#this pairs kind of hilariously with my hc that human johnny cannot swim

[cobrakatharsis]

au where johnny is the most popular attraction in the aquarium (maybe he's a mermaid or a snake creature ??) and daniel is his favorite trainer

i’m so sorry it takes me SO DANG LONG to answer asks i am the slowest writer the world has ever seen

HOWEVER. i absolutely love this idea, anon, you are fantastic

johnny was owned privately by one terry silver in what was a fairly extensive collection of illegal exotic “pets”, though none were anywhere near as interesting as johnny himself. he’d been a gift for silver’s lover, john kreese, and subsequently seized when kreese was arrested for something or another in the midst of a spat with silver and snitched on johnny’s existence.

he’d thought johnny would be put down immediately, if not seized for experimentation, but instead johnny was brought to a sanctuary aquarium where many large ocean mammals are being rehabilitated and researched, and countless other large displays attract the public with fish and creatures and talks by the scientists who work there.

daniel isn’t particularly passionate about the ocean - it had more been a job of convenience, getting an internship here after moving to california with his ma in his senior year - but he’s grown to love it all, grown to be a deeply popular trainer with the animals and with the public, and he’d been immediately fascinated with johnny. johnny is like nothing anyone’s ever seen, and he’s beautiful. he could look almost human if you only looked at his top half and didn’t look too closely, but at his waist his pale skin gives way to dark scales in blood-red and black and gold, stretching into a long tail - roughly three times his torso length - that curls and dances in the water. his fins where his hips would be were he human, and at the end of his tail, are intricate and frilled, glittering champagne like his hair.

his eyes are sharp and dark. they look almost all-black to the untrained eye, but daniel knows they’re really blue - a circle of pale colour, if you’re able to look closely enough, which matches the hue of his skin at the edges of his gills and his lips and his sharp fingernails. he’s cold to the touch in most places, especially his hands and face, but his blood pumps warm.

they’d thought him incapable of speech, at first. he’d come to the sanctuary afraid and sullen, visibly sickly and thin. utterly silent, and very still. he’d been kept for the last few months or so in a small container of cold, stagnant water in a dark storage unit, hidden away like an illegal firearm by his previous owner terry silver to try and prevent his retrieval by police, so the first grasp at his trust had been daniel and the rest of the staff getting him into his new enclosure. they’d started out in a private one in the research and rehabilitation facility, sprawling and deep and full of safe enrichment, kept warm by heaters, and daniel had been assigned to be his trainer. he brought johnny food and spent all hours of the day with him, talking to johnny almost all the while and aiming to earn his trust. he called johnny goldie, since they didn’t have any other name for him, and daniel liked to compliment the gold in his hair and tail.

the first word johnny had spoken had been his own name, to daniel. he’d swam up to the surface of the water one day, where daniel was lounging on the decking beside the edge of the pool, writing on a clipboard and chatting to johnny like he usually did about anything that came to mind. he jumped when johnny reached out and touched his ankle with a cold, gentle hand, unused to johnny coming so close, but smiled broadly.

“hey, goldie!” he’d said. “you hungry? or you just exploring?”

johnny tilted his head, dark eyes affixed on daniel almost nervously. shyly. “…j—johnny.”

daniel’s jaw had dropped. johnny had explained in stilted speech that he thought it was only fair daniel got to know his name, since he’d told johnny his on the first day they’d met - “hey, man. my name’s daniel. i’m gonna be looking after you, okay?” - and from there he’d never really stopped talking. his personality, a little prickly but funny and sincere and endearingly spacey, had begun to shine through, and daniel was even more enchanted by him.

johnny started swimming around more in his enclosure, exploring, and even finally started playing, engaging with the weighted rings daniel tossed in the water for him or the inflatable balls they played catch with. he beamed with his gorgeous smile - dark eyes squinting, sharp teeth bared - when daniel climbed into the water with him to swim and play or just paddle his feet at the edge, and he even began climbing out of the water and shuffling across the deck - excited and cute like a seal - to curl up next to daniel’s side on the deck when he was sat there working.

the two of them immediately became a sensation when johnny agreed to be moved to a public enclosure when he was ready, engaging with the public past the glass during opening hours. he waves at people and swims to greet them or just examine them up close, sometimes smiling at them and sometimes glaring, pulling faces, dancing around to the wonder-filled gasps of children. he and daniel put on shows, playing together or swimming together or doing tricks, making johnny beam and laugh, and daniel does talks and answers everyone’s excited fascinated questions about johnny as his handler - but johnny only ever speaks to the staff he trusts - most frequently to daniel - and only when there’s no one else around to hear.

silver and kreese hadn’t allowed him to speak, he confesses quietly to daniel one night, when they’re lay together on the sloped deck with the water lapping at their feet. they hadn’t allowed him to do much. he was decorative. and not even a wanted decoration, if his abandonment in his last few months outside of the sanctuary was anything to go by. silver hated him.

“i think you’re perfect,” daniel tells him, and means it. he doesn’t mention the money that johnny brings into the sanctuary with all of the people that come to see him, nor the entertainment he provides for them. instead, he rests his cheek against johnny’s hair - impossibly soft when it’s dry - and tells him, “you’re my best friend.” johnny presses closer to him, clinging to daniel like he often does, and daniel learns another new thing about johnny - he can cry.

he learns a lot of new things about johnny when they’re curled together like that every night. more details about what life had been like with silver and kreese, bits and pieces of a story that always breaks johnny to pieces as he explains in agonised whispers that he hadn’t always been like this. he hadn’t always been a monster. but daniel also learns that he certainly doesn’t kiss like a monster, just like he doesn’t do anything like a monster. he kisses slow and soft and shy, whines sweetly as daniel takes the lead. his lips are cold, as is every bit of skin daniel touches, but he warms up quick, and he looks even more human like that, cheeks and lips and chest flushed blood-warm and pinkish. eyes sweet and blue up close.

he’s in an especially good mood for the shows the next day. and the crowd explodes with wonder when johnny surges his torso gracefully up out of the water to catch daniel by the shoulders and lean up to gently nuzzle their noses together, beaming as daniel holds him securely by the waist. he swirls in the water like a drop of ink, long tail twirling in a blur of red and black and gold, when he drops back in, and daniel beams right back at him, raising his arm to the audience’s praise of his and johnny’s ‘special connection’. it feels special. it feels like everything.