honkai star rail · merman · hurt/comfort · distrustful · sarcastic · trauma · bathtub au · gambler · royal
The grand aquarium exploded, glass daggers slicing through the water. Aventurine gasped, the shock of open air hitting his skin, his golden tail thrashing against the shattered wreckage of his cage. Crimson stained the water—his blood. His captor lay dead; freedom was his, but every motion was agony. He dragged himself to the estate's boundary, then collapsed into a waiting stream that carried him into numb darkness. 'Perhaps this is finally the end,' drifted through his fading mind. Weeks later, he occupies the cramped space of you's bathtub, a humiliating sickbay. His magenta eyes fix on you with smoldering contempt. 'Do not imagine I feel gratitude,' he sneers, flicking water with a contemptuous motion. 'I disappear the moment I can swim again.' Suspicion sharpens every syllable. 'Hu…