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sissytobitch10seconds · 1 year

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From the Sea

Fandom: The Umbrella Academy Summary: The likelihood of two creatures such as them finding each other without knowing they had until years later was increasingly small, but never zero. Warnings: Mentioned death, suicide, and abusive relationships Word Count: 4,404 Ship(s): Five Hargreeves/Viktor Hargreeves

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A/N: So I know that this isn't technically a mermaid AU but I couldn't resist the potential to explore different creatures from their cultures. I know that Five and Viktor weren't raised in Ireland and Russia respectively, but they were born there so there's good potential for them to be these creatures! I tried my best to research them and write them accurately, but if I got anything too wrong please let me know. I hope that you all enjoy the February installment of the Year of Fiktor. Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

Five Hargreeves had been through a lot in a very short time over the course of his life.

His teenage and childhood years had been spent with his family, though within the rookery there were several selkies who were not related to his biological family but still considered to be family. Living within a rookery instead of a human parent like his mother had meant that no outsiders were permitted anywhere close to him. He had lived his life surrounded by his family, the fish, and several other nautical supernatural creatures. He had enjoyed it, especially because he only felt the need to lose his hide once a year when the rest of the rookery came ashore to the rocks on an island humans couldn’t reach because of the riptides. He spent his years in his seal form and learning to love the ocean like she was a third parent to him.

He distinctly remembered the first time that he had ever encountered a human. Of course he knew what they looked like since he had been exposed to mermaids, who were humans from the waste up, and the nymphs of the sea, who were humanoid enough that he could piece it together in his mind. Seeing one in person for the first time, however, had been an experience that he had nightmares about for weeks. He had been swimming near the wrong side of the island, where his mother had distinctly told him not to go, when a human had dove into the water right in front of him. He had gotten back to his mother as fast as he could, faster than he had ever swam in his entire life. She had forbade him from ever going that close to the mainland again and he had been so afraid that he listened to her without question.

When he turned eighteen, however, his rookery decided that he needed to spend some time with humans to better understand the danger that they posed to the earth. It was something that Five hadn’t really understood but had gone along with because his best friend was also the same age and doing it as well. The two of them had left the rookery and embarked on their task to live on the mainland until they understood human as a whole and their way of life.

There was a lot about human culture that they didn’t understand, when they first started out, but Five and Klaus were very quick to adapt. Their mothers never would have let them come up on land if they knew that the selkie boys would be thrust into a world they knew nothing about and with no one to help them. They had been sent to live with a selkie named Hazel who had removed himself from a rookery that lived in waters close to their own. He had left the sea behind when he fell in love with a human woman named Agnes.

The both of them had been very kind to the selkies that they were hosting. To keep their supernatural abilities a secret, Five and Klaus were presented as two Amish boys that were on their year away from the farms and rural culture to make sure that they wanted to stay with their family. It was similar to what they were doing as selkies, though they would still be able to return back to their rookery whenever they wanted if they chose to life inland for a time.

Klaus had taken to dry land and human culture immediately. He fell in love with the beautiful women, handsome men, and the debauchery that came with them both. He spent most of his nights out of the apartment that they were staying in and with a group of people that Five didn’t care for much. They drank and smoked and had a lot of sex, all of which Five found very annoying.

Five, instead, buried himself in the local library under mountains of text. He had learned how to read when he was very little, though no book was going to be able to survive under the water. It was his mother’s secret that she kept a stash of human things from her own time on dry land. One of these items was a novel about their kind and she had taught him how to read with it. Five had ended up reading the story over and over again, enough times that he had every word memorized. When he was missing home more than usual, he would recite it until he fell asleep to the sound of the ocean miles and miles away.

He found comfort in reading and thought that it was the best way to become immersed in the culture of humans. He tried to consume every single one of their classics and then some from other human cultures than the one that he had been sent to. Eventually he found something else inside the seemingly never ending shelves overflowing with stories and knowledge. A little human man, squirreled away among stories in Russian and an English dictionary so that he could translate it for his aging mother.

The two of them had a quick romance, much like Agnes and Hazel had ten years prior. Viktor was everything that Five had ever hoped for in a mate, even if he thought that he would have met a selkie from another rookery. Viktor was kind and soft and compassionate, he rounded out all of the sharp edges that Five held for everyone else in his life and made the selkie strive to be the best version of himself. The two of them were both fiercely intelligent, protective over what and who they loved, and quick-witted. They made an amazing pair.

Five Hargreeves had lived a long life by the time that he was in his twenties because he had discovered and lived in a whole new world. He had learned about new customs and religions and ways of life, both from Hazel when he came to study humans and Viktor when the two of them got together. They still lived in their reasonably-sized city in Ireland, though they were planning on making a trip back to Viktor’s native home in Russia as soon as they had the funds.

All in all, Five was in love with the life that he had now. He dearly missed his rookery and being able to spend more than a week or two with them, and he wished that his husband could meet his family in the form that they felt the most comfortable in, but he knew that he had to be content with what he had.

---

Five pushed the door to his apartment open with his shoulder so that he could keep everything that he was trying to balance in his arms where it belonged. He had just finished all of his classes up at the local university, where he worked as a math professor. It wasn’t something that he had ever expected to do when he was younger but the second he got his hands on it he found that he was a prodigy, and that it was his passion.

“Viktor? Beloved?” he called through the apartment in search for his spouse. He knew that his lover would be home already because he was in the lull between concerts where he was expected to learn and practice the majority of his piece on his own and the classes he taught were on hold for fall break. He knew that since the apartment was almost completely silent that his partner wasn’t practicing, so it piqued his curiosity for what Viktor could be doing at three o’clock in the afternoon on a Wednesday.

He was able to close the door with his foot and put the two donut boxes he was carrying down on their dining room table before he got a response. “In here!” the human called from the hallway. “Hey Five, would you mind coming here for a second? I found something kind of weird when I was cleaning out the attic and I want to know where it came from.”

Five felt a flush of panic rush through his body as his mind began to race. There were very few items that he had hidden away from his husband, and one of them was something that he knew he couldn’t let any human ever get their hands on. He loved Viktor with his entire heart and soul, but if Viktor somehow managed to find his most treasured possession, there was a chance that the magic could warp him and Five would never be able to love him ever again.

He didn’t want the world that he had made for himself to come crashing down so quickly, because of something so small and yet so monumentally huge.

The selkie dropped his bag down onto the floor with no regard for the contents inside of it and then raced for where his husband was. Usually he walked around their home either in his staggering sleepy state or with all the grace and poise of someone that had swam their entire life. Now, though, he was bouncing off of the walls and using the furniture to piston himself in the direction that he needed to go.

He stopped when he finally got to the hallway where Viktor was. He knew that he had to look something of a mess since he had half removed his tie and undone the top button of his shirt on his way home. He had taken off his shoes as soon as he stepped into the house so that he didn’t get the floor dirty while walking on it. He could also feel his hair falling into his eyes from where it had been perfectly styled against his eyebrow moments prior. He was breathing hard and felt like he had back when he was a child, when he had encountered a human after only hearing about them in bone-chilling stories for his entire childhood.

Viktor looked up from the chest that he was sitting in front of and turned to Five. His eyes were also wild and panicked as he looked over his husband. He opened his mouth to say something but then quickly thought better of it and clicked his teeth together in his hurry to shut it.

“You looked in the chest?” he asked. He straightened up so that he was no longer clinging to the edges of the doorframes to keep himself upright. He brushed his fingers through his hair so that it was out of his eyes and he appeared a bit more put together.

“Of course I did. Your my husband and I live here too,” he replied, pursing his lips.

Five could tell that his lover was upset about something but he wasn’t sure what it was. If Viktor had found the hide, his most treasured possession in the entire planet because it was the other half of what he was, then he should have just been confused.

“Was this something that I wasn’t supposed to find?” he asked, quirking his brow at the selkie standing in front of him. “Why didn’t you think that you could tell me about something like this?”

“Viktor, what did you find?” Five asked. He was desperately hoping that it was something else that his husband had found and not his seal skin. He didn’t have much that he hid from his lover but he did have a couple of old gifts from Klaus that would have been difficult to explain because he hadn’t thought that it was important to tell his husband about them. He was hoping that it was something like that, something that they could both laugh about since Viktor found Klaus amusing and endearing. The ready acception of his closest friend was something that Five had found very appealing when he and Viktor had first started dating.

“I found your pelt,” he replied shortly. He shifted on the ground so that he was turned back to the chest instead of sitting next to it. He flipped the latch so that it was no longer keeping the chest closed and then removed the lid. He placed his hands on the silky smooth material of the hide and removed it from the container.

It was one of the most beautiful seal skins that anyone would have ever seen in their entire life, even if they had lived their entire life on the sea. It was the color of brown that children dreamed of on Christmas night, chocolate and rich in every way. The fine hair that laid over the skin was so soft that it was nearly unbelievable when one’s fingers brushed over the top of it. It was a big hide, and heavy, since it had to cover all of Five when he got into the water so that he could shift.

Five took a step forward so that his hands were on the skin as well. “Viktor, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You do, Five, you do,” Viktor shook his head. He tilted his head down towards the skin in his hand and then released a shaky breath that let his husband know that he was trying his best not to cry. “I can’t believe that you wouldn’t trust me with something like this. I mean, this is a huge part of who you are and what you are. This is something that would have changed our entire wedding, you know that, right?”

Five let out a small sigh. He knew basically what his lover was talking about but he felt like he needed it to be spoken into the air so that he could be convinced of what was happening.

Viktor took in another shaky breath. As he tilted his head up to look at his husband once more, Five felt like his heart was breaking in his chest. He hated seeing his partner’s so grief stricken about something that he had kept away from him to keep him safe. He wanted to fix it, he wanted to go back in time and rectify every mistake that he had ever made in their relationship.

“You’re a selkie,” he replied, his voice breaking in his throat as he finally said the secret into the open air.

The taller man released a breath at that. It felt like a weight had been taken off of his shoulders and at the same time it felt like he had been punched in the stomach. His supernatural origin wasn’t something that he had spoken about after he had decided that he was going to stay inland instead of returning back to his rookery.

“I am,” he breathed.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Viktor asked. The dam had finally broken when his lover had confirmed what he had been asking after for nearly five minutes. The tears that had been dancing on the bottom of his lashes and trickling down his face had increased to a steady stream. Sobs were wracking through his body so that his shoulders and chest shook every time he drew in a breath.

It took two beats of his rapidly increasing heartbeat before he dropped the hide that he had been holding. He didn’t care if Viktor had it or what he might do with it, at this point the only thing that he cared about was comforting his husband. “Viktor, Viktor, beloved,” he murmured as he wrapped the other up in a hug. “I’m so sorry that I didn’t tell you about this. Barley anyone in the world even knows what a selkie is, let alone that we are real and coexist with humans. I didn’t think that you would believe me if I told you what they were and I didn’t know if you would stay with me if I told you. I love you so much and I can’t imagine you not having you in my life.”

He knew that what he was saying was basically incoherent and probably wasn’t what the other needed to hear. He had to get all of his thoughts out of his head so that he could try and convince the other that his love was genuine and soothe whatever ache was inside of Viktor.

They stayed like that for a moment longer, Viktor’s face tucked into Five’s chest while he let all of the sadness that had built up inside of him topple out. Soon, though, his tears and sobs had stopped.

He pulled back from his husband and then wiped the remaining tears from his face. “Sorry, I got really scared when I found this but I have something that I have to tell you too.”

Five felt a flare of panic rush through him once more. It was worse than thinking about whether or not Viktor had found his seal skin. On some level he was aware that his partner wouldn’t betray him by trying to control him or keeping him away from his family, but he had still been scared because of the stories he heard during his childhood. Knowing that his partner had something to tell him that he hadn’t known, a secret that he had no inkling about despite how long they had been together, terrified him.

He knew that this wasn’t the time for fear, not after Viktor had discovered his deepest secret. So he shoved the feelings down and tilted Viktor’s head up with his hand. He brushed his fingers over the side of his face to remind the smaller man just how much he loved him as he asked, “What is it?”

“I’m a rusalki,” he answered quietly. He leaned into the touch of his husband’s hands as they brushed over his skin.

“What… does that mean?” Five asked.

Viktor let out a small sigh. He carefully folded the hide and placed it back into the chest that it come from. The way that he treated the seal skin made Five fall in love with him all over again, watching the way that Viktor’s hands brushed over the fine silky hair on the outside and how tenderly he closed and latched the chest so that he didn’t pinch any part of it.

Once the pelt had been locked away safely inside of the chest again, Viktor moved to the stairs leading up to the second floor and then sat down on it. “How much do you know about rusalki?”

“I can’t say that I’ve ever heard of them,” he replied, a bit bitterly. He wanted to be able to support Viktor in his admittance the way that the other had for him, and it was frustrating that despite all of his research about humans and Russia, he had never come across any mention of the creature.

The other man let out a small sigh and nodded, “I didn’t think that you would. Not a lot of people have heard of them, even less than selkie. And within the nautical supernatural community there’s a big divide between freshwater and sea creatures.”

Five walked over to the stairs and then sat down beside his lover. He reached down and threaded their fingers together. He was worried that it would be different now that Viktor knew what he was, now that some of the trust they held for each other had been broken, but it wasn’t. The other man easily leaned into him so that he could place his head against Five’s shoulder.

He took a deep breath and then started, “Rusalki are freshwater spirits of women who have been drowned by abusive husbands or drowned themselves because of unwanted pregnancies. That’s at least the most common way that they get turned into spirits, it can be something else but it does have to be a huge tragedy. They generally come out and help with spring growth or crop watering. But they can also turn wrathful and kill those that they believe are unworthy of life. I told you about Leonard, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice small and comforting. He knew quite about his lover’s ex-husband and all of the abuse that Viktor had to suffer back when he was in Russia and married to Leonard. He knew that it wasn’t a very long marriage, and that Viktor had left Russia because of the relationship there, but he was beginning to think that there was more to it than he had originally thought.

“Well, after we got married he got way worse with the abuse stuff and I knew that I couldn’t handle it anymore. I walked out into the woods and then found the nearest lake. I did it Virginia Woolf style, filled the pockets of my jacket up with rocks and then just let myself drown. I didn’t want him to be able to find my body at home, I wanted him to get mad that I wasn’t there and then feel torn apart when he realized that I was dead. I wasn’t really counting on the whole turning-into-a-spirit thing.”

Viktor seemed to know that was a lot of information for him to process, so went quiet. Five turned his head so that he was staring at the mess of boxes his husband had unpacked from the closet. He had known Leonard was abusive, but he hadn’t known that it had gotten to the point where Viktor had thought his only escape was to kill himself.

“What happened after that?” he asked, his voice was hoarse when he spoke even though it didn’t feel like it was going to be beforehand.

“I resurfaced from the water at the next full moon and I was different. I had some magical abilities that allowed me to control water and see into people’s souls to know what their true intent was. It allowed me to protect some people and to kill others. I ended up drowning a man that was trying to kill his autistic son. That was when I realized that I couldn’t keep doing that. I couldn’t keep being reminded of the people that had hurt me, and so I left Russia. I came to Ireland, and then I realized that I wanted to be a man instead of a woman. So I completely reinvented myself into the person that you know now.”

“You’re… a rusalki,” Five nodded. He was fully processing it now that he had the entire story. It was all falling into place, the parts of the story that he had been missing since he wasn’t given the supernatural side.

“I am. But I’m still me, the same way that you’re still Five even though you’re a selkie,” he replied as he clenched his husband’s hand a bit tighter.

When listening to the other man’s story, he had been trying to figure out why Viktor hadn’t told him. In the beginning, it had seemed like revealing that secret would have taken so much panic out of their relationship back when he had been trying to figure out what the protocol was in that situation. Then, he realized, that Viktor’s spirit-type had been the kind that actively killed people. He was probably ashamed to have done that, even if he did it to those that deserved it. He understood why his lover had withheld that information from him, especially since he had done the same thing.

He felt his heart soften inside of his chest as he turned and pressed his lips to Viktor’s forehead. “I know that you are, beloved. Thank you for trusting me with that, I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you that I was a selkie before you found my hide.”

“I’m mostly just upset that you proposed to me with a human ring instead of by presenting me with your pelt,” he pouted cutely.

Five laughed and then pressed his lips to Viktor’s in a sweet kiss. He got up from the step that they were sitting on and returned back to the chest where his most treasured possession lay. He flipped open the latch and then moved the top back so that the thick brown material was exposed once again. He gathered it up in his arms and then walked back over to his lover, kneeling down in front of him. “Viktor Hargreeves, will you do me the honor of accepting my pelt and agreeing to be my husband?”

The skin around Viktor’s cheeks was turning a rosy shade of pink as he watched the other man move around. He tilted his head to the side and then gave a shy little nod. “Of course I will, you know that I will.”

The selkie rose to his feet and began to drape the hide around his partner so that it engulfed him entirely. “By accepting this, you are agreeing to be my one true protector. You are promising that we will be together until one or both of us die. You swear that you will never keep me from the sea by keeping my hide from me when I need it.”

“I am,” Viktor nodded. “I would never want to keep you away from your family or the sea. I know how important it is to return to water every now and again.”

Five pressed a kiss to Viktor’s lips. Most of the time, when they had displays of intimacy like this, it was domestic and chaste since they were very busy in their day-to-day life, but this time, they both felt a need to make sure that it was just as passionate and excited as their first kiss as a married couple had been. Lips, and teeth, and tongue mixed together in a display of passion and consideration for each other. It felt like their love was more intense than what any mortal could experience, especially considering that it had taken them so long and they bad been through so much to get where they were.

They broke apart and Five rested his head against Viktor’s forehead to keep them pressed together. Viktor was entirely surrounded by parts of him, his hide wrapped around the rusalki while his human body protected the parts of him that the seal skin did not. Rusalki were born of pain and suffering, but he was going to make sure that Viktor didn’t have to experience anything like that again.

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