Archive of Our Own ^beta

They stood alone.

At the current hour, there wasn’t much conversation to be seen.

They’d never truly felt comfortable opening up enough to join in. But an odd urge, maybe one physiological, had always given Nagare a sense of want for it. For speaking up, talking to another. Making their feelings known, however minute they were. Just talking, really.

Knuckles tensing as they squeezed the case, they clicked their phone’s power button. In the wake of an empty feed, countless reloading swipes still familiar on the tip of their thumb, the screen reflected back. Fuzzy from scrapes and scratches in the screen protector. Simply black.

Pulsing above narrowed eyes, Nagare’s polyps flickered. Slowly, yet severe.

Those that knew them well would label that pattern of lights alone as “concern.” Disregarding the scowl below. That would make it too easy, if accounted for.

To their right, the doorway they stood beyond opened with a harsh crack, then jingled once it was a good third of the way open. The bell was installed crooked, leaving a considerable delay between both sounds.

Fourteen times now, they’d watched this song and dance play out. Once going in, once going out. After that, repeat.

Bustling out the door, busy, yet shaking with some sort of fervor, a ray-finned fishfolk with prominent dorsal fins and a nervous demeanor scoffed at Nagare as they were passed.

“Not- not even worth it!” the fishfolk huffed. The zippers on the bustling character’s guitar case jingled with a shiver of disgust. “Not worth your time! Get out- outta here while you still can!”

Was… that directed at—

“It’s- hey— HEY!! It’s not like that at all, really, just—” came tumbling from the door, words like paper swept up by a gust. Green hands snatched up the handle, stopping the door at the apex of its swing, before the rest could hit its glass. Or worse, the origin of the words. “You didn’t let me explain, I- there was a specific meaning I meant, that I want to— that I wanted to see if we could portray! But it’s just too hard to explain without—”

In all of his striped glory, tentacles twitching and flickering with a practiced sort of mellow overlay to his annoyance, Shima’s chase ended two steps beyond the doorway he emerged from.

Nagare blinked, not that loudly, they were sure. Just the motion seemed to be enough, though. Tentacles bouncing, the Octoling whipped his head around, dumbfounded.

Frustration, intensity… maybe even a bit of sadness. It all melted from Shima’s eyes as the coral stared back. Their lower lip twitched, as did an eye. What had happened? They tilted their head to the side, as if the movement of their face had tipped a scale, and shrugged their own guitar case a bit snugger over their shoulders.

“Nags! When did you get here?” Shima laughed, not a trace of prior frustration left in his tone. In place of what had melted and evaporated away, a pleasant sort of grin lifted his cheeks, brows shooting up with surprise.

Nagare blinked again. Deadpan.

“When you texted earlier.” Deader than deadpan.

“Whaaat? That was right after I got here!” the inkfish pointed out. His grin faltered, though only from the naive blend of confusion that washed in next. “Why didn’t’cha pop in sooner?”

Glancing down, Nagare shifted their weight from their right foot to their left.

“You were busy,” simply, they stated. “Didn’t wanna interrupt auditions.”

It picked back up again, Shima’s grin, that is. Whenever he got antsy, it lifted the left side of his face half a strum higher than the right. His brows tensed for a blink.

“Oh, pfft— that would not have happened!” the Octoling laughed, hands waving. “I mean— you would’ve been fine to just walk in! Could’ve… Oh! You could’ve been a second judge! Judge of their sound, I mean!”

Again, he laughed. Faster than the last. Faster than he always did.

Again. What had happened?

“…I think that would’a complicated things further,” Nagare hummed, gaze dropping to examine how Shima’s hands curled in on themselves, arms held close to his chest.

“No it—” A scoff interrupted his indignance, eyes rolling the moment their gaze lifted again. “It definitely wouldn’t have. C’mon, just— You’re here now! Come on in already!”

Nagare shifted their weight forward, before the Octoling got any ideas about snatching up their wrist to pull them along. You’d think he’d take a hint when it came to timing, eventually. Maybe 21 years spent joint at the hip just didn’t cut it. Couldn’t break through that never-ending flow of thought behind those striped locks. Might never, at this rate.

Regardless, they stepped into the studio’s lobby ahead of Shima. He fussed with the zipper of his jacket once the two of them made it to the hallway holding their destination. Today, he wore his light blue one. Since it was Wednesday.

The faint sound of the sound room’s door clicking shut, one Nagare’s ear had picked up earlier, fourteen times in delayed succession, fit snugly in time with a brief realization.

Shima’s tentacles, when left unprovoked into fluttering through a thousand different variations of emotions with their hues, tended to stick to a consistent three; Deep cerulean, fading to a modestly diluted magenta, then striped over with a dark, warm sort of royal blue.

Colors had never been Nagare’s thing. A simple ‘blue and green’ sufficed as descriptors for their own head.

But, for Shima, to describe him as anything less would be dishonest. Disrespectful. His colors, whether to mimic, mask, or manifest his true emotions, deserved such vivid descriptors. He was vivid, in all of his finicky wordiness. His high-strung charm.

Anything less wouldn’t even be Shima to begin with.

The colors he displayed were not those consistent three, though. Not at the moment.

They were dulled. Grayed. Timid. Had he worn a darker jacket that day, he might’ve even gotten away with hiding it.

From anyone but Nagare.

“Who was that,” they hummed, shuffling around to watch the keyboardist approach what you’d expect. His tentacles tensed, less bobbing, more curling, as he slid onto the rolly-stool behind the instrument.

He sighed.

“How’s stuff… gone?”

Sure, they’d skipped his turn and taken up a beat to press further, but Nagare wasn’t stupid. They had a good idea of what they’d hear. At length, knowing Shima.

His function often flew beneath the necessities of form, but it was hard not to notice just what patterns he stuck to. Repeating, measure after measure. Bar after bar.

More than anything, Shima loved music. He wanted to be in a band. To start one. He wanted to take the gigabytes, really, gigabytes, of voice recordings that clogged up his hard drive… Drives, plural, at this point. He wanted to do something with them.

He could think up as many ideas as there were grains of sand on the beach. He could compose tide in, tide out.

But, that’s all he would do.

Another set of eyes, minimum one, was necessary to turn those ideas and compositions into anything more than fodder, forever to collect dust if they couldn’t be fished out and fixed up. Arranged nicely. Maybe even performed, for once.

So, he’d begun to ask. All around, plastering as many printed posters as he could across Dear Old Silversea (Academy of the Arts)’s bulletins. Walls, bricks, and… they were sure a few made it onto lamp posts.

“GUITARIST WANTED! Any skill level required, no judgement! I want to hear what YOU will bring!”

Something… much less persuasive than that. Reasonably persuasive. Seven nutjobs had shown up after Nagare, after all. And it took a certain lack of reasoning to reach Shima’s level.

Nagare’s lack of a heart, let alone three, didn’t seem to hinder how intimately they understood it, though. That level.

“Ah,” he hummed in the present. His glasses obscured half his gaze, despite how they slipped down his nose. Shining cerulean, a chord or two brighter than tentacles above, only breached to meet Nagare for a moment. The next, Shima smiled crooked.

Worse than before.

“It’s… honestly gone fine!” He lied. Maybe not entirely, but the coral knew why he’d asked them to judge. “No, uh… matches yet, though.”

They blinked, then waited. He’d missed a turn before, after all. It was only fair.

“Nobody’s… nobody’s really…” Shima tried to elaborate. “Uh.”

He really did.

Guilt panged harshly, that “fairness” now bleached to regret.

“Um.”

The smirk shattered into a thousand pieces, reforming into one muted purse of lips. Shima’s eyemasks crinkled at their corners with a withering sort of resignation.

Nobody got it. Nobody got what Shima was after, what he’d nitpick and poke and prod and rip and tear and eviscerate for. All without really meaning any harm.

His pickiness was that nitpickiness, down to its core. Words flew from him, surely faster than his rapid-fire brain was even thinking them up, stringing together such kindly shaped platitudes. Such simply bold declarations of stupefaction.

Or some other big combo of words. Like that.

It left Nagare… some sort of way.

Not shocked, nor all that angry. The latter never really left them, the more they really thought about it.

Anger is easier left alone to escape on its own, flitting between polyps and weathered stone until it dizzies itself into running from the labyrinth. It’s personal, but it stays that way. Anchored to the rocks below, even after moving a few dozen islands north.

Blood in the water, questions and cries of “Why? I just wanna be friends!” painted a different picture. Sang a different, shuddering song. Secondhand anger. Outrage, shock.

It pressed into their nerve net, replaying and replaying and replaying still. Years later.

The world angered Nagare, enough to tire them of it. The anger, that is.

And, if it wouldn’t treat him right, then they would simply let themselves grow tired of it, too. The world, that is.

“…Y’know,” Shima peeped out. A sheepish smile tugged at his beak, lower lip twitching. “Hah.” His voice was dry and quiet as he stared at the floor.

…Not all of that was true. The tiring out thing especially. Of a world where they could be angry on his behalf, that is.

A world with him in it, period. One that felt so young, like it had started just yesterday, and yet persisted forever. Nagare had known him forever. Before he’d known himself.

They had watched the world begin, after all.

To be 17 years old and listlessly bored in Inkopolis led one, more often than not, into the live house scene. It meant growing acquainted with the certain pinch that your best friend would apply to your wrist, gripping with odd, cephalopodal fingers and pin-pricking with just enough claw to keep you held tight, as he pulled you through the crowd.

Usually, to listen to some band you’d spent the past week hearing about. Month, in some cases. Even plural, if the artist was lucky.

At 17, Nagare had gained an ear for what music they liked. Even without ears of their own.

Kicking around some venue with less security than production value, comparative to some of the dinner rush hour acts, one they’d later remember as the Seagrass X, that aforementioned boredom crept back up.

Nothing had clicked. And you knew when nothing was clicking when the Octoling was getting impatient.

“Just one more,” they’d mumbled. “Then we go, Sheem.”

He’d flitted an odd look in their direction at the insistence.

Really? Nagare wanted to stay for longer? Nagare did?

…His thoughts weren’t that scathing, they were sure. It was only right to exaggerate them, though. Shima got inquisitive when broadening his aural palette.

The two of them shuffled closer to the front. In the pitch blackness, worsened by the excited glow that seeped into Nagare’s overgrown view of half their hair, half the stage.

Three subtle glows moved into their places, clearly inkfish. Inklings, considering just how bright the glow was. Two… more? Some more shuffling of footsteps accompanied them.

And then, the very first sliver of their world began. In tandem with whining speakers and a lull in the crowd.

An unabashed chant of vocoded Inklish filled the venue. To back it up; a synth and electric guitar.

To the right of the first guitar, a second chimed in. The bass and drums followed suit.

Nagare turned to their left, only briefly, and was almost blinded. The world was fully illuminated in that moment. One eye reflecting teal, pink, and navy blue, the other overwhelmed by a glowing, overpowering white. Shima’s tentacles twitched, their colors thrashing and rolling in confusion, just from the shortest snippet of sound heard.

They needed to hear more. Both of them.

As the drums and bass and that second— no, the first guitar. The Inkling on the right was who played it, that glowing white form in the dark. The room grew electric with excitement as the act revved up, more and more. Working in tandem, their sound flowing through the crowd like a flood.

Nagare grabbed Shima’s wrist this time. They dug the tips of their digits into it with all of their might. They pressed forward through the crowd.

He needed this the most, though. The most, more than anything.

The muted, fabric mask that he donned, originally in an attempt to mask his own lack of a mask, was paid no mind. The fact that the two of them had snuck into this venue in the first place was long forgotten. Discarded, pulled down to his chin to let his jaw drop in awe. All in the place where they’d stood. Bearing witness to those first notes.

Their world needed this. Something fresh and new and, and…

While all Nagare could keep up with, once the lights slammed back on and illuminated everything with a shining, genuine sort of tidal wave of performance, was the guitar… Was- both guitars, how they meshed together so well, taking turns and jumping back and forth, just as their wielders, both vocalists of the band, seemed to be such masters at telling their tale. Getting their point across, whether genuine or snarkily self-assured.

While all they could parse through the sensory blast that flooded through their nerve net was something akin to, “This is good. I’m witnessing something good. Better than good,” their eyes, at the very least, knew what they were seeing all the same.

Shima was seeing it too. He was seeing it, and he felt it. One in the same, the two of them watched. Let the aural barrage wash over them, soaking them from head to toe. Surely, surely, dripping onto the floor below if the metaphor was strong enough. Somewhere along the way, he’d slipped his wrist from their grip, claws fit snugly, perfectly, between 3 fingers and one thumb.

They peered up, past the chanting, wobbling wall of jellies, shouting an array of timed, “HEY!”s that the two of them would soon catch the rhythm of on their second go-around of the chorus.

They stayed for the rest of the band’s set, each song enveloping them, sending the quintent’s sound soaking deeper and deeper into them.

It took Nagare jolting awake at 3 am, sitting up in bed as their polyps strobed and flashed in syncopated rhythm, still replaying, replaying, replaying how the Inkling on the left strummed that first riff to their fourth song, as if playfully cutting off her bandmate’s MCing as she began before he finished, over and over and over and…

And they knew then. They had to do that. They needed to do that. More than anything.

Their dream, the one that sent them jolting up in bed, lighting up their room with a frenzied glow, had been just that.

They’d been on stage. Nagare had. They’d found themself zipping between first, then second. Both guitars, like they were in both places at the same time. In the same instant.

They’d found the bass in their hands, too. Its sound heavy, weighted, yet carefree as they’d bounded it throughout the room, slapping without a care in the world.

They’d flailed and peered around the dreamscape’s roaring, shining stage as they’d drummed like their life depended on it. Arms flying faster than they could watch through the bleary haze. More than just two arms, it sometimes felt like.

They’d played everything. Everything they could try. Knew they could try.

But pianos had never suited them, oddly enough. Despite how the band’s synth had tied it all together, their four digits could never quite get the hang of the music teacher’s little piano she would cart into the room from the storage closet, all throughout elementary school.

That was okay, though. Because, even if they couldn’t play the synth, they needed to do it all again. They needed to learn guitar, needed to learn everything they could.

In the following months, they did.

Wet Floor was the name of the band that they’d watched perform. They had two EPs released in the prior few years, and two full albums. The show they’d caught had been one debuting their newest of the latter’s music to the part of Inkopolis the Octoling and coral both frequented most in their downtime;the Square.

All four pieces of their discography sat in two individual rooms. One of the eight was signed, given as an extra pricey present. One worth more than anything else in the world. All eight CDs were treated with utmost care. Played and replayed and so on and so forth with utmost obsession. It was only right.

If Shima’s older sister, with all of her fussiness and reluctant appreciation at how invested he was in her success, got the ball rolling to get him into music in the first place… Wet Floor kicked it. Punted it. Slipped, swam, then batted it out of the park. Up into the stratosphere.

And down, down into the walls of Silversea Academy of the Arts. Only a 5 minute drive, 20 minute walk, from the University of Inkopolis, sure. It felt so much further, though.

Nagare knew their limits. Knew their own expectations for themself. A half-week schedule was taken, to accommodate for the lessons they’d scrounged up the money, years worth, the more they reminisced, needed. To attend Kazuyori Academy. Their own Silversea, albeit on a much smaller scale. More intimate, more string and fret focused.

It helped to focus in on honing their craft, there. Their teachers were kind, impassioned. They certainly helped to keep them from fretting about the other half of their education.

About what they needed to…

Oh…

Right.

Even now, in the present, Nagare hated thinking about it. About what they needed to do. No matter how important it was. It knotted their nerves into nervous twists. Net tangled, limbs and digits following suit as they would always, always seem to freeze up.

It was the bycatch of a bycatch. Their binder of music sheets and guitar tabs, nearly broken and spilling from how worn it was, always fit back onto their bedroom shelf beside a snug array of books on childcare. On early education. On mediation between—

…

Every trawl through the mind always dragged it back up. Every metaphorical sunny day at the beach, an ugly abomination lay in their way, 15 years spent rotting and bloating for the impending explosion. For the real world to finally knock them down a peg.

It was all intertwined, you see. The former sparked the latter. The latter could never be forgotten in a world where the former existed. A discography of a playlist, the backdrop to a shitty, free quiz they’d found online.

Which was to say…

The rest of the world had never been kind to the duo’s little pocket of it. Their niche, spent walking side by side to and from school, grown for years.

Sometimes, Nagare wondered if their elementary school’s nurse knew just how big of an impact she’d left on them. The way she’d understood how- no, why their polyps had bristled and fired off their toxins at those cruel, older kids. Ones Shima had no ill will towards. Had just wanted to be friends with.

The rest of the world was cruel. Willing to send them home for a week, to think about what they’d done.

To think about what they had to do. A seed sprouting before middle school even began.

The rest of the world needed more people like that. Willing to look at the root of things. The unsteady rocks where things tried to anchor. It was hard moving so far upstream, so far from where things should’ve begun for the both of them. They’d only had each other, once the tide kept pulling them forward with time.

Nagare knew they couldn’t make a living off of music. They, alone, were just one coral.

As the tide had kept rolling, kept pushing on and on, things changed. It receded. The Square changed. People changed.

Shima stayed the same. Achingly so, as Silversea and the U of I pulled them apart.

They were bound for two different currents.

Nagare to stay below, clinging to the hope that they could replicate the miracle that had snatched them up. Saving them. Both of them.

If someone could keep being kind, keep tending to those rocks below… Maybe the prosperity they’d found in Inkopolis would be repaid. Maybe their family would finally be proud.

Maybe the tidal pools of rock and jazz and who still remained behind in the dry, dry Square would suffice.

But, Shima.

Shima was destined for more than tidal pools. More than dry beaches with haunted colonies that held a bit too much spite from years long, long passed.

Octolings were clever folk, no matter where they hailed from. Look online, look at billboards! Look who was headlining a new tour, a second, third, fourth… Despite the rocky history of the Octarian Empire, any inkfish with the gumption and gall to carve their name into the ebb and flow, into the twisting, turning, sea-sickeningly spiraling tides of the world, no matter how many tentacles, was meant for greatness.

Shima deserved to ride every last crest he could reach. Deserved to surf into every last sunset he desired to watch. The billboards, the tours. Hell, a SquidForce-partnered, Turf War Association-approved trailer of his very own.

The rest of the world deserved him, no matter how cruel.

Because… that was the crux of it. Their world was bright-eyed. Shaping and shifting and shapeshifting… Mimicking anything his hearts desired, so long as disbelief could be suspended by a hastily mimicked drumline, expressed through a 5 minute long voice message.

That was Nagare’s world.

But, it seemed he didn’t know it. Not with the resigned sigh thrown into the air. The hands that whisked up, the smile of defeat.

That alone was enough to snap them out of their daydreamy daze, paralyzed by uncertainty. How were they supposed to- to tell him all of that?

He smiled, still. Smiled wrong, not even trying to fake it anymore. He shook his head.

“Welp!” Shima chuckled. Dry as the beach. “Guess it’s time to throw in the towel… For- for today.”

For good. He knew he meant for good. Nagare knew what he meant.

Could he have even said it in a way that hurt less? Had he miraculously grown his own nematocysts? Ones that lined the tongue? Struck them at their core, where three hearts would’ve been, in his place?

He laughed again, proper. Trying his best to cheer himself up. To see the bright side of things, his grin lifting a strum higher to the left as he stared at

Nagare.

“I mean, unless you wanna give it a spin or something, huh?” His eyes caught on them, their own blurry as they tried to follow where his gaze danced and flitted about. Too much brainpower spent keeping their head from flickering too fast. Or too brightly. That would only get his attention. Would worry him more.

“Why’d you bring your guitar along, anyhow?”

The honesty, genuine and blissfully ignorant, that Shima slid the question forward with, it…

It didn’t ache anymore. Just… made it harder to keep their head from lighting up like one of those scrolling light boxes outside of stores. With text marquee-ing, flashing, pulsing. Guiltily spelling out just how much they. They…

They loved Shima.

Why else would he be their world? Would they have such high hopes, such a grandiose belief that he deserved good things. Better things than he’d ever dreamed of having before. Than he’d ever gushed so giddily about, sprawled across their lap beneath a clunky, plastic-blurred array of stars, projected onto their cozy blanket fort’s sky. More vibrant than his head had ever projected, chromatophores fluttering and pulsing to mimic Nagare’s own flickering rhythm.

Nagare loved him.

They always had, always would. They couldn’t imagine their world without him. Every last one of his strange little smiles, the way his eyemasks curved and pointed and his glasses tried their damnedest to slip from his face with every dropped jaw, every obnoxiously carefree cackle. The way his claws dug into their wrists so insistently, yet hardly at all. The way his tentacles bobbed when he nodded his head, how they tensed when he shook it. They wouldn’t give any of that up for the world.

But, that’s what Shima was destined for. For the world to see him. To love him.

How could Nagare not be selfish, then? An Anthozoan, longing to surf the seafoam, so far above the seabed they were destined to anchor upon? An Anchor Coral with dreams of free-floating. Forever? The only way up was to drag Shima down, surely. They couldn’t latch on, no matter how much they ached to.

And yet…

Nagare, nerve net buzzing, pounding, as their throat seemed to dry up…

They… they wanted to try. No matter what, they did. They wanted to… to—

“…I wanna audition too,” they mumbled. Didn’t hurt as bad as it seemed it would’ve.

First thing, Shima laughed. Genuine, this time. Lighter and comforted, like they’d managed to help silence his doubts, for the moment.

“Whaaat? Nags, c’mon!” he lilted. It should’ve been comforting to hear him so lighthearted. “You of all people don’t need to ask about it! You could’a just popped in whenever!”

Because he’d accept them. Because Shima didn’t have it in his big, dumb, airheaded, four-eyed, loving head to even consider turning Nagare down on something like this. They’d spent too much time together. With instruments and without. Before Shima could shift forms and after. Two lives spent joint at the hip made brave declarations seem more like simple requests.

And the latter was not what Nagare was making.

“I- I wanna do it for real…!” they huffed. Their brow furrowed, lips pursing. “‘s not… not fair if you jus’… Say yeah, ‘cuz it’s me.”

Their head throbbed, eyes falling to the checkerboard pattern of tiles covering the synth’s half of the room. They gripped their case’s straps, hands shaking.

Shima huffed, then laughed. The wrong kind, the kindest kind.

“Ooohoh! Okay!” He didn’t get it. “Y’don’t have to be so serious about it, Nags. C’mon!”

How else could they have gotten their point across, though?

Sure, there Shima went, sneakers squeaking as he crossed from carpet to linoleum tiles. Strolling back behind his synth, hands clutching fabric. Unzipped, unlike earlier. As he liked it, now.

The uninformed, maybe even unimpressed, might think it was all practiced. The way Shima moved. Not quite proper, nor enthusiastic, but just… Carefree. Self-absorbed, maybe. But that wasn’t all that bad, was it?

It wasn’t, but it didn’t help. It didn’t help, not at all. He just didn’t get it.

Nagare needed to try. They needed to do this. Needed to make him understand. Needed him to get it.

No matter how much it made their head pound. Pound and reverberate and heat up, sending their vision swimming as they slipped their guitar case off, unzipping it with shaky hands. Anticipation and frustration working together for their attempted sabotage of any motor controls they could possibly usurp.

He was rambling, and Nagare knew they should’ve been listening. Something about rathering this. About some audition, probably the worst one, that made him laugh after they left. They clutched their tremoring wrist, guitar balanced flat across their lap as they crouched, trying desperately to do something. Do anything. Check their tuning, start grabbing cords for their amp, find the pedal that Shima had borrowed from them for this. Their pedal.

A muted arpeggio rolled through the room, just below gentle rambling. Below the roaring and whirling of panicked synapses firing behind Nagare’s ears. They couldn’t hear or understand Shima, but he still brought some comfort. Enough that it burned.

They had to do this. Had to get this right. This was their only—

Maybe it wasn’t their only chance, but…

The timing was right. It made sense. He’d rented out the room they sat in. Shaking. All out of his own pocket, all for his dream. Three years of work, poured into a Music Major. Composition.

If they couldn’t get this right, they’d both have to get back to work. One year of university was left, right?

Three years of work, poured into their own degree. Early Childhood Education.

Nagare felt sick.

The studio lights were dimmed. Like how they’d sneak to turn the computer lab’s lights down, when it was just the two of them studying. The carpet was firm against their feet, like the very first room once you entered the Sadakou home.

Their feet were steady on the ground, no wobbling or wavering in their knees. Their hands had even quit shaking, once they’d found the amp they needed. Once they’d steeled their nerves and plugged the cord into the amp, into their guitar. Their tool, their weapon.

Their only shot; their last resort. Something Shima understood the language of. He had to, considering just how many times the two of them had been here. Not here, here. But… with these things. Together.

Nagare blinked and looked up. They didn’t clear their throat.

“‘Kay,” they hummed. Hands clutching their guitar, strap over their back. Eyes meeting bespectacled ones. “What’d you make ‘m play.”

A void surrounded Shima. Framed him, letting him glow without any photophores to speak of. The tension that flooded the room, suffocating all else, simply fell flat around him. His brows flicked up, then he smiled. Maybe not the wrong kind, not with the comfort it brought this time. Despite it all.

“Mmwell, funnily enough!” The meandering of his claws slowed, silencing the synth gently. Gradual, theatrical. “I actually ran most of them through that one demo! The one from last week?” The one they’d been workshopping together in their spare time, yeah. “Y’know, to really see if they could get their heads into it?”

Into Shima’s own. It wasn’t the most difficult of songs, not by a long shot.

It was the Octoling that was difficult. Picky, persistent. There was some sort of vision he was after that had to be put into just the right words. The right phrasing, right chords. Motions and measures and motifs and impossibly specific riffs.

Something that only Nagare could achieve, it seemed.

“Mm,” they hummed. That was the problem. “‘Kay.”

The Problem. They had an advantage.

“Pick somethin’ else, then.”

One that they needed to shake off. Perhaps apply a bit more pressure on. Weight themself, avoid their expertise so that they didn’t have to hold back. So they couldn’t.

“Huh?”

They shot Shima a look. A sharp one, knowing and stubborn.

“Pick something else.” Lips pursed, they slipped on a serious frown. “I already know it, wouldn’t be fair.”

A secondhand-embarrassingly innocent tilt of the head, a bob of tentacles, and a lift of a lower lip all coalesced to send Nagare themself pouting. The nerve Shima had to be confused at their insistence.

Their annoyance was only half-exaggerated.

The circumstances were odd, likely a bigger switch-up for Shima than the coral could imagine. It wasn’t often they’d speak out. Demand something of him in turn. Paradigms shifted more messily than forms. Even on good days turned sour. Especially then.

“Mm, okay,” he hummed all the same, thumb and finger prodding and pinching his cheek. Thoughtful. Shima’s eyes narrowed as he rattled something off onto his keyboard. “We can, uh… try running through one of those other demos I mentioned the other day. The one I started last week, yeah?”

Nagare hummed back, their glower lifting. They were sure they’d already be a bit familiar with it. Shima couldn’t help but share each step of the process, asked or not.

…The tense expression that pinched his eyemasks barely matched his tone of voice, though.

It would be fine. Nagare knew it would be fine.

It had to be. They would make sure of it.

Listening through a loop or two of the demo was easy enough. Shima’s biggest weakness with arranging had always been just how messy he got. Every little idea ended up in the file somewhere. Nagare had developed a knack for decluttering, thanks to the mess. Of arrangements, that is.

That was where the easy part seemed to end, though.

They ran through the demo. Once, then twice.

Nagare played fine. Better than fine, really. They gave it their all. They had to, remember? They had to remember to. This was their last shot.

But, Shima.

Shima sat there and played. He knew the track better, indepth and intricately. Their best shouldn’t have been better than his direction.

And yet, something was off.

During “once,” a chord or two was off. During “twice,” he cut them off, asking to restart.

Shima sat there and played, yet… didn’t seem to be all there. Like he was mimicking himself.

Or… no. Maybe not.

Maybe Nagare was the problem. Were they too focused? Too invested in their playing to tell the difference?

That was wrong. It had to be. That was a mistake. This was a mistake.

They were doing this to make him happy, right? To save him from disappointment. To make him feel as though someone really was invested in what he made. To let him—

Shima stopped before “twice” could become anything more. He smiled, but it was still the wrong kind, just as before.

“I…” he began. His voice lifted breathily. Enough to lift Nagare’s own.

“Did I do something wrong?”

The room dropped below zero. The coral’s digits felt like ice, still holding their guitar. It burned hot, like a spotlight was scorching them to dust. Like the metal, the strap, the strings, all of it was melting them. Caught red-handed doing something wrong, despite how ironic the saying was.

“…Huh?”

“I just… I thought you’d just wanna hang out, or something,” Shima went on. As if they hadn’t uttered a single sound.

“Why’s… what’s up with all of this, Nags?” he rambled, and they honestly, truly, couldn’t stop their eyes from darting back up to stare.

“You’re— You know you’re always more than welcome to just… come play, y’know?”

Eyes locked onto fidgeting claws, tensed tentacles. His glasses would start slipping down soon.

“You— Like- like I said earlier, there’s no need to be so- so serious about all of this. With the formalities, ‘n all?”

Why now? Why now of all times did they have to be so intimately aware of what that pastel periwinkle that soaked into his tentacles meant?

Why wouldn’t they? Their frustration, fear. Discontent.

“It just- just makes me feel bad. Like…”

It was none of those. It was guilt. It was guilt from the seafloor to the sky. Blue and green to cerulean-turned-periwinkle, barred and bundled up tight with something that Nagare should’ve seen coming from the start.

“Like, you’re taking the time out of your day to- to go through with all of this! To be so professional, all over some dumb auditions!”

Foreshocks. Warning tremors. Ripples on the surface.

“Which is something that you really don’t need to be so professional for, y’know? ‘Specially if it’s just- just us.”

The tide receded. The pools lay barren.

Nagare couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

“‘Cause, I mean… that’s— This is all time you could probably be spending working on- on something much more worthwhile.”

It had torn them away, torn their family from the south, before. And here it was, again.

“Something important t’you…”

Tsunami.

“Like your degree, y’know?”

They couldn’t scream. Couldn’t make a single sound, not for a while. Maybe just a few seconds, but it felt like hours.

They couldn’t see him anymore. Eyes were too blurry, blinking once, then never again.

They couldn’t do anything. Not even hide it, not anymore.

But, that was exactly it, wasn’t it?

Nagare never hid things from him. They told him everything. Everything their parents never knew. Their teachers never knew. Everything the rest of the world never knew.

Shima was their world. They wouldn’t have grown up without him. Wouldn’t have existed without him. Without him, Nagare would’ve been someone else.

And that’s why…

“I-”

They choked the syllable out, still freezing and burning all the same.

“Idon’t— don’t wanna.”

They gasped in a deep breath, painfully audible. Just once.

“Don’t wanna be- don’t wanna be a teacher. B- be responsible for that. Don’tknow if- i- if it’s right.”

At least, after another blink, they could make out the bobbing of curled tentacles again.

“H… huh?”

“‘M scared. ‘M scared, Sheem.”

Their head surely was pulsing up a storm. Surely looked like a storm. Arcing flashes of light upon a soft surface. Condensed condensation welling up beneath the very lowest rolling bumps and curls.

They gasped in again. Twice.

“Y… y’re why Iwanted t’ do it. In th’ first place.” The words poured from Nagare like a flood. Their chest and head pounded. Aftershocks. “Wanted t’ be a good ‘nfluence. Wanted t’ help. S- so they wouldn’t hafta… h- hafta go through what you did. W- what we did. But…!”

It terrified them. It wracked them to their core, the ugly, miserable truth setting their flood of words and water up to a boil.

What if they couldn’t? What if they couldn’t complete their goal, couldn’t help? What if they were even worse adjusted than they already knew they were? What if they were worse with kids than they thought, what if they only did more harm than good? What if

The thoughts melted to a stop as their eyes cleared. They could blink thrice, at least. Surpassing that motif of two.

Shima was making a face they’d never seen him make before. One that made them wonder if… they really did tell him everything. If he needed to hear something else, before they could let him prattle and ramble and hem and haw and worry up his own sort of storm.

“But- but I… I love…”

They bit their tongue. Briefly. They brought their fretting hand to their face, wiping their soaked cheeks with the back of it. They closed their eyes.

Nagare told the truth.

“I love music, too. Love… playing it. With— ‘Cuz of you. ‘S just as important to me.”

Okay, maybe they snuck in an ommittance there.

He’d learn someday, though. They’d tell him everything. For real.

“‘N if nobody else is gonna… gonna get their act together. T’ hear you out on how important it is to you too… ‘N… see- see how much talent you’ve got…? I wanna…”

As… long as they had the words to tell him.

“I wanna…”

They’d run fresh out. The storm had passed.

In its wake, Nagare felt warmer. Less tense, more fidgety. The metal of their guitar matched their temperature, now. Ignited, molten, pulsing.

With no words left, Nagare could only do what came naturally to them.

Hands steady, eyes still shut...

...They strummed a chord.

Muscle memory washed over them, that chord bubbling up into more and more and more. They strummed, left hand dancing along the neck of their guitar, building and building. Shifting their fingers along, letting their own ideas flow out.

They stood tall, going deeper. Strumming with more conviction, more than they’d ever realized they could. They shifted their weight, foot to foot, leaning onto their pedal with one. Falling back on what they never thought they’d get to practice. Not with Shima.

They reached a peak, simply showing off. The smoldering rush of pride filling them calling to mind just how proud the headmaster had been, once they’d figured out the trick to the very technique he’d taught them. Just how much they’d learned, and how much further they had to go.

They kept going. They kept playing, remembering just why.

Who it was all for.

Nagare fell into a familiar pattern, strumming a real tune now. A familiar one. To Shima, too.

That aforementioned demo, the one they’d last seen titled “stop&go_demo(2).frsh” bounded from their hands. From their guitar, from their chest. Determined and steady, they drove it forward, first running through that repetitive hook, then even through parts that Shima’s own hands would have played, under ordinary circumstances.

Then, the core of it. The meat of the guitar, the rolling, the marching. A memetic sort of call, one that was a bit incomplete without the midi bass and drums they’d picked out to back it.

The riff went twice, then twice more. Shima’s part was next.

After the second repetition, they stopped.

Nagare looked up.

“You gonna play too?” they murmured. Less a question, more a challenge.

Before them, Shima stared back.

They weren’t sure how long he’d been standing there like that, holding that expression. Eyes wide, beak agape. Colors rolling through… more words than Nagare could recount to do them justice. That was for sure.

But, just a beat later. He smiled.

A bit scared, that left upper lip still half a strum too high. But, it was right. A bright one.

At the sound of a warbling, soaring synth’s tune, Nagare smiled too.

They played on. Together.