Penned Sea Hearts

Ramos couldn’t believe he’d wasted so much time sleeping. He shouldn’t have let Kai convince him to do this. Letting him pay for Ramos’ food had been bad enough.

He did feel better, but not by much, and now he was in a panic. The library had never been closed this long before. It couldn’t just close. People needed books all the time. And the books about magic needed him to pet them every day or they got grouchy.

His gills fluttered as he gasped for breath as he reached the door, never having swum so quickly to the library before, only to find the entrance unlocked. His heart stuttered, his stomach twisting with a hit of new anxiety. He knew he’d locked the door. So why was it open? Maybe his supervisor had taken over for a bit due to his absence?

Ramos prayed that was the reason as he pushed the door open, only for his eyes to widen when he saw Kai at the front desk, surrounded by five magic books, all trying to get as close as possible to Kai who was petting them, going as far as to fight each other for a better spot.

Ramos just stared at the scene for a moment, not sure what to do with this image, when Kai noticed him.

“Oh, Rami! You’re awake!” he called, grinning, making a move to swim toward Ramos, but the books grabbed onto his hands and hip fins, trying to keep him sitting and petting them. “Oops, guess you’ll have to go to me.”

Much to his horror, Ramos realized that his lips were steadily creeping into a smile, and he quickly put a stop to that nonsense, moving to his desk with a few sharp swishes of his tail, scowling at the books.

“Come now, you can’t keep Kai prisoner.”

He tried to grab Bookies, stroking her spine, but the book slipped out of his grasp and cuddled close to Kai. Ramos almost gasped. That little traitor.

“I don’t mind Rami,” Kai said, all smiles. As usual. “It’s not their fault. They just can’t resist my charm.”

Ramos sighed, a few bubbles escaping his mouth. No one could resist it, it seemed. “Thank you for taking care of them while I was sleeping in.”

“Sleeping in?” Kai exclaimed, scoffing. “You looked half dead. You didn’t even sleep as long as I expected you to.”

Ramos narrowed his eyes, wanting to argue, but his words were interrupted by a long yawn, forcing him to cover up his mouth. Kai immediately pointed at him, resulting in one of the books closing on it with a thud.

“Ow! Settle down,” Kai grumbled, nevertheless petting the book still clamped on his finger on the spine. “Frisky little things, aren’t they?”

“You’re…not yelling at them,” Ramos commented when he suddenly realized that fact. That was interesting. He would have expected such a popular author to get frustrated easily. After all, the regular person got frustrated trying to coax these books to open and let them read what was written in them. But then again, in a way, this was similar to having adoring fans.

Somehow, that put Ramos in a bad mood. He didn’t like how easily Kai got along with everyone. Especially because it made him feel even worse that he’d been rude to him for no reason.

“Why would I? They’re just eager for attention.” Kai chuckled. “Can relate.”

Ramos rolled his eyes, though his heart wasn’t in it. Much to his annoyance, it was quite endearing to see Kai just being his cheerful self. “Well, I don’t mean to break up your book club, but I need to sit there to do my job.”

“Book club!” Kai repeated, laughing as he scooped up all the books and floated up from the chair, leaving it free for Ramos. “Ah, I didn’t think you’d be into puns. What a nice surprise.”

Ramos had been fairly sarcastic with calling it that, but if Kai hadn’t picked up on that, he wouldn’t put in the extra effort to point it out to him. Instead, he took his seat, checking the logbook, surprised to see that below his meticulous, crisp handwriting detailing who borrowed and returned what, there were now several lines of words written in messy scratches. He refused to call this handwriting, though it was surprisingly readable. It was simply very ugly.

“You, um, took care of the returns and borrows for me.”

Kai grinned so damned proudly even as the books surrounding him pushed against him tighter, trying to get the best spots for petting. “That’s right! I figured you’d be grumpy about depriving people of their right to check out books, and I had nothing better to do.”

Ramos nodded, attempting to smile gratefully because he should be grateful, but already he could see that the way Kai had done it wasn’t the way he usually did it, with several returns taking up a whole line instead of a check on the original mention of the borrowing. And it was going to drive him mad looking at it and not trying to fix it. He knew it.

“Did I do it wrong?” Kai asked, frowning with concern, and Ramos had to sigh. Dammit, he hadn’t meant for the other merman to notice.

“No, it’s…good,” Ramos forced out before clearing his throat. “It’s fine. Thank you.”

Kai’s face brightened again. “You’re welcome! Kind of a peaceful job, you’ve got.” He chuckled as he looked at the books clinging to his shirt. “Usually. I think I’d get bored sooner or later, but I had fun meeting people.”

Kai’s eyes suddenly went wide and excited, making Ramos frown, wondering what Kai had just thought of.

“Oh, while you were sleeping, I told a few people that the library isn’t doing so great, and people have been bringing donations,” he announced with a wide smile, and Ramos gawked at him.

“T-they have?” Every time he’d tried to get people to donate just because, Ramos hadn’t had much luck. But then again, he didn’t have the patience nor the will to set aside his pride and beg people for money.

But he couldn’t imagine Kai doing that, which meant that once again, simply being Kai must have been enough. It had to be nice to be so charming.

“Yeah!” Kai confirmed, his grin even wider now as he darted off to the door, grabbing the donations box and swimming back to Ramos’ desk, the magic books following his every move. “Look!”

Ramos stared at the twenty-inch tall, glass-and-metal box with surprise, noting that it was half full of coins. It certainly wasn’t an amount that would save the library, but it would pay for his meals for a while at the very least, which was the minimum needed to keep this place going.

“How did you do this?” asked Ramos, unable not to question him. It seemed far too good to be true. After all his stress and hopelessness, Kai had managed to at the very least delay the problem in one afternoon.

It made Ramos feel strangely hollow inside. He should be happy, and yet something was clawing at him. And he knew perfectly well what it was—he simply refused to think about it.

“I just asked,” Kai shrugged. “People care, you know.”

“Not in my experience.” Ramos sighed, nodding at Kai with an attempt at a smile. This really was a relief, and he shouldn’t let anything ruin that. “Thank you. I…already don’t know how I will ever make this all up to you.”

Kai shook his head, pushing a few books out of the way as he leaned against the counter with his elbow. “You remember our deal, right? You’ll be making it up to me by taking care of yourself.”

Ramos huffed. He didn’t regret agreeing to that. Realistically, it was too good to be true. But he didn’t understand why Kai had to have chosen something that difficult. “Why do you care so much?”

Kai raised an eyebrow. “Because I like you? And I don’t like seeing people I like…like that.” Kai snorted while Ramos once again gaped at him. “That’s far too many likes. No wonder my editor keeps complaining.”

“You…like me?” Ramos repeated once he managed to summon the words, saying them slowly and carefully, not believing what he was hearing.

Unless….

Oh no, Kai meant like as in he was attracted to Ramos, didn’t he? The first thing he had told Ramos was calling him sexy, after all. Gods below, could he pretend to reciprocate for long enough to secure enough funding for his library? Could he even do it at all?

“Yeah, of course. I’d love to be friends with you. I hear you don’t have a lot of those, but that’s because this town is weird. So I’d like to rectify that,” Kai continued, making Ramos’ gills twitch as he let out a relieved breath, a few bubbles escaping his mouth.

Oh.

Panic over.

At least until Ramos realized that what Kai had just said was completely insane. Kai wanted to be friends with him? Why? How? What had Ramos done to make the other merman want that? He’d never been good at making friends, especially once he’d moved here, and he’d never truly managed to pinpoint what exactly he’d always done wrong, but he did know that being as rude as he had been to Kai should have deterred him forever.

“Hey, it’s fine if you don’t want that. I don’t—” Kai started to say, but Ramos cut him off.

“No!” Immediately blushing at his outburst, he scowled, annoyed with himself. “Uh, I mean, no, I do not see why we can’t be…friends.”

The word felt so alien on his tongue. As if he’d never said it out loud. But it was true enough—he didn’t see why they couldn’t be friends. But he also didn’t see why Kai wanted to befriend him in the first place. What could he possibly get out of this?

Ramos couldn’t help but wonder if this was some kind of ruse, but he immediately felt ridiculous for thinking that. Kai had been nothing but nice, and he had no reason to manipulate Ramos, even if he wanted to. What could Ramos offer him?

“Great!” Kai smiled so genuinely then, so warmly, it made Ramos’ heart do strange things. Things he was firmly going to ignore. “You got another chair around here?”

“In the back,” he said, turning in his seat to point at a door on the wall behind him. “I’ll get one for yo—”

“No need, you do your librarian work, I’ll go get it.”

And just like that Kai was off at such a speed that it threw the magic books off him, leaving them behind, snapping themselves closed loudly. Ramos sighed, looking at them throwing a tantrum. He would let them go at it, if not for the fact that the instant he thought that the books started to fight each other, snapping hard.

“Come now, stop it, you’ll damage yourselves,” he told them firmly, making the books pause their fighting before gliding away in a huff, opening and closing loudly as they went off somewhere among the bookshelves.

Ramos sighed again when the only one that remained was Bookie, which of course immediately flew into his lap as if she hadn’t been all over Kai just seconds ago. He stroked her spine, anyway, trying not to feel jealous. Everyone just loved Kai, and Ramos was grasping at straws trying to come up with a justification for why he should be the exception.

“Here we go,” Kai said as he swam in with another chair, putting it down next to the desk and taking a seat, snagging a stack of paper off the desk as he did. Ramos blinked, not having even noticed that being there before, and only when he saw Kai pull a coral pen out of the pocket of his shirt, he realized what this was.

“Your next book?” he asked hesitantly, not sure if he wanted to give Kai an excuse to go on a tangent about his writing.

“That’s right!” Kai said brightly before grimacing, scowling down at the stack, paging through it. “It’s being a bit difficult.”

“Oh? I heard you were quite prolific.”

When Ramos saw the amused, lopsided smirk on the other man’s face, he rolled his eyes. He already knew what was coming his way for knowing that.

“You did, eh?” Kai’s smirk grew. “Nice bit of trivia for someone who hates my work.”

Ramos folded his arms over his chest, huffing, at which point Bookie swam away somewhere toward the ceiling, clearly annoyed at the lack of petting. “I’m a librarian. People come here and talk about books. Yours often enough for me to remember some trivia, as you say.”

Kai chuckled. “Right. Well, I don’t know, it’s getting a bit boring, writing about the same thing over and over again. I always wanted to try my hand at writing fantasy, you know. But alas, that’s not the Phish Seaman brand.”

“I would hope not,” said Ramos, snorting, unable not to find that funny. “That would be an awful pen name for a fantasy author.”

Though that was an interesting piece of information he’d just been told. He hadn’t thought Kai would be interested in writing anything but romance for some reason.

Kai laughed. “You’re right. I’ll think of a new pun name for you to lose your mind over.”

Ramos scowled, huffing again. He wouldn’t stand for being mocked like this. “You must admit that Phish Seaman is an atrocious name, surely.”

“No, it’s hilarious.”

Ramos shook his head as Kai started laughing properly, his whole frame shaking from it. Annoyed, he turned back to his formerly immaculate logbook, noting that a few of the newly checked-out books were of course Kai’s.

“Oh, come on, you know it’s just a joke, right?” Kai said once he managed to get through his laughing fit. “The name is meant to be ridiculous.”

Ramos sighed, nodding, not even looking at Kai.

He realized that. With Kai, very little didn’t seem to be a joke. But it was like a slap to the face to see such a famous author be like this when Ramos, who had always tried to take his writing seriously, was no closer to achieving his dreams than he was when he’d left his family home so many years ago.

“And you wonder why I called your books pornography.”

Kai huffed out a laugh, clearly not offended in the slightest. “You know, I would have thought that a librarian could tell the difference between erotica and steamy romance. Maybe you’re not as good at your job as I thought.”

Ramos narrowed his eyes, dragging them over to look at Kai. This was clearly a ploy to get him to read Kai’s books. And yet, it was working perfectly in getting him out of his chair.

“Fine. I’ll read one of your stupid books,” he muttered, stalking away toward the romance section and snagging the first book of Kai’s he saw off the shelf. Swimming back, he wanted to throw the book on his desk to properly express his irritation, but he couldn’t bring himself to potentially damage it. His heart couldn’t take that, not even with Kai’s books.

“Can’t wait for your snarky review, Rami!” Kai gloated, grinning ear to ear. “Especially once you read the rest of my bibliography after you find out how addictive my work is.”

Ramos gave him a withering glance. “I’m shocked you know such an advanced word as bibliography.”

Kai pouted, clearly pretending to be hurt by that. “Aw, that’s mean.”

Ramos rolled his eyes again. Was this what having friends was like? If so, he had to wonder why everyone saw it as a good thing.

He had been willing to try to give this book a fair chance, despite his prejudices, but if Kai was going to be like that, so be it.

Ramos was going to point out every single issue he could find, nitpick every detail. And he was going to enjoy it.