Two heads are better than one

[tanks4thememory]

Who: Clu1 and Clu 2 (a_perfect_end)

Where: Their User world abode and possibly other places

When: Some undetermined time post Legacy and after this thread

What: ABO sexytimes and maybe other things; a Clu on Clu catchall

Warnings: VERY NSFW. Multiple kinks, ABO related warnings, sorta incest depending how you view programs from the same User, basically enter at your own risk if you're not into that sort of thing

The life and times- and sexytimes of Clus One and Two in the ABO universe, collected here for the sake of convenience and avoiding page clutter. Multiple scenarios, lots of fun. Mostly of the NSFW variety.

Comments

[a_perfect_end]

Claude was staring, and he knew he was staring, and the knowledge did not help him stop. A thing of beauty was meant to be appreciated. And she gleamed, top to tail tips, all bright scales and brighter skin. Though there was a hot burn of color in her face where she worked dilligently to get enough air.

He glanced his eyes aside for that. Manners, and all. She let out a single chiming cry, like a delphine trying to sound its whereabouts, and then--

Laughed at him. A noise like music and a knife right in the pride, words razor quick and just as precise, just as sure to their target.

Still. The men were watching, and he was no lass, after all.

Claude snorted. A good job his compass still pointed true. He folded his hand to his waist, resting it just on his belt knife to hide where his fingers had itched to try those shining flanks.

"My mistake," wry, tilting his head, knuckling his cap as one might to a slightly better equal, with heavy irony. "Goodly sir, but you will cut your skin on those nets if you panic." Stating facts was not a threat. "One way or another, Lyle and Mason here'll help you out."

"Oh, hell," Mason squeaked under his breath, only he twitched right to attention when Claude looked at him, pale with fear of more than mermen. "Uh, Yes, Captain."

But he didn't move. Lyle smirked at his antics, but didn't move either.

"Give over," snapped Claude, "unless you wanna scrub the deck with the two good teeth between ye! Move!"

Forward they went, with his boot in their belts to boost them.

The combined effect was immediate. The instant dry hands clutched wet rope and smooth soft skin, all three of them had...an experience. The most incredible grip seized their every muscle at once, unbearably tight, and didn't quite permit them pain even as they were pitched backward, hard as a good shove.

Some sort of spell, connected or transmitted by the water and each other.

Claude choked. All his hair stood on end. His heart was trying to--wiggle--unpleasantly, at having been squeezed so. He couldn't have fought the creature in this shape. And judging by their bent postures, crooked as old men and breathing ragged, neither could his men at the moment.

"You, two," slowly, with precise care against a tongue gone cotton, "go, and see Cook."

Their surgeon was gone, after all, lost in the storm.

"Cap'n?"

"Go," he repeated, in no mood. "Have'm listen to your ribs 'n' take a good swig of whatever he's got, no matter how it tastes."

That might help. It was all they had to work with. Off they limped, with a hoarse aye-aye.

"I'll fix our guest. The rest of you, jump! We'll need warm seawater to draw the lad a bath."

Just in case he thought he was going anywhere fast. Claude rounded on him, pressed as close as he dared without touching. They near could have rubbed their eyelashes together.

"You," he raked hot eyes over his catch, thin-lipped with more than fury, "ye try that again, an' I'll boil y'in it."

He would never. For one thing, the merman was too valuable alive. But it sounded good.

[tanks4thememory]

He didn't quite cease his struggling, though it had become clear to him at least that semi-panicked flailing would do him no good, and indeed might only get him more entangled. Instead he changed tactics to more strategic squirming, testing the net for weaknesses and trying to perhaps wriggle an arm free. It wouldn't be much, but it would be something, and better than laying there trussed up like a freshly caught tuna. He'd likely get out of the net eventually if he let the humans do it, of course, but after seeing first hand how rough this lot of them were, that was something he wanted to avoid for as long as possible.

As the captain and two of his men- named Lyle and Mason, apparently, though he was unsure which was which- found out the hard way when he released his gathered charge, knocking all three of them back. But not out; it must have been a bit less potent in air than in water, though the two men clearly wouldn't be up for much for some time. He suspected the same was true for the captain, though he made more of an effort to conceal it.

In the end, however, his efforts were for naught. He was still trapped and the captain was ordering his other men to prepare some sort of container of water for him. He wasn't sure if the fact that they were that prepared was reassuring or not. On one hand, it meant that he didn't have to summon water to sustain him long term; he could do so, summoning a sphere of water about the size of a manta cart that would remain stable and allow him to rest inside it. But on the other, that would require most of his available aether. He was no trained mage, and such an effort would leave him hungry and exhausted in a place where he was unsure how well or even if he'd be fed, and where sleeping deeply might not be advisable. Not to mention tipping his hand to the humans that he had magic beyond the simple translation trick at all.

No, if he must be trapped, best to take what accommodation he was given. For now, at least.

Then suddenly, the captain was rounding on him, leaning in til their noses nearly touched to snarl at him. C'leel's fins flared- well, as much as they could in the net, which wasn't a great deal- and his glow flared to life, previously all but invisible patterns on his tail and one side of his chest made suddenly obvious in an instinctive response to a threat. Like a puffer expanding, it was meant to intimidate, to threaten an opponent or predator into backing off. Unlike a puffer who still had its poison though, with him it was now a largely idle threat; he was no trained warrior either, and wouldn't be able to manage another charge like that for the better part of a day.

The now illuminated patterns on his body cast the captain's face in a yellowish glow, highlighting his expression of mingled fury and hunger. Of the two, it was the hunger C'leel found more threatening; it reminded him of a shark who'd locked on to a particularly fat and tasty meal, but he suspected it wasn't the desire for food that prompted it.

"I did warn you," pointed out, holding the captain's gaze, blue eyes hard and sharp as the icebergs of distant waters. Two could play at the intimidation game, and while he was at a distinct disadvantage, he'd be damned if he gave in first. "And you and yours are the ones who hauled me up here against my will, lest you forget. I've every right to defend myself. Especially with you leering at me like a half-starved barracuda looking at a shoal of herring."

[a_perfect_end]

The merman's predicament was not helped by his sudden change of movement. Of course he wouldn't lie still for the insult of the net! No sea creature ever did, only this one wriggled that great golden expanse of tail with very human hips, and that was--

It put a tug in the mast he'd never quite experienced before. There was hardly a polite place for it in leather trousers, so Claude coughed hard and stiffened all his ribs, to a one, which after all still burned with the knowledge of exactly how well-defended his catch was. His gorgeous catch he would not eat and didn't quite dare touch.

"Mercy," he breathed, same as a curse. And louder: "Aye, so ye did. We won't eat ye, lad."

It was not dinner that he fancied, and he could see the merman knew it, that cold blue regard bitter as the winter sea. The difference in how they were made didn't give the lad even one ounce less of spine! He flashed sharp fins at Claude with a fury that caused him actually to glow, gold as a lantern, and it would have taken Claude's breath away except it put him in mind of that odd cold fire that had gripped him so.

Claude could feel his own eyes widen, steel grey popping to some other, lighter shade; but he did not back away until it could be taken for courtesy, however mocking. He made a thoroughly middle class bob of leg, as might a merchant's son to betters he didn't want noticing him twice.

Before his salt life he'd known all about that. But that was the great thing about being a scallywag of the sea: Claude never hid what he wanted, nor from whom, nor why.

"It's not food we're after." The grin would not be suppressed, leached out in the rich, greedy singsong that had caught his voice. "Purchase, perhaps--or crew, or ransom--but make a meal? Out of a treasure like you? Oh, no."

Of course the life he had now came with its own rules: work hard, show no fear, take pains to be manful. Give the same rights and equal share to the lovely and the louts and--et al., and et cetera, as befit the pirate code--which might be individual to the ship, or answer the greater fleet's consensus in Cutthroats' Bay. Those things were expected of any captain worth his own salt, and nevermind how he laid his pillow.

It helped that Claude preferred the husband's share, of the work and otherwise, though of course most men hoped for true wives of their own, back on shore.

Gulls and thunder! But his mind was wandering all sorts of places it had no port of call. Purely for a pretty set of scales and the most befuddling, wonderful show of sheer backbone he'd been granted in some time.

"Oh, it's all our blame, is it?" with a huff, with low hoarse laughter, rusty with affectation. "Cheeky little thief!" He tutted cheerfully, wagging his finger with a crooked, wicked grin.

A hungry fox bared its teeth the same way at sleek, tasty prey and great, awful hounds. It remained to see which this merman would turn out to be. Either way, what fun.

"Y've a lot to learn, lad, about taking things from pirates."

[tanks4thememory]

C'leel didn't find the knowledge that he wasn't bound for this crew's dinner table particularly reassuring. He'd suspected as much from the beginning; despite the analogy, one didn't look that way at one's next meal. No, the captain wanted something entirely different with his body. As if he had any idea what that actually entailed or how differently they were built beyond the obvious.

His attempt at a threatening posture seemed to have at least a bit of an effect though, as the captain's gray eyes widened as they were lit by his glow, and eventually he backed off to stand more normally. The shark's grin that crossed his captor's face a moment later erased any modicum of ease that had brought him though. Naked greed behind sharp eyes, no doubt already calculating how much his catch might fetch at market. "Oh, so you'll sell me off to the highest bidder then, will you, so perhaps they might eat me?", he said, making it clear that a delay of such a fate didn't make the possibility any more pleasant. "I know you humans have some ridiculous ideas about how eating my people's flesh or drinking our blood can heal your ills or make you immortal. Well, unfortunately they do no such thing; I don't know how such a stupid old fish tale even got started. It's true that we live quite a bit longer than humans- assuming we're both healthy and lucky-, but that's all; we're as mortal as any other creature, and our flesh and blood are only that, not some sort of panacea."

His glare faltered slightly, though only for the most fleeting moment as his theft was brought up. He really couldn't deny that he'd done it, after all, but a few pilfered trinkets hardly justified his current predicament. "Your crew has such a penchant for getting silt-headed I'm almost surprised they even noticed aught was amiss," he said somewhat disdainfully. He doubted human terms for intoxication were quite the same as his own, but the context likely made the meaning fairly clear nonetheless. "And I was going to leave you something in return before I left; I've been foraging pearls- among other things- for days now, and where I wouldn't miss a pouch full, I imagine it'd be worth a great deal more to you."

Never mind that such a notion was something he'd only just come up with to soothe a guilty conscience, rather than something he'd planned from the beginning. And obviously they'd be getting no such thing now, even if he did manage to escape.

the slowest boat to china is carrying the most goods!

[a_perfect_end]

It was not food he was thinking of, nor was it the idea of a nice hot meal that had him all but licking his chops. No, indeed.

Claude took a sharp breath and held it, let it out again slow, the same as a good steady draw on a pipe. Settled the nerves and tempered hotter, more primal humours.

He could see, now, that he'd given the lad a solid fright: his fins wavered at their full extent, and even slitted in wrath his eyes darted ceaselessly, trying to watch all of them at once as he wriggled against the net. Claude snorted, quiet, and considered that. In the first place, he wouldn't force attention on the unwilling--though of course his captive had no way of knowing that. And in the second, they had an audience: or he did, and one that counted on him for their lives and their livelihood.

"Steady." A reminder to himself, and reassurance to his catch--a tempting dish in any sense, even still trying to skewer him with a chilly gaze. "Steady, lad. The man that'd make su-chii out of you has more money than sense, and that'd be a poor sale."

Though to hear his hope of a fortune in miracle blood so neatly unraveled--did knock some wind out of his proverbial sails.

"Unfortunate," gruffly. "That is a loss: not to grant a child sight by cutting your thumb, no worse than the slip of a hook, nor spare his poor mother an early grave." His free hand tapped his chin, tugged thoughtfully at a beard gold as carrots in the sun. "Suppose'n there's no such thing as perfect medicine."

But the merman had said several other odd things, besides.

"...Silt...?" Claude squinted, thought. "Oh, that. Some as were celebratin' early. Caught you right enough, though, snootful or no."

"Captain? Uh, sir?" Jarvis hesitated. He always did, except in battle, all arms and legs and gander-pale no matter how he sunburned.

Claude twisted in place, exasperated, and slid him a look that near enough made the man's knees rattle. "Well?"

"Sir." Clearing his throat, the stork of a man gangled his way into Claude's personal space--and as near the strange, enthralling creature on their decks as he quite dared. "Your bawth is ready."

A ransom originally, Jarvis had a sharp head for sums, meticulous organizational skill, and that fancy, too-good accent like an orchestrated yawn.

"Perfect," was Claude's sole summation of this news.

Jarvis cleared his throat. "Our--" hot-eyed, with an envious pinch of the pale, pale mouth, "guest seems, perhaps, overburdened with his ordeal, and quite weighted down with tackle that's not necessarily his own, originally. You are, therefore, naturally within right of," he paused, and one could half watch his mental dictionary flittering through its officious little pages, "...restitution."

Claude huffed a laugh. "In English english, Quartermaster?"

"Hmm." Jarvis rolled his tongue in search of shorter words and arrived at: "...Plunder, sir."

That one little case? The lad's arm was wound tight around it, as though it held the universe's very secrets. And he had mentioned pearls.

However justified Claude's claim might not be, hesitation never won a man anything. He fair swaggered into place, smirking down at his captive.

"Any more tricks?" He moved decisively, to keep the knife neat and straight in his hand. "Y'gonna curse me? Sing me a storm, or a pod of killer whales to smash my ship? Hold still, now--" He cut without touching his guest or the net itself, cleaner than a close shave. "...There."

Might made right, and just like that the satchel was his.

"Shall I," Jarvis paused, not quite reaching, "analyze it, sir?"

"No!" perhaps too sharp, gruff and too quick, "No, thankee. The lad'll want it with him, I'm sure, or at least close by." And louder, for the assembly: "You'll all have your share, soon as it's due."

For this, there was a collective exhale, their first return to something like normal order--and an abrupt, group shiver of coarse laughter. After this long at sea, there was not a clean mind among or between them.

Certainly his own wandered more than he might wish.

"Understood, sir," Jarvis tutted, some hardly readable and longsuffering expression plastered stiff on his face. "Very good. I'll see you're--" a pause, flick of the eyes up and down, "not disturbed?"

"Good man!" barked Claude, with a rusty laugh of his own. "Now, then--"

There was a trick to lifting with the knees, and not with the back, and it made the turn of the net easier. With one great haul he at last had an armful of merman, slung headfirst over Claude's shoulder and not at all quiet about it, fins flashing to cut, hands thumping good and hard with a yell.

Insults rained bitterly on his back.

"If ye bite me," Claude snarled, tilting hard under their matched weight, "I'll leave y'for the gulls--" He gasped, sharpish, and dropped his voice. His teeth were gritted. But not from pain. "Don't wriggle so, lad!"

In response, the great golden tail gave one wicked, awful thrash, but they were too close together for it to drub him, and he was too well-braced to be pulled down. His men scattered like ninepins, or like crows, flowing together around the commotion in a lumpish cloud of rough jesting.

"I mean it!" Low, urgent into the heaving flanks of his thrashing, wondrous catch. "Will you hold still--"

Of course he didn't.

They made it through the narrow cabin door just the same. Somehow, somehow, he got the net loose and his wonderful, irate gilded prize into the washtub with only a moderate thrashing.

His everything was askew; they'd knocked into everything there was to bump over or nudge against. His lip was cut, by net or fins. He could taste the salt of his own blood.

The merman glared up at him with pure affront, seething fit to murder, but for some wonder held his tongue.

"Welcome," panted Claude, thoroughly discombobulated, "aboard."

[tanks4thememory]

C'leel couldn't deny that he was afraid. And as much as he tried to keep up the front of bravado, he suspected the human Captain knew it to. He seemed a more intelligent sort than the rest of his crew, which he supposed he had to be. He wasn't big enough to intimidate by size and strength alone, or- from what C'leel had seen- vicious enough to command through sheer terror. Not that that did a great deal to calm him. An intelligent captor would be that much harder to escape from, assuming it was even possible.

Some small part of him felt bad for disabusing the humans of any notion that his blood held some miraculous cures. There were those among his people who could have, perhaps, helped those the Captain mentioned, but healing magic was a craft that required many years of study and practice. And who even knew whether techniques meant for healing mers would be equally effective on humans? Still, if he'd had such abilities, and the opportunity to use them to help an innocent arose, he wouldn't have needed to be forced.

But that small part was, at present, a very small part. He was still a prisoner, however, bound for an uncertain fate, one that grew more uncertain by the moment. At present, he could only clutch his pouch and wait as he was discussed, though he could see that they were even eyeing that. Unsurprising, he supposed; as their prisoner, the would likely claim anything on his person as part of their catch. The pouch itself was on the large side, designed to evoke an upturned snail shell, and made of sturdy turtle-skin leather. It hung over his shoulder on a long strap of the same, though the strap was more flexible than the stiffened leather of pouch. He suspected that they would be far mor interested in its contents than its craftsmanship, however.

He was forced to still for a movement as the captain cut him free of the net- he had no interest in having more than the ropes cut after all- but once the captain had put away his knife, he resumed his struggles with renewed vigor. Not that he suspected that they would be especially effective as despite them he was hauled steadily away from the side of the ship and the freedom that lay in the sea, but he was determined to make his transition to true captivity as difficult as possible for his captor.

Eventually though he was deposited with a splash into a metal tub of seawater, glaring up at the captain from the awkward position. He took a certain amount of grim satisfaction in how disheveled he now looked. Served him right! But continuing to glare at him wouldn't accomplish anything at this point, and after a long moment, he allowed himself to shift into a slightly more comfortable position in the tub, pulling in the tips of his fins from where they'd trailed over the edge, and glanced around the room. Though it was in a similarly disheveled state to its owner as a result of his thrashing, it was still more intact that any human room he'd ever been able to examine; even just at a glance, he could spot a number of things he recognized but even more that he didn't, made all the more fascinating by their novelty. And it was out of the sun, which he had to admit was a marked improvement from being on deck.

But still, he was well and truly caught now. Which led to a single question in his mind. "Well, you have me," he said, bitter and wary. "What now?" He wasn't to be dinner, but that still left a great many possibilities, most of them unpleasant.

[a_perfect_end]

Claude was quicker than the others--in both brain and boots--and his leadership had seen them survive their recent misfortune, which kept him captain in the first place. Not the strongest. Not the meanest. But the sharpest. Oh sure, some great dull cudgel of a brute might trounce him in their next election--and the sun might rise in the west, tomorrow, too.

He shook his head with a snort. It would hardly matter to his present catch why he'd been made captain, or how he held onto that position. And anyway at times he outpaced himself: having caught the poor creature, he hadn't the faintest idea what to do next.

Or, really, how to care for him. He looked plain miserable, and that struck the headwind straight from Claude's sails. Something sharp and bitter pulled at his ribs for the sight of the great gold tail in a tight coil, fins pulled inward and arms the same, wrapped tight around the little pouch they'd fair drooled over. The merman's eyes darted this way and that--alight with something other than fear, for that moment, caught up in some other venture of feeling--but his gaze slitted sharp in sheer winter as he watched Claude.

Ice and steel in his voice, poised sharp enough to cut.

"Peace be!" grumbled the captain, prodding his own lip. "T'were hard enough to pry ye loose! Those louts out there are great in a storm, and better in a fight, but--well. They might think you're made of gold, shining like that. And they won't believe you aren't magic, no matter what you tell 'em. Had to get you apart."

And out of the sun. And into some good clean seawater--he'd seen what fresh water did to ocean fish, and salt to river ones.

And his room was the nicest on the ship. Or, it had been, anyway. Still was, under all the fuss. Claude snorted, arighting himself: this was his own fault.

"Give a man a moment to think," he sighed, trying to straighten his--everything--while he went through the guesswork.

It made sense to run down a checklist of what human hostages tended to need or want in this position. Freedom to move about under guard was often the first and fiercest of their desires, but it had to be earned, and anyway he'd no idea how that would work--ships made their way by keeping water out. Could they safely take on water, later on? After a good and thorough careening in harbor, they might be able to work something up. Perhaps by some mechanism of the lower decks--except, reversed bilge would be foul and silty, not at all like the clear currents he might be used to...

No. Fat lot of dream sheep wool that idea was. So: with shelter improvised, for now, the lad would need food. And more than that:

"Didn't cut ye, did I? I mean, are you hurt anywhere?" And lest the merman take this for charity, for bleeding-hearted weakness, well. "In men, copper poisons the blood, and I wouldn't lose you that way."

There. Much tougher. Couldn't give the lad a chance to see his chagrin.

Besides, he was curious.

"D'you eat," thinking, "sea grass? Or other fish, maybe--certainly that and biscuit are most of our lunch, this late in a voyage. Can't let you starve, either."

Pause. Squinting:

"Forgive me, but--how do you, drink? Water's just air to ye, isn't it, and the salt must be terrible dehydrating--"

He was babbling. He sighed.

"Don't suppose you take tea?"

[tanks4thememory]

C'leel watched as the captain attempted to put himself and his room to rights. Part of him wanted to lash his tail at the man's tone and part of him wanted to shrink away, but there was no room in the metal tub for either. So instead he simply frowned. Under other circumstances and from other lips he may have taken the idea that his scales could be mistaken for actual gold as a compliment, but as things were, it merely cemented the greed of this particular group in his mind. "Magic is something that's learned," he said rather sullenly. "Something that takes study and practice. It's not something someone can simply be. So they'd be disappointed either way."

Still, all in all, he preferred not having them only discover this after pulling off half his scales or some such thing. And speaking of injuries. "No," he said. "I'm a bit bumped and bruised-" likely in part because of his own thrashing- "but not cut. I had sense enough to keep still while you were cutting the ropes to make sure of that."

And he was going to be relatively still for awhile, if the captain had his way. Even if he wanted to give C'leel room to swim, any attempt to do so would result in his ship joining the shipwreck that had drawn them both here on the seabed. And despite his predicament, he wasn't so vindictive as to wish such a fate on his captors. He'd seen the bones of the poor, unfortunate souls who'd gone down with that ship, and didn't wish to add to their number if it could be helped.

The question of food was a far more immediate concern though. "Fish and plants both, according to the season and our tastes," he said. "There's actually some travel rations among the things in my pouch. I'd been supplementing them with hunting, but on their own they should last a few days, if eaten sparingly. I doubt eating your food would be an issue though, if needed." Nor the humans his either, he suspected, though how much either of them would enjoy the other's fare remained to be seen.

As for drinking, he actually had to think for a moment. He'd been told as a child, of course, among the endless questions youngsters were prone to, but it was never something he'd had to consciously think about as an adult. "Normally we take what we need from the water around us, with our gills filtering out the excess salt, among other things. But as that can't happen here, I suppose drinking like a human would do me no harm, so long as it's water and not ale." He had no desire to find out how that stuff would affect him, thank you very much.

"Tea though... do you mean the drink or the meal? I know it's both, somehow, though I'm not sure how that might be." He suspected that the captain was referring to the drink, as that was what he'd just been talking about, but he couldn't be sure.