Chapter Text
Bruce sat at the edge of the water, watching as Dick worried over his little brother.
Little being a relative term because in the five years that he had adopted Jason the mer had grown to be just as large as Dick.
And, he was still growing.
After consulting Leslie and a couple of scientific articles, they had learned that Jason was a larger subspecies than Dick and, it all went well and Jason kept a healthy and consistent diet, he would grow to be about 3-4 feet longer than Dick.
Bruce smiled as Jason made a grumble of displeasure and Dick snapped out a short hiss to stop any protests. Jason glared as if considering whether to actually fight, but eventually acquiesced and let his brother keep up the worried nuzzles to Jason’s cheek.
During their last feeding session, a woman had managed to scratch her whorishly sharp nails into Jason’s cheek when he went in for a bite.
Bruce could still see it in his mind. Dick was circling ahead, playing with the woman more than drowning her and Jason must have gotten bored with it. Usually, Dick drew the first blood, but Jason lunged first this time.
The woman had seen Jason’s intent and had managed to catch his baby’s face. Jason’s eyes had widened in surprise before suddenly there were claws digging into the delicate skin on the ridge of his right cheek and trying to get to his eye.
Jason had screamed, blood clouding the water, and Bruce nearly had a heart attack as his baby struggled.
Jason had just been trying to eat, and she had almost taken out his eye. She could have caused him permanent damage or even blinded him on one side when all he had been trying to do was fill his stomach.
He was just doing what he needed to survive. It wasn’t his fault that he was the superior predator.
At least she hadn’t managed to fight back long.
Dick had stopped her.
You can’t claw into a merling’s face when you don’t have that arm anymore.
She had had a long death as Jason was brought to Alfred and the wounded area was carefully bandaged. Dick had made her end very slow, being torn limb from limb but careful not to strike anywhere too vital too quickly. He did love playing with his food, especially when that food dare hurt his baby brother.
“Don’t touch that,” Bruce commanded as Dick began nosing at the bandage on Jason’s face. The wound was healing well but they had to keep it covered to prevent it from reopening. Especially because Dick’s instinct was to furiously lick at his brother’s wound which would definitely tear his stitches.
Dick growled in frustration and instead groomed Jason’s neck like he hadn’t been about to tear the bandage off. Again.
He was a menace.
Jason grumbled, hissing grumpily and murmuring some words to Dick. Dick didn’t answer, he just kept grooming and, when he thought Bruce wasn’t looking, began to nibble at the bandage with his teeth.
“Dick, I see you,” Bruce said with a sigh, standing up to walk over to his boys. Dick’s head ducked like a scolded puppy and he tried covering up his action by focusing on Jason’s ear fins instead.
Bruce gave him a skeptical look and Dick refused to meet his gaze.
“What did I say about the bandage?”
Dick frowned, his nose scrunching. “That I’m not supposed to bother it.”
“And what are you doing?”
Dick huffed and finally met Bruce’s eyes, blinking innocently. “I’m not bothering. I’m just checking to make sure it’s still secure.”
Bruce rolled his eyes. “Sure you are chum, but just let me remind you that even though you want to lick the wound, you can’t because it might get infected. We cannot risk any infection with a wound that’s so close to Jason’s eyes.”
“Yeah, Dickie,” Jason butted in and shoved at Dick slightly. “I’m not going to let your mother henning make me go blind.”
Dick’s eyes narrowed and he shoved Jason back. Harder.
Jason instantly smiled, all teeth and fangs, and he started to heave himself to lunge at his brother before Bruce’s arm on his shoulder forced him down.
“No roughhousing either,” Bruce stated, ignoring Dick’s snicker. “If you two cannot follow the rules while Jason is injured, I will be forced to separate you two.”
Both Dick and Jason froze, heads bowing like chastised dogs and Bruce chuckled, ruffling their hair.
“Be good. Alfred is going to look after you tonight.”
The mers instantly caught the meaning behind those words. Dick lunged forward, catching Bruce’s legs and wrapping his long body around Bruce like an eel. He had always been a bit clingy, though Bruce had learned that was pretty normal for growing Mers. They were pod animals. In the wild, Mers often never left their pod and stayed within their family units their entire lives.
Both of his sons had had their pods brutally ripped away from them. Dick’s family had gotten torn to pieces to supply the trade of Mer bones, fins, meat and scales. Jason’s parents… they didn’t know. He was a breeder fish. He had been bred to breed. His parents had been bred to breed. Given Jason’s age and the average age that breeder fish lived to… they never lived very long. Jason would probably be dead himself if he had stayed in the breeding circles.
Their lack of parents meant Bruce and Alfred were all they had. The humans were their pod even though the humans could get up and leave them so easily.
It always made the Mers anxious when their humans went out of the Manor, when members of their small pod became distant and inaccessible.
Dick’s long tail was circled around Bruce. He grasped at the man’s pant legs, claws sharp and tight. Bruce could read the anxiousness in the bob of his ear fins and the way his fins clamped tight on his back.
“Where are you going? Are you leaving? Is it a food thing?”
Bruce laughed and ruffled Dick’s hair, trying to ignore the urge to sit down within his son’s coils.
“No, it’s a party. I think. My friend, Harvey, invited me, so I’m not entirely sure.”
“Oh,” Dick’s mouth went into a little ‘o’. His eyes flickered over to his brother before returning to Bruce. “Nothing dangerous right?” he asked, nibbling his lip nervously.
Bruce chuckled and shook his head. “Nothing dangerous. You won’t be getting food out of it,” Bruce promised and Dick relaxed, letting Bruce’s clothes go.
“Alright,” Dick said, pulling back and settling down against his brother. “Just come back soon.”
“I will, Dickie. Always.”
*****
Tim’s muscles screamed as he kept his tail fin forced up and curled. His spine ached. His dorsal fin were itchy and dry. The delicate stripe around his waist, the incredibly sensitive strip where his human skin merged into the more tough skin of his tail, was begging to have the pressure of almost all of Tim’s body weight taken off of it.
But he stayed as still as a statue with his body in a tight arc, tail fin unnaturally bent so that his fluke came up next to his forehead.
His mom walking in front of him, clicked the button in her hand and the sound sent a jolt of joy through him.
A click meant good. A click meant obedient. A click meant he had done what she asked for correctly.
He relaxed, his tail fin going down and his muscles singing in relief. His mom walked forward and patted him on the head and he instantly leaned into the touch.
“Roll over, Timothy,” she said simply, and he instantly followed the direction despite the instinct to not reveal his soft stomach.
He went onto his back, ignoring the twinge of pain from his dorsal fin. It didn’t hurt as much as it used to now that his dorsal fin swooped over to the side instead of being straight up. He didn’t know why it did that and he knew Mother didn’t like it, but he didn’t know how to change it. As he got older, it had just gotten more limp and now it constantly flopped against his back.
He settled on his back, baring his inner tail and stomach.
His mother clicked, and before he flipped back over, she gave another command. “Stay still.”
He froze.
“Limp.”
He forced his muscles to relax, despite how tense he got whenever he was on his back. It was hard to keep himself as relaxed as his mouth wanted him to be when so much of himself still had the silly instinct of not wanting to be in this position.
She crouched down next to him and he didn’t look over. He just kept staring up, focusing on the overhead lights. Her hands pressed into his skin and he didn’t twitch as she skimmed over his body, pressing on skin and muscles.
He was actually relaxing now under his mother’s hands. His body craved the touch, he couldn’t deny that, and the times when his mother touched him gently like this were so rare.
Then, suddenly, her nails dug into the skin right where his hip fin merged into his tail fin. Pain instantly flared through his tail and he barely managed to keep from screaming. His tail wanted to writhe and to take him away from the nails that were clawing into his sensitive skin.
He fought not to flinch and remained still with his face blank.
She stayed still, her nails in his flesh while he remained quiet.
Finally, she clicked the button, and took her nails out of his skin. Tim tried not to look at the bleeding crescent marks that he was sure were pressed into his tail. Mother wouldn’t want him to acknowledge them. The animal part of him told him to lick the wound, to keep it clean, but his mother had long trained his urge to act on silly things like that out of him.
“Good boy,” she chirped and he brightened, ears perking at her happy tone.
When he was younger, he would have tried to bite anyone that did that to him, but they had been working very hard on tampering down the baser parts of him and getting rid of the animal shame.
“Go in your pool,” she asked and Tim turned, seeking out the pool. It was small and indoors, but still the largest amount of water he was ever put in.
He hated it.
He didn’t like being in such a large amount of water. Mother almost always kept him on land and he much preferred it there. When he was younger and more manageable sized, she used to carry him everywhere, fitting him up against her chest in a sling. Now that he was larger, she usually kept him in the corner of her study, laying in a nest of blankets and providing him with books to entertain himself with. When he was bad or they were moving to their next location, she would tell him to go into his box, but that was so rare now.
He had long perfected being good, so he could remain curled up near her feet and petted while she hummed through her work.
He slipped into the water, shivering at the feeling of empty space rushing around him. His nerves screamed at the onslaught of sensation and his skin crawled. The temperature suddenly dropped and his muscles wanted to lock up. He felt his breath hitch up anxiously and he was desperate for his mother to give him the command to come back out of the water.
He used his tail fin to leverage himself up and keep his head above water.
His mother watched him and then in a quick movement, threw something into the pool. It landed with a squeak and its paddling rapidly stirred the water.
It was a rat, desperately trying to swim to the edge.
“Timothy.”
His attention snapped onto her.
“Attack.”
He surged forward, using spring forward with his tail and launching onto the rat. The animal screamed as his teeth sunk in and with a forceful shake of his head, he broke its back, killing it instantly.
It died. Its blood was on his tongue. His stomach twisted, hunger rolling through it, but, like all his instincts, he ignored it.
He brought his prey to the edge of the pool and place it at his mother’s feet. It didn’t belong to him. He wasn’t allowed to satisfy his own urges unless she allowed him to.
She was silent staring down at the dead, wet rat. Tim leaned forward, desperate, desperate for…
Click!
Tim’s entire body relaxed in relief and he nearly cooed out of happiness.
She smiled and picked up the prey to take it to the trashcan.
“You can come out of the pool,” she said over her shoulder and Tim scrambled out, desperate to leave the water behind and go back to comfortable land. He shook the water out of his hair, trying to get rid of the excess water that dripped off of him. He rubbed his face on his arms, trying to get the taste of blood out of his mouth.
“Belly,” she commanded as she came back and Tim easily complied. She clicked, and warmth filled him. She was smiling even wider now and Tim could feel excitement bubble in his stomach and want to come out in a coo.
Then, she did something she never did. She sat down near him with her legs crossed, her lap was open.
“Lap,” she said and the word was like music.
He went into her lap and melted into her body as she put her arms around him and held him. She clicked but didn’t let him go and the joy of it almost made him cry. She just held him, he pressed as close as he dared into her chest.
Joy burst inside him, so much that he wanted to cry and keep this moment forever. She was so warm. He felt safe and protected. He would do anything to make this last and stay in the privilege of his mother’s love.
“Such as good listener,” she murmured and the words almost drew a purr out of Tim’s chest. “So good. So tame.”
Yes, he was good. Always good.
He press his head against her shoulder, his nose nestled into the crook of her neck. It was so rare that she hugged him for this long.
“You’re finally perfect. All our hard work has paid off.”
She looked into his eyes and he saw the love reflected back to him.
“You’re ready,” she whispered and clicked the button.