression. “Yeah, it was the most necessary thing I’ve ever done,” Yami told him. William pouted, probably, it looked like a sort of pout but he was also scowling a lot. Then he made a quick motion, and Yami fell into the water when William tippled over the rowboat, and William chortled at the sputtering and glare and curses it resulted in. “And that was the most necessary thing that I have ever done,” they told Yami. “So fucking cheeky,” Yami muttered, and William laughed again, looking far too cheerful with the situation but Yami supposed it was fine for the time being, it was cute and all.