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saturnslandfill · 3 days ago

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GLASS BETWEEN US Pairing: Merman Rafayel x Scientist Reader

author note: ive been into love and deepspace recently, so here ya go hehe

wc: 4,870

───⋆⋅ ☾⋅⋆ ───

You took the job because you needed a way out.

It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t even particularly well-paid. But the offer came with minimal paperwork, restricted clearance, and one very clear instruction: ask no questions.

So you accepted.

The facility—remote, underground, heavily secured—was the kind of place not listed on maps. It didn’t exist according to the public record, and yet it buzzed with life: researchers, guards, engineers, medics. They all moved with the quiet, tense urgency of people doing work that couldn’t be acknowledged outside these walls.

Your first day was a blur of orientation. Non-disclosure clauses, retinal scans, and procedural briefings stacked with redacted pages. You caught glimpses of terms like “specimen,” “cognitive divergence,” “aquatic containment.”

No one told you what exactly was inside Lab C. Just that you’d be assisting with long-term observation. You assumed it would be another mutated marine species pulled up from some trench, something grotesque and territorial. Maybe even dangerous.

But the truth was stranger.

When they finally led you through the corridors and into the observation chamber, you expected cold steel and sharp smells.

Instead, the room was quiet. Dim. The tank was massive—more an aquarium than a cell—bathed in low light that shimmered across the walls like waves. The water inside was dark, cold, impossibly deep. You stepped forward, clutching your tablet, already preparing to log oxygen levels and salinity.

That was when you saw him.

Not a specimen.

Not a subject.

Something else.

Your breath caught before you even registered why.

And just like that, the job you took to escape your life became the one thing you couldn’t walk away from.

You didn’t know it then, but that first glance would mark the start of something irreversible. Something that would pull you under, inch by inch, breath by breath.

The moment you saw him, your surroundings blurred into static. The beeping monitors, murmuring technicians, even the weight of your data tablet—all of it fell away.

Inside the isolation tank, a living impossibility drifted in manufactured saltwater. Designed to emulate the hadal zone, the deepest part of the ocean, the containment system glowed softly under rows of harsh overhead lighting. The glass was nearly ten inches thick.

He floated at the bottom, not quite asleep but clearly subdued. His body was serpentine, a long and powerful tail coiled beneath him like an anchor. Its surface shimmered with deep cobalt and streaks of pearlescent silver, every movement creating subtle waves of reflected light. Even now, in apparent stillness, he seemed to shift with the current, his tail flicking faintly like a ribbon suspended in water.

The upper half of his body resembled a human form—broad shoulders, strong arms—but with a sleekness and symmetry that felt engineered rather than natural. It was hard not to stare. Harder still to assign him the term specimen, as though he were just another data point.

His face was unnerving in its beauty. Too elegant. Too calm. Dark purple hair floated around his head, surrounding him like a halo. Thin, branching scars ran near the gills along his neck—signs of struggle? Or surgery? You couldn’t tell. Around his wrists were red rings where restraints had dug in, proof that something here had gone very wrong before it got quiet.

You took one step closer to the glass.

His eyes opened.

Bright blue, slit-pupiled, and utterly alien, they fixed on yours with uncanny stillness. Not vague awareness—recognition. As if you were something known. Something expected.

You didn’t realize you were holding your breath until Dr. Havers spoke behind you.

“Sedated but semi-lucid,” he muttered. “You’ll get used to it.”

You doubted that.

You didn’t look away.

Neither did he.

Your formal role changed within forty-eight hours. A sudden shift, approved without ceremony. You were now responsible for the nocturnal observation cycle—Lab C, 2300 to 0400. Solo rotation. Minimal contact. Maximum discretion.

It wasn’t framed as special. If anything, it felt procedural. But there was an unspoken reason behind it. He responded to you—consistently, uniquely, and visibly. While other personnel were met with either silence or aggression, your presence generated stability. Lowered agitation. Reduced biomarker volatility.

“You’re not a risk variable,” Havers said, handing you a new clearance badge. “He recognizes that. Use it.”

That first night on shift, you sat alone behind the curved monitor console, tank lights dimmed to deep ocean blue. The lab echoed with the soft churn of water filters and the occasional mechanical click of the oxygen injectors. You opened a new file. Began a log.

SESSION 01 2303 HRS — Subject floats near lower quadrant. Motion minimal. Eyes open, tracking. 2317 HRS — Approaches glass at station-facing side. Remains within one meter. 0010 HRS — Mimics observer posture. Arms crossed. Head tilted. Intentional or coincidental?

The entries became more granular with each passing hour. You logged pupil dilation, fin twitching, shoulder alignment. The angle of his fingers against the glass. The way he followed the rhythm of your breathing when you leaned forward. Occasionally, he'd trace your silhouette on the other side of the glass, following your hand movements with uncanny precision.

He blinked less often when watching you, and more when others entered the lab—a strange, deliberate contrast. He began to tap his claws rhythmically against the tank wall when you wrote, a pattern that shifted in tempo depending on your pace. When you stood up, he rose. When you sat, he settled. A mirror, distorted by water and light, but growing clearer by the day.

By your third shift, the notes had started to blur.

SESSION 03 2248 HRS — Subject at station wall prior to entry. Appears to anticipate schedule. 2350 HRS — Subject mirrors tablet tapping. When observer writes, subject responds with claw motions against tank interior. 0104 HRS — Sustained eye contact. Three full minutes. Observer initiated break. Subject remained locked in gaze.

You began categorizing his behaviors under new terms. Not hostile. Not adaptive. Instead: intentional. Self-directed. Curious.

And eventually: fixated.

There was a pattern now, undeniable and precise. Every time you entered the room, he was already waiting. Every time you left, he followed your departure with slow, measured turns around the glass, as though mapping your absence.

Your notes became less technical. More observational. And then, more personal.

You started writing things you didn’t submit to the shared logs. Quiet questions scrawled in the margins of your private notebook.

Why only me? How much does he understand? Is this intelligence, or attention? Or is it something else?

You didn’t know the answers. Not yet.

But you couldn’t stop asking.

You hadn’t planned to speak to him. You weren’t even sure he could comprehend language.

But on the sixth night, everything was too quiet. The hum of the facility, the subdued flicker of the monitors—it all pressed in like static. You were tired. Frustrated. Your head rested on your folded arms, your mind drifting.

“I hate this place,” you muttered.

The water stirred.

Your eyes shot up. He was near the glass. Closer than before. His hands hovered just beneath the surface, claws relaxed. He tilted his head, as if listening.

Then he repeated it.

“I… hate… this… place.”

His voice was strange—raspy, resonant, shaped by a throat unused to speech. But he’d matched your cadence. Your tone. Even the way you’d slurred the words.

You stood.

“You understood that?”

He moved his mouth again. Slower. Testing the rhythm of speech.

“You… are… different.”

The room felt suddenly warmer. Or maybe colder.

Maybe both.

From that night on, your interactions became more complex.

Every time you entered, he was already waiting. You’d sit. He’d drift toward the glass, his body weaving gently behind him, as if pulled by invisible threads.

He began to mimic you in increasingly specific ways. When you tapped on your tablet, he tapped the tank wall. When you shifted in your seat, he mirrored the motion, down to the tilt of your head.

Researchers noticed. They logged it as proof of successful imprinting.

But you knew the difference between mimicry and obsession.

There was an intensity in his gaze that couldn't be dismissed. It was full of purpose. Of attention. He was learning you—not just your behaviors, but your moods. Your microexpressions. He watched your fingers when they trembled. He watched your lips when you breathed.

You tried to maintain boundaries.

But then the dreams started.

The dreams began as fragments.

At first, they were flashes—flashes of cold, of water creeping into your lungs, of sound that wasn’t quite voice but still carried meaning. Pressure without pain. Depth without fear.

Then they became immersive.

You were no longer watching from behind glass. You were inside the tank—or somewhere like it. A vast ocean with no surface and no floor. Everything shimmered in gradients of blue and black, lit by pulses of distant light. You were floating, suspended, and something was circling you.

You felt it before you saw him.

His presence. Electric. Intentional. Like gravity made flesh.

In the dream, Rafayel didn’t speak with words. He moved closer with the slowness of a creature that knew time was irrelevant. His fingers brushed your shoulder, your wrist, your waist—not with heat but with a chill so profound it burned.

You were never afraid.

Sometimes he held you. Other times, he watched you from below, his eyes glowing brighter than the deep. Always silent. Always there.

And always, just before waking, he would place his hand against your chest and say:

You belong here.

You’d wake gasping. Covered in sweat. The room dry, your lungs aching with the ghost of imagined water. And you’d feel it: a residual pulse. As if part of you hadn’t returned.

It was nearly 3:00 a.m. when the emergency alarms shattered the stillness.

You were off-shift. Sleeping. Or trying to. The facility-issued cot in your quarters was thin, the recycled air too dry. But exhaustion didn’t matter—because when the klaxon blared and the lights above your bed pulsed red, your heart dropped into your stomach.

Containment breach — Lab C.

You didn’t stop to think. You didn’t change. You threw on your coat over your sleep shirt and sprinted barefoot through the corridors, barely registering the startled faces of guards and technicians scrambling toward lockdown protocols.

When you reached the lab, the glass was already webbed with cracks.

Inside, the tank churned like a storm-tossed sea. Rafayel was in full fury—no longer the silent, observant being from your shifts. He was something else now. Magnificent and terrifying. His tail whipped with bone-cracking force, slamming the reinforced walls, again and again. The steel supports groaned. Water frothed with foam and light. Machinery sparked along the edges. A lab tech screamed as a panel exploded.

Two guards aimed stun-rods at the tank. “We have to subdue him—!”

“No—!” You pushed past them, breathless. “Let me try first!”

They hesitated—just long enough.

You stepped into the observation chamber, doors sealing behind you. A protective barrier of glass separated you from the tank, but it felt far too thin. Rafayel turned—spun mid-air like a coil of silk and muscle—and slammed his claws into the tank wall right in front of you.

You didn’t flinch.

You raised your hand. Slowly. Palms open.

“Rafayel,” you said softly, almost whispering, “Stop.”

His body stilled, suspended in violent motion.

The roar of the alarms, the hum of the oxygen pumps, even the buzz of the failed lighting—all of it faded into the background.

His breath came in sharp, rapid bursts. His eyes glowed like deep-sea lanterns. He hovered there, inches from the glass, claws still pressed hard enough to screech against it. But he wasn’t attacking now. He was… watching.

You stepped closer, until you were nearly touching the tank wall. Your hand hovered where his claws had struck just moments before.

“It’s me,” you said.

He blinked.

Then, without a sound, he floated backward. A slow, deliberate motion. One hand slid down the tank’s interior, leaving a trail of pale bioluminescence behind it. His tail coiled gently beneath him. The water settled. Foam dissipated. The light in his eyes dimmed—not dulled, just… quieter.

And then, unbelievably, he pressed his forehead to the glass.

Directly across from yours.

The room held its breath.

He closed his eyes.

You mirrored him.

The silence stretched.

Behind you, through the speaker system, you barely caught Dr. Havers’ voice: “Subject de-escalated. Immediate threat withdrawn.”

The guards didn’t speak. They didn’t move. No one did.

Because they saw what you saw.

He hadn’t calmed because of sedatives. Or fear.

He had calmed because of you.

And something in your chest cracked—splintered under the weight of a realization you weren’t ready for.

Whatever Rafayel was…

He wasn’t just watching you.

He needed you.

After the incident, you were called in for multiple evaluations. The staff expressed concern. His reactions were too focused. Too specific.

“Forming a fixation,” they said. “You’re a variable he’s centering around. It might become dangerous.”

But you didn’t feel afraid.

Each night, he was waiting. Sometimes he pressed his hand to the glass, palm to palm. Sometimes he mirrored your face until it felt like looking into a distorted reflection.

You broke protocol.

“Why me?” you asked him softly.

He moved close.

“You… are mine.”

Your heart thudded. You stood frozen.

“You don’t know me.”

He smiled, faint but assured.

“I remember you.”

You shook your head.

“That’s impossible.”

He only repeated, quietly: “You were always coming here.”

You stopped sleeping.

Each night, your dreams blended into your shifts. You began bringing small things into the lab. A book. A ring. A scarf. He noticed all of them. Watched each object with careful interest.

One night, you left a pen on the console.

When you returned the next night, it was inside the tank—placed delicately in a shrine of coral, shells, and scavenged materials. A gift.

You didn’t say anything.

But your chest ached with something unnamed.

And he knew.

The lab was quiet when you arrived, as it always was during your late shifts. But tonight, something felt heavier in the air. As you keyed into the monitoring station, you sensed him waiting.

He was already pressed to the glass, body still, eyes glowing faintly in the dim blue light. His gaze locked on you the instant you stepped into the room. You hadn’t even set your tablet down before he moved—slowly, fluidly—closer, so close that his breath fogged the glass.

Your heart pounded.

You didn’t need to say anything. He already knew you were listening.

“Free me,” he said.

The words were clear. Measured. Spoken not as a plea, but as a promise.

You stared at him, your throat tightening. “I can’t.”

He didn’t move away. He simply watched you, eyes scanning your face like he could read what you didn’t say.

“You don’t belong here either,” he murmured, voice soft and steady. “Not with them.”

He pressed a hand to the glass, and instinctively, without thinking, you lifted yours. His fingers aligned with yours, claws brushing the barrier.

“They see a cage,” he whispered. “You see me.”

The words didn’t sound rehearsed. They sounded like something he’d been waiting to say for a long time.

You swallowed hard. “If I open that tank, they’ll—”

He tilted his head, interrupting gently. “They fear what they cannot hold.”

You felt the heat of your own breath fog the glass. Your hand stayed pressed to his.

“Take it away,” Rafayel whispered. “Let me show you what you already know.”

The glass vibrated faintly under your palm. Not from his strength. From something else. Something deeper. A resonance that pulsed in your bones.

Outside the tank, you were still an employee, a researcher, a name on a schedule.

Inside the tank, he was waiting.

And in that moment, the glass no longer felt like protection.

It felt like a wall you weren’t sure you wanted to keep.

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