Abyssal (ManxMan)

Clash

Clash 

Kai put his sealed box in the back of the SUV and then went inside the house to fetch more boxes from the kitchen. 

"Where are we moving to?" he asked his mother as he moved through open doors. In the midst of the chaos, he hadn't thought to ask her before. But as he packed his belongings into boxes, it suddenly occurred to him that they really was moving away from the only life he'd ever known. As the son of an Ambassador, he should have been used to constant moving and relocation, but his mother had successfully sustained her position as the US Ambassador to Turkey for over twenty years. Which meant that he was moving for the very first time in his life. He was born in this country, and this area near the Black Sea was all he'd ever known, but now he had to leave it all behind, including his friend, Hakan. His chest tightened unbearably. 

"Somewhere far from the sea." 

Kai abruptly halted in his steps, then backtracked to the kitchen where his mother was furiously dumping her favorite china into a box with little care and no plastic wrapping. Since they'd woken up to continue packing this morning, an unbudging frown had drawn her brows together with no signs of disappearing. Her temperament resembled that of a tea kettle on fire, waiting to hiss. 

"Then why did you live right on top of a sea if it's so dangerous?" he couldn't help but ask incredulously, one brow arched. 

Seriously, this was poor planning on his mother's part. If the condition to awaken his powers was a life-threatening situation in a body of water, then his mother should have done everything in her power to keep him away from seas or lakes or even hotel swimming pools. It was what he would have done if the situation were reversed. 

"It was your father's decision to live near the sea. He insisted you needed the water to... live," she said without looking at him. 

Kai pictured a scenario where he grew up far from the sea, and never learned to swim. Would he be the same person he was today? Would he have even known what he was missing? Or would he have instinctively missed it, because of the merman blood coursing through his blood? 

Since discovering his heritage, his overwhelming love for the sea made sense to him. Whenever he was given the choice between going for a swim or doing something else, he always, always picked swimming. It drove Hakan mad, whose first choice of physical activity was a sword duel. 

Either way, it was too late for such talk now. All they could do now was avoid any future problems by staying away from the sea. He consoled himself in the fact that he now knew the truth. 

"Funny how a man that I never saw had so much influence over my life." he muttered as he left the kitchen and headed for the car. He saw that he needed to rearrange the twenty other boxes already in the trunk, so he set the one in his arms down on the ground and start shuffling the ones in the car around. 

"A prince of the sea performing manual labour. How mundane." 

Startled, Kai whirled around, his heart lodged firmly in his throat and he saw him. The breath whooshed out of his lungs in one go and his eyes went wide. 

Not too far from where he was standing, a dark-haired giant of a man stood. Never in his life had Kai seen someone so shockingly tall and broad-shouldered before, with rippling muscles that begged to be caressed just to see if they were really as hard as they looked. He had to be at least six feet five, at least. Kai took in the chiseled face, full lips, and broad shoulders that tapered into a thin waist with slight envy, and he couldn't help but be conscious of his own slight physique. He was at least thirty, Kai guessed. The man was not handsome. No, handsome was not a strong enough word to describe him. He was beautiful, like a da Vinci statue made to absolute perfection. It was inhuman.