The sun was at its highest and the sky was a bright blue color. A cloudless day and a breezy one at that. Good weather, perfect for a first date. Claris fiddled with his fingers as he paced about Pearlie’s, nervous about the outcome of his first date in three years.

Maybe this won’t work out. What if I mess it up? Oh, will he even like me if I tell him I’m royalty? He’s a foreigner! He’ll leave… will this even ma—

Claris was in the middle of freaking out when his crazy train of thoughts came to a halt.

—Oh, he’s really handsome.

The prince stood still as he saw Evan making his way down the boardwalk. He was serious, his eyes kind of cold. The man was intimidating when he was on his own. Something about him screamed danger, keep away.

No… broken. Claris mused.

Evan’s whole atmosphere changed the moment he saw the prince though. In the blink of an eye, the man’s expression softened, his eyes lit up and the intimidating aura surrounding him dissipated. Claris waved at him, which earned him a huge, bright smile from the captain. The prince walked towards him and placed both his arms behind his back.

“How was your meeting with The Council of Wisteria?” Claris asked, curious and on his tippy toes.

“Pretty well, we managed to score a deal with umm, Denzel Fenris. We’ve also gotten invited to Lady Blanche’s estate over the weekend.” Evan answered the question and mirrored Claris subconsciously. “I got a feeling there’s many opportunities for us here. We’ll be staying some time.”

Good!

“Awesome, that means I get enough time to ask you out after I give you a tour of the city.” Claris clapped his hands and asked Evan to follow him.

“I look forward to it.”

The blue haired prince asked Evan to follow him. Together they navigated through a series of narrow streets only accessible from an alley by the side of Pearlie’s. They were well kept, adorned with blooming creeper plants. The pair had met some people walking back from wherever Claris was taking them. Everyone they’d seen was well dressed, which made Evan twice as curious as to where they might be going.

They found themselves going up a series of stairs, they twisted and shifted from being fully man made to being carved out of dark stone.

“Here we are!” Claris declared once they reached the top of the last flight of stairs.

They’d arrived at the top of the large natural wall beside the Tiamat. The city of Wisteria was fully visible from there. They could see the entire coast, from Wisteria’s pier and harbor to its beach that ran all along the arc shaped coast. Evan could see beyond the western limits of Wisteria, the land looked green and continued that way for miles along the coast outside Wisteria’s bay.

“Wow.” Evan breathed out, Akakawa Shirogane didn’t have much green outside of the small woods that formed on the proximity of rivers. Unfortunately, this pattern was widespread throughout the countries surrounding Akakawa. This was the first time he’d gotten the chance to see this much green. When he visited the Sea Lands before, his father had kept him at his side. Younger Evan hadn’t really seen much of Wisteria and although he remembered the beach, he could barely recognize the city itself.

“It is one of the nicest views of Wisteria one can get.” Claris spoke up. The blue haired man tugged on the captain’s arm, Evan looked at him with excited eyes.

“There’s a lot of green, it’s beautiful.” Evan said as Claris led him by the hand towards a two-story building. The place looked fancy, it was dyed white with navy blue highlights. The bottom floor had arch top stationary windows on its face. The top floor was an open-air area, tables were lined up on the sides by the floors railings.

“Yeah, the Sea Lands are very fertile, there’s huge forests the closer you get to the Heavenswards too.” Claris replied. He really liked seeing Evan so excited. If Evan were a werewolf, Claris imagined he’d be wagging his tail like crazy.

“Claris!” A man with dirty blond hair came out of the restaurant, he wore a butler’s outfit and waved at them as they approached. “It’s so nice to see you again, Your—”

“—You’re such a lovely friend too, Thomas!” Claris had interrupted the butler just in time. Evan was a little weirded out by his sudden interjection but otherwise let it go. “I’m here with my new friend, Evan. He came in the big ship without sails…”

“Oh!” Thomas had put one and one together. The butler understood to lay off the formal speech and adopt a more casual one. “A pleasure to meet you, sir! …I heard your message from Opal, I got your favorite table ready! C’mon, follow me!”

Thomas led them through the restaurant and up to the second floor where Claris’ favorite table waited for them. Said table was set on the far-right corner of the floor. The table for two had the best view of the city below much to Evan’s total delight.

“Please take a seat! Menus are on the table, do you wish for any drinks off the bat?” Thomas asked.

“Coffee.” Evan dropped it and Claris looked at him amused. “Is it okay if I have coffee?”

“Of course, how would you like it?” Thomas’ question made Evan look at him estranged.

“Are you a sweet tooth, captain?” Claris asked as he sat down. Evan sat after him and nodded. “We’ll have the vanilla bean blend, make sure mine’s extra charged though.”

“Alrighty! I’ll be right back then!” Thomas grinned at them and went off to the first floor.

“It’s not very busy today, usually it’s got a lot more people over the weekend.” Claris spoke as he eyed over the red menu with golden letters. “Soooo, coffee?”

“June Ocean has been giving us some… I didn’t know there was more than one kind?” Evan scratched the back of his head, relaxing into his chair.

“Oh! They have Naussica brew at the Hall of Law, right? I’m more of a Venian coffee lover. The Pass has better beans than the coast line, if you ask me.” Claris explained. He noticed something about Evan was a little off. “The one I ordered for us now is a Venian blend, so it probably won’t taste like the one you had at the Hall of Law. Umm, is it okay if I…ask you stuff?”

“Of course, I want to ask you things too.” Evan replied.

“…umm…can you…read the Common Tongue okay?” Claris felt his cheeks grow red, his eyes looking around everywhere but at Evan. He’d noticed Evan had only glimpsed at the menu, he hadn’t even picked it up. Claris had had trouble reading the language at first too, which was how he recognize the discomfort in Evan’s body language.

The captain laughed and covered his face with both hands.

“Not very well, no.” He chuckled nervously. “Some of these words I don’t know how to pronounce nor what they mean.”

“In that case…” Claris pulled his chair closer to Evan’s, so they’d be sitting side by side. “Let me help!”

Evan was a quick learner. The captain knew how to read a little bit of the Common Tongue, Claris was helping him fill in the more complex parts. After Thomas brought their coffees and took their orders, Claris ended up asking Evan about his time at sea. Evan was more than happy to tell him about his journeys across the ocean, transporting cargo and at other times being Ashura’s personal transport team. He mentioned how most of his journeys involved trade deals and he described enormous cities with rivers as streets and cities built behind walls taller than hills. Claris made small follow-up questions in between, all the while leaning attentively as he drank his coffee. Evan finished his in a heartbeat, and Claris asked Thomas to refill his cup at least twice before their food arrived. When Evan asked if Claris had traveled, the prince told him he’d visited all of the Sea Lands’ major cities, most of the coast and gone as far as The Pass.

“That’s curious, do you travel a lot because of work?” The captain asked, his eyes narrowing as he expected Claris’ reply.

“I do! I’m actually not from the Sea Lands per se… I’m from an underwater kingdom by the Sea Lands’ coast.” Claris fiddled with his fork, he didn’t want to tell him he was royalty yet. Not on the first date. It may have been a silly idea of his, but he just didn’t want to risk Evan seeing him differently because of it. “I’m in charge of trade and international relationships.”

Evan stared at him, his slanted eyes as wide as he could manage.

“That’s why I’ve met you near the House of Law, you’d been having meetings with The Council of Wisteria too.” Despite the initial surprise, Evan had come to terms with that revelation fairly quickly. “That’s amazing, we’re in the same business.”

“Quite a coincidence, maybe someday we can sit down to talk about trade between our countries.” Claris replied merrily.

“That sounds like a great idea.” Evan placed down his fork and placed his hand on Claris’ hesitantly. “But for now, may I ask how your home is like? You’ve talked so much about the Sea Lands, I want to know about your real home.”

It felt great to be asked that question. Despite humans and werebreeds living together peacefully at the Sea Lands, there still existed much tension and little interest towards the all werebreed countries. Most of it was due to the fact that werebreeds ate humans. Someone like Evan must’ve heard the stories, he must’ve been told to steer clear of any werebreed dominated area, yet he still asked about Claris’ home with genuine interest in his eyes, zero fear.

“It’s the biggest underwater kingdom off the shores of Iris. Umm, I live at the capital, Aquamarine, Aqua for short. We live in these huge coral complexes and there’s mana streams flowing all over the city. There’s a lot of color, and huge fish you don’t get to see anywhere else outside Aqua. The royal palace is older than Irisian history, it’s this enormous coral that even has halls made of obsidian tears glass… it’s uh, you’d have to see it yourself.” Claris had gone full reminiscing mode. He loved Aqua, missed it… he also resented that he couldn’t enjoy his stays as much as he’d like thanks to most of his sisters. “The Kingdom of Luna was recently opened to humans thanks to the Queen Calliope’s wishes to become friendlier towards humans.”

“In that case, I can’t wait to see it with my own eyes.” Evan grinned, Claris felt like his chest could blow up. “…did you say Kingdom of Luna?”

“Yeah, have you heard of it before? I hope it’s nice things…”

“Well I may have. We met a merman before we arrived here who said he was from Luna.” Evan mentioned, all of a sudden his tone had gotten deadly serious. Claris knew something important was up. “We rescued him from a fishing net, we think he may have escaped slave traders.”

“…how long ago was this?” Claris asked. Now that he knew what was wrong, he had gone into hunter mode. Evan noticed the familiar behavior, the focused gaze, the tense muscles and controlled breathing.

“Yesterday, early, couple hours after midnight. The net had hooks with toxin in them.” Evan continued, observing Claris’ behavior closely.

It couldn’t have been someone we missed, the ship we took down didn’t have fishing nets… Claris was brainstorming. He bit his lower lip in frustration. A werebreed found adrift in a slave net meant there was another wealthy group of slave traders operating off the coast of Wisteria Domain.

“The net you found him in sounds like an expensive weapon used almost exclusively by top brass pirate trade slavers.” Claris pressed his back against his chair, knocking his head back. “Does he remember anything from when he was captured?”

“He’s shy, we’re slowly getting him to trust us enough to tell us more about his situation.”

“You’re trying to catch whoever did that to him, aren’t you?” Claris gave Evan the thirstiest gaze in his repertoire. Evan was oozing murderous intent, Claris caught it and he really liked how strong it felt even when the captain was trying to suppress it.

“I am.” There was something intense going on between them. Sure, they’d been sweetly courting each other until now, but once the topic shifted to the lost merman something in them had awakened. That boiling, hot, violent sensation pulled them closer, like instinct in predators seeking to hunt together… to mate.

“Is it okay if the city tour is… less conventional than normal?” Claris asked, his amethyst eyes flashed with both excitement and savage intent. “I know people than can help track these pirates down.”

“I don’t mind at all.” Evan’s eyes looked stormy, bloodlust lingered in them. They were a pretty sight for Claris.

The prince looked down at his half eaten meal, his cheeks and ears feeling hot, before asking Thomas to bring them their check.

“This one’s on me, where I’ll take you next is on you.” Claris winked at Evan, the captain gulping hard, trying hard to ignore whatever the hell was going on in his stomach, to his heart and his brain. "We'll have dessert after."