Chapter Text
When the sea spray hit his face, it used to remind him of freedom. Long, temperate days on unending shores. His hair hadn’t been so long then. So grey. Beard more sparse. Eyes less cold.
Now, the spray wasn’t warm as if caressed by a gentle sun, it sharp as stinging nettles. Cold and static. Pin pricks across weathered skin. His brow set low, furrowed and dark. Gaze trained on the runny blackness of the sea. A mirror for that damning sky shrouded in its ashen clouds.
The lights on the boat were dim – not that it’d make a lick of difference. He knew better than to kid himself. Still, it felt… Safer. Somehow. As if they were on equal footing this way. They weren’t.
Hank had his harpoon gun, his pistol, a skinning knife – hell, he’d even brought his shotgun – all in vain; searching for some semblance of control that would never really be his.
He’d gotten close to fooling himself a few times. Lulling his nerves into a sedated state. All that did was garner his left forearm a nasty scar after a chunk was torn clean out – the one blessing of teeth that sharp.
Hank had learned well since then. Thick layers were to be donned as much as the weather would allow: gloves, leather jacket or denim. Whatever he had that might prove useful, even if barely, lived on that boat. Tucked away in the hull. The place lay a mess of charts and ammo and photographs. Sketches, too, littered the ground – not that he was much of an artist.
Amongst all the shit he’d left strewn about, there was just enough space for him to lie down. He never did, not anymore… The waters weren’t safe enough to grant him the comfort of sleep. Sumo, his behemoth of a dog and preferred sailing buddy, however, didn’t share those same concerns. Not until dusk, anyway, only then was the dog diligently by his owner’s side. Stance squared, ears back and eyes on the water. Like he was now.
Hank took a swig from his flask before tucking it back into the inner breast pocket of his denim jacket. The whiskey went down sharp as rocks but hot enough to push the chill off his skin. Yet, not quite strong enough to push the mission from his mind.
It would be easy to convince one’s self that it was a trick of the light, the eyes seeing what isn’t there, sleep depravation, so on and so forth. Perhaps, that would be kinder than knowing what lurked beneath the waters. Hank didn’t have that luxury. He was never granted any luxuries. They bobbed lifelessly with the current, alongside his hopes, his dreams… His heart.
He scanned the uneven, lapping waves. Each break a thump, thump against the aluminum stern. His muscles tensed with each moment of silence. A taunt. Time ticking away until a meeting he, no matter how he watched and waited, was never truly prepared for. Exhaustion shrouding him or weather deteriorating him. Life breaking him down.
He turned the skinning knife over in his hand. The handle weighty and well sanded. It made him feel less helpless. Less vulnerable. That foolish disillusionment, creeping up on him, once again, like when a child hides under their blanket. A fantasy to calm the mind.
But it never really did matter. As soon as the water broke, each and every time, his heart fell to his stomach. His blood turned cold, thick in his veins – lead like.
It was just a swift slice through the glassy surface. Easy, always easy, to mistake it for something harmless – a fish jumping out of the water.
Hank knew better. He knew to call Sumo a few feet back. He knew to fasten the carabiner from the cable of his boat’s railing to the harness around his waist. He’d be damned before he let that thing drag him to the sandy sea floor.
It was just as that metal clacked and tightened into place that he saw them. His eyes unable to tear away. They were piercing, blood curdling. They raised the hairs on Hank’s arms, brought a clammy wash to his skin.
Like a sniper laser, red tore through the current. It glinted, un-fractured, despite the broken ripples of the waves.
“C’mere, you fucking coward,” he rumbled under his breath.
Sumo followed his lead, letting out a deep growl of his own as he bore his teeth.
“Come on, you piece of shit!” he shouted, taking a step nearer the tansom’s edge. “I see you, fucker!” He clutched the handle tighter, seeking some steadying force as that glaring stare cut through him.
Those eyes never appeared to get closer. Never seemed to glow brighter or grow bigger, but swiftly and, yet, somehow as if in slow motion, it breached the water.
Hank thrust his hand forward, knife brandished with practiced precision – oh, yes, he’d practiced.
The serrated edge nearly grazed its skin only to fall short as its grasp, slick and ice like, consumed the man’s wrist. Its hand was slender, spindly, pallid. Long nails, claw like, pressed to the meat of Hank’s forearm. The touch provided a bite, but drew no blood. The grasp held firm, insistent, despite the viscous residue that marred its skin – akin to the unexpected feel of seaweed drifting to the shore.
Hank sought to free himself, but as hastily as it beached the waters it insisted on returning to them. This time with the man in hand.
Hank dug his heels into the boat, but his weight was no match for his counterpart’s. Sumo lunged to Hank’s rescue, his jowls clacking wetly as his teeth just narrowly missed the end of his caretaker’s coat; the man hitting the stern and plummeting down with a mighty splash.
There’s often a moment, just after a shock so intense, that the mind is left reeling, working to catch up with the body’s circumstances. For Hank, on many occasion – more than he ever dared admit – that was the searing heat that came with a fist to the face. Too many drinks and too many words into some stupid bullshit garnered him a swift embrace from sticky wooden floors. And each time, no matter how recent the last, he would find himself caught in a limbo much like this. The pain just two steps removed from all encompassing as his mind was wiped clean of anything other than that inescapable something.
This time that something wasn’t pain, not in that way, at least. It was a white, frigid shock to the senses as the brisk water devoured him. Despite the darkness of the sea, his body knew only the blaze that came with such an icy welcome, but the contents of his mind were gone all the same. His muscles contracted, fighting to escape into himself. Anything for a respite of warmth, alas, none was to be found.
Hank fought to keep hold of his senses enough to maintain the hold on his breath as well as his knife. Undeterred by the sting of the salt, he forced himself to peel open his eyes. He grit his teeth at the burn, but the hurt melted to the back of his mind as he took in the sight before him.
He’d never been so close to it before. Beyond the scratches and gashes that he’d been bestowed, that is. Like this it was odd, deceptively peaceful. It stared at him with those predatory eyes. Here, though, they seemed… Harmless. The sharpness that seemed to score his peace of mind from beneath the waves, with its red deathly gleam, looked… Gentle. Delicate. The moonlight, scattered by the water’s surface, provided just a glint enough to catch that red reflection. Now, however, just an arm’s length away, that gaze was more warm like auburn and honey. Big and round and innocent.
Its body was an expanse of flawless pale skin… Or blubber, perhaps? Hank was unaware of the intricacies of its anatomy. What he did know was that that devious form seemed molded by myth. Its arms were toned, slender and sharp. The outer edges of its forearm bore fins, jagged and translucent; a silvery tone to them that seemed to freckle out across the snowy flesh. Its abdomen was just as perfectly sculpted, the planes shadowed in a way that one could find sinful as it dragged the eyes down to what should have been a pubic bone. Instead, the form continued, just as meaty and defined as it trailed into a long grey tail. Down the sides of that swatch of grey, smaller fins jutted out in a dorsal like manner, guiding to the caudal fin’s sharp breadth of space – he hadn’t gotten to notice before, but here, in these dark waters, they seemed to glow a faint blue. The tail beat back and forth, a slow tread, as the thing tipped its head. Its hair was a dark color, haloing that face, which was somehow all curves and all edges all at once. An anomaly that could only be of legend or divine design.
Hank understood, for a moment, how in folktales sailors found themselves bewitched enough to pose no threat. He wouldn’t make that mistake. No matter how those eyes took him in with a seemingly naive curiosity. No matter how much this creature was like that out of Hank’s deepest fantasy. He was no fool.
Hank thrust his arm out. The water worked in opposition to his movement as if it had hands of its own pulling him back. The thing was no such slave to the sea.
It reared back with a precision that felt unjust amongst the water when Hank could move so little. A trail of bubbles spilled from its open mouth and it squinted at Hank, jaw tensing before it circled around him.
Hank fought the current to turn, his free hand working to clutch the cable that held him in union with his boat.
It darted again in the other direction.
Hank glared. Was it taunting him? He thrashed back the other way, arm flailing uselessly; struggling to make purchase with his prey – he didn’t dare admit he was the prey.
It tipped its head even further, using the momentum to spin once and then draw nearer.
Hank lunged forward once more, the blade coming up beside the thing’s cheek. The metal just kissed its skin when it seized hold of Hank’s wrist, yet again. Bubbles trickled up to the surface from its nostrils. Was it laughing at him?
Hank tried to retrieve his wrist, to recoil... Those fingers, slender and strong held only tighter. The force enough to pry the knife from Hank’s grasp. It didn’t hurt, it didn’t pluck his fingers away… But it might as well have. He was rendered unable to do anything but submit to the will of the thing before him, its touch. Its vast brown eyes.
Hank watched the weapon slip from his hold and spin in the water, drifting to the surface. A leaf caught in the wind. Trash afloat in space.
His face must’ve betrayed his horror because the thing… It furrowed its brow, not angrily… No. It seemed, confused? Saddened? Its grasp eased. And, so, Hank took control back of his arm and swung it forward, hand still balled up, into that enigmatic face.
The thing flittered backward, clutching its nose.
A trail of crimson misted between them, a fog from where it had once been to where it bobbed now. It blinked twice, shoulder’s hiked in defense, then turned tail and scrambled off into the shrouded ocean depths.