Fantasy romance short. A merman saves a fisherman from drowning, once.
4k, rated T. Just a cute one here with a merman who saves a fisherman from drowning, and the fisherman saving him back! There are descriptions of fear and drowning in this, but no other particular content warnings.
Adapted from a Tweetfic.
Years ago, when the dock worker had only been a young man, their boat had gotten caught in a torrent and been thrown overboard. Velley remembers the frantic lights in the water and he remembers, too, hearing the boy’s mother and brother call out for him from the deck of their boat, trying so hard to find him in the roiling waters, the skies thundering above their head, falling rain further clouding any vision they had in the dark.
His floating clothing had been torn on the edge of the boat so they couldn’t even search for its bright yellow colour in the dark, and Velley had taken pity on their helpless cries and took the boy under his arm, pushing him into the line of one of their searching lights.
Barely conscious, shivering in the cold water (and yet still so warm in Velley’s hands!) he’d looked blankly and uncomprehendingly back at Velley as he pushed him gently through the floating ring the boat had thrown out for him, keeping almost under the water, remaining out of sight.
“Wait,” he’d coughed out through brine-stained lips, a new bruise blossoming across his cheek.
Velley had sunk beneath the water to watch them tow him back to the ship, still looking searchingly back for his saviour until they’d hauled him out of the water and wrapped him up neat and warm, out of the way of the storm.
He’s frightened of the water, now — back then, he’d been a fisherman, and now he only ever works on the docks even his family set to the water to fish. Velley wishes he would come out. He wishes he would swim, even.
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he will walk out and stand on the pebbled shore with water washing around his feet and smoke one of those things — a cigarette — and stare out at the sea.
Velley thinks he’s searching for him, at times, watching for him the same way that Velley watches him, the way he always keeps an eye out for him. He wishes he could be angry that the dockworker is scared of the sea, scared of what would bring him closer to Velley’s grasp — he remembers his face in the waves, cheeks stained with tears and sea water, chapped lips parted. His eyes had been so brown.
Velley understands his fear, nonetheless.
Once, as little more than a hatchling, a high wave had thrown him up upon a rock, and nearly a day went past as he dried out and choked under the sweltering sun, his skin aching and threatening to peel off in flakes, his body trembling, his throat shuddering, before the tide came high enough to save him.
They share two halves of the same fear.
Velley has seen the little amulets some of the landwalkers wear, two halves of a shape that slot together — he doubts they’re so heavy as the fears he and his counterpart wear around their necks. Even shallow waters fill Velley with remembered agony — they do the same to the dockman, too, he expects.
The glow of the dockworker’s cigarettes are subtle, not bright, on nights when the sky is dark and even the moon doesn’t shine off the surface of the water, but they serve as beacons for him, soft orange glows that light up the dockworker’s dark eyes and his downcast features.
In the water, no fire burns.
“Come to me,” he says once, when the wind is blowing from the bay in toward the shore on one of those dark and lonely nights, where it seems that they two are the only people left alive. “Come into the water with me.”
The dockworker even hears him, he thinks.
The cigarette is drawn away from his mouth and in the scant light he sees the dockworker’s eyes search the still waters, flitting back and forth, but even though Velley’s head is just above the water, the dockworker’s eyes aren’t so good as his without light, and he does not see him.
When the dockworker sighs, shakes his head, and turns away, Velley’s heart pangs.
He watches him trudge up the beach, out of reach of the water once more.
* * *
Used to be Fred Weddleton wasn’t afraid of nothing and nobody, but that was when he was young and stupid and didn’t wear his life jacket tight enough.
These days, he’s not scared of much, but being in the water makes his skin feel tight and his chest feel full. He couldn’t be away from the sea — it runs in his blood, he thinks, as much as it runs in the currents. The smell of the sea spray, of wet rope and rubber, even the stench off the nets when his family bring ’em in — even with smaller and smaller hauls as the years go by — that’s the smell of home.
He remembers it in flashes.
He remembers Taylor’s yelp as he got his fingers caught on one of the boat hooks behind him — he remembers thinking it was more serious in the storm, that Taylor had cried out because he was really hurt, remembers skidding on the soaking deck as the boat pitched. He remembers the sound the jacket had made as it tore, that high-pitched, plasticky nylon rip, remembers the bruise on the side of his thigh and his whole head spinning as he tipped right over.
He remembers how fucking cold the water was, how it bubbled around him like it was boiling.
He remembers gasping, treading hard at the water because with the waves going so hard he couldn’t just lie back and float on top, especially without his jacket — he remembers it getting harder and harder, remembers the sting of salt in his eyes and the back of his fucking throat.
It had gotten hazy.
He’d lost track of where the boat even was, struggling to keep his eyes open with the salt stinging at them and the crash of waves into his open mouth, salt on his tongue and making him gag — his hands had felt so heavy in the water and his body had been so fucking tired. He’d known he had to fight, but as the seconds had ticked by it had been harder and harder to remember, to know he should fight to keep his head over the water, the whole thing so dark and so confusing —
He remembers cold, slimy palms that were ridged in the way no human’s are. He remembers huge, dark eyes and a mane of kelpish hair, remembers a face that by all rights should have scared him, but in the moment only soothed his fears. It’d been so goddamn gentle with Fred, trashing in the water.
He wanted to ask its name, if it had one, wanted to talk, to ask why, to ask what it even as, but he’d been dizzy and half-drowned as it looped him through the life ring, and God knows Taylor and Momma would never have believed him.
He thinks he sees it, sometimes, all these years on.
He wonders if it thinks about him.
“You wanna come out today, Fred?” asks Taylor, and claps his brother on the shoulder.
He knows the answer. He’s not surprised when Fred says, “Not today, Taylor,” because that’s what he says every day, has said every day for near ten years now.
It’s just after the boat has pulled out and Fred has waved them off, ready to head back to the house and fix the roof — it’s sprung a leak and there’s rain coming tonight, he knows it in his bones — that he sees Sarah-Lee Smith, the pastor’s daughter, running along the harbour edge.
She’s laughing, a bucket in her hand, and waving fiercely at Fred, who’s always there even when all the boats have shipped out, who will marvel over whatever she’s got in her bucket to feed her cat, Big Man, and Fred sees it almost before it happens, like it’s happening all slow-motion.
He sees the way her sole skis on a bit of wet concrete, the way the bucket’s weight tips her forward, sees her eyes widen, one little hand flying out.
He sees the thunk of her little head on one of the big iron boat tethers, and the sound of it — dull and agonisingly loud — goes through him like a shot.
The “No!” comes out of him so loud and hard he feels it drag at his throat, not that it does anything but bounce off the harbour wall, ’cause he’s the only man left around now everyone’s set out for the day.
He runs as fast as he can to get to her, but she’s already slipping.
It’s a quiet splash as she hits the water, and he prays that the cool of the water will wake her up, bring her out of it, but she’s as limp floating in the water as she’d been falling into it.
“Fuck, fuck,” he hisses, feeling his chest tighten as he stares around for the nearest rope, but he knows that’s too slow — ! She’s already unconscious. She’s already fucking out, and she won’t grab the rope and he won’t be able to get it around her. He knows he can’t reach her from the stone, that he’ll have to dive into the water and be in it, swim in it, and it’s not like he’s forgotten how to swim but it’s like he’s paralysed, like he can’t even —
Sarah-Lee, all of a sudden, is face-up in the water, not face-down.
Face-up and tipped forward, Sarah-Lee is coughing as she wipes at her eyes and touches at the side of her head — no blood, thank Christ — and is glancing backward at the dark green form pushing her gently up out of the water.
“Gimme your hand, sweetheart,” says Fred, dropping down on his belly to reach over the side, and Sarah-Lee, frowning with confusion, takes Fred’s hands and lets him heave her, soaked through and heavy with water, up and out from the harbour. He sits back on his heels and then stands up, clutching Sarah-Lee to his chest as she coughs and shivers in his arms.
Fred stares down at the merman, and it stares back.
“This all you do?” he asks breathlessly, because it’s been a decade but he knows it’s the same one. At the same time, he gently cups the back of Sarah-Lee’s head and tilts it to the side, checking her head — there’s a lump forming there, but still no blood, although it looks like she’s tugged some of her hair out. “Lifeguard for the bay?”
It doesn’t smile — he’s not sure it can, with no lips — but somehow it looks playful.
“Oh no,” says Sarah-Lee in a mumble, staring down at her toppled bucket.
“Oh no?” repeats Fred, tilting her face up so he can meet her eyes a second, and he follows her gaze, but before he can say anything more, a little pipefish is tossed out of the harbour and lands with a little smack on the side. Fred’s seen her feed Big Man pipefish before — he likes them.
“Wow,” whispers Sarah-Lee, staring at the merman.
“What do we say?” asks Fred automatically.
“Thank you!” calls Sarah-Lee as Fred slowly puts her down, scooping the pipefish into her bucket, now in much shallower water, but the merman is already gone, the harbour empty again. “Let’s go feed Big Man, Fred! He loves these and they’re hard to catch!”
“No, honey, let’s take you across the street and see Doctor Holly,” says Fred, leading her by the hand and glancing back to the now-still harbour water. “Even if you pass out for a second, that’s no good.”
“Was that Taylor?” she asks.
“In the water? Uh. Sure, yeah. It was Taylor. Come on, let’s go.”
That night, Fred unloads the boat, and once Momma and Taylor have gone, he steels himself before he drops off the harbour edge onto the deck.
The slight rock of the boat is at once familiar, comforting, and also scares him shitless, even though for all the rain that’s come this evening and is yet to come, there’ll be no wind.
Fred stands there on the centre deck for five minutes or so, just feels the slight breeze on his skin, twitches his hand towards his pocket but never pulls out his cigarettes.
When it starts to rain again, the water collecting on the deck makes his guts twist, and he quickly steps back onto the dock.
* * *
“My daddy says you’re scared of swimming,” says Sarah-Lee one day some weeks later. She’s crouched down with her feet flat, her knees bent and elbows resting on them, holding out a fat little shrimp for Big Man to devour.
“Everyone’s afraid of something, kid,” replies Fred. “Your daddy’s scared of flying ants.”
“Nuh-uh!”
“Yuh-uh,” says Fred, taking a sip of his soda.
Sarah-Lee squints up at him in the overly suspicious way some kids do, when they’re not sure if an adult’s playing a game with them or not. “Really?” she asks.
“Fell into a nest of ’em while we were still in elementary school — God, must’ve been five or six, maybe seven? They’ve scared him ever since — it’s why he always calls me around right away whenever your window screens are broken, you know how he’s got me on speed dial? Freaks him out when they fly in.”
“Huh…” says Sarah-Lee, musing on the thought like it’s the most serious thing in the world, like it’s a whole revelation that her daddy could be scared of something, and Fred smiles down at her fondly.
It’s stressful sometimes, looking after her on days like this, when there’s no school, especially with that knock to her head the other day, but he never resents it, never dislikes spending time with her.
She’s a good kid, adventurous, pensive, and she’s a better fisherman than anybody Fred knows at her age.
Big Man departs, walking off with his head high and his tail up straight like he has somewhere important to be, and Sarah-Lee follows after him. Keeping an eye on them but not walking too close — Big Man will accept Sarah-Lee’s escort, but he doesn’t like a crowd — Fred walks along the shore.
It’s a warm, sticky day, the kind of day a swim would help.
Once Sarah-Lee’s aunt picks her up at lunchtime, Fred takes a cold shower instead, tries to scrub the yearning he’s feeling for a swim in the sea right off his skin.
* * *
The storm that comes is the worst storm that Velley can remember. He gets caught in an undertow when he’s swimming home with mussels in his sling and once the current has hold of him he can’t pull himself free: when he slams headfirst into rock, swallowed into a cloud of stirred up sand that clogs his primary gills, the world goes black.
The sun isn’t yet risen when he wakes up on the shore, and panics.
He tries to calm himself — he’s not a hatchling any longer, he’s grown, his secondary gills are developed, he can breathe, breathe like the surfacers do, and he’s strong enough to move his body without the water to take more of his weight —
He can’t remember how in the moment, the panic hitting him.
He can’t remember how to breathe, either.
* * *
Fred retethers the boat as the storm lashes down the harbour, and he checks the others are secure as he walks along in the gloom, torch in hand, held at his shoulder so that it lights his way as best as possible. Taylor’s laid in bed with a cold, and Momma had offered to check the boat, knowing that stormy nights like these make him nervous, but Fred had insisted.
It’s really not that cold, but he’s shivering anyway.
He thinks the strange, foreign screeching, chittering like a bug’s wings, is just the wind at first, or something carried on it, but then he realises it’s much closer, that it’s coming from the beach.
He runs so fast he stumbles, skidding in the sand as he swipes the torch’s beam back and forth, scanning for a body until he sees it, green-black and slick and shining in the torchlight.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he has to shout over the wind, and when the merman’s unblinking eyes land on him it reaches out and clutches for him, grabs at his clothes, his hands. It’s making an awful sound between pained screeches, these weird, harsh gasps that make the gills on the sides of its thick neck jump and quiver.
The ones on its sides, cut under its ribs — does it even have ribs? — are clotted with damp sand, and Fred touches one of them where the skin is very thin and fluttery, but it flinches.
It’s shaking hard, and it sounds so pained it hurts Fred too.
“What can I do?” he asks desperately, and the merman points with webbed fingers.
He doesn’t hesitate, this time — he puts his arms under the merman’s armpits and scrambles with it in his arms into the splashing little waves. Here in the bay, even with the storm raging and the wind battering the coast, the waves are no higher than his waist.
(He repeats that in his head to try to slow his heart down and stop his blood freezing in his veins, stop his body freezing too: they’re not too high, Fred, you can’t drown, you’re fine, you’re fine — )
He copies what the mermaid is doing, pressing on the upper part of each vent to push the clogged sand free, letting the water wash it away.
It relaxes when the water can move through them again, the flaps of skin moving more naturally now, more like he’s used to gills working when he sees a fish in a tank — it doesn’t seem as frantic now. The merman is still grasping at Fred’s chest, bodily leaned against him, its body incredibly solid and incredibly heavy — Fred’s pants, his jacket, are soaked from the sea and the rain, his life jacket to, but he doesn’t give a fuck.
“You,” he manages to wheeze out, aware that his voice is trembling although relief is flooding through him, “you scared of a little sand?”
The merman chitters, laid back across Fred’s knees with choppy water running past both their faces, keeps slapping Fred in the chest, the neck. When he flinches as some of it comes too close to his mouth, the taste of brine filling him to his fucking brim, the merman replies, “No more than you are of sea water.”
Its voice has a hum in it. Fred has heard its voice before.
He touches its kelpy hair, fascinated by the texture, its weight; taking the invitation to touch him in kind, the mermaid slides its hand under both the lifejacket and the sodden hoodie he’s wearing underneath it, its slick palm touching his chest.
“These spines aren’t very hard,” it says in bafflement.
“It’s hair, not spines,” says Fred. “Like on my head.”
“I wanted to talk to you for a long time,” says the merman. “I wanted to touch you again.”
“Why did you the first time?”
It doesn’t have eyebrows to raise, but somehow he can still see the incredulity there. “You wanted to drown?”
“Fuck no.”
“That was the impression I got at the time.”
Fred laughs, touching its face, sliding his palm over its cheek. It’s got a kind of mucous on its skin, the same as an eel.
“Why is your head on such a thin stem?” asks the merman.
“I was about to ask you why your neck was so thick,” Fred replies, and they laugh together this time. “I still don’t — You know, I still don’t think I could swim… swim with you. You’ve asked me, right? Or your voice has carried.” On the wind, sometimes, it carries, a voice calling him into the water, into the sea. It’s comforting to know it’s someone he knows, and not just his own fucking death wish. “This is okay. Nice, even.”
“The shallows, then. Next time,” whispers the mermaid. “You know, I’ve seen — I’ve thought about what I would say to you. How we could… I’ve seen etchings.”
“Etchings?”
“Surfaces, you touch your mouths together.”
“Oh,” Fred says, laughing. His cheeks are blushing, and they feel warm even though the rest of him is cold and shivering. “A kiss? Yeah. Yeah, we kiss each other.”
It asks, softly, “How do you — ?”
If they can be called lips, the merman’s lips are cold and wet and slightly slimy, tasting milder than they smell, but when it opens its mouth and Fred slides his tongue against the merman’s, he lets out an embarrassing sound when he realises how long it is, uncoiling from deeper in its throat.
When he leans back, he accidentally takes its tongue with him, and laughs at the strange tickle as the merman pulls it back, looking at him reproachfully.
“You mean to eat me,” it says, teasing.
“You wanted a kiss,” he replies. “Call me Fred.”
“Velley.”
“Velley,” says Fred. “I, uh, I gotta get back. My brother’s laid up with a cold.”
“What is this?” asks Velley. “A cold?”
“Just sick,” says Fred. “Not serious, though — just blocking in his nose and mouth. A mild illness.”
Velley nods and slides away from him into the water. “Thank you,” it says. “You saved me.”
“Turnabout’s fair play, I hear.”
Velley peers at him. “What?”
“Just a — just a thing we say. Means you do something, I do the same thing for you.”
Velley inclines its head, then nods, and swims away.
Fred drips back up to the house and his Momma laughs at him, asks if he was fighting with the rain.
* * *
It is the light that waits for Velley the next time they meet, early in the morning when the skies are still dark. The storm has passed, but it has left the air behind it thick with its memory, and he feels the tension on the air when he raises his head above the water.
He swims toward the familiar orange glow.
Fred is sitting back on a stone in the water, letting it lap around his waist, but Velley can see that he is trembling. A cigarette hangs from his lips, and his other hand clutches, grip tight, at the ring buoy beside him, upon which glows a lantern, a more yellow, less alive glow than the cigarette.
Fire… It fascinates him.
He makes sure that Fred sees him before he reaches for him, but when Velley touches his knee, he jolts even though anticipating it, but then relaxes. It makes Velley nervous, being this close to the dry land, but Fred’s skin is warm and strange, free to touch when he’s wearing some sort of shortened trouser.
Even though he is in the water, he is not wearing a piece of floating clothing over his clothes. It makes Velley’s gills flutter.
“We share two halves of a fear, you and I,” says Velley.
Fred’s face moves so much: his eyes become somehow larger, his mouth opening. He looks at Velley, showing surprise, perhaps, or engagement, and says, “Do we?”
“You fear water, I the land. By all rights, we are each made to go between them.”
“Jeeze,” says Fred. “I already figured all the girls in town were too smart for me — you two?”
Velley laughs, softly.
When the sun begins to rise, they split apart, but they are bound to come back together, like two parts of a strange amulet. Perhaps Velley will mention them to him one day, those amulets.
Perhaps he and Fred could share one.
FIN.
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