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"Doesn't it ever bother you?"
Pete hums under his breath at Carole's question, resting his head atop hers where she drops against his shoulder, an arm around his middle as he gazes out the bar's open deck section. Cold sea air blows through and ruffles the curtains as the sun begins to set, and the lanterns lining the beach flicker on.
The summer season is ending on their little southern California coast. With it, the tourists are thinning out, leaving a strange but peaceful hush to fall over the beach between times when families run and laugh in the sun and sand and when the moonlit sea warns them away to head for the bars and restaurants opening their doors as the light dips behind the horizon.
"Not really," Pete settles on, eyes trailing lazily across the lapping shore, watching as a plastic bucket abandoned by a child is sucked out into the surf, bobbing atop the water twice before a larger wave fills it and pulls it under. "Teaching Bradley's been helping."
What better way, Pete thinks, to overcome a fear of the water than to help someone else do the same?
It's been years, nearly eight now, since he and Nick almost lost their lives to the deep, and still, the thought of treading out into the ocean past his chest sends a shiver down Pete's spine. But helping little Bradley Bradshaw learn to swim, taking him down to the shore before his and Carole's shifts at The Flyer , is easing the apprehension one lesson at a time.
He needs to be strong for Bradley, and Pete is pretty sure that's why Nick and Carole bullied him into handling the responsibility in the first place, now that the kid is old enough to tread waves.
Unconsciously, Pete lifts a hand to his sternum, touching the necklace he keeps hidden beneath the collar of his undershirt. The shark's tooth presses into his skin but doesn't break it. After years of having worn it, the edges, once dangerous enough to cut, have been smoothed down.
"Think we'll be able to get on the boat come spring?"
Pete scoffs softly, nudging Carole's side with his elbow as his gaze finally breaks away from the ocean so he can meet her eyes.
"Whatever happened to walking before we run, huh?"
She raises her brow at him, smiling in a way that only Carole can make feel genuine, whereas, on others, it would look condescending.
"You sayin' you can't manage?"
"I'm sayin' you're asking me and Nick to fix up that old junker in four months."
She's also checking on him silently in a way that doesn't make him feel weak or defensive. Can he get back on a boat? Will he be able to sail after the last time had been so disastrous?
Pete hopes that the answer will be yes when it comes down to it.
He and Nick had grown up in their corner pocket coastal town, kicking up sand each summer as they raced to the beach, rolling out rented paddle boats and boogie-boards until they'd scrapped enough cash together to buy a busted-up, second-hand dinghy that had taken them a full winters break to patch the holes in.
They'd been sixteen, pimple-faced and too full of confidence when they first took it out, but it had been a revelation, a kind of freedom that Pete spent chasing for months; Nick and sometimes Carole, who had joined their duo at the start of that following summer when her parents moved to town, at his side.
They were the kings and queen of the sea, and that bolstered hubris had seen him and Nick charting out for a cove five miles from shore, a place they liked to explore and swim around when the weather was good enough, and they had assignments or chores they were looking to blow off. Only that day, the sky had been grey, not dangerous, but bleak.
Carole had warned them, said that something didn't feel right with the clouds when she looked, but Pete had brushed off her concern and dragged Nick with him into the water a few hours later.
They'd made it to the cove when the rain started, at first a light drizzle that felt warm compared to the salty chill from the unseasonably choppy waves. It hadn't felt ominous; nothing they hadn't seen come and go in the space of a few minutes.
It had been too late by the time the wind picked up, and a distant boom of thunder rocked Pete to his core.
Nick had been at the helm of their boat as they made a race back, shouting that he could see the shore, its umbrellas tilted heavily by the storm winds, its banks empty of swimmers. Just as Pete prepared to laugh in triumph, ready to put this alarming misadventure down as nothing but a close call, a wave, large and powerful, crashed into them.
One moment, Nick was there, staring back at Pete, and the next, he was gone, claimed by the maelstrom below.
Even to this day, Pete doesn't remember cutting the engine or diving in after Nick, but he does remember squinting into the depths, the pressure around his chest and head as he kicked further and further into the water until he caught a flash of pale skin, illuminated by a bolt of lightning from above and managed to kick harder.
He remembers getting his hand around Nick's wrist and tugging with all his strength, a burning so sharp in his behind his ribs that it's a pain he sometimes still feels. Breaking the surface of the water had felt like an impossibility that when he had, Nick held to his chest, coughing ocean from his lungs, Pete had nearly sobbed.
He doesn't remember getting back to the dinghy or getting Nick thrown into it, just the feeling of hanging onto the edge, strength failing from his arms as he watched the shuddering rise and fall of his best friend's chest. Then another wave hit, slamming hard like a wall of ice into Pete's back. His grip had gone slack, the shock of the impact taking what air he'd managed to gulp down, and with one last glance to the shore, blessedly closer than before, perhaps close enough that the boat and, thus, Nick would be pulled into the coast, the waves dragged him under.
It was all a cold, twisting sensation after that. Pete couldn't see; sounds were a rush of water over his eardrums, popping, painful as his body spasmed, making the foolish mistake of trying to suck in the air where only water was.
Pete's eyes blurred, stinging as he choked over mouthfuls of salty, sharp water. Nothing but endless black encroached at the edges of his rapidly fading vision, and his body grew heavy as he sunk further into the depths.
He doesn't remember succumbing to death, the moment when his mind gave up along with his body. It all just became nothing.
What Pete does remember the most is waking up, heaving seawater and shivering, body sprawled against the gritty sand, rain pelting like hail against his skin as he is wretched. He remembers scrabbling further up the surf, grabbing handfuls of shell and seaweed and making it hardly more than a few inches from where he'd come to.
His lungs were burning; his skin was raw. There were scratches and deep cuts across his shins, bleeding pink from the water that ran across his legs. Off to the left, a dull thud sounded in the distance; Pete's attention had been drawn to it, and there was his and Nick's boat docked and tilted in the coast, heavily leaning on its side.
When Pete had been able to crawl to his knees, pulling himself dizzyingly to his feet, he'd made it a step before something sharp pierced the heel of his foot, sending him back to the ground to vomit another time as vertigo rocked him.
The thing was a tooth he'd come to find when picking it from his skin, a shark's if he had to guess.
He hadn't known then why he'd pocketed it, even as fear and worry lanced him the longer it took him to reach the boat and see Nick inside, pale, blue-lipped but breathing. Even now, he doesn't fully understand, but it brings him comfort to run his finger against it, to feel the smooth weight of it over his chest and know it's there, a charm as much as a reminder of the mistake that had almost cost him everything and more.
Though, sometimes, when the wind howls against the windows of his cabana or the rains are particularly harsh and Pete is sleeping, he'll be transported back those eight years, underwater and drowning for no good reason than his own teenage stupidy. He'll blink through the water, experience that sobering thought of 'Well, this is it,' and just before the moment he slips under, and gives up, there will be a flash, a shadow moving quickly toward him, displacing the currents sucking him down. Lightening will flash so far above the surface that it only highlights the shape coming closer. White, murky yellow, a slick gray. Then nothing.
On nights like that, Pete wakes up shivering, his heart thudding against the cage of his ribs and his hand instinctively around the tooth hanging at his throat.
The strangest thing following those dreams is that when they come and pass, and Pete is left to chase after the tangible shadows brought forth in sleep, he's not afraid, not of being in the water or the thing that gets closer each time he closes his eyes. He should be, he thinks, there should be some lingering fear, but there isn't.
The dreams are always quick to fade, chased away by early dawn sunlight and the sound of familiar sandals clomping onto his tiny porch.
Eight years and only now, under the pretense of staying brave for his favorite kid in the whole world, is Pete starting to return to the water.
He wasn't lying to Carole, though, maybe trying to put on a bold face a little, but the biggest issue is no longer whether or not Pete can get into the ocean, is willing to put himself out in the middle of the sea with the only people he can call family again, but if they can get the boat fixed.
After that fateful day, he and Nick had left it mostly abandoned in the Bradshaw garage. It still had the holes where it had crashed into the rocks, and the engine was more than likely rusted over along with the frame.
Four months was going to be a stretch to get the work done on it.
"Mitchell!" Pete's head snaps to where the bar owner, Mike Metcalf, is leaning against the frame of the kitchen; he gestures with his head and unimpressed raised brows to where a few patrons have taken up residence at the bar.
If Pete doesn't do his job, he muses to himself, giving Carole a squeeze so she can get to taking orders, he won't get a chance to fix up the boat at all, given he'll be broke and homeless and living out of Nick and Carole's shed.
It's Saturday, and though the summer months are coming to an end, the locals still pack into their favorite place to drink and dance and work away the stress of inner city life well into the hours of the morning. The last call comes and goes, and it sees Pete on his own, having shooed an exhausted Carole into the loving arms of her husband, waving at them from the sandy parking lot as the clock struck three.
Without the bar open the following day and Pete on his own for the rest of clean up, he's stuck for another two hours, flipping chairs and labeling everything he drops into the deep freezer so it'll be usable come Monday afternoon. Once the surfaces are wiped and the windows are locked up tightly, Pete does a final walk-through, determines that it's good enough, and sees himself out.
Somehow, even given the late (early?) hour, there's no lingering tiredness in Pete's system, a gentle buzz of energy under his skin keeping him alert and awake even though he knows if he just returned home and laid on his bed, he'd probably be out like a light. Instead of doing that, the sensible thing really, Pete takes off his shoes and shirt, tucking them and his work bag beneath the wooden ramp leading from the bar into the sand, and starts walking along the coast.
The water, where it laps against his ankles, is cold but not unpleasant, and the wet sand trying to suck his feet into the surf is just enough of a struggle that it's amusing more than anything else. At the very edges of the horizon, Pete can see the inky blue of night fading as softer shades begin their crawl into the sky. It will be followed by pink, then orange until the sun has climbed out of its bed to illuminate the world in a wash of warm light.
Pete decides as he ambles, humming some random bar shanty the patrons had repeated for half an hour sometime after midnight, that he's going to stay up for it, the sunrise. He'll walk to the end of their shore, where the broken dock is, where the water is cut with rocks and tide pools, and find a spot to watch like he often can't be bothered to do.
It's a nice plan, one with a certain kind of peace he doesn't seek out because the thought of being alone with himself is a bit much sometimes, but this morning, with its quite chilly calm, urges him to do it. He doesn't have the energy to protest.
When he makes it to the part of the beach where it's more stone than sand, Pete begins to look for a spot to rest, debating the merits of trying to climb one of the more coarse boulders with his bare feet than just being satisfied lower on the ground. It is as he makes up his mind, stepping in close to the first protruding rock, he hears it, an off-patterned splashing that breaks the familiar crash and recession of the gentle ocean waves.
Pete doesn't know where it's come from at first. His eyes snap over to the horizon, trying to pick up where it is, but there's nothing, no boats dotting the edge of the water with bobbing black shapes, and he doesn't see anything reflected closer to the shore from where the buoys blink their orange warning lights.
Still, he hears it, the frantic sounds of slapping water punctuated by a trilling kind of grunt that's strange to his ears but distressed all the same. Pete listens closer, wills the echoing nature of the rocks and the waves to clear just enough, and when he focuses, catching another bout of thrashing, Pete knows the direction. He bounds over the rock he'd been ready to sit on, using his arms and feet to hoist himself as carefully as he can, thankful for the seaweed from the lower tide making the landing soft instead of biting.
When he finally touches down, head swinging toward the noise that has suddenly stopped, replaced only by the lapping waves and occasional gull, Pete just about falls on his ass because his knees go jelly weak at the joints, and his breath halts so quickly it almost hurts.
In the nearest, deepest tidepool, the ocean so close that every other wave splashes into it before pulling back, there is a person.
Only, with the weak sunlight just beginning to press into the sky, a single line of muddled yellow that teases illumination, is Pete able to see that it's not exactly a person at all. Sure, there are arms, a chest, a head, all pale skin slick with water as another wave rushes into the pool, there's even blond hair and a pair of eyes watching him, but there's so much more than that. It has Pete floored, his pulse climbing into the back of his throat as he's unable to blink.
Yes, there's hair and hands and eyes, but there's also slick gray scales, large, easily identifiable fins, and gills . The eyes are also not normal upon further inspection; they're yellow and glowing, almost glinting in the low light where a dimming solar lantern beams nearby. And when Pete looks even closer, really unable to do anything else while his body forgets entirely how to operate, the hands are strange too, the nails at the very least, all black and tipped sharply like claws.
Pete blinks, and when he does, he realizes how dry his eyes are, indicating how long he's just been looking, dumb-struck as the thing stares in equally flabbergasted shock at him like it's Pete who is the anomaly here.
"Uh..." the sound slips out without Pete meaning for it to, and just like that, the staring contest is broken because the creature's expression goes panicked, and he (because Pete is going to run with the assumption that no breasts equal male in this case) begins flailing in the tidepool again and draws Pete's attention to the rest of what's going on.
Wrapped tightly around the shark tail is a thick tangle of fishing wire. Each strand is thin and no doubt painful, where they notably dig into the appendage. Pete's seen similar scenes of sea turtles and the odd fish that washes up on shore. Hell, once Pete had gotten bored and accidentally tangled his arm in a lobster line and was worried it would take his arm off with how tight it got.
It's probably dangerous, and it's definitely dumb , but Pete watches as the indentations on the mer-things tail get deeper, their struggling, even with their claws doing very little to free them as the tide gets closer with the backdrop of a slowly rising sun. Without words, he approaches.
Fear is still pumping through his veins, and his heart is thundering in his ears, but Pete thinks that in less than an hour, there will be the local surfers trying to beat the late-season tourists to whatever waves are offered for the day. The joggers who like to avoid the hotter rays of sunlight are all going to begin their descent onto the sand. Even if the water gets high enough to wash the creature out into the ocean, Pete doesn't know if he'll need to come up for air, if he'll even be able to without the use of his tail.
Can something part fish drown? He doesn't think his conscious could take the risk if they can .
"Uh," Pete starts again when he's only a few steps away, still out of range (he thinks) from any of the half-shark's limbs, intentionally this time to get the thing's attention.
Its eyes snap up to him, their strange yellow flashing, cutting off in the shadow and showing Pete that they're actually blue. For some reason, that almost makes Pete lose his nerve; well, that and the fact that when the creature pants, physically exerted from his attempts to free himself, Pete has a much clearer picture of his teeth, two rows, small but sharp.
Pete takes a breath and powers through it anyway, slowly lowering himself to his knees and trying not to wince as broken shells dig into his shins from where they're scattered across the rocks.
"Do you- can I help?" He looks back and forth between the tangle of netting around the tail and the creature's eyes, a hand raising at a glacial pace, as slow as he can manage.
Pete reaches forward and isn't at all surprised when he's met with a low hiss and a flinch. Still, there's no swipe of claws, and the merperson doesn't try to roll away and get even more trapped. Only slightly deterred, Pete inches closer again, one foot, half, then barely a centimeter between the tips of his fingers and the shark tail, his gaze never breaking from the other's.
As his hand touches down, Pete is almost surprised that the scales are as smooth as they are and that the tail is as cold as it is. The water lapping at his legs over the lip of the tidepool is warm; even the waves that splash his side aren't as frigid as they could be for the year.
After a beat of nothing happening, no attack, and no attempt to flee, Pete makes a show of raising his second hand, the first still lying against the tail, his slight tremble the only thing giving away his nervousness. Fishing around in his back pocket Pete finds the box cutter he's always forgetting to leave at the bar and produces it with a small smile. He should have perhaps been anticipating the alarm passing across the creature's expression when he exposes the blade. Pete is only thankful that he left his shirt with his bag and that he doesn't tip into the tidepool with the force the tail exerts, trying to slap him away.
"Stop! Stop, Christ! I need to cut you free."
Something about his tone, maybe the way he throws his hands up in the universal gesture of 'just wait a damn minute!' seems to do the trick because as quickly as the struggling starts, it ends, and when Pete squints into the low light of the dawn the shark-man is looking at him again, a tilt to his brow.
Pete almost drops the box cutter a second later because, in the space of the water settling around them again and him catching his breath, the creature speaks.
"Help?" His voice is lower than Pete might have assumed if he'd even managed to come around to the assumption that the creature could speak, and there's the smallest of hissing, no doubt because of all the teeth.
"Uh-" and wow, Pete would probably be more ashamed of his lacking vocabulary if the circumstances were different. "Yeah. Help." He carefully moves the box cutter back and forth in the air. "You're all tangled up; I gotta cut you out."
Flashing eyes dart between Pete and the tool, dark blond brows pulling together in a blatant show of mistrust. Pete doesn't think he can blame him.
With the same slowness as before, Pete tilts himself closer and goes for the nearest twisted-up fishing line. It's hard work getting his finger under the tight cut of the wire, and he has to ask for the merman to shift around a bit, thankful and only a little surprised when he does so without Pete needing to repeat himself. It also doesn't take as long as he feared it might, the sun bearly eeking up, the first curve of its round shape over the beach painting the image of Pete finally dragging the rest of the fishing line off and then out of the tidepool itself, determined to get the mass of it into a nearby trash bin so it can't risk floating back into the water and catching any other unsuspecting half-shark creatures in its snare.
"There," Pete says, sliding his boxcutter back into his pockets, smiling as he mindlessly runs his fingers over the dimpled indents on the shark fin, glad to see that they're smoothing out quickly now that the bindings are gone.
"Thank...you."
Until he'd spoken again, Pete had almost forgotten that he had the ability to, so Pete doesn't think he can be blamed all too much when he goes tipping headfirst into the tidepool in surprise.
Two slick hands grasp him by the shoulders, nails scraping but not digging into his skin as he's lifted back up. Pete sucks in a shocked lungful of air, his brain spinning out between the mix of saltwater and the unexpected dunk.
With such little prompting, just the shock and the blur, he's thrown into a stuttering flashback, blinking through the water still raining down his eyes.
White, murky yellow, a slick gray.
Pete's hands go to the shark tooth around his throat even as he's coughing out the tiny amount of water that had tried to drown him this time. It's when his fingers brush the smooth surface, and he can blink again, really seeing this time through the snapshot memories of blind panic, something like an impossible wash of clarity hits.
He meets the creature's eyes and finds himself knowing their unreal brightness; the hair, matted with water again but seeming not to lose its quaffed shape, is a dark blond that he can effortlessly see shifting through waves, and the teeth ...
Pete doesn't realize he's reaching forward with both hands, his mouth dropping in a small 'o' until he's got two fingers on each corner of the shark man's mouth and is stretching his lips to get a good look.
There's a clawed hand on Pete's wrist, but he hardly pays it any mind, even as it clenched hard enough to twist and be uncomfortable because, well... he's not being stopped. They're just staring at each other, Pete's fingers stretching the edges of surprisingly soft skin, and he's not being bitten or anything. Maybe-
A warm tongue brushes unintentionally against the back of his nails, and Pete feels his entire face heat, but he can't move away, not while he's being stared down, not while the sun is rising and backlighting the merman with a shimmery golden glow. Not when he knows the shape of those dangerous teeth deep in his bones and, more distantly, the feel of the creature's pale arms around his middle.
"You-" Pete's throat clicks, and he tries again, "You saved me."
The mershark's face scrunches, his brows coming together in a look that is somehow both confused and judgmental, and Pete realizes, okay, yes, that might be confusing, seeing as he'd technically done the recusing this time around.
"Eight years ago, there was a boat and a storm, and you..." Pete's voice trails, confidence waning the longer the look remains on the blond's face. Slowly, his fingers slip from the other's mouth, but the vice around his left wrist only loosened fractionally, not dropping.
Uncaring of the spit on his skin, Pete takes the merman's free hand with his own and carefully presses the tips of his claws, pointed and sharp, to the pendant hanging between his pecs.
"You saved me. That was you, right?"
The moment of recognition is almost euphoric, yellow eyes dipping in disbelieving snaps between the tooth and Pete's beaming face. It's a piece of that lost day dragged back and held firmly in Pete's hands. A merperson, this merperson, strange and dangerous and beautiful, had saved him. He laughs bright and loud and tries not to feel too bad when it startles the creature.
Pete opens his mouth to speak again, to say something, anything, but as he's about to- a string of probably dumb and unintelligible words at the tip of his tongue- there's a sound coming down the beach. His head snaps to the side, and he watches in the distance as four shapes become less and less of silhouettes, more recognizable as surfers arriving to stake their claims by the rocks.
The merman must realize this too, because before Pete even has a chance to do anything, let alone turn back to meet his eyes and tell him to scram, a wave crests high into the tidepool and no longer trapped by caught fishing line; the creature uses the slight swell of water to flip himself out of it and into the shallows, disappearing lightning-quick into the foam and disturbed sand, the top of his unmistakable dorsal fin the last bit of him Pete catches before he's gone as if he'd never even been there.
It's stupid, but Pete doesn't think any part of his morning has been anything different, not to mention impossible, so with that in mind, he finds himself wading into the water a few seconds after his savior merman calling out a low but loud "Hey, wait!"
He gets up to the middle of his chest, the farthest he normally goes when teaching Bradley how to slap around and keep afloat, when he feels something terrifyingly alive knock hard into his ankle.
Pete yelps and almost slips fully into the water, already having sunk further into the waves to the point where his feet can't touch the ground, but before he can, there are strong arms around his hips, and he's held up above the surface.
With the sun having drifted high enough into the sky, lightening up the world in soft blues and blinding yellows, the unnatural flash of the merman's eyes is gone, replaced with a mesmerizing blue that Pete finds himself caught by.
Neither of them speaks, and Pete realizes with a start that the other is waiting for him to say something. He had been the one to tell the creature to 'wait' after all.
"You-" he searches, colors hot in his cheeks, and tries not to think about the fact that he's being held and stared at so intently. "Will you come back?"
Pete doesn't have the capacity to figure out why he'd want the creature to, but he's asked, and now that the words are out there, he doesn't have any urge to pull them back. Of course, that doesn't stop the merman from asking him to try explaining anyway.
"Why?"
Pete attempts not to flounder at the hesitant mistrust.
"I mean, you saved my life, and I-" Pete fiddles with the shark tooth at his throat, the memory of it stabbing into his heel distant, the rush of knowing who it belongs to lighting up his nerves. "I kinda owe you."
It's weak, considering that Pete did just technically, probably, repay his life debt (if that's even a thing), but there's nothing else he can think of as a good enough reason aside from a ridiculous "You're a merperson, and that's really fucking cool, please come back so I can just stare at you and prove to myself I'm not going insane."
The merman glances between Pete's fidgeting with a tooth that used to be in his mouth, and Pete's eyes, and the guarded, curious expression starts to clear from his face, replaced with something that rolls an unexpected spark of heat down Pete's spine. Those blue eyes go half-lidded, considering, and the creature's head tips even as he inches it closer. If Pete weren't suddenly rigid with something that's not quite fear, not quite anticipation, he would have missed the slight flare of nostrils and the semi-pleased curve to the other's dangerous mouth.
There's also no way for Pete to miss the solid press of lips against his own, not the salt tang or the there-and-gone burst of hot-sharp-ow pain on his tongue and the slick of blood that follows.
It would be terrifying, Pete thinks, mouth agape as he's moved closer to shore, eyes locked with the creature whose pupils are blown, a hint of fading red at the corner of his lips, if he weren't a little too invested in seeing if it might happen again.
It doesn't. Pete's feet find purchase in soft sand and tangling seaweed, and the arms around him retreat.
"Be back." It is the merman's parting words, then Pete is alone for a second time, watching a shark fin disappear between two lazy waves that lap against his stomach a breath later.
Something tells Pete that when the other returns, it won't be while the surfers hit the waves, maybe not even soon, so he drags himself onto shore, brain a mess of working out whether or not all that truly just happened, the only evidence being his wet boardshorts and the cut still stinging on his tongue.
If, after he's retrieved his bag and clothes from under the ramp near the bar and then slept for five hours, Pete finds himself at Carole and Nick's doorway with his tools and a grin to fix up the old boat, well, no one asks if it's because he's eager to get to sailing once winter passes or for some other reason.
And if that some other reason might be the real one, fins and teeth and glowing eyes and a promise that Pete can feel thrumming under his skin even though he doesn't know what it really means, well, that's for him to worry about.