#they JUST barely survived a dangerous shark chase AND survived a storm | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

amjustagirl · 3 years

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Chapters: one. ~ two. ~ three. ~ four. ~ five. ~ six. ~ seven. ~ eight.

Wordcount: 2.9k

Summary: Being with Miya Atsumu is like chasing a storm - equal parts exhilaration and danger. After all, it’s impossible to tame a storm

Masterlist link here

AO3 link here

Author’s Note: And we’re at the final chapter! Thank you so much for going on this wild ride with me, and I’m rly excited to hear what you guys think - so please, drop me an ask, a note, a comment, anything!!!

It takes time and effort to rebuild a home wrecked by a storm, and reconstruction efforts aren’t necessarily smooth sailing, especially at the start - after all, he’s still the same Miya Atsumu, arrogant and brash and foulmouthed and hyper focused on volleyball, and they both have baggage from years of regret and pain to work through. But he has determination to spare, and she loves him too much for her own good, so they start from the very foundation and work their way up, step by step, one day at a time.

‘I’ll kill ya if ya ever hurt her again’, Osamu threatens darkly when she and Atsumu break the news to him.

‘Go find yer own girl and stop being sweet on my wife damn it! ’ Atsumu growls, but the kiss he presses to her forehead when she smacks the back of his head for being mean to his twin is achingly sweet.

‘Ugh, soppy. Get yer shit outta my house!’ Osamu scrunches his face in mock disgust.

Both brothers are surprised when she beats Atsumu at flipping Osamu off.

Atsumu moves back home (he’s not even going to hide how happy the sound of that makes him), and they mark the occasion by slipping his wedding ring back on his finger and eating take-out pizza on the living room floor.

Her burly brothers turn up on their doorstep with a glint in their eyes and too much teeth in their smiles, determined to drag Atsumu off for a couple of drinks and what she assumes will be a very unpleasant chat. She’d insisted on patting them down to make sure they’re not packing any knives - ‘what do you take us for, little sis’, they’d protested - but she’s not taking any chances, and begs Osamu to join them, ‘please ‘Samu, I don’t want to be a widow right after I decide not to divorce his ass’, and he agrees despite grumbling that he might as well be Atsumu’s glorified babysitter at this rate.

She’d woken up in bed the next morning to find the space beside her empty, but the living room crammed full of those four silly men. Atsumu and Osamu share a single futon between them, snoring back to back. There are faint bruises on Atsumu’s cheekbone and telltale scrapes on her own brothers’ knuckles, but otherwise they all seem relatively unscathed.

She bends over, tracing her thumb along the contour of Atsumu’s jaw, and he stirs, eyes half lidded with sleep.

‘Hey darlin', I’ve come home’, he tells her, warmth flickering in his smile.

‘Welcome home, 'Tsumu’, she says, tucking the blanket under his chin and he hums in contentment, falling back asleep.

His nightmares of brown envelopes and harsh neon lights distorting her face slowly fade, and he dreams instead of weeknight dinners and weekend picnics at the park, relishing the quiet domesticity of grocery trips and laundry loads, and delighting in home games with her and Shino cheering him on.

Some piss poor excuse of a gossip hound corners him after a match to ask him about whether he regrets leaving for Milan since his season ended in injury - and he freezes when the reporter slyly adds ‘especially since we all knew it’s a move that required you to leave your wife and daughter behind ‘. His manager is about to intervene when she sneaks up on him to slide an arm around his waist, apologising to the reporter that ‘she’s just so excited to give her husband a congratulatory kiss!’ .

Sakusa and Meian have to join forces to pull Atsumu back from punching the reporter when he grins shark-like, thinking he’s spotted easy prey and asks her whether she felt abandoned in Japan due to his move - ‘pardon me Miya-san for my unwieldy choice of words’.

‘Not at all’, she says without missing a beat, and Atsumu wonders if he imagines the flash of a knife in her smile. ‘I’ve always supported my husband in all his endeavours. It was a joint decision that I should stay in Japan to ensure our daughter has some stability in her life.'

‘She’s good’, his manager tells him when the reporter slinks away with his tail between his legs.

‘Yeah - I don’t deserve her’, he answers with a rueful smile.

When he tries to thank her that night, she levels him with a look that could knock a grown man (i.e. him) off his feet, but her voice is gentle and her words are soft.

‘Don’t thank me’, she says. ‘Just be a better husband and father, ok?’

He’s not ashamed to admit that he actually cries.

He learns to tell her he loves her at least once a day. She starts to smile back cheekily and reply ‘of course’.

The game is in between sets when the skin at the back of his neck crackles with nerves. From the corner of his eye, he catches a glimpse of Osamu sprinting right into the stands. Then his ears pick up on his little girl’s scream - ‘mama’ she cries, her shrill voice ringing above the confusion rippling through the crowd and his legs move of their own accord, leaping over the barrier into the audience, as he snarls and shoves his way to her usual spot.

He thought he’s had his fill of nightmares to last him a lifetime. He’s evidently wrong.

She lies crumpled on the ground, head resting on Osamu’s lap. Her lips are pale and her eyes are closed but thank god - thank whichever deity’s listening - her chest still moves with her breath. He’s not quite sure what happens next - he knows he dives to his knees and pulls her towards him but everything else is a blur until her eyes flutter open and she groans.

‘Darlin’, can ya hear me? Can ya tell me where you are?’ he asks, forcing his voice to remain calm.

‘Tsumu? Why are you here? Aren’t you in the middle of a game?’ she murmurs, confused.

‘Fuck the game’, he snaps. ‘Are ya feelin' ok?’

‘Something hurts, Tsumu’, she rasps, eyes glazing over. He can feel the chill of ice seep into his spine.

'Yer fine, yer fine, yer going to be fine' he mutters, over and over and over again, willing her to sit up and tell him she's fine, she's ok, she'll just shake it off - but light starts to shutter out of her eyes and frost creeps up his throat.

‘I need a medic!’ he shouts, voice cracking on every word. ‘I need a medic, now!’

‘Tsumu’, he hears his brother interrupt urgently. ‘Tsumu, she’s bleedin’.

He’s never been more grateful for Osamu when his twin turns to yell for an ambulance and yanks Shino away with him. The little girl is kicking and screaming for her mama but he knows she would kill him if he lets their little girl be traumatised from seeing her mama lying in a pool of blood on the floor.

He can’t breathe - not even when the medics finally come and whisk her off to the hospital, his mind hardly able to process anything, terror still coursing through his veins when the doctors press brown envelopes full of forms into his bloodstained hands for him to sign so the relevant procedures can be carried out.

‘Don’t!’ Osamu says sharply, when he drops his head into his hands and starts to whimper about how he’ll die if he loses her again and what the fuck is he gonna do, ‘Samu, if she doesn’t make it out alive – ‘she’s stronger than ya think, don’t ya dare give up on her like that’, and he promptly shuts up after that. Time in the waiting room passes agonizingly slow, seconds feeling like minutes, minutes stretching into hours, and he would have drowned from the weight of his despair if he weren’t anchored in place by his twin’s hand on his back.

His breath rushes back into his lungs when the doctors later tell him she’s fine, they carried out the standard operation - but she doesn’t look fine, doesn’t seem fine, is very clearly not fine when they wheel her out, huddled into a ball with her head between her knees, like her world has just collapsed into itself. She doesn’t even look up when he sits beside her, the bed dipping under his weight.

‘I’m sorry’, she eventually says, voice barely a whisper, and he fights the urge to break down into tears – because ‘Samu’s right, she’s so much stronger than he thinks. They'd been talking about trying for a sibling for Shino for some time now, since they've both grown up with brothers of their own and can't imagine life without them. But the doctors tell him that it’s just bad luck - the baby was never going to survive, and her collapse was probably exacerbated by stress, overwork, perhaps even fatigue from her skipping lunch for work and dinner to rush to his match.

‘Don’t be. It’s not yer fault at all’, he manages to pull himself together to reassure her, but she just stares blankly at the wall.

His grandmother calls when they find out the baby they lost would have been a boy, and he fails her again when he’s too late to snatch the phone away before the old lady’s poison drips into her ears and traps her in a deadly fog. He’d cursed the old bitch out relentlessly, but the toxic words fester beneath her skin and she fades into a ghost before his eyes. He desperately tries to stop her spiral into frozen silence, but he’s away for games more than half the time, hands tied behind his back by the stranglehold of contracts and commitments he has no choice but to fulfil.

He’s never been so thankful before when the season finally ends - but he is, at least this time, so he can talk her into taking two weeks off from work. They drop Shino off with her indulgent grandparents, and drift down the coast on the back of her bike. She doesn’t try breaking any speed limits - and he knows he should be happy about that, but there’s no spark in her eyes, no smile to answer the wind - there hasn’t been, not since she collapsed.

(not since they lost their child)

He buys her mochi at every town, but she picks at it listlessly, just like she does these days when Osamu tries to tempt her with his latest creations. He insists they stay at ryokans, traditional inns with onsens attached, hoping the heat from the water might chase the chill from her bones, but colour does not return to her cheeks. There are shadows beneath her eyes, and she seems to wilt under the vibrant red and gold of autumn leaves.

They go for a walk after dinner one night, tracing a path along the shore. He’d been talking non-stop the entire trip to mask the gaps left by her silence, but tonight he falls quiet, allowing the hum of the waves to wash over them. Her hand is cold in his, so he wraps his jacket around her shoulders and hopes the warmth from his body bleeds into hers.

She comes to a standstill, feet sinking in the sand, and tilts her head to face him.

‘Tsumu?’, she breathes, a question in her eyes.

‘I’m here’, he says, a prayer in his heart.

There is a lighthouse on the cliff just a few miles ahead, illuminating the shadows of the waves. The faintest reflection of light pools in her eyes, and he stills as she lifts her gaze to meet his.

‘I know’, she says, offering him the smallest of smiles.

He interlaces their fingers together firmly, and tugs her towards shelter, as a storm brews over the horizon.

That night she tucks her head under his chin, and he holds her until she falls asleep, cradled in his arms. He keeps slumber at bay by counting her breaths, and only falls asleep himself when the storm breaks.

'Why did I wake up to a blonde octopus wrapped around me', she mumbles, voice heavy with sleep.

'Nah. More like a seahorse, cos I'm not letting ya go, sweetheart', he replies, tightening his grip on her waist. 'Ya got a problem with that?'

Her only response is to burrow herself deeper into his chest.

'Guess not', he chuckles fondly, nuzzling his nose into her hair, hope blossoming anew in his heart.

Time turns their wounds into scars and they heal together, one breath at a time.

She stays away from their first few matches when the season begins again. The press is coerced into passing over reports of her collapse by the dual forces of the MSBY press machine and their legal team, but they are forced to ride out the gossip generated in internet forums by a fringe group of deranged fans. His teammates treat her like she’s made of glass - even Bokuto dials himself down a notch, all save for Shoyo, who slips her his mother’s number, telling her gently that the six year gap between him and Natsu wasn’t deliberate, and that she would find a sympathetic ear in the older woman.

He knew he was right to anoint Shoyo as his favourite wing spiker - not only does he fly high enough to answer the demand of every single one of his sets, but his sunniness drags her out of the fog into yoga classes and meditation practices, and slowly but surely he watches her bloom again. It’s a powerful combination - Shoyo-kun’s friendship and his mother’s gentle conversations, Osamu’s cooking and her love for Shino, capped with his determination to show her he loves her and prove that he’s here to stay.

‘It’s like Kintsugi’, she tells him, with a wide smile. ‘All of you poured gold into the cracks of my heart and made me whole again’.

The years pass.

Shino turns seven – a very respectable age for his very best girl, he tells her (I'm your only girl, Papa, Shino informs him archly), and obliges her demands of a bicycle in MSBY colours and volleyball lessons, forcing all his teammates to turn up for her birthday party, volleyball themed of course. The look of unadulterated joy on his princess’ face is worth every ounce of effort to put up with Sakusa’s complaints at having to turn up for a kiddie party full of loud noises and far too much candy, and the sweaty afternoons spent hand painting the bicycle black and gold.

The day Atsumu discovers his first white hair makes her thank her lucky stars that she’s immune to his nonsense by now, because the wailing and gnashing of teeth she has to put up with makes ‘Samu offer her his couch as refuge. She slaps tape and salonpas on his aches and pains, and points to the deepening lines on her face when he complains about his age.

‘Those lines aren’t wrinkles. If they’re caused by laughter, it doesn’t count’, he reasons laughingly. She’s left befuddled by his logic and shakes her head.

Meian Shugo retires, and Hinata throws a party to celebrate in his honour, cramming the entire MSBY team and assorted friends into his penthouse apartment on a rainy Saturday night. Osamu’s hired to cater the food but remains as a guest, shooting a smirk at him when Shoyo drags her off to dance during his favourite song, twin flames burning bright in the night.

‘A hundred yen for your thoughts?’ she asks, when Shoyo returns with her breathless but wreathed with smiles.

‘Was just wondering when you were gonna save a dance for this old man’, he teases.

‘Oh?’ she says with a laugh. ‘Thought you said your back hurt, and you didn’t want to move?’

‘Meh - I was hoping you’d forget that’, he says airily, then frowns when he notices there’s no drink in her hand.

‘Not drinking tonight, sweetheart?’, he asks, curling his fingers around her empty hand.

‘The doctor warned me not too’, she answers, her smile growing impossibly wider. He blinks in confusion when she leans on to her toes to whisper into his ear - then oh.

‘You’re pregnant?’ he repeats, unable to trust his ears, eyes filling with tears when she bites her lips and nods.

‘Are you happy, ‘Tsumu?’, she asks, her face alight with hope.

There is so much he wants to say to her, starting with thank you loving me enough to give me another chance all those years ago and ending with I love you, so ridiculously much – because he can never say it enough, she’s given him more than he deserves – her heart, Shino, a happy home and now the promise of another child.

But there's salt and water welling up in his throat, and it’s all he can do to choke out a shaky ‘of course’, before gathering her in his arms, warmth pooling in his eyes, love overflowing in his heart.

They stay that way for most of the night, entwined in each other’s arms, so drunk on happiness and love and warmth that they don’t even notice the storm clearing and the moon rising in the clear night sky.

#haikyuu #haikyuu!!#hq #haikyuu x reader #hq x reader #hq imagines #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu writing #hq writing #haikyuu angst #haikyuu romance #haikyuu fluff #miya atsumu x reader #miya atsumu x y/n #atsumu x reader #miya atsumu #miya osamu #inarizaki #haikyuucreations

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teacupfulofstarshine · 5 years

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LOVELY, DARK, AND DEEP: CHAPTER 4

((alright y’all, here we go. the long-awaited chapter 4. i hope you like it~))

chapter 1 // chapter 2 // chapter 3// read it on ao3!

(tw: panic attack, anger, electricity, injury mentions, blood mentions, fight mentions, minor angst, mild anxiety)

word count: 7112

“What do you want to know?”

Thomas watches the way the merman shakes on the lab table.

“Are you cold?” he asks. Logan blinks at him. “You’re shaking. I know you’re probably scared, but the table can’t be super warm, either. Do you want a blanket or something?”

Logan tilts his head suspiciously. “What . . . what is a . . . blanket? Does it hurt?”

“No,” Thomas says, and it hurts his heart that Logan thinks he’s going to be hurt here. He knows that it’s probably the most rational thing for him to assume, but he hopes they can convince Logan they mean well. “It’s . . . it’s a soft thing. We drape them over ourselves to stay warm, and we use them when we sleep, too.”

“It is cold here,” Logan admits. “If you do not mind, I – I think I would enjoy one of those blankets.”

Virgil hurries out of the room and returns quickly with a red-and-gold plaid blanket. It’s thick and warm, and he’s painstakingly careful as he drapes it over Logan’s shoulders and tucks it around his body. “Better?” Thomas asks.

Logan sighs shakily and curls into the blanket. “Better,” he agrees. “You . . . must have other questions for me, I imagine?”

“You’re surprisingly fluent in English,” Virgil says, clicking the tape recorder he keeps in his pocket on. “I didn’t think you’d speak this well.”

Logan looks at him as though he’s stupid. “Of course I speak this language,” he says. “My kind speak the language of whatever human civilization we happen to live near. We need to understand what your fishermen are saying if we’re going to avoid getting netted and killed. Not . . . that it always works.”

“We’re not going to kill you,” Thomas says. “We just want to know how to help you.”

“Put me back,” Logan says immediately. “Put me back in the ocean. Let me go back to my pod, they’re probably worried sick I –”

He looks at them and clamps his mouth shut. “Pod?” Thomas asks. “As . . . as in a family unit? You – you have a family?”

“Of course I have a family!” Logan snaps. “What, did you think I was some kind of monster roaming around the ocean on my own sinking ships and eating sailors?”

“What –”

“Don’t play dumb with me! I know exactly how humans think! They think we’re monsters! When they catch us, they take us apart to study us or they put us on display and kill us slowly or – I don’t know if they eat us or not but I wouldn’t put it past you!”

“Okay, calm down time!” Virgil says. “We don’t think you’re a monster. We wanna study you, yeah, but we don’t have to vivisect you to do that!”

“What does that mean?!”

“We aren’t going to cut you open,” Thomas says softly. “We’re scientists. We study the ocean and the creatures that live in it. We rescue animals that have been hurt by other humans.”

“You mean you steal them.”

“No, I mean rescue. We bring them here, we patch them up, and we let them heal in a safe environment where predators can’t get them. And once they’re strong enough to survive in the wild, we let them go. We release them into the ocean, where they belong, because keeping them here longer than we have to would be cruel.”

Logan is still glaring suspiciously at them, but there are tears brimming in his eyes. “I – I don’t – I want to go home,” he demands. He doesn’t sound nearly as scary as before. “I want to go back to the ocean.”

“You’re not strong enough to survive that journey,” Thomas says. “You were poisoned by that net, and it tore you up pretty badly regardless. You aren’t going to be healed enough to go back for at least two weeks.”

“That – I – n-no, you – I can’t – th-they’ll be so s-scared,” Logan whispers. “They’ll think something happened to me. I – I have to go home. Please.”

Thomas looks at his hands. “I . . . I’m so sorry, Logan. We can’t let you go home yet. If we do that, it . . . it would be opening you up to all sorts of dangers that -”

“You think I don’t know how dangerous the ocean is?!” Logan snarls. “I grew up there! I spent my childhood frolicking around the depths of the Marianas Trench! My idea of fun was to taunt a shiver of sharks and get them to chase me because I knew I outpaced them easily! I’m a hunter! There are plenty of dangerous things in the ocean and I am one of them!”

His chest is heaving, eyes narrowing, tail twitching. Thomas inhales sharply, preparing to say something, but then he catches the scent in the air. It’s sharp and metallic, almost coppery but not quite. He knows this scent. It’s almost . . .

Electric.

“Virgil, get down!” Thomas yells. He grabs Virgil and tackles him down to the ground, rolling away from the metal chairs and the metal lab table and the metal everything. Logan screams, tail slamming against the table as electricity crackles down his entire being. It leaps out from the circular patches of scales on his arms, it arcs across his tail, it crackles at the corners of his eyes as he screams.

“Let me go!” he wails. “Please, let me go back to them! Let me go! I don’t want to be here! I never wanted to be here! Let me go back to them!”

The electricity fizzles out, and Logan’s hands find their way up into his hair. He grabs at it, pulling it much harder than Thomas would prefer as he screams. “Let me go! Let me go, let me go, LET ME GO!”

“We can’t do that!” Thomas calls. He curls his body protectively over Virgil’s, shielding as much of him as he can. “We can’t let you get hurt any more than you already are!”

Logan shrieks again, and Thomas claps his hands over his ears, because that is not a human noise. It sounds like the scraping of a rusty ship’s hull against rocks as it crashes in a midnight storm. It sounds like the wind howling through a wild November hurricane. It sounds like the power and fury of the wildest ocean depths, condensed into one long, never-ending noise.

Eventually, however, it does end, and when Thomas finally uncovers his ears, he hears not the shrieks of some long-dead sea monster entity, but the muffled sobs of a broken man. He cautiously rises up onto his knees, peering over the edge of the table to see Logan, slumped over the cold, hard metal, face buried in his arms. His entire body shakes with sobs, and Thomas carefully reaches for his shoulder. “Logan -”

“Get away from me!” Logan roars. He throws his head forward, snapping a mouthful of gleaming fangs, and Thomas barely manages to avoid those fangs sinking into his hand. “I want to go home!” His entire body is tense, preparing to launch himself off the table, but he’s shaking from the force and wincing from the pain.

“Virgil, can you please go into the kitchen and make some tea?” Virgil looks at Thomas as though he’s just asked him to set the lab on fire and leave him there.

“Doc, are you sure -”

“Yes. I got more teabags, they’re in the cabinet above the stove.”

Virgil cautiously edges away from Logan, who glares at him until he leaves. Once the lab door slams shut behind him, Logan’s gaze snaps right back to Thomas. Thomas carefully lifts his hands up palm-out.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You hurt me when you took me away from my family!”

“We didn’t set that net,” Thomas says, soothing but firm. “We found you on the beach, poisoned and dying. I’m sorry that you got caught in it, and I’m sorry that you’ve been stolen from your family. I promise that Virgil and I will get you back to them as soon as we possibly can. But we run the risk of killing you if we release you back into the ocean as you are.”

“I’ve spent my entire life in the ocean! It can’t kill me, it can’t hurt me!”

“You can barely move right now.” Logan bristles, and Thomas hates himself for being so callous but he needs Logan to understand the severity of the situation. “There’s no way that you would survive on your own. Even if you can defend yourself from predators, you’re exhausted and you can barely move. How are you going to hunt? How are you going to feed yourself?”

“My pod will -”

“How are you going to locate them?”

“I - I can call for them!”

“Sure, but what if they can’t hear you? The sound will only travel so far. If they can’t hear it, you have to move, but your mobility is extremely limited. It would be better for you to wait until you’ve healed more. I’m sorry that you have to be here, but you do.”

Logan screeches loudly. Thomas covers his ears and hunkers down to wait it out, but he can’t completely block out the noise. It’s a horrible noise just on principle (like grating metal, like nails on a chalkboard, like steel wool fibers pulled apart and dragged across a cheese grater, like a badly out-of-tune piano, like the death shriek of a hellish creature, like a car wreck), but there’s more to it than that. The noise is horrible because it’s the sound of a heart breaking, shattering into pieces.

The screech goes on forever and it lasts only a moment. By the time Logan has stopped screaming and Thomas’s ears have stopped ringing, Virgil is lurking near the staircase. He’s wearing his wireless headphones to muffle the horrible noises. Thomas smiles, balling his fists to hide the shaking, and motions for Virgil to come in.

Logan is shivering, pulling the blanket tightly around himself and curling up to avoid looking at them as best as he can. Virgil’s footsteps are hesitant and shuffling, less of a step than a drag of his foot across the linoleum floor. He carefully sets the tray down and looks at Thomas, hesitantly pulling one headphone away from his ear.

“Is . . . everything okay, Doc?”

“Yes, Virgil, everything is fine.”

Thomas sips at his tea, watching the merman carefully. Logan very pointedly stares at anything he can see that is NOT Thomas or Virgil, clutching his arms so tightly that Thomas worries he’ll leave gouges in his arms. “I’m sorry that we have to keep you here,” he says. “But you have my word that once we’ve confirmed you’re stable enough to survive, we’ll release you into the ocean.”

“How am I supposed to trust that?” Logan snaps. He doesn’t look at them.

“The doc would never lie to someone,” Virgil spits, defensive, but Thomas shakes his head a little.

“He’s allowed to be upset. For all he knows, we kidnapped him.”

“We did not! We would never -”

“Virgil, how would you feel if you woke up injured and isolated in a strange place and were then told that you weren’t allowed to go home for quite some time? I know I would be terrified.” He turns his gaze from Virgil to Logan as he speaks. “I would want to go home as soon as possible. I would want to be freed immediately, and if I wasn’t, I would lash out at anyone who tried to keep me confined, even if they said they only wanted what was best for me. How would I know they were telling me the truth?”

“I . . . I guess you’re right . . .”

“Logan,” Thomas says softly. “I understand that you’re upset. It’s okay. It’s a perfectly natural and valid response to the situation that you’re in right now. I just want you to understand that Virge and I, we’re going to take care of you. We want you to recover and we want you to get home safely.”

“How am I to trust that?” Logan says softly. “I know what humans think of those like me. We are rare, exotic creatures to be kept on display and shown off like trophies. We are not capable of real thought or speech, despite our tremendous ability for ‘mimicry’. What if I never see my family again?”

“Why don’t you tell me about them?” Thomas prompts. “You don’t have to be super specific, but talking about them may make you feel a little better . . .”

Logan’s eyes flicker towards him, although they focus on his feet rather than his face. One hand comes away from clutching the blanket to gently touch the odd band of lighter-blue scales coiling around his upper arm.

“I . . . I suppose . . .”

*~*~*~*~*

Sunlight filters through the water. A red blur darts around in front of him, weaving with ease through seaweed that would tangle in his fins and ensnare him. “Stay where I can see you, Roman!” he calls, but the smaller mer doesn’t listen.

Finally, he catches up, taking a detour above the seaweed, almost panicking when he hears crying. He sends out rapid distress clicks, but when Roman answers back almost immediately unharmed, he calms down a little (but not much).

“I found someone!” Roman calls back. “He’s crying and he’s all alone, I think he might be lost!”

He swims closer, listening, and he picks up on the sobs only a few more seconds after Roman does. “Hello? Are you alright? You don’t have to cry, we’re here to help you! Did you lose your pod?”

“I . . . I do not . . . I do not have a pod,” the stranger sniffles. A few quick clicks confirm that there is a second mer, slightly smaller than Roman, sleek and streamlined with his hands pressed to his face. “I am all alone.”

“Do you remember what happened to your pod, little mer?”

“I do not have a pod,” he repeats. “I - I have never had a pod. I do not . . . I do not remember what happened to me. I woke up near this reef, and I was alone, and I cannot remember ever not being alone. I . . . I think that I have always been alone.”

He feels the water disturb as Roman fidgets, rustling his spines and trying to decide if he should reach out and comfort the strange mer with touch. “You’ve . . . always been alone?” Roman asks softly.

“Yes,” the mer says. “I . . . that is not normal, is it?”

“No, little guppy, it’s not,” he says. “But it’s okay, you don’t have to cry! You can come with me and be part of my pod if you want!”

He can see the mer freeze, fidgeting a little with his hands and looking up at him instead of down at the sea floor. He starts to uncoil, just a little bit. “You . . . you want me?”

“Of course, guppy! Roman here used to be part of another pod, but when we found each other he was all alone too! Now he’s part of my pod, and he’s not alone anymore!”

“It’s really great! We’re a small pod, but we’re a great pod! I like us much better than my old pod,” Roman says, puffing his chest out proudly. He hears the other mer giggle a little, quietly.

“Do you want to join our pod, guppy?” he asks, soft and gentle as though he’s cradling a sea otter pup in his palms.

“Wh - really? You really want - I can join - you - really?!”

“Of course! I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t want you to join us!”

He’s close enough to the other mer to see when his face breaks into a wide grin. “I would love that! I - I’ve never had a pod before, how do I join?”

“Tell me your name.”

“Logan. I - that’s the only thing that I remember. My name is Logan.”

“Welcome to the pod, Logan.” He reaches forward, carefully wraps his thumb and index finger around Logan’s upper arm. He concentrates on Roman, the only other member of his pod, and hears Logan gasp when all of his scales light up. Roman grins proudly at his side as the blue scales on his arm begin to glow.

When he pulls his hand away, there’s a band of light blue scales wrapping around Logan’s arm. “Whoa! How did you do that?”

“Easy, guppy. I’m magic.”

“He’s an elder mer!” Roman boasts proudly. “He can do all kinds of cool, neat stuff that we can’t because he’s magic! That’s our podmark! It means you belong with us now!”

“And it shares a little of my magic with you,” he adds. “I age differently than regular mer, so now you age differently, too! I didn’t ever want to lose my pod, and now I never have to!”

Logan smiles shyly.

“I’ll race you!” Roman declares, turning and pointing out into open water. He sends a click out, waiting for the echo to show him the shape of the rocky cliff that Roman is gesturing to. “I bet you can’t beat me!”

“I bet I can!”

“You’re on!”

He feels Logan take off, and he’s slicing through the water like a shark. Roman doesn’t even start swimming, so completely stunned and in awe at Logan’s speed. “He didn’t tell me he could rocket around like a sailfish!” he complains.

“You didn’t ask, guppy,” he chuckles. “You’d better start swimming, or he’s going to beat you for sure!”

“Never!”

He lets them swim for a minute longer, carefully sending out echos to check their progress. Logan is absolutely going to beat Roman to the cliff, even without the head start he’d accidentally received. With a soft bubbling huff of laughter, he swims off after them.

---

Roman is dizzy. Where is his pod? What’s happening? All he knows is that one minute, he was swimming along after his dad and his brother, and then he was suddenly slammed into the sea floor. He pushes himself up, flaring his spines defensively.

There are orcas surrounding him, gnashing their teeth as they circle above him. The largest one is battle-scarred, tail swishing menacingly, and as Roman puffs his spines out, the large orca slams its tail at him. So that’s what knocked him down.

Roman swims up, looking for his pod, but he can’t find them. They must not have realized that he’s been caught. His head is still spinning like a whirlpool with the force of the blow, but he has to fight. He has to get out, he has to get back to his pod.

One of the orcas lunges towards him, and he twists, slamming his spiky tail into the orca’s body. It howls in pain and jerks forward, yanking him through the water and straight towards the gaping maw of another orca. He quickly yanks his tail away, shouting a word his dad would never approve of as a few of his spines are ripped away. Even though they’ll grow back, his heart still pangs at the sight of his beautiful spines embedded in such a monster.

Two of the orcas rush him at once, and he quickly barrel rolls away from them, firing his spines out as he dives through the opening. He shrieks as one of the orcas snaps and catches his tail in their jaws. Pain explodes up through his side as he slashes his arms around and stabs his elbow spines directly into the orca’s eye.

“Get off of me!” he roars. The orca lets go with a yelp as Roman floods his gills with water and screams his pod call into the water. The orcas around him make angry noises, and not for the first time Roman wishes his dad was here. His dad speaks orca, he could get these awful creatures to leave him alone. And his dad is big, he would be able to tail-slap the orcas into the abyss.

The orcas, angry at Roman fighting back and angry at him calling for help, swarm him. He doesn’t have enough spines to fight them all off, and he drives his elbows into them at every opportunity but it’s not enough. There is pain everywhere as they bite at him and tail-slap him, and soon enough he’s sinking back to the sea floor.

The water around him clouds with blood, and the orcas begin to circle in a more hurried frenzy. The ones he’s speared are beginning to sink from the poison in his spines, slowing down as it invades their brains and slows them down, but that hasn’t helped him. If anything, it’s spurred the other orcas into a frenzy.

Roman calls for his pod again and again and again and again, desperately praying to the Goddesses of the Seven Seas that his dad shows up to save him before the orcas eat him.

“Roman?!”

Roman jerks his head up, hearing a response to his pod call, but quickly realizes that it’s Logan swimming to his rescue. “Logan, no, get out of here! Go get -”

“I’m not leaving you!” Logan skillfully weaves through the orcas and swims down to grab Roman’s forearms. “What happened?! Are you hurt?! No, that’s a stupid question, you’re obviously hurt, what can I do?!”

“You can get out of here!” Roman hisses. “You can go get dad, he can fight off these monsters and you’re faster than I ever could be!”

“I’m not leaving you!” Logan repeats. “What happens if they get to you before I get back? I just got this pod, I’m not abandoning you!”

Roman is distracted by the sight of one of the orcas growing impatient with waiting. It dives down, mouth open, teeth glinting and sharp, and Roman knows that it’s going to sink its teeth into Logan’s fins and hurt his baby brother and he will not let that happen.

“Logan, get down, now!” he snaps. Logan jerks his head up, turns to see the orca. But he doesn’t move; instead, he positions himself in front of Roman. “What are you doing, you kelp-brain?!”

“GET AWAY FROM MY BROTHER!” Logan roars. Roman gasps as the dark rings of scales all over Logan’s tail and torso and arms begin to glow, so brightly that Roman is forced to close his eyes. The water around them gets suddenly warm, and then there’s a burning all over Roman’s body that leaves him stunned and paralyzed. He can barely keep his eyes open, and the last thing he sees is the illuminated silhouette of his enraged baby brother.

---

Logan blinks awake, feeling strange motion around him even though he is not swimming. He opens his eyes and realizes that he is being held in someone’s arms.

“Dad . . .?” “Shhh, guppy,” he soothes. “It’s alright, you’re safe now. I’ve got you.”

“But - but Roman, he - they - I -”

“He’s safe too, guppy. I have him.” He is shifted, carefully, and Logan realizes that his dad has him cradled in one arm and Roman in the other. “He’s lost quite a few of his spines, but they regrow after a few days. It’ll be painful cause he’s lost so many . . . but he’ll survive. We’re going back to our cave so I can patch him up.”

“Wh . . . what happened, Dad? I remember finding Roman, I remember turning to see the orca, I remember getting angry . . . but nothing else . . .”

“You have a gift,” his dad says, and he sounds proud. “You have been blessed by the Goddesses of the Seven Seas. They have given you the Burning Light.”

“Wh . . . what?”

“The rings on your body emit a Burning Light. It travels through the water and stuns everything in its path. Few mer are gifted with the Burning Light - you are blessed, guppy, truly.”

“I just wanted Roman to be safe.”

“And he is, guppy. He most assuredly is.”

*~*~*~*~*

“Burning Light?” Virgil asks, rapidly scribbling down notes.

“We later learned from overhearing human sailors that the humans refer to the blessing as ‘electricity’,” Logan says. “It allows me to hunt, and to protect my pod, although that is not my primary job. That belongs to . . . to my brother.”

“Roman, right?” Thomas says. “The one with the spines?”

“Yes,” Logan murmurs. “He is my older brother. He and my father . . . they are the only family that I have in this world. They are my pod. And now, I have been taken from them, and . . . and I do not know if I will ever see them again.” One hand comes up to touch the light blue band of scales around his arm, what they understand now to be a mark from his pod.

“I promise that you will,” Thomas says. “We just want to make sure that you’ll survive when you go back to the ocean. You’re injured, and you can barely move.”

“I am aware.”

“I promise that as soon as you’re healed, we’re going to let you back to the ocean,” Thomas says. “We don’t want to keep you here any longer than we absolutely have to. But I cannot, in good conscience, let you go to your death.”

“I . . . I suppose I can appreciate such a sentiment,” Logan sighs, “although I am still fundamentally opposed to remaining here. I . . . am sorry that I attacked you earlier. I was distressed, but . . . that is not an excuse.”

“Hey, no, don’t do that,” Virgil says, snapping his head up. Logan’s eyes widen slightly at the fire in his voice, a fire Virgil hadn’t meant to put there but doesn’t bother to suppress. “For all you know, you’ve basically just been kidnapped by your greatest enemy. It was a perfectly legitimate response on your part. And the doc and I are fine.”

Logan blinks. “I . . . thank you, Virgil.”

“No problem.”

“May . . . may I make a request?”

“What kind of request?”

“I - I would like to go back into the water now,” Logan says, looking away from Thomas and Virgil nervously. “I dislike when I am not at least partially submerged.”

“Well, you can’t go back into the big tank until we flush it out and bring in clean water,” Thomas says. “You were peeling your bandages off, so the water’s contaminated, it’s got your blood in it now. And we have to rewrap the bandages that you peeled off . . .”

“What about the turtle tank?” Virgil says. He refers to the large, flat, cylindrical tank where they keep smaller sea turtles and rays when they’re brought in for recovery. It kind of reminds Virgil of the touch tank at an aquarium, and it’s not an ideal place to keep Logan permanently but it could be a good solution for the time being.

“Hmm . . . That could work,” Thomas says. “Logan, would that be alright with you?” “You . . . care what I think?” “Of course we do.” Thomas smiles gently. “We want you to be comfortable while you’re here.”

Logan looks painfully surprised, and Virgil can’t stop his mind from wandering to what kinds of horrible, torturous things the poor merman thinks they’re going to inflict upon him. “I . . . tell me again what you are proposing?”

“We can’t put you back into the big tank because the water has your blood in it, and you could get sick if you sit in that. And we need to rewrap your bandages, too. But we have another, smaller tank that we can let you sit in so that you’re in the water at least a little. Virgil will rewrap your injuries while I flush out the tank, and then you can go back in the water, okay?”

“That . . . that seems adequate.”

“Okay then,” Thomas says. “Can we pick you up, Logan?”

“Yes,” he says, “although I would prefer -”

Logan stops talking before he finishes his sentence, but Thomas refuses to let him. “What is it, Logan? You’re allowed to tell us what you would prefer.”

“I . . . would prefer if . . . if you held my tail, while Virgil held my . . . the rest of me.”

“You - you really would?” Virgil feels his face heat up as Thomas shoots him a distinctive blackmailer’s grin before smiling kindly at Logan again.

“Of course we can do that,” he says. “Virgil, is that alright with you?”

“Y - yeah, of course it is,” Virgil grumbles, glaring at him. When he looks at Logan, however, his anger evaporates as the merman reaches out and gently touches his upper arm with one hand.

“Thank you, Virgil. I greatly appreciate it.”

“Yeah - I - um - y - no problem,” he mutters, feeling the heat spread through his cheeks and his ears and his entire face. Logan removes his hand from Virgil’s arm, and Virgil feels the spot where it was begin to tingle and burn from lack of contact. Before he can properly begin to process what that might mean, however, Logan reaches up and locks his arms around Virgil’s neck.

Virgil barely manages to remember to breathe, but after only a few seconds of short-circuiting he remembers how his arms work and scoops Logan up. He’s faintly aware of Thomas next to him, gathering Logan’s tail into his arms and wrapping it carefully around his shoulders and waist to keep it off the floor, but all he can focus on is Logan.

Logan’s arm presses against the bare skin of Virgil’s neck, and it’s slightly rough and scaly but also surprisingly smooth. His hair is damp, with little beads of water running down his face, and Virgil swallows hard as he watches a single drop run down the pale column of Logan’s neck. His eyes are framed by small, glittering, dark blue scales, but even their beauty cannot compare to how pretty Logan’s eyes are. It’s like staring straight into the depths of the ocean, frightening but mesmerizing all at the same time.

“Earth to Virgil?” Thomas asks. Virgil snaps his head up and looks away from Logan, towards his boss. “Are you ready to go?”

“Wh - I - y-yeah, I - sorry, boss, I got distracted. I’m ready, I’m sorry. Are we moving now?”

“Just waiting on you, Virgil. On three?”

“On three. One . . .” “Two . . .”

“Three!”

Virgil and Thomas both lift up at the same time, managing to hoist Logan up off the table. Logan shifts a little, apparently still slightly unnerved by the idea of being lifted around, and Virgil tries very hard not to think about how he’s basically carrying Logan bridal style. Instead, he pushes up onto the balls of his feet and begins to take slow, careful steps backwards, glancing between Thomas and Logan and his destination over his shoulder.

“Thank you,” Logan says softly, and his mouth is right next to Virgil’s ear. Virgil is proud of the way he doesn’t even flinch a little, even as his heartrate rockets up to truly dangerous levels.

“N - no problem.”

Virgil carefully lowers Logan into the tank, keeping his hands under Logan’s armpits to hold him upright while Thomas disentangles himself from Logan’s tail. It slithers neatly into the water in one shimmering, fluid motion, and Logan carefully lays back, submerging himself completely in the water before poking his face up above the surface.

“Better?” Thomas asks.

“Much.”

Thomas heads off to the big tank, and Virgil pulls a roll of bandages out of his pocket. “This might sting a little . . . but I promise I’m not trying to hurt you. I just wanna keep you safe.”

Logan sighs, wincing as he shifts his tail so that Virgil can see his arms. Tenderly, Virgil pulls out a cloth and begins to carefully wipe at the exposed injuries. Logan hisses at the sting, flinching just a little, but he doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t bite Virgil, either, which causes Virgil to breathe a massive sigh of relief.

After all the injuries are wiped down and clean, he begins to bandage them. Some of them are small enough that he can simply cut off a small piece of bandage and plaster it down, but some of them require wrapping lengths of bandage around Logan’s arms and torso.

Virgil keeps his touch as light as possible, applying as little pressure as possible, since there are bruises around the injuries. Logan flinches and winces but keeps his face stoic, watching Virgil with a careful, calculating, almost eerie intelligence. Virgil pretends that he doesn’t notice the way Logan is looking at him, the way Logan is studying him.

He very much notices.

He finishes bandaging Logan before Thomas finishes flushing and filling the tank, so he turns to pick up his sketchpad before realizing that he probably shouldn’t be drawing Logan without his explicit consent. “Hey, Logan?”

“Yes?”

“I - do you care if I draw you? I usually draw the marine life that we bring in, cause it’s good practice, so I - I just figured that I should ask you for permission before -”

“What is . . . draw?” Logan asks.

Virgil hesitantly opens the sketchpad and turns it to some of his previous drawings - starfish, sea turtles, jellyfish, sea urchins. He flips through them slowly, watching Logan’s eyes widen and mouth open as he stares at the drawings.

“You . . . created these?” “Yeah,” Virgil says. He pulls a pencil out of his pocket and quickly sketches a flower in the corner of a page. “There . . . I kind of had some . . . some drawings of you already . . .”

Logan is quiet. “May I see them?”

Virgil blushes, tucking the pencil behind his ear. “Um . . . Y-yeah, yeah, I - here, here you go . . .”

He carefully shows Logan the sketches he’s already done - Logan curled in the tank, asleep, rough guess sketches of Logan’s anatomy, close-ups on some of Logan’s fins and the band of light blue scales around his upper arm. He deliberately doesn’t turn the page to the final drawing, which is a close-up of Logan’s face that he spent an embarrassing amount of time on.

“You . . . created these images of me? But . . . but why?”

“Some of the drawings I do get sold for textbook illustrations, some of them are for research purposes, some of them are just practice for anatomy. But most of them are just . . . for fun. I like drawing.”

Logan blinks. “Does . . . drawing me require any specific action on my part?”

“Nope. You don’t really have to do anything at all.”

Logan studies Virgil’s face very carefully, and Virgil studies him back. He doesn’t know if he’s going to be allowed to continue drawing the merman, but his mind is already thinking in artist terms. How should he shade Logan’s irises? How should he capture the delicate facial scales? How should he accurately represent the gossamer-thin fins that replace Logan’s ears, the hair that floats around him like a feathery halo in the water and plasters itself to his forehead in the air, the curve of his chin and the slant of his nose and the bright life that gleams in his eyes?

“You may continue to draw me,” Logan decides, finally. “On one condition.”

“What’s the condition?”

“I would like to be able to see the drawings when they are done.” Logan suddenly averts his gaze, looking away almost adorably. “If . . . you do not mind showing them to me.”

“Of course I don’t,” Virgil answers immediately. “I’m more than happy to show them to you. They’re of you. Thank you, so much, for letting me draw you.”

Logan smiles, and his entire face lights up, and Virgil is so, so gay.

Before his soul can completely leave his body, Thomas calls that the tank is full, and Virgil is setting his sketchbook aside and helping Thomas carry Logan back to the tank. They do their best not to throw him into the tank, but he still sinks in the water without much grace due to his injured tail.

“He must coil like that because he misses his pod,” Thomas comments, watching the way that Logan curls up to sleep.

“We can’t keep him away from them, Doc,” Virgil says.

“We can’t release him yet, Virgil. He can’t even swim. If he goes back into the ocean, the scent of blood will attract predators galore. He’ll never survive, and he won’t ever see his pod again.”

“Yeah, but look at him,” Virgil argues. Logan is coiling up, slowly and painfully, and he looks objectively miserable. “He’s never gonna be happy here, Thomas. We don’t want him to suffer, but he’s gonna suffer if he’s alone.”

“So what are you proposing, that we go find his pod?”

Virgil smirks. “Well, actually . . .”

*~*~*~*~*

“You . . . you wish to what?”

If Virgil thought Logan’s eyes were pretty before (and he did), that’s nothing compared to watching his face light up as hope slowly unfurls its banners. He tears a chunk out of the fish and shoves it into his mouth as Virgil explains his idea.

“We don’t wanna just let you go back into the ocean when you’re injured and can’t swim, cause that would basically be a death warrant for you and we don’t want that. But you’re clearly miserable without your pod, so - so I thought that maybe, we could go and find them? We could bring them here to visit you, let them see that you’re alive and okay, and then they’ll know where you are and they won’t panic. And once you’re all healed, you can go back to the wild with them.”

“I . . . you are truly willing to help me?”

“We don’t want you to be miserable,” Thomas says. “And your family must be worried sick. I know that if anything ever happened to Virgil and I didn’t know where he was or what had happened, I’d be distraught.”

Virgil feels something strange welling up in his chest when Thomas says that, something like pride, something like love, something like acceptance and warmth and family. Instead of expressing these sentiments, he elbows his mentor gently and mutters, “Yeah, yeah, doc, don’t get sappy on me” while smiling and staring at the floor.

Logan grins, flashing his mouthful of fangs, but Virgil can’t see this as threatening. He can’t see it as anything other than incredibly endearing. “I - this - thank you, thank you so much, that is - this is more than I could dream of.”

“The only problem is that we don’t actually know how to find your pod,” Thomas says. Logan doesn’t appear deterred in the slightest.

“When we are not in the same place, we have a call that we use to find each other,” he says. “I could attempt to teach it to you and then -”

“Slow down there, bud,” Virgil interrupts. “We don’t have the same anatomy that you do, there’s no way that we could replicate a noise like that.” He hates to say it, hates to watch the way the hope in Logan’s face dies, but he can’t let it live if it’s false.

“We couldn’t make it ourselves,” Thomas muses, “but what we could do is record you making the call and broadcast it from the boat using the sonar equipment.”

“Could we reformat the sonar to do that?” Virgil asks. Thomas grins, sharp and intelligent.

“We absolutely could.”

Virgil grins back, and they both look at Logan, who’s cautiously smiling, hope beginning to creep back into his features. “Alrighty then, Logan. We’re gonna find your family.”

*~*~*~*~*

Thomas anchors the boat a few miles offshore and carefully prepares the sonar equipment. They’d had to record about ten different trials of Logan’s pod call before the merman had deemed it satisfactory, but he’d been so excited about seeing his pod again that Thomas hadn’t minded that much.

Out here alone, with Logan still in the lab and Virgil keeping him company, Thomas lets his mind wander to more pessimistic options. Even with the recording of Logan’s pod call, there’s no guarantee that he’s anywhere near Logan’s pod. There’s no guarantee that they’ll find the pod today, or tomorrow, and there’s no guarantee that even a fully healed Logan released into the ocean will ever find them again.

He shakes his head to clear the negativity; he can’t afford to think like that. Logan is desperate to see his pod again, and Thomas can’t let him down. He carefully hoists the sonar speaker into his arms, heads to the side of the boat, and lowers it down into the water.

Thomas has already decided that he will spend an hour in this location before he moves on, and he’ll advance five miles into the ocean every time he moves. He sits down at the monitoring equipment and presses the button to begin projecting the call out into the water.

He has plenty of busywork reports to occupy himself while he’s waiting for something to happen, so he does. His eyes flick back and forth from the sonar screen and the reports he’s filling out, not sure what exactly he’s looking for but feeling his optimism fade every time there’s nothing on the screen.

And then the screen explodes.

Thomas can feel the hull of the boat itself vibrating as the sonar detects something - someone - responding to the signal. He’s quick to shove the busywork away and pull up the sonar display, and gapes at what it displays. Something is quickly approaching, close to the surface and roughly the size of a medium shark, but that’s not what’s concerning.

What’s concerning is the other thing approaching from deeper waters, larger than the largest whale (the largest creature, full stop) that Thomas has ever seen. Suddenly, the signal gets fuzzy and distorted before completely warping out, and something thunks down onto the deck.

Thomas stands up, turning to see a mangled speaker on the deck. It’s covered in tooth and claw marks, crushed and crumpled and ripped like a tin can, but what’s scariest is the red-and-white spine the size of Thomas’s arm speared cleanly through it.

Dimly, Thomas realizes that perhaps summoning the pod of a lost and injured merman without having said merman immediately present might be a mistake. That’s the only realization he has time for before something explodes up out of the ocean in a spout of seawater. Thomas scrambles backwards, but not fast enough; whatever it is tackles him flat on his back and pins him to the deck. His head slams painfully into the deck, and the air is knocked out of his lungs, but Thomas can’t focus on that. He can only focus on three things.

The first thing is the gleam of furious eyes and the glint of razor-sharp fangs, bared above him. The second thing is the feeling of something sharp pressed close to the soft, vulnerable skin of his throat. The third thing is a single phrase, hissed out in a strangled, terrifyingly irate voice.

“What have you done to my brother?!”

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#starshinewrites #lovely dark and deep #analogical #virgil sanders #logan sanders #thomas sanders #roman sanders #patton sanders

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wazafam · 3 years

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Shooting locations can sometimes make or break a film; there are many films in which the location plays a big role in the story. A beautiful or interesting location can really immerse viewers into the movie and enhance the viewing experience.

RELATED: 10 Horror Movie Sets On Which Actors Were Nearly Killed

Some shooting locations can be so exotic or extreme that it can create a difficult or even detrimental situation for production. Here are ten movies with extreme locations, some of which helped the movie stand out, and others that proved to be calamitous.

10 127 Hours (Utah)

James Franco stars in this 2010 survival drama which takes place in Canyonlands National Park, Utah. This movie was filmed on location and director Danny Boyle hired two cinematographers, Anthony Dod Mantle, who had collaborated with Boyle previously on Slumdog Millionaire, and Enrique Chediak to take shifts for the long, grueling days shooting in the canyon.

Franco had to spend a lot of time in a very small space and was often uncomfortable and even in pain during some scenes, which made his job portraying Aron Ralston's harrowing ordeal easier in some ways despite the challenging nature of the set.

9 The Martian (Jordan)

The Martian takes place in the future year of 2035 and tells the story of an astronaut becoming separated from the rest of his crew on Mars in a dust storm and presumed dead. Matt Damon portrays Mark Watney, who must find a way to survive alone on the red planet for the next four years.

Much of the production took place in a village called Etyek just outside of Budapest, Hungary, because it had a huge sound stage that was perfect for filming interiors. For exteriors, however, the crew traveled to Wadi Rum, Jordan. Also known as 'The Valley of the Moon," this world heritage site provided the perfect backdrop for mimicking Mars' vast, alien landscapes.

8 Black Panther (Uganda)

One of the goals for the creators of Black Panther was to have it serve as a homage to several sub-Sahara African cultures while at the same time staying true to the comics. Production designer Hanna Beachler created the world of Black Panther by studying the cultures and technologies of existing tribes and brainstormed how the technology and infrastructure would have advanced had colonialism not interfered.

RELATED: 10 Ways Black Panther Changed The World For The Better

Location was an important aspect in keeping this goal in mind. Black Panther had several locations in which it was shot, including several sound stages in Atlanta, Georgia, on location in South Korea and the Rwenzori Mountains and Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda. The Bwindi Impenetrable National Park is part of a huge forest of the same name, and it's also named by the U.N. as a cultural heritage site and one of the most biodiverse places on Earth.

7 Predator (Mexico)

The original 1987 version of Predator was filmed in the jungles of Palenque Mexico. This location posed several problems, including extreme temperatures and wet conditions. Heat lamps had to be brought in, and many of the scenes took place on hills and uneven ground. At one point during filming, Arnold Schwarzenegger had to trudge through cold swampy water filled with thick mud and leeches while being chased by the Predator. Schwarzenegger called the experience a "survival story."

6 Monos (Colombia)

This war drama was shot on location in Chingaza National Natural Park, and at the Samaná River in Colombia. Filming for Monos lasted nine weeks in these intense but beautiful places. The jungle scenes, in particular, were unusual for a film shoot because of how remote and untouched by humans the location was.

A base camp had to be established for the crew complete with military tents, and food and equipment were carried up the mountains by donkeys. The crew dealt with heavy rainfall, elevation sickness, and scarce resources like electricity and refrigerated food as they filmed high in the mountains.

5 Apocalypse Now (The Philippines)

Production for Apocalypse Now was famously riddled with problems and struggles. One of the many woes the film cast, crew, and director faced was the difficult location. A huge typhoon rocked the Philippines two months into filming, delaying production for three months.

Even worse, some of the sets were destroyed in the storms. Much of the crew ended up flying back to the U.S. to wait out the conditions. Despite all the difficulties production faced, they eventually overcame them, and Apocalypse Now would go on to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival. It's now considered by many to be one of the best films ever made.

4 Mad Max: Fury Road (South Africa)

2015's Mad Max: Fury Road was able to achieve its unique apocalyptic aesthetic by shooting in Dorob National Park, located in one of the oldest deserts in the world, The Namib Desert in South Africa. While the scenery was beautiful, the conditions were harsh; actors dealt with sand, wind, and freezing temperatures at night.

RELATED: Deadpool & 9 Other Movies That Barely Escaped Development Hell

There were also other environmental difficulties in terms of conservation. A leaked report had stated that some endangered plants had been damaged during filming. Despite the rough and destructive nature of the scenes, the claim of environmental damage was later disputed, and the Namibian Coast Conservation and Management Project said that the report was an unfinalized draft and shouldn't have been used to make a judgment call.

3 Lord Of The Rings Trilogy (New Zealand)

This epic collection of movies were made famous thanks to their beautiful scenery and stunning landscapes. In fact, New Zealand has enjoyed an increase in tourism partially due to The Lord Of The Rings, and travelers can go on "Lord of the Rings Tours" where they can visit the movie's actual locations. Over 150 locations in New Zealand were used for the movies, including the city of Matamata and Queenstown, which is a resort town on the South Island.

2 Jaws (The Atlantic Ocean)

Steven Spielberg's decision to shoot a portion of the principal photography on the open ocean caused a few different problems and delays. At one point, one of the boats carrying the cast and crew actually began sinking and had to be evacuated, and a stuntman almost drowned while he was trying to get footage of real sharks to add to the movie.

Because of these difficulties, much of the crew doubted and disliked Spielberg on the set of Jaws, but, in the end, it became the first of many successes. The decision to shoot on the water paid off as the ocean scenes were all the more realistic, evoking danger and a lack of control.

1 The Revenant (Canada)

This rugged and brutal tale finally earned Leonardo DiCaprio his Oscar. The harshness of The Revenant is reflected in its setting. The Canadian Rockies was where much of the scenes were shot, but the cast and crew also filmed in remote areas of Argentina, Italy, and Montana.

There were some crew members that quit the shoot because of intense conditions and freezing weather. DiCaprio stated that wading through freezing river waters for this movie was one of the most difficult tests of his career.

NEXT: 10 Best Movies About Taking On The Wild

10 Movies With Notoriously Extreme Shooting Locations from https://ift.tt/364jblb

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dansphlevels · 6 years

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Mermaids please, I love mermaids!

I had a lot of fun writing this fic! I definitely want to write more siren/mermaid au’s in the future. Maybe a sequel to this one? Let me know what you guys think!

Caudal

Day 3 of 12 Days Of PromptsSummary: The cave has two exits. One, a hole in the ceiling, wide enough that Phil could see the stars glitter at night. The other exit was through the pool in the middle of the cave, where they’d come from. The siren leaned against the cave wall a few meters away, tending to his wound. It wasn’t bleeding anymore, but the damage was done. Sharks circled in the pool, desperate for a taste of the merman. The hole in the ceiling was too high up, the walls too steep to climb. The sharks circled in the pool of water, ready to eat whatever comes their way. No way out. Phil was stuck, with no food, no fresh water, no hope to escape, and a siren who had tried to drown him not hours before. Length: 8k wordsThemes: merman/mermaid/siren!au, sharks, survival, enemies to ?

Phil was not supposed to be there.

A storm was coming. The waves lapped against the coastal sand, hitting it harder than it had the day before. The sky was more gray than blue and more cloudy than clear. The gray had infected the water, turning it darker. Even before the first raindrops fell it was clear that a storm was on its way.

So all in all, the beach was not a good place to be. But Phil found himself walking along the sand, his bare feet no longer complaining after all the time he’d spent on that very beach that month. A change of scenery was good for people whose minds were blocked, so he’d heard. So far, the retreat was more of a break from reality, and though no new ideas came to his mind, it was a much-appreciated one.

He allowed himself to walk right up to the edge of the sea, letting the waves pound at his legs. They weren’t too big, just forceful, as if pushing him back.

The wind blew hard against him as if agreeing. It whipped against his white t-shirt and tan cargo pants, blowing his raven hair back. He wasn’t in swimming trunks, but it hardly mattered. No phone- it had been left in Manchester, very purposefully- and no wallet- no need for one, his rental house wasn’t far away. Really, no reason why he shouldn’t go for a quick dip.

He took a few steps forward, and all around him it grew quieter. The birds calmed, the wind dyed down, even the water seemed to be less harsh.

He took another step forward, and heard a strange sound, something that didn’t in any way belong in the ocean. It was… a piano?

Phil’s feet walked forwards on their own free will, diagonal along the coast towards the rock formations a half kilometer away. They were shaped like mountains but much, much smaller, only a short hike to the top. Phil had wondered why no one ever came to this beach, and over the past few days being here he’d decided it must be because of the intrusive rock formations. They were ugly, and there were lots of things like that under the water when you got over too far. Bad for surfing, and no good for pictures. The beach was completely deserted, every day of the week, even when it didn’t storm.

These thoughts went through Phil’s mind as he walked, the gentle playing of the piano becoming less faint as he grew closer. Soon, he was up to his waist in water and started swimming, doing a smooth front stroke towards the noise. The ocean stilled for him, as if it was listening to the playing as well.

He swam out further than he planned to, but there wasn’t a single thought in his mind that made him want to turn back. He had to find out where the noise was coming from. It was a beautiful tune, unlike anything he’d ever heard before. The notes ran together easily, enticing and beautiful and perfect. Whoever was playing the instrument must have a true passion for it, and a talent as well.

There were large outcroppings of rocks sticking out of the water that Phil had to swim around. He slid in between them, careful to keep his legs from touching the sharp, dark grey stones on either side. The area was badly polluted, with soda cans and plastic bags floating in the water. A fisherman’s net slid against his legs, catching on his foot. Phil had to pull out his pocket knife and cut it. The pocket knife was for opening clams, but luckily, it worked, and Phil was free from the ropes.

Phil began to swim faster as the source of music came closer. The piano keys tapped delicately one after another, going in his ears and circulating through his entire body. Every cell, every tissue yearned to go closer, begged to find the source. It was The Answer, to everything he’d wanted and everything he was searching for. This was why he was here, this was the reason he was alive.

A rowboat was wrecked against one of the huge slabs of rocks. A large chunk had been taken out of it by a mouth the size of Phil’s torso. He kept swimming, faster. He had to get to the noise, he had to get to the music.

He swam past the last rock outcropping, into the open sea. The music pulsed and hummed, all around him, but when he turned in a full circle he saw nothing, no piano anywhere. But it was here, he knew that with all his being and all his mind, it was here.

He held his breath, and dived under, opening his eyes underwater. He looked around desperately, his actions becoming more and more anxious. Where was it? He had to find it, this was The Answer! He needed The Answer!

The water was so deep he couldn’t see the bottom. Nearby, there was a huge wall of rocks, sharpened and deadly, part of the mountains that made this bay so ugly. But where was the music? Where was it?!

Phil came back up, gasping for air. It had begun to rain, droplets of water hitting the sea in little ripples of motion.

He treaded water, catching his breath, his heart pounding in his ears as he realized the music had stopped. Not a bird dared to chirp, nor the waves dare to splash. Everything was perfectly silent.

Something wrapped around his leg and Phil had no time to scream as he was ripped into the water. Someone had grabbed him, and Phil yanked and tried to kick or pull away or do something but whatever it was had grabbed ahold of him and wasn’t letting go. Bubbles raced to the surface as they descended so quickly Phil’s ears popped and he heard the thumping of a drum in his head.

Something had grabbed him, a slick form that felt almost like a human hand, wrapping around his ankle tightly, pulling him down. And he was going to die.

The thought made his brain go into overdrive, it’s blurry waterlogged HTML code sending mass orders of panic. Get away get away get away get away was blared through loudspeakers on repeat, his entire body screaming in terror and agony as they descended so rapidly the pressure made his insides crumple like a soda can.

And then they were slowing, the decent smoother. This was the moment before the white of death, where everything slowed as your heart prepared to stop. Phil’s arms went down to his sides, working on orders from the shred of his brain that still worked. He fumbled with his pockets.

Phil looked down and almost blacked out.

The tail was the color of crystalline swamps, a shade of green unlike anything Phil had ever seen. Fins ran off of it, flowing naturally in the dark water. A hand, a human hand the color of milk but slightly sickly green was wrapped around his ankle, pulling him down. The figure, the monster, the mermaid, the whatever it was, pulled him deeper. A creature of terror, of darkness, of death, it swam downwards towards the ocean floor and Phil’s immediate death.

The tail brushed against his legs.

Phil pulled out the object from his pocket and opened it. Before he had time to consider it, he plunged the knife into the creature’s tail.

Horrible dark blue liquid the color of poison poured out from the wound, and the creature let go in pain, it’s body writhing with agony. For the first time, Phil saw its face, human, a boy’s face twisted in pain and horrible anger, pointed teeth bared and ready to rip his throat out as Phil tried desperately to swim away. It swam to him in a burst of motion, grabbing him and pulling him down, when something changed and it shoved him away. The water was turning sickly blue from the blood, and the creature was looking at something in the distance. Then he turned, swimming away at an incredible speed away from whatever was there, and Phil may have been drowning but he knew danger when he saw it. He followed, hurriedly, kicking with all his might and praying that he wouldn’t drown. His lungs begged to burst, his whole body screaming in pain at the pressure.

The mermaid swam into one of the caves formed by the rocks, and Phil followed, desperately kicking and praying and drowning all at once because he was a talented individual who refused to die like this.

The light of day was getting closer, and he swam upwards, letting out his final puff of breath and begging the God he didn’t believe in to save him.

And then there was light, and then there was air, and Phil gasped and swam to the edge of the pool, trembling hands gripping onto rock. He didn’t know what was chasing them, but he knew that if it was bad enough to scare the merman, then he didn’t want to meet it.

Phil dragged himself onto land, coughing and then vomiting, the taste of salt wedged underneath his tongue and down his vocal cords. He crawled away from the pool of water, his entire body shaking with cold/fear/exertion/pain.

Nothing came out of the water to kill him. He was safe, for now.

Phil had finally stopped throwing up and managed to slump to the ground a few feet away, his entire body aching horribly.

"Hello there. I’m sorry I didn’t drown you, this would have been much easier for the both of us if you’d just died like you were supposed to.“

—

Phil sat against the stone wall of the cave, his feet resting on the sandy ground.

Across from him, on the other side of the pool, lay the creature. He was… well, Phil knew what he was. But he wasn’t sure if he could admit it.

The creature’s top half was almost human. He had a male torso, and though he had muscles, he also seemed skinny to the point of malnutrition. His skin was extremely pale, with an almost green tint. If you looked at his face and just his face, you might call him handsome, but possibly ill. Damp brown curls hung over his eyes, and he pushed them back in annoyance.

Phil wished that was all. But it wasn’t.

Under his belly button, where one’s stomach would begin to curve into a pelvis, the skin turned scaly. Instead of having legs, he had one massive tail, long and dark, swampy green and onyx black.

"You’re a mermaid,” Phil said aloud, still staring at the boy.

He huffed. “I’m not.” His voice croaked, and he cleared his throat, the same way Phil had to do whenever he hadn’t been using his voice for a while.

"Then what are you?“

The creature- the man- the not mermaid?- sat up a little straighter, showing off his pale green inner arms. A small smile tugged at his lips. “Come on, you know. I was the one who grabbed you. You don’t look horribly dumb, just make a guess.”

"You’re a merman,“ Phil suggested, his voice monotone. His eyes flickered back and forth between the creature’s tail and his eyes. Dark, very very dark, probably brown.

He rolled his eyes. “I’m not a mermaid, or a merman, or whatever else you’re suggesting. Mermaids don’t exist anywhere but German fairytales and old pirates stories. And in case you haven’t noticed, I exist.”

I noticed. “Then what are you?”

He smiled again, like he was imagining trying to drown Phil and succeeding. “Well, I’m a siren, obviously. You heard my music.”

The puzzle pieces clicked together all too late. “The piano music.”

"That was me,“ he agreed. “I always think, surely this time they won’t fall for it. Someone will have enough sense not to go out to sea in search of a piano of all things. And every time, I’m mistaken.” He shrugged, and the end of his tail, the semi-transparent parts flapped nervously.

Phil looked into the water. The cave was about the size of a small room, circular, with most of the space being taken up by the pool in which they’d small up in. Above, it rose in the shape of a mountain, with a giant crater at the top where they could see the gray sky through.

The water lapped at the constraints of the pool upsettingly, dark and blue without any green at all. Far below, Phil could see something move.

"Something’s-“

"Sharks,” the siren supplied. “They love the taste of sirens. Can smell our blood from miles away, and come racing.” He crinkled his nose in annoyance. “Rude of you to stab me. It will take at least two or three days to heal, and who knows how long the sharks will stick around for.”

"Sharks,“ Phil repeated, still staring down into the murky depths, trying to make out any features.

"Yes,” the siren agreed, as if talking to a small child.

"And you’re a siren. Which is different from a mermaid, apparently.“

"Yes.” Now he looked slightly annoyed. Phil wondered if he’d try to drown him again. “Mermaids are fictional. And sirens…”

"…play piano music in the middle of the bay,“ Phil finished. "And are attractive snacks for sharks.”

He was definitely going to drown Phil.

"You act as if I’m the bad one. Like, out of the three of us in this cave, I’m the worst one.“

"Three of us?”

"Including the shark. Though there’s likely more than one. I can see better if I stick my head underwater, but right now my goal is not to die, so I’m not going to do that.“

Phil backed up from the pool, going back to his original position against the cave. He bent his knees, bringing them to his chest. "Yeah, but you’re the one who tried to drown me. That’s pretty bad in my books.”

"You’re the one that tried to drown me,“ he corrected. "With carbon emissions and pollution. Honestly, have you ever thought about your actions? That maybe dumping thousands of tons of sewage into the ocean each year might be a bad idea? Because I have some news for you, some of us have to live in that ocean, and we can’t do that very well when you’re destroying our ecosystems!”

Phil blinked.

Dan stared back at him, not daring to look away.

"Nerd.“

"Oh my god. Oh my god. Wait ‘til I get my hands on you, you slimy little land bastard-”

"I prefer Phil, actually.“ Phil smiled, tilting his head a little. His skull ached, like someone was trying to hammer new information into it. Maybe he was seeing things. After all, he did just inhale a lot of seawater.

Neither spoke for a while. Eventually, the siren stopped staring at Phil and instead tended to his injury.

Phil tried to mind his own business for a few minutes, observing the cave. He doubted the merman siren could get out by a land exit, but he probably could. He looked around, and then eventually stood, walking around his side of the cave. He was able to walk all the way over to where the siren lay without any difficulty, but he’d already almost died once today. The last thing he wanted was to be thrown to the sharks while being lectured about carbon emissions.

Every once in awhile, Phil caught the siren looking at him. Whenever he caught Phil’s eye he would quickly look away, back to his wound.

Finally, Phil decided he had to accept it. There were only two exits to the cave: the pool and the hole in the roof. Unfortunately, the pool contained a shark hungry for a fish-human hybrid, and Phil didn’t doubt that he’d settle for just a human. And the walls were tilted towards the hole in the ceiling, making them impossible to climb. It was like the inside of a volcano, Phil realized, but with a pool of water instead of magma.

He tried to be discrete about looking at his company in the cave. But as he watched him work, he realized something.

"You took the knife out?” He asked before he could stop himself.

The siren huffed, pushing his brown curls away from his face in annoyance. “Clearly.”

"You should have kept it in. It was the only thing keeping your blood from flowing out, you’re supposed to leave it in until you get to a vet.“

The creature looked up so pointedly Phil wondered if he should make things easier and just jump in the water on his own terms. "A…. vet?”

"You know, like a person who cares for animals.“

"I know what a vet is,” he snapped. “But I’m offended that you’d suggest I might need one.”

Phil blinked. “I mean… you’re tail…”

He brushed it aside. “You know what, never mind. It doesn’t matter anyway, because I took the knife out already. In the water. That’s why I bled so much, that’s why the sharks came, and that’s why we’re in this mess.”

"Because you took the knife out?“

"Because you stabbed me.”

Phil huffed. This wasn’t getting anywhere.

"How’d you know that anyway? The knife thing?“

Phil crossed his arms, looking down at the surface of the water, turned gray from the sky’s reflection. "I went to school to be a vet. I ended up doing something else, but I still ended up learning a lot of stuff like that.”

He stared at the sand, digging in it with his fingers. It was true. He’d ended up changing to studying language and film after he’d gone to see surgery performed on a horse and passed out.

He was so deep in thought he hadn’t even realized the siren was saying something. “Feel…. Feel! Erm, Fell? Feel? Phil!” He snapped, and Phil looked up. “Phil!”

"What?“

"Stop digging around and come help me! God, you’re a vet, I’m not supposed to have to ask.”

Phil stood, looking at him unsure. “Will you drown me?”

"Not until after you help me.“

"No.” He crossed his arms tightly, hoping the merman couldn’t see how nervous he was. “Promise you won’t try to kill me. At all. Ever.”

He whined. “But Feeeeeellll.”

"It’s Phil.“

"But Phiiiiiiiiillllllll.”

"Do you want help or not?“

He pouted. "Fine.”

"Swear it. On your tail,“ Phil added quickly.

He continued to pout, but gave in. "I swear on my tail that I won’t try and kill you again if you heal me.”

"If I help you,“ Phil corrected. "I’ll do my best, but I have no supplies.”

He groaned. Phil decided it was enough and walked over and knelt next to him.

The wound probably looked worse than it actually was. Even so, it didn’t look too bad. “Well, you’re not bleeding much.”

"Wow, thanks for that professional advice.“

Phil ignored him. "Does this hurt?” He reached over, carefully touching the area around the wound. It was a little darker blue-green than the area around it. Phil realized too late that it was stained with the siren’s blood.

“It doesn’t really hurt,” he announced.

Phil nodded. "That’s good. Um… you should… apply pressure.”

"Great.“ He seemed unamused but did so anyway.

Phil’s mouth tasted like seawater. He was on one knee next to the creature, right next to his tail. It was even more beautiful up close. So dark green it was almost black. Now that Phil was closer, he could see flicks of gold in it, especially around the area where the tail met with his skin.

"You’re staring,” the siren noted.

"Sorry.” Phil tried to stand, but his eyes caught onto the fins at the very end of the tail, lighter greens and blues with golden veins. "Can I touch it?”

"Um, what?”

"Touch your… fins. The flipper things.” Phil pointed. His tongue seemed to have forgotten how to work.

"My… caudal fins? Fine, just be very gentle. They tear easily.“

Phil crawled over and knelt next to the flippers. Most mermaid pictures and drawings he’d seen depicted the end of the tail, where a human’s feet would be, to be two elongated flippers, like those ones that some freedivers used. Or maybe it was one flipper, shaped like a v.

The siren’s ‘caudal fins’ were not like that. It was as if he had multiple pairs of mermaid fins all stacked on top of each other. Smooth and soft like fabric, folded together in a confusing mess.

Phil reached out, and touched it. All of sudden the fins shot out, jumping and unfolding to form one massive flipper in the shape of a math bracket {.

It unfolded so fast and took up so much room that Phil was almost pushed into the pool of water.

His eyes widened. "Woah.”

It was clear the siren wasn’t sure what to think. He had a perfect poker face, like he was just observing Phil, trying to decide what to make of him.

There was a rip in his tail, a little hole by the ends, which were a little torn themselves. “What’s this from?”

"Fishhook. Like I said, you humans have no respect for the creatures of the sea.“

He folded his tail once more, pulling what would have been his knees up to his chest and leaning on it. "Okay, now it’s my turn. Come here.”

Phil gave him a strange look but crawled over anyways.

"Let me see your… legs. That’s the word. And your… feet? Those.“

Phil hesitated. "Wait. I need to know your name first.”

"Why would you need to know that?“

"I don’t like strangers touching me. Just a general rule.”

The siren stared at him intently. “Fine. My name is Danye.” He pronounced it like ‘dawn-yay’. “But you can call me Dan, since humans lack vocal ability. My pronouns are he/him.”

Phil looked up. “I’d kind of assumed that already.”

"Rude. You should never assume someone’s gender.“

"I mean- I wouldn’t think that mer- sirens would care about that sort of thing.”

Dan gave him a look like he wasn’t sure how much to tell him. Then he shrugged. “Meh. You’ll probably die in the next few days anyways. You would care a lot more about pronouns if none of the creatures of your species had penises.”

Phil found his eyes drifting down to Dan’s waist. “Um… you don’t-”

"Have a dick? Oh yeah, sure, let me pull my tail down like a pair of pants. It’s around here somewhere… Obviously not, you fern. And don’t ask how we reproduce, because I’m not going to tell you.“ Dan patted the spot next to him. "Come here.”

Phil decided to just listen, scooting over. Dan quickly grabbed his ankles, dragging him a little closer. “Your legs are filthy,” he noted.

"What? No, that’s just hair.“

Dan looked at him like he was trying to decide if he was lying. "You grow hair out of your legs?”

"Um, yeah? And out of our arms, and chests, and stuff. And most guys my age can grow beards, if they try. I can only get a weird neck beard.“

Dan touched his neck, as if imagining hair sprouting out from it. As he moved his arm, Phil realized his armpits were completely bare of hair.

Eventually, Dan went back to inspecting his legs. Apparently, he’d known what toes were but never realized there was such thing as toenails. He prodded at Phil’s ankle bones and felt his knees. "It’s unnatural,” he decided finally. “And frankly, I’m uncomfortable.”

"Hey! You’re the one who’s part fish!“

"And you’re the one sitting by the shark-water, so I’d watch it,” Dan threatened. “Can you see them?”

Phil leaned over, looking into the water. A figure circled beneath, closer than it had before. “Only one, I think.”

Dan rolled over onto his stomach, a real process with his large tail. He dragged himself over to the pool by his forearms, army crawling close enough to see over it.

"How long until it leaves?“

Dan shook his head. "A few days, at least. Sharks will do just about anything for a taste of sirens.”

Phil’s stomach ached. “What do we do?”

"Wait it out.“ His voice was calm, which would have been reassuring if he didn’t look so worried.

—-

The rest of the day was spent waiting. They were shaded from the sun, but it still came in from the cave, glittering against the water.

Phil retreated back to his side of the cave and laid on his back, staring up at the walls curving up to the hole in the ceiling. The walls weren’t smooth, but he doubted he could climb out that way. It would take upper body strength that he just didn’t have.

He didn’t dare nap. It might be difficult for the merman to crawl over across the sand, but Phil didn’t doubt that he could. And, as casual as their interaction earlier was, this was still the creature that had tried to drown him. Phil knew better than to trust the creature too easily.

At some point in the afternoon, Phil rolled over onto his side and found Dan laying on his side as well, staring at him from across the water. When he caught his gaze, Dan scowled and rolled over, staring at the wall.

Phil watched the sharp edges of his back, observing the dark contours and the greenish tint of it. Then, lower, as the skin turned into thick green-black scales that lead to his tail, longer than human legs, with the folded caudal flipper at the end. He moved his flipper around nervously, tapping it against the sandy ground. At one point, his fin twitched, launching a pile of sand into the water so aggressively Phil wondered how strong his tail was. It must have been incredibly powerful. He remembered the hands wrapping around his feet and the force pulling him down so quickly there was hardly any resisting it. Dan had been able to do that with hardly any exertion.

His stomach ached slightly as the day went on. He would have been okay if he hadn’t thrown up his breakfast- a painful side effect of almost drowning.

Phil kept thinking that they’d start talking again, but the siren seemed intent with ignoring him. Finally, the long day was over and Phil could feel his eyelids weighing down, begging to be closed. He wanted sleep. After a short struggle, he gave in, hoping that he’d wake up in the morning.

—-

Dan did not kill him.

When Phil woke up, Dan was leaning over the pool, staring into it. He glanced up when he heard Phil stir, then went back to looking into the water.

"There’s more,” Dan noted.

It took Phil a few moments to process. “More what?”

"Sharks. I see at least two, but I think there’s a third one.“

Phil could feel his stomach rumble. "What do we do?”

"Wait it out.”

"How long?”

"As long as we need to,“ Dan snapped. "Unless you want to jump into the pool and try swimming.”

"Would it work?“

"No. You humans are miserable swimmers, you’re painfully slow, what with your deformed fins. They’re horrible for propelling you.”

Phil took a wild guess that Dan was talking about his feet. “We don’t have fins. They aren’t deformed, they just are made for land use. I can swim better than you can walk.”

"You want to test that theory?” Dan gestured to the shark-infested pool. "Be my guest.”

Phil stood slowly, brushing the sand off of his clothes. “If you’re so intent on me dying, why didn’t you just kill me in my sleep? You could have tossed me to the sharks and been done with it.”

The siren looked more hesitant now that Phil was standing. He had to look up to see him.

"I didn’t throw you to the sharks,“ he explained slowly, "because then they’d win. I hate sharks. Even more than I hate humans. If I kill you, trust me, I’m not going to let the sharks get something out of it.”

That did not reassure Phil. “But you wouldn’t kill me anyway,” he reasoned. “Because we made the deal.”

"I agreed not to kill you if you healed me. Well, guess what.” Dan moved a little ways back from the water, bringing his tail around for Phil to see. He pointed at the gash, which appeared to have scarred over, but was definitely not healed. “You didn’t heal me.”

Phil ran his fingers through his fringe, brushing the sand out of it. “Healing takes time. What did you expect, that I’d just say the word and it’d be fixed?”

Dan looked at the ground.

Phil realized too slowly. “You actually thought that?”

"You humans are insufferable,“ Dan defended. "Too busy polluting the ocean to explore it. There are things down there that would make you curl up in a ball and cry, Phil. Don’t act like you know my world.”

"Wait- what? There’s something down there that could heal wounds that quickly?”

"Shut up.” Dan pulled his tail back behind him protectively, slumping onto his stomach. “It’ll be at least two more days until the sharks go.”

Phil’s stomach flipped inside out. “What?”

"The sharks. They know they have me trapped.” He shrugged. "We just have to wait it out.”

Phil could feel his breath quicken as panic set in. “I can’t… I can’t survive that long! I need food-”

"You can’t go a few days without food? Wimp.“

"But I definitely need water. A human can only survive two, maybe three days without water, and even then they might go mad.”

Dan looked at Phil like he was trying to decide if he was lying or not. “There’s water right here.”

"Freshwater! I can’t drink salt water!“

Dan’s voice mimicked Phils, getting higher and louder. "Why not?”

"Because- ugh! Because humans can’t process salt! It’ll be worse than drinking nothing because the salt will dry up all the water!“

"What the fuck is wrong with you? Why did you humans evolve to not be able to drink salt water?”

"Stop acting like you’re the normal ones! Why would anyone want to drink salt water?“

Phil hadn’t realized, but he’d been stepping forwards, getting closer to the siren. He saw Dan’s eyes widened, then he lashed out, pulling himself up and whipping his tail around, knocking Phil off of his feet. Phil yelped as he collapsed.

Apparently, Dan could move fast on land when he wanted to. Within a moment he was on top of Phil, grappling with him and trying to pin him down.

Phil tried to slide out from under him, fighting and slapping his hands away. Dan’s tail was extremely heavy, even heavier than he’d previously thought.

Dan grabbed something off to his side, and raised it above his head, preparing to strike. Phil processed it in a split second- the gleam of the blade, the way it was still stained from dark blue blood- and before he knew what he was doing, he’d knocked it out of Dan’s hand. It fell into the pool with a plop.

Dan jumped off of him, reaching out to the water desperately. "That was our only weapon.”

Phil sat up, moving away from the siren in a hurry. “Yeah, well you should’ve have tried to stab me!”

"You shouldn’t have been preparing to attack me!”

"I wasn’t!”

"Oh really?“ Dan mocked him, squaring his shoulders and sitting up straighter. "You stood up, made yourself look tall and then stalked towards me. If that’s not preparing for an attack, I don’t know what is!”

"I was just arguing with you! I wasn’t going to attack you!“

Dan’s tail fin fanned out fully, unfolding into a huge fan. He cursed in a language Phil didn’t recognize, and quickly retracted them. "It doesn’t matter. What is done is done.”

He rolled over onto his back, still scowling. “You humans. You’re always right, aren’t you?”

Phil was careful to sit down, not wanting to make the same mistake as last time. “What do you have against humans?”

“Everything. Do you even know how much of a global footprint you leave? You’re killing our earth.“

“Well, you’re… you’re… you’re over hunting the fish!” Phil retorted. In reality, he hadn’t known sirens even existed until the day prior, much less how they affected the environment. But based off of the offended expression Dan made, he’d hit a sore spot.

“For your information, we work very hard to conserve our species diversity. The Tecopa fish extinction was an accident! Things like that can’t always be avoided!”

“Excuses excuses.”

“Don’t act all innocent, we may have caused the extinction of Tecopa, but your species killed the Dodo bird! Do you know how upset I was when I found that out?”

“The dodo bird has been dead for centuries!”

“How long do you think it took me to figure that out?“

Phil paused, his eyes growing wide. “How old are you?”

Dan gnawed on his bottom lip. The longer he hesitated, the more Phil freaked out. Could he actually have been alive when the dodo bird was around? Was he a hundred years old? Two hundred?

“I’m twenty-five.“

“Oh.”

“Do I look old to you?“

“No! You look… young, in fact.”

“Young?“

“Good! You look- good, like, not little or anything-”

“Are you calling me fat?“

Phil covered his face with his hands. Dan didn’t say anything for a few moments, then scooted over, the sound of his tail dragging on sand obvious and entirely without grace.

Dan tapped on his arm. "Phil!” He whispered urgently. He still pronounced it sort of wrong, like he was trying to say Feel. “It was supposed to be a joke! I forgot how delicate humans are!”

"Oh, shut up.“ Phil moved his hands away from his face, smiling at the ground beside him.

Dan poked at his arm again, equally urgently. "How old are you?”

Phil brushed aside his fringe, looking at the boy’s troublemaker face. “Twenty-nine. Almost thirty.”

"How long do humans tend to live?“

"You know about ecological footprints but you don’t have how long humans live?”

Dan shook his head.

"Guess.“

"Um… Forty years.”

"Higher.“

"Four-hundred years.”

"Lower.“

"Two hundred?”

"Usually around seventy,“ Phil supplied, "But it depends. My grandpa lived to ninety-three. How long do sirens usually live?”

Dan shrugged. “I don’t actually really know. No one really dies of natural causes, it usually because of predators or fishing nets, that sort of thing.”

Phil licked his lips. They were beginning to crack. He needed water soon. “That’s… pretty sad, actually.”

He shrugged again. “Depends on how you look at it. On the bright side, no one ever really grows old. You’re as strong as you are strong for, and survive as long as you can survive for. Then, when you aren’t strong enough anymore… nature takes its course.” He was playing with a shell in the sand, digging in it absently. “How many sharks?”

Phil peered over. “Three. They’re closer to the surface now.” He leaned down a bit more. “They’re a lot closer, actually. And… I think there’s more underneath.”

"That’s weird. There’s no reason for-“ Dan stopped mid-sentence, his face going even paler, if that was possible. "Oh no. The knife. Did it have any of my blood on it still?”

Phil’s eyes widened. “Yeah. But there was just a little-”

"That’s all they need,“ Dan mourned. "They know I’m here, and they’ll be desperate for a taste. No way they’re leaving anytime soon now.”

Phil’s stomach turned over. His mouth tasted like salt water and sandpaper. “How long?”

"Dunno. But we might have to find another way out.“

In perfect unison, they both looked up at the hole in the cave ceiling.

—-

It was the next day. Phil felt faint and light-headed, and his stomach and head ached.

They talked quietly. Every so often, a fin would break the surface of the water. The shark would swim a few slow laps, testing it out, and then submerge once more. Every time one came that far up, their conversation paused, and didn’t resume until it disappeared again.

Meanwhile, Dan tried to convince Phil to climb the cave walls. "It’s our only option!”

"Dan, do you see them? There’s no way I’ll be able to without falling in!”

Dan huffed, his caudal fin bouncing up and down in agitation. It was partially unfolded, maybe half of its full size, and every once in awhile it twitched, closing and opening like the shutter of a camera. Though he didn’t complain, Phil knew Dan was suffering the effects of hunger as well. He was incredibly skinny, only muscle and bones. Maybe he stored fat in his tail, energy to use for later.

If they were stuck in the cave for much longed, Dan would survive for more time than Phil would. He wasn’t suffering from dehydration; he still could drink the ocean water, while Phil knew better. He couldn’t filter out the salt like the siren could, it would just make everything so much worse.

They stopped arguing as a shark’s dorsal fin peaked through the water. Phil could see its full body through the thin layer of water; it was probably almost as long as he was, and much wider. And there were even bigger ones lower, ones that couldn’t fit in the little pool easily and had to wait further down.

It’s fin submerged, and they continued. "It’s our only chance,” Dan argued. “If we stay here, we’ll die. If we try to swim out, we’ll definitely die. You especially, with your deformed…. foot things. This is the only chance we have.”

Phil stared up at the ceiling, at least a dozen meters up. “What good would it do you? It’s not like you could get out that way.”

"True,“ Dan agreed, "But you could give me provisions. Lower them down. Food, maybe a weapon. Trust me, I don’t like the odds much either, but it’s our best bet.”

"I won’t. I can’t do it Dan, I can’t…. what’s that noise?“

Dan tried for a blank expression. "What noise?”

Phil was looking around, desperate to find it. “Its…. it’s music! Don’t you hear it? It’s… a piano!”

Dan shrugged, not saying anything. His fingers tapped out a gentle melody against the sand, and he watched as Phil’s eyes widened, and then looked up.

"It’s coming from up there,“ he realized. "I have to find it.”

His hands were already on the rocks, searching for hand holds. He soon pulled himself up, his feet finding holds.

He climbed slowly towards the source of music, getting increasingly frustrated the longer it took. “I have to find it…”

Meanwhile, the sharks grew more agitated. They churned, going up to the surface and dipping back down. Two sharks circled, tail to tail, and Dan scooted away from the water, his breathing increasing. His fingers didn’t stop tapping, tapping so lightly he was hardly touching the sand.

Phil grunted. His hands were shaking slightly, whether from the stress of not being with the noise or the exertion it wasn’t know. Possibly- likely- both.

He was so high that the cave walls had sloped over the pool. If he were to fall, he’d fall into the shark-infested waters.

Dan began humming, a low and quiet melody that went along with the gentle tapping of piano keys. Phil cried out, grabbing for another ledge, only centimeters deep. He forcibly pulled himself up. He was only holding on out of pure willpower.

Dan’s willpower, to be exact.

Over the courage of a few long, painful minutes, Phil managed to climb the increasingly steep cave walls. At the top, it was too smooth for him to find a single handhold, so he jumped. Dan caught his breath as he leaped, pushing up and away from the wall, hands reaching out frantically for the edge of the crater.

He grabbed it, swinging as he gripped onto it with both hands, trying to pull himself up. Dan exhaled, “You’ve got this!”

But he realized too late. Dan’s fingers were idle, and the music was replaced with an eerie, ringing silence.

Phil’s eyes snapped open, like they’d been closed the whole time. His grip loosened, and he dropped like a stone into the frothing water.

—-

It happened too fast for Dan to have time to make a decision. He had to go with his gut, and before Phil had even completely hit the water Dan’s gut was throwing himself over the edge into the water. He grabbed Phil and swam.

The sharks were so surprised that for a split second, maybe a fourth of a second, they didn’t react. Then they pounced.

But by then, Dan was already at the bottom of the pool, swimming with all his might and tearing out of the cave and into the open ocean. He didn’t dare look back, but knew that the sharks were right on his tail- literally.

Phil was limp in his grasp, his legs bumping against Dan’s tail with every beat of it. Dan could feel Phil’s heart beating through his tshirt- or maybe that was his own heartbeat, thumpthumpthumping in his head.

He risked glancing behind him as a shark opened its huge maw, ready to snap. Dan dove to the side, barely avoiding having his flipper bitten off entirely. His caudal fin was completely unfolded, beating against the water as his body gyrated rapidly, swimming so fast he could hardly breathe.

Another sharp snapped at him, and he dove to the side, narrowly slipping in between two outcroppings of rocks. The waters were becoming more and more dangerous, floating with pollution. Huge outcroppings of rock jutted out from beneath the seafloor, and Dan swam in between them, his entire body made for this type of swimming. Still, the sharks gained. He only had a little time before he made a wrong move and then it was over- for both him and the limp boy in his arms.

Dan ducked under a piece of sinking wreckage, weaving in and out of the huge rock formations so fast that his tail whipped against one of them, stinging with pain.

Phil was so limp in his arms that he wondered if the boy was even still alive. Then Dan cursed- he’d forgotten humans couldn’t breathe underwater! How long did he have? Surely, Phil could survive another few minutes, right?

A shark grabbed part of his tail, and Dan wanted to scream as a section of his caudal fin was ripped off, tearing like tissue paper. He swam faster, looking for anything, anywhere he could go to ditch them…

He spotted it. It was too far up, but he’d have to make it work. With a ginormous shark right on his tail, Dan dove to the bottom of the sea. At the very last moment, he arched his back and curved, swimming upwards with more force than he’d ever used in his entire life.

They broke the surface of the water with so much speed they soared upwards, then fell to the earth and landed on an outcropping of grassy land with a horrible thump. Dan felt Phil slip from his hands, and without any way to stop himself, tumbled a few meters down a grassy hill, sputtering and grunting as his body pounded against the ground.

Finally, he came to a stop as they land flattened out. He slowly did one last roll, then managed to groan and stop himself on his back. The sun was so bright it was almost blinding; the sky was so blue it was as if it was trying to imitate the sea.

Dan coughed, sitting up. He flexed his caudal fin, slowly extending it to its full length. He’d only lost a small section. It left the end of his fin torn and ripped at, but he knew it would still work, and since it was his fin instead of his actual tail, he didn’t lose any blood.

Up on the hill, Phil was finishing throwing up bile. He stood, shakier than ever, and turned, looking down the hill to where Dan lay in a heap, covered in grass and out of the water, but still very much alive.

12 Days Of Prompts Masterlist / Fic Masterlist / Request A Fic

#mermaid #merman #siren #au #ocean #water #sharks #caudal #dansPHlevels #fanfic #fanfiction #phanfic #phanfiction #phan #prompt #prompts

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