money to be made

Striding confidently into his shop, Emilio was delighted to see the big tank. He had wanted it to stretch around the 3 walls of his storefront, with a small entryway in the back that led up to his apartments. Upstairs, there was a top that could be taken on and off for feeding. Locked, of course from the outside. To make sure Leo couldn't escape through the tops of the tank, he had little steel bars protecting the gap between the lights and water. In all, it was a very beautiful and grand creation, with more than thousands of dollars poured into it. Eventually, he wanted to add more fishes in there, bright colourful fish that only accented Leo's beautiful colouring.

Shuffling over to the glass, Emiliano admired the little underwater scene, searching immediately for the creature. This was his first time ever taking care of a pet fish for an extended period of time, and it made him a little bit nervous. Most people could experiment on the goldfish that seemed to be so readily apparent in pet stores. "Olááá !! " Emilio was in an incredibly chipper mood now that his fish had been moved and stored, and he waved gleefully at the grumpy creature that had been staring at him. "What a lovely tank you have!"

Bouncing along with his captive, Emilio smiled wickedly at his little friend. He was just so cute when he pouted like that. Striking a match, Emilio stuck a cigarette in his mouth as he lit it, sucking gently to start it. Waving the fire out, he flicked the smoldering stick towards the garbage bin, missing it by a mile. Figuring he could clean it up later, Emilio made the rounds, inspecting all three walls of the massive tank. He had knocked out a back wall to make it as open as it was, and had relinquished much of the storage room for his packages.

All water under the bridge for now; He could always buy out the building next to him and turn that into another tank extention, and another warehouse. "Well. Yes. I'm afraid I don't have enough money to give you a tank as big as the sea. Do you want friends to sit with though? I can buy you little fishes to swim with. Or eat, if you eat those..." He was thinking a nice big school of those cute little neon tetra fishes. They were awfully fragile looking, but 100 of those little creatures would look nice in such a big tank. Those and some more brightly coloured animals. "A shark, maybe, even." Would a shark want to eat Leo? Probably. Maybe not a shark, then.

Emilio tilted his head, not catching onto Leo's meaning. He looked around uncertainly, wondering if a shark had actually been slipped into the tank somehow. Finding it still very bare, Emilio shrugged it off as some kind of expression. Flashing his rakish smile once again, Emilio was back to being perky. Drawing a breath on his cigarette, smoke trailed out of his nose as he thought. Taking a few cautionary steps, he went up and down the glass tank, admiring the way the water made the shadows on his floor dance. He had heaters installed on intermittent points along the tank, hopefully enough to warm it up. Tiny glittery rocks lined the bottom of the tank, and it occurred to him that a tank of this size would be horrible to clean.

"How messy are you, anyway?" He wouldn't get a goldfish to keep Leo company, he had heard they were very messy and very noxious when left in their tank for too long. Obviously, a whole person would produce more waste than a teeny fish, and Leo could only imagine how dirty a tank would get in a month. Well, he certainly didn't trust Leo enough to go in to clean it himself, and wondered if a hired help would survive the adventure. His hand automatically came up to the fresh scab on his shoulder, his fingers tracing the deep gauge. That would definitely scar up his nice body. "You're lucky I don't pull your teeth out."

A handful of employees were bustling around, trying to organise and re-sort things. Emilio had voted to dump the misplaced things in a pile in the centre of the room until the tank was situated. He didn't have very many people working for him, just enough to make sure he didn't have to clean things himself.

Wandering closer to the glass of the tank, Emilio raised his arms above his head, folding them over and pressing himself against the glass. He stared back at Leo, a slow smile spreading across his mouth. His little fish looked ... Strangely attractive, floating around in his tank like that. Emilio had never ever been attracted to any type of animal, merman or not, and the idea of wanting to bed a fish person was a little alarming, but as long as he just kept it in his head, there was no harm, right? Even so, Emilio shifted a little uncomfortably, one arm dropping to subtly try to adjust himself. Maybe he would just retire a bit earlier than usual tonight. Oh, but he had put a little window to the tank into his bedroom, hadn't he? Maybe not, then. "You look so cute in there, I'm so glad you decided to stay and visit."

Hands on his hips, Emiliano watched his merman drift away, creating a very obvious distance between them. His eyes narrowed, a little unused to being ... well, unloved. There was something deep seated in him that was restless if the thing he was after didn't love him in some manner. Even just long enough to let him bed them, that was enough for him. He needed to fuck the merman. He needed it. To prove something to himself, and the nasty creature. He was lovable. He was!

Trotting back and forth for a moment, Emilio waited for a moment, perking back up when Leo came back down from wherever he went off too. Both pressed up against the glass, Emilio stared back at the floaty little fish, his own dark eyes meeting with the blue ones. One hand came up, pressing flat against the thick glass. His breath had fogged up the spot in front of him, and the pirate pulled back for a moment, an idea sparking in his mind as he looked up with a rakish smile. Drawing a heart in the middle of his fog, he wrote te amo in smaller letters underneath.