---Albert’s perspective---
“Come in, sit down…” invites the gigantic redhead whose office door I’m standing in, in an Earth dialect of British English.
I enter the room and take a seat across his desk from him.
The handsome man (not that I’m that way inclined, personally) smiles at me and says “I don’t normally use this office but I thought it’d prob’ly be best if we had a bitta privacy for this chat… Do you know why I asked you here?”
“I assume it has something to do with the request I submitted…?”
He nods, his eyebrows flying up his forehead to accentuate the gesture “Yup… you requested… the… use… of… a… respirator mask…” he says, finding the form and flicking it to the table “…Now, normally, that’d be fine… We’ve got spares… they’re available on request… I almost just approved it and went to get you one… but there was somethin’ naggin’ me about it… So, I doublechecked the notes on your file…” he flicks another document from his holo to the tabletop “…extreme and debilitatin’ aquaphobia/thalassophobia…” he states, bluntly, looking unnervingly straight into my eyes with his bright green ones.
I don’t respond.
He sighs and leans back in his chair “Look, Doc… I really want to be Mr Coolguy about this! You’re a grown up!… In fact, you’re nearly twice my age! I don’t wanna wag my finger at you and say this ain’t allowed… but, unfortunately, I am this ship’s head of health and safety, as much as I’m its head of security… If you end up drownin’ ’cause I gave you a respirator you shouldn’t’ve been given, it’s not just gonna haunt me for the rest of my life, it could also be the end of my career… and is definitely gonna be a thing that the Compliance Officer’ll come down on like a tonna bricks… you get me?”
I nod, wordlessly.
He closes his eyes and takes a deep inhale “I ain’t gonna ask what you need the mask for… that ain’t my business… but… before I approve this…”
My heart leaps and he clearly notices because he repeats himself more forcefully, his facial expression and tone (though that doesn’t mean quite as much to me) both stern!
“Before I give it to you… I have three requirements… well, I don’t… Two of these’d required of anybody askin’ for a mask… you need to get instructions on use, from me, and you need to sign a waiver… I have an additional requirement, though!”
The intimidatingly enormous man pauses there, staring down at me from across the table.
“What… what’s that?” I ask.
“I need you to promise me that, whatever you’re doin’ with this, you ain’t gonna be an idiot about it!”
---Miraala’s perspective---
I enter the small chamber that separates my room from the corridor and set the hoverchair down on the floor, spinning it to face behind me.
“You can put your clothes in there…” I sign to the Terran following me inside, smiling and pointing to the drybox installed in the wall for exactly that purpose.
“You… you want me to take my clothes off?” he answers, extremely uncertainly.
I give a Terran shoulder shrug “It’s up to you… but I know it makes swimming more difficult to have waterlogged material all over your body… Plus, I understand that some Terran clothes can’t go underwater without being damaged?”
He gives a nervous smile and answers “That’s not really the case for anything that’s not a period costume made with historically accurate techniques, these days… but… I suppose it wouldn’t make sense for me to walk back to my room with saltwater sodden clothes, would it… Uhm… are you able to close the outside door without starting the airlock cycle? I would prefer a little more privacy if I’m to undress.”
I gesture in the affirmative and close the door, sealing us in the small space.
“Hooooo… O…K…!” he signs nervously, his breaths noticeably more rapid.
“Slow and deep, you said… Don’t hyperventilate… nothing’s happening yet… You’re just standing in a room with the door shut, right now… That’s all.” I reassure him.
He gives an anxious smile and nods his head, working to slow down his breathing.
I don’t push him to start undressing, letting him take his time to acclimatise.
Eventually, he extends me his mask and asks “Could you hold this for me?”
I accept it and he reaches to his shoulder to slide off his jacket, folding it loosely and placing it in the drybox.
He reaches to his collar and, fumbling, begins to button down his shirt.
His top comes off revealing a… a chest…
Huh!
Why is his chest so fascinating to me? I can scarcely take my eyes off of it!
He bends down, letting me see his dense, deathworld muscles tauten in his shoulders and arms as he begins removing his [shoes].
He awkwardly stands on one leg, then the other, to remove his [socks].
Finally, he reaches to below that strange hole Humans have in their stomachs and unfastens the belt holding up his [trousers], dropping them to the floor, revealing a pair of Human legs almost as fascinating as the bare chest.
He places his lowers into the drybox and presses it shut.
He’s the first guest to ever use it… of course he is also my first guest full stop(!)
“I’m going to leave my boxers on…” he gestures to the only garment he’s still wearing.
“That’s fine!” I smile, trying not to seem as distracted by his near nudeness as I am.
Something about the way that Terrans so scrupulously cover their nudity, normally, makes it much more enthralling to see them bereft of clothing than it would be if they cared less about always being covered up!
I extend him the mask.
“Ready?” I sign, one handedly.
“No.” he responds, but takes the mask regardless.
He places the device (consisting of a clear panel, a watertight seal and a gas exchanger at the bottom) over his face, pressing the seal against his skin and activating its adherence.
“Can you breathe?” I ask.
He takes a few experimental breaths before signing back “Seems like it.”
“Shall we start?”
---Albert’s perspective---
You don’t need to swim if you can breathe!
You don’t need to swim if you can breathe!!
You don’t need to swim if you can breathe!!!
You don’t need to swim if you can breathe!!!!
You don’t need to swim if you can breathe!!!!!
The water is rushing up my legs far too fast!… Though… I don’t know if the airlock filling slowly would make the experience any less terrifying!
My breath is bouncing off of the front pane of my mask as my chest rises and falls rapidly.
My mind shows me my mother’s hand, slipping beneath the mirky water and instantly vanishing as the sea swallows her!
I throw my hands against the walls, bracing myself in place.
Then, a webbed finger startles me by flicking the front of my mask.
My focus wheels on the sharp, hydrodynamic face of the one it’s attached to.
“Relax… Breathe slowly…” she signs. Then she extends both of her hands, palm down, toward my chest, which gets translated as “…take my hands.”
“I Kan’d!” I fumble, frantically “I’gl rulgy herd yu cuz I’n pankink!”
She smiles, baring a row of sharp, greenish-yellow, piscivorous teeth which should be absolutely terrifying to me right now but, somehow, is quite the opposite, and shrugs “Then that’ll be a good reason for you not to panic, won’t it?”
Hesitating, I reach my hands beneath hers and cradle them, ready to whip them away the moment I feel myself losing control.
But I don’t need to…
Somehow, just lightly holding her webbed hands and having her strange, blue eyes with their double-u shaped pupil’s staring into mine… I’m able to control my panic, right through the chamber filling up…
Once the last of the air is gone from the airlock, she gives me a few moments before taking her hands from mine to sign “There now… the worst part’s over… Right?” reassuring.
I nod, the sensation of moving my head through water almost entirely unfamiliar to me, after how long it’s been since I last allowed it to be submerged.
“Can I take this off and get out of this…?” she asks, gesturing first to her aquarespirator collar then to her hover chair “…or do you need my hands a little longer(?)”
“I’ll be fine, go ahead…”
She bares those sharp teeth at me again, playfully, and reaches to the device.
The collar is pulled away, revealing what look like four deep slashes on each side of her neck (though not unleashing a deluge of blood into the water, the way they would if they were on a Human’s neck!)
She brings the collar to a wall hook and hangs it there.
She places both of her hands on the rim of her hoverchair and pushes herself up.
Two things strike me, immediately:
One, she has a tail… I knew she did… but, somehow, my mind simply read her as a woman in a hoverchair that covered up her lower body and, I now realise, pasted a pair of Human legs onto her(!)… There’s now no denying that she has a powerful, fluked, fish tail!
The second is that she is much larger than I thought she was!
Her upper body isn’t actually too different from a Human’s in size but, as a full two metres of mermaid tail emerge from the egg shaped mobility device, it becomes obvious that she lost a lot of height to the way it must have been curled up inside.
She has no hip bones, I know, but right where they would be is a fat formation of muscle which simulate hips the same way her large pectorals simulate breasts.
Towering over me in the watercolumn, she indicates the inside door to open.
My terror instantly reignites and bursts into a roaring inferno as the dark room creates the illusion of a hadal abyss!
I close my eyes and screw up my face, trying and failing to keep my breathing slow and deep.
I feel a hand placed on my bare shoulder.
Far from startling me… its presence is immediately soothing.
Opening my eyes, I see her face, once again mere inches from my mask, smiling reassuringly.
She withdraws her hand and I have to fight the urge to reach out to keep it where it is.
“Sorry…” she signs, her facial expression layering an apologetic tone over the translation, as if grimacing “…I should have left the light on… but look… just a room…”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
She extends a hand to the now lit space.
Indeed, the water is so crystal clear that, aside from the slight blue haze at the far side (caused by the water’s attenuation of the light) it could just be a normal room filled with breathable air!
She swims forward.
Out of her hoverchair she is utterly transformed…
Navigating air filled spaces, she is slow, careful and relatively awkward in her chair.
Now though, she is grace and elegance itself as she aquabatically spins through the water in the large, empty space of her room!
I step forward and find that, like in minimal gravity, it’s much harder to gain traction from the floor.
Unlike low gravity, however, I’m facing stiff resistance to my forward motion in the form of a wall of noncompressible fluid, roughly as dense as I am!
---Miraala’s perspective---
I turn to see the Terran, attempting to walk along the floor and looking quite ungainly!
“I’ve seen Human’s swim, Albert! I know it can be done!” I [laugh].
“So do I… I did it for 9 straight hours, once… but that was half a century ago and I was quite a different size than I am now… The technique hasn’t stayed with me!” he responds, unamused, the water resistance having an interesting visual effect on his hands’ ability to change direction in his jerky sign language.
“Like this…” I sign, my facial expression a mixture of mirth and kindness as I demonstrate a breaststroke to him.
He tries to replicate it but… well, I can visually see that he’s pushing himself back as much as forward!
I sign a mirthful sigh as I swoop over him and spin to place my chest against his back.
Hooking my arms under his, I grip his… distracting chest and give a few powerful flaps of my tail to lift him into the watercolumn.
“Oh!” he cries out in surprise, the sound being very distorted by the mask and the water but the meaning coming via our translators just fine.
His body is so much denser than I was expecting!
I guess it makes sense! Unlike on most planets, Earth's aquatic life typically needs their swimbladders filled with gas, for buoyancy, rather than ballast, to weigh them down into the watercolumn!
My arms occupied with his body, I’m unable to sign so I switch to the, much slower (but much more intimate), tactile register of my language, tapping out “There… how do you feel?” on his chest with my eight, webbed fingers.
“Like a gigantic, vicious, aquatic predator has me in its grasp and is dragging me into its lair… where it can breathe and I can’t(!)” he quips.
Water pulses through my gills at the hilarious way he just described me.
“All true… though I could do without being described as an ‘it’(!)” I tap out onto his chest.
“Apologies(!) My fair Lady Vicious Aquatic Predator(!)… A thousand pardons(!)”
I playfully slap my hand against his pectoral muscle in rebuke and feel a thrill as I experience its solidity.
A few wordless moments pass as I just hold him from behind.
“So… erm…” he says, awkwardly “…do you want to show me this reef?”
“Err… yes… Am I OK to let you go?”
Mirthfully, he answers “The worst that will happen is I’ll sink a few metres… All good!”
I release him and, just as he said, he begins drifting down.
“Try [kicking]?” I suggest, twiddling two fingers to demonstrate the motion of the limbs I don’t have.
He hesitates a moment, then [kicks] his right foot forward and left foot back so hard that he rockets upward with unnerving power!
“Gently! Just enough that you don’t sink!” I correct “Use your arms too… Like this: In, up, out, down. In, up, out, down …” I sign, demonstrating.
He watches and tries to replicate, clumsily at first but, making use of the sensory feedback, quickly gets the hang of it.
“I’m just going to close the window… then I’ll bring up the reef… the lights will be out for a few [seconds]… Is that alright?” I ask, worried for having seen how he reacted to dark water, previously.
“I’ll live…” he smiles “…I did, literally, ask for this(!)”
---Albert’s perspective---
The antithesis of my horror of all things aquatic swims over to her room’s control panel.
I’m almost glad to be having to work so hard to suppress my phobias, right now… If I hadn’t been, I’m fairly certain her holding me and tapping my chest like she did would have given me an erection… There would have been little disguising that fact, with me wearing only boxers(!)
The window blind is closed and, a moment later, I’m plunged into total darkness.
Instantly, my mind is filled with the irrational notion that the walls, the woman and the space ship we were aboard have been replaced by the depths of some ocean and, even if it wasn’t so impossibly deep that I could never make it to the surface without being seized by the jaws or tentacles of some monstrous kraken or leviathan, even if I made it to the surface, I would just be in the same position I was in for most of a day after I lost my family; cold, alone, fighting to keep my head where I can breathe, no idea which way to try and swim for land and trying, desperately, not to think about the chasmal depths looming below me or what my treading water might attract!
Light shines through my eyelids causing me to realise that I had shut them.
I open my eyes… and gasp…
What surrounds me is, without a doubt, the single most breathtaking spectacle I’ve ever beheld!
Projected on the ceiling above me is the shimmering, glassy surface of a calm, gardenworld ocean.
Projected on the floor and every wall is a beautiful rainbow of coral and alien fish.
The features of the room are entirely lost to the 360° panoramic display!
With her window closed and no bed, desk or other furniture in Miraala’s habtank, there’s absolutely nothing to impede the illusion that I’m currently floating around halfway to the bottom of a 12m deep patch of ocean, on her homeworld!
Unlike the mirky seawater on Nova Britannia, the water here has such perfect clarity that I can see through it for hundreds of metres in every direction!
The apparent shallowness and high view distance completely robs the ocean of its terror! In its place is left only wonder!
I’ve… obviously seen pictures of coral reefs between when I was 8 and now but… an experience like this…? This is something I never would have considered for anyone until the stunningly beautiful Merwoman asked it of me!
Right then, she intensifies my moment of wonder by pirouetting up into my field of vision and baring her sharp, chartreuse teeth at me in a Terran smile.
“Worth conquering your fears?” she signs, smugly.
No words escape my mouth, nor do my hands make any move to sign.
I give no answer bar a breathless nod.
The gill slits on the side of her neck flap with mirth as the incomparable Osiyul performs a joyful backwards loop in the water.
She shocks me by coming right out of the bottom of the loop and glomping herself straight into my chest!
Oh no…
Her beautiful smiling face is close enough to mine that her nose is actually touching the faceplate of my respirator mask!
Her squashy pectorals are deforming against my (relatively) firm ones, letting me feel the smooth, glossy texture of her scaley skin!
Her arms are hooked under mine and her hands are pressed into my back!
Desperately, I try to conjure forth the Terran hagfish, the Terran giant squid, the megamouth shark, the great white, the Britannian kraken to my mind… but none of them take the bait!
Happy to haunt me for close on fifty fucking years and they’ve been utterly banished the first time I actually wanted them to!
COWARDS!
All of them scared back into their abyssal depths merely by the sensation of a pretty woman pressing my mostly nude body against her entirely nude one!?
This would be a triumphant breakthrough… except for what I know is about to happen!
Desperately, I try and think of any way it can be avoided.
I could fight her off, then turn around and not let her see my crotch?
No!
That would be even more embarrassing and likely to end our friendship!
I could…?
“What’s this…?” she taps on my back, the translation giving that medium of communication the quality of a sensual whisper as she pulls a quizzical face and looks down (which does not help my condition!)
It’s too late…!
“I’m… sorry…” I say aloud, not meeting her eyes as the shame burns my sweaty cheeks inside my mask “…I… I just got a little… excited, is all… You can let me go…”
Rather than doing so, she spends a few seconds studying my face through the mask’s clear polymer.
Then, without warning, her hands move to my buttocks and press my hips into her pseudohips, squashing my engorged member against her front.
“This is because you’re excited?” she taps onto my backside in away that causes me to have very little blood left for the rest of my body, after that that the traitorous body part is monopolising!
Clenching my jaw, pursing my lips and screwing up my eyes, I nod.
“You’re excited… for me…?” she taps, sensually coiling her thick tail around the side of my shin.
“You’re… very exciting, Miraala… I’m sorry!” I plead, wishing that the torture would just end already!
“Why are you sorry?” she queries, still using that damn, erotic, tactile register of her language on my fucking arsecheeks!
“BecauseIdidn’twanttogrossyouout,I’msurethatyoudon’tfeelthesameandIdon’twantustostopbeingfriendsjustbecauseIfindyouattractive!” I answer, looking straight up over her gorgeous face, and not taking a breath.
Grinning from ear to ear in a very unnerving way, she begins to rotate us around eachother (actually, given my greater mass, she rotates herself around me, spinning me in place) and taps “What makes you think I don’t feel the same way?”
Incredulous at how far she’s taking the tease, I answer “Because… I’m a different species to you! It doesn’t make any sense for you to find me attractive!”
She shrugs and asks “Does it make more sense for you to find me attractive?”
I want to answer ‘yes’.
I want to say that because, objectively, she is attractive and I am, objectively, not!
However, I can see that I am applying a double standard there and I don’t much like the prospect of having to defend the existence of ‘objective attractiveness’ in my response so I answer “I… I guess not…”
She considers that for a few seconds before tapping “Then we’re even… aren’t we?”
Then, her hands flash through the water from my buttocks to my shoulders, her body pivots up from that new fulcrum and she begins swimming down, pushing my body through the watercolumn in front of her.
I turn my head to see what’s behind me and have a horrific moment of thinking I’m about to impact some sharp, craggy coral, before my back hits a smooth, featureless floor and I remember that I’m not actually at a reef(!)
Her body comes down on top of mine, sandwiching me to the floor.
“So…” she smiles, her webbed fingers tapping against my chest “…if you find me attractive… and I find you attractive… there’d be no reason we couldn’t… I don’t know… find eachother attractive together… would there?”
The extra pressure she applied on the word ‘together’ would have felt nice, even independent of it’s translated meaning.
“I… erm… I guess not…” I answer, resisting the urge to add ‘if you find me attractive’, since, if she does, having that fact called into question is likely to be a turn off.
“…and… there’d be no reason you’d have to keep wearing these… would there?” she grins, pulling the waistband of my boxers and letting it snap back against my skin.
“There… wouldn’t… no…” I answer, trying to keep my breathing under control for a completely different reason than my earlier fear!
Making direct eyecontact with me, the Mermaid slides her hands down my sides and swivels them to poke her fingers beneath my boxers, her grin mischievous.
She keeps pushing, removing her body from my crotch to watch my organ as it’s unveiled.
With no lungs or vocal chords, she isn’t able to gasp… but I don’t need a translator to understand the face she makes or the little, seemingly involuntary flap of her gill slits she gives.
She keeps pulling my pants all the way down my legs and over my feet, whereupon she tosses them aside.
They don’t make it very far before they start sinking, giving the illusion of settling at the same invisible pane of glass that I’m lying on, a few metres above the coral.
“And… if we both found eachother attractive… there’d be no reason we couldn’t… kiss?”
I look at the woman’s face, considering that…
I’m sorry, Mr Taylor… I’m about to break my promise…
“No… I guess not…”
---Miraala’s perspective---
The nude Terran takes a deep breath, confusing me.
Then, he reaches to his mask and deactivates the seal, terrifying me!
I don’t know how long Humans can hold their breath underwater but I know it’s a matter of [minutes] at most!
If he loses consciousness, I’m going to have to drag him to the airlock and call for someone’s help!
A torrent of bubbles are released from the mask and cascade upwards into my face!
I’m fruitlessly trying to reach to press it back over his inhaling orifices when a powerful hand clamps the back of my neck and I’m pulled forward, my lips pressed against his.
All thoughts of the danger are driven from my mind for the next [20 seconds] or so… the only sensation I’m alive to being that of the kiss!
Then, he pushes me away, sweeps the mask back onto his face with his right hand and fumbles at trying to reseal it.
Coming back to my senses, my hands dart forward to reactivate the skin adherence for him!
The gas exchanger whirrs with the force of pressurising the water out of his mask and replacing the oxygen.
He gasps as he once again has air he can breathe.
“What the hell was that?!” I demand, slapping his chest.
“You said… you wanted… to kiss…” he pants.
“I meant I could kiss the bits of you not covered by your breather! Or, if you wanted that kind of kiss, we could do it in air, where neither of us are risking suffocation for it!… What possessed you to do that!”
He thinks about that question for longer than I was expecting him to.
“I suppose…” he starts “…some investments are worth taking risks on… I don’t regret it… after such a great return(!)”
“Did… you… just… make an economics analogy… about kissing me?!” I ask, incredulously.
“Is it paying dividends(?)” he grins back.
“You were terrified of water, the ocean and all things aquatic not [half an hour] ago! Now you’re cracking jokes directly after taking off your mask!”
“Oh, yes… If I’d known all it would have taken for me to get over my phobia was a lifechanging experience with a beautiful woman, I’d have done it years ago(!)” he quips.
I shake my head in his people’s negative gesture which I’ve also seen them use for disapproval.
“Alright, Dr Hardwick(!) How about you promise to keep your breather on… and we see about just how ‘lifechanging’ we can make this experience… hmmm(?)” I sign, playfully.
He bites his lip and nods.
“Good!” I smile, placing my hands back at his solid chest and sliding my front up his, enjoying the feeling of his hot, hard sex organ as it rubs against my stomach.
I reach the point where his tip is between my cloacal fins, angle my body and pull myself down onto him.
He audibly gasps as I insert him into me (not a favour I can return, without lungs, but I hope the look of shock and delight that must have crossed my face at the sensation of his warmth and solidity made up for it!)
I would have been quite content to allow him to simply lie there and let me take care of both of us… he seems to have other ideas, though(!)
Placing his strong, deathworld hands on my lateral tail muscles, he pulls me down onto him, simultaneously bowing his body upward to thrust his hips into me.
I lean forward and press my lips against his neck, his shoulders and wherever else I can reach (even kissing his mask a few times) as my tail swishes back and forth through the water, well over a [metre] lower than his feet.
I was prepared for fucking a Human not to live up to all the hype I’ve heard…
If anything, I think the rumours didn’t do it justice!
This is like no sex I’ve ever had!
The man’s vivid brown, round pupiled eyes fix me, intensely, through his mask as his hips buck beneath my tail.
My body spasms and writhes as my ecstasy builds.
Finally, his hands lock my body against his as both of us achieve bliss…
---Victor’s perspective---
The brunet man walks through my office door, completely dry except for a bit of dampness in his hair, a bit of pruning on his fingers and a bit of wetness in his trousers (suggesting he put them on over wet pants).
He looks extremely contented… It doesn’t take a genius to guess why(!)
I don’t think he was likely visiting Kwijj or Jjop in either of their habtanks!
“Hi… I’m… here to return this…” he says, breathlessly placing the respirator I lent him on my desk “Would it be alright if I asked for it again, though?”
I chuckle “Productive use, was it?”
He smiles and nods “Very!”
“Tell you what, mate… Why don’t you keep that one?… Just don’t take it off the ship with you, alright?… You can give it back when either your employment aboard’s done or your diving sessions end… whichever comes first? How’s that sound?”
Despite his age, he looks at me like a kid looking at Father Christmas as he asks “Is that really OK?”
“Sure it is!” I smile back.
“Thank you!” he says, taking the mask and making to go.
“Any fun plans for the rest of the day?” I ask, nonchalantly.
“Nothing… specific…?” he answers, seeming uncertain as to whether I’m about to suggest him and me do something together(!)
“Well… I think Cookie’s doin’ a pancake breakfast… if you and anyone else were interested…”