Songs That Sound Like Sea-Foam (III)
AU MASTERLIST || FINAL CHAPTER
PAIRING: Fisherman!John Price x F!Mermaid!Reader
WORDCOUNT: 7.1k
WARNINGS: Angst, blood, death, violence, swords & firearms, abductions, hurt/comfort, torture references, nakedness, needles, gore, etc.
A/N: Alright, and that's a wrap on this mini-series. Biker/mechanic!Ghost is next on the list.
*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*
You hit the water and immediately push back to the surface, ignoring the burning of your open wounds.
“John!” Your high and panicked call can’t be heard above the yells to arms and the distressed wails. “What are you doing?!” Bodies get chucked from the side of the ship and all you can do is watch as they meet the water around you—skin cut open and eyes dead.
While the sea was numbing your pains, your heart was hurting enough for all of them; hands flailing to try and help keep you above the waves. But everything was so dark, only the light far above giving you a sliver of perception.
“John!” You scream again, eyes snapping back and forth along the ship. Your arms burned with heat.
“Go!” The words ring out and make you cringe, graveled and ragged—an order. But how could you? Vile grunts and skin meeting skin sound out, no more shirking blade edges or the boom of pistols. Fists meeting ribs, bared teeth.
“The Mermaid was wearing tags! He’s part of the King’s forces!” The leader. “If we can’t have the beast, we’ll have the coin from a turncoat!”
“Deserter!”
“Traitor!”
“Tie him to the post!”
Your ears twitch and pull at the horrible words, lungs near hyperventilating and black waves going red. If you weren’t able to ingest water, the way your head was slowly sinking would have left you sputtering and choking.
What will they do to him? Why can’t I help? It was the only part in your life where you regret having a tail, because now you can’t save John in the same way he saved you. Your eyes lock helplessly to the upper deck, far, far above. You can’t drag yourself up or even find the energy to stay above water.
Your strength was waning quickly—you needed to be tended to; healed. But it felt worse than a betrayal to see not even a glimpse of John’s brown hair or his large arms. To not feel the hold he kept on you. You wanted his lips and his flesh to be pressed into you, to venerate your image as he always did.
A Hierei that worships at the shrine that is you.
“Curse you,” you say aloud to the men above. The ones that tie your raging love to a post; you hear his low growls and biting expletives like blades in their own fashioned way, the sea garbling your words. “Curse your greed and your violence!”
But no one listens, and with a heavy and weighed heart, you have to let your dead muscles rest as they give out completely against your will. Sunking under the battling waves, you feel like dead weight; no different than the various bodies around you that John had dispatched.
You felt useless.
Above you was John, being tied up and taken—taken to a King that wants your species dead. You don’t want to leave, but the current is snatching you away like seaweed, limp and broken. Whatever John had done to your wounds, the fabric of his shirt was holding fast to your shredded flesh, but it didn’t stop the agony or the inner conflict.
He was right above you…why aren’t you strong enough to help?
Your eyes flutter, hair and arms floating.
Everything grows dark, but John never once leaves your mind. Perhaps the Fisherman was worshiping you, but you did the same unto him.
The eyepatched leader’s words loop in your brain, paired with storm-blue eyes. Gentle praises.
“...I think he loves the beast!”
Your body sinks with the rest.
—
The sand under you is coarse and dry as your eyes barely open, chest rising and falling but shakily, stuttering in its course. Small noises groan in the back of your throat, fingers like stones beside your face.
Everything hurts, but something has woken you up. Noises. Muttered speaking.
“Now why would she have these?” There was a moment of clinking metal and a low huff.
You groan louder and curl into yourself more, only to stop when the tears in your flesh pull. Your lungs inhale sharply.
“Oh, Christ,” the accented voice is smooth as it gets closer. “Easy, then, Ma’am. Shite, I was hoping you’d stay under a bit longer, I’m not bloody done yet.”
Forcing your eyes open, you hiss at the burn of morning light, laying on your stomach with…your brows tighten…were you wearing a tunic? A hand meets the back of your shoulder and you cry out, jerking.
“Woah!” More force is applied to keep you down but it only makes you struggle more. “Please, I’m trying to stop the bleeding!”
You stall at this revelation like a bird, panting. Muscles tight, you cautiously look over your shoulder to weakly stare at whoever this man was.
Brown eyes meet your own, and a dark-skinned complexion over an oval face. They blink at you with concern and hesitation, sparing only a nervous smirk and a chuckle. You stare widely, saying nothing.
“I…I’m just trying to stop the bleeding. Whoever got you,” this man trails off, glancing down at your tail. “Well, they did some proper damage.”
“Who are you?” Your voice is damaged from all the screaming you’d done, cracking and frail. You stifle a cough and survey the land with frantic snaps of your orbs. This wasn’t your cove.
Where were you? What had happened to the ship? To John? Your hand travels to your neck but lands on nothing. It’s like the world stops turning.
The necklace.
“My name’s Kyle, Miss, but I’m just as well off being called Gaz—” Your hand snaps to his shoulder, wrenching him down in a violent slam to the sand; with a shove of your ailing body, you cross an arm over his chest to pin him.
Brown eyes widen, and one hand easily raises in a placating manner. You don’t bother to look at the other, your head broken into bits of instances and images of horror.
“Where is it?” Your lips hiss out. You didn’t know you could make a sound like that.
Kyle, dressed in a fine outfit of a Bookkeeper, furrowed his brows at you. He didn’t look off-put by your brashness, or by the fact that you were of the Merfolk.
“I’m sorry, Ma’am…I’m not following. Where’s what, exactly?” There was a glinting at his throat, and you snatched at it with a glare and snarl of ‘thief’ on your tongue.
A blade presses into your side and you freeze. Kyle stares up at you with a frown on his face, body tight. “I think you should let that go, Miss, yeah?”
The metal discs are the same as John's, but they hold a different name entirely.
“Kyle Garrick, Sergeant, 141st company under the King.”
“One Hundred and Forty-First?” You whisper in a hushed voice and the blade loosens from you. Mouth opening and closing, you forget for a moment what Kyle is. Your eyes go glossy with hope. “You know John?”
Eyelids blink at you in astonishment and all at once the knife is sheathed at his hip once more. Gaz gapes, his slight stubble shifting on his face as he talks slowly.
“Yes, I do…how do you know the Captain? No offense, but I didn’t peg him for the type to run off with…well…” he trails, chuckling. “Not run exactly, then, is it?”
You glower and push back, flinching at your aches but waste no time in speaking frantically to the man as your tail flaps. If he was on the same ship as John was, they certainly knew each other well; Kyle had to assist you.
“Please, you need to help me,” The man’s face goes serious and he pushes himself up, “—there’s been a terrible event. John has been taken, don’t you understand?” Your hands grasp at his collar, forgetting to ask about the missing necklace in your mounting hysteria. “They took him. They’re bringing him back to the King and it’s all my fault!”
You don’t know if it’s the pain or the fatigue, but your emotions spill from you in droves, silver tears falling like drips from a blacksmith's smelter to the beach of this foreign place. Your body feels unable to hold itself up—so much blood lost.
Gaz gains a sheen of panic at your state, gripping your shoulders lightly above the given tunic.
“Now, now, Ma’am, steady. You’ve lost a lot of blood, eh? We need to get you sorted.” But internally your words disturbed him. John had been taken? His Captain? And he had known a mermaid?
“I don’t need to be sorted,” you mock, shaking him, “I need my John back! And you’re going to help me.”
Kyle gazes around awkwardly, clearing his throat and trying to comfort you as his upper half gets forced back and forth.
“First,” he stops you with a firm squeeze on your shoulders, “we’re getting you stitched and wrapped, Ma’am. If what you’re telling me is real,” Gaz pauses, glancing at the sea lapping at your tail, “then I need to get in contact with the others.”
Your body slightly sags, panting and shaking. While you should have asked who the others were, your adrenaline was too great to allow you to think above the fact that Kyle was going to help you. He had known John—that was enough for you to know he was a good person.
“Easy,” the man mutters, face pulled in concern. There’s a moment of tense silence before Gaz shifts a hand to the pocket inside of his tweed frock coat, slipping to the side of his green notch vest. He blinks his brown eyes at you before he lightly takes John’s necklace from the depths of his clothes. Kyle presents them as your shoulders loosen with a small sliver of comfort. “I believe you were looking for this, yeah?”
He spares a friendly, boyish, smile.
Your fingers brush his as you delicately take the metal up, fingertips weeping with torn flesh. Staring at them, you bring the item to your lips and kiss it gently after a moment of agony, a few more tears slipping down your cheeks.
“Oh, John,” you whisper, “you fool, what have you done?”
“I’ll be needing to move you, Ma’am,” Gaz clears his throat and looks back to the grass-coated road. The beach where you had washed up was near the bottom of a slight hill, and along with sand, there were a lot of pebbles. The wind was chilled. “I was just finishing up with a temporary binding when you woke. We can speak more when I get the larger wounds stitched.”
You see his gaze fall down you once more.
“I’d think there’s a lot to catch up on.” Shuffling John’s necklace over your head, you allow Kyle to take bandages from his Gladstone bag which he had brought down from the road with him. He says he found you on the beach unconscious not five minutes before you woke back up as he takes out John’s tunic strips before packing the wounds with fresh material.
“You stopped?” You ask quietly, body shaking. “Why?”
“Well, I left the same time that the Captain did,” he explains, looping fabric around your tail as you shudder and clench your teeth at the long cuts over your scales. Kyle spares you a glance before continuing. “Same reason too. The minute innocent beings were being hunted, everyone in the One Hundred and Forty-First deserted. They weren’t too happy with us, I’d imagine. I do what I can to help anyone, regardless of species.”
Gaz pulls back and finishes up, brushing his hands on his folded legs and sighing.
“We all separated and led our lives the best we could—got jobs, hid ourselves, the like.” While the story was fascinating, as John was rare to talk about the King or his service beyond a clenched jaw, you truly were suffering from blood loss.
Every moment it became harder to keep your upper-half vertical and your eyes open. Gaz’s words slurred in your eardrums as the sand under your hands got pushed back by pressure like a rock being dragged. Your head must have swayed, because the next moment you’re being lifted with a grunt and a steadying of feet.
“Can’t say I’ve ever carried a mermaid,” Kyle grumbles to himself, blinking down at your form as our head rests limply on his chest. “Certainly not one that knows Price of all people.”
You focus on your breathing as he ascends the hill, going slowly and holding your form tight so as not to drop you. While not John’s size by any means, the man was still strong in a more lean and lithe way where your Fisherman’s was upfront and bare with it.
You’re carried down the trodden path to a lone house on the upper hill above the water, small and quaint, it’s only a single square room.
Truly this event speaks to your luck—how on earth had you found perhaps one of the only men on the planet that knew John and sympathized with magical creatures?
Kyle sets you back on his bed softly, pillows pressed into indents of your head and cheek.
“Alright then,” he sighs, “let's get this figured out, yeah?”
You’re offered food and water, but all you care about is sleep. Your tail hangs off the end of the bed and your fins ache with torn skin. Without even looking at your scales, you know they’re damaged immensely. Most will be left with great scars.
Merfolk could be called vain in their lifetime, and the sentiment wasn’t entirely untrue. You were beings of elegance and beauty—ethereal lustfulness hardwired into your DNA. Image was important to you, and this loss was great.
But the loss of John hurt more than any torture someone could inflict on you; any wounds. You needed him back.
As Gaz prompted you to tell your story, which you did with failing consciousness, your hand traveled to your necklace to grasp it tightly. Lips quivering. When the first push of the man’s needle entered your hard flesh, you never even felt it.
—
You awoke for the second time, once more, to the sound of speaking.
“Well, he’s sure gotten up to it while we’ve been away! Fuckin’ bastard.” This accent didn’t belong to Gaz, and thus your eyelids pushed back with slight unease. Had John’s Sergeant sold you out? With a struggle, you blink back to reality only to find a pair of bright blue eyes stuck on you.
For a moment you startle, those shades so similar to John’s that for a moment you had forgotten what had transpired. Then the pain in your tail strikes up and you balk back sharply.
“Soap!” Gaz hisses, grabbing the large and built man away from the bed. “Get the hell away from her, would you? Christ, she’s been through enough without having to look at that face when she wakes up, Mate.”
“What in the hell does that mean?” Soap, as he’d been introduced, was the epitome of a blacksmith—ash still on his square jaw and his large black apron tied at a stiff waist. His arms were as bulky as your head and while he was shorter than Gaz he made up for it in sheer muscle.
Blue eyes darken with annoyance before they swivel back to you, but they lighten just the same when they spot your fear-spiked expression.
“Sorry about that, Little Lady. Just curious, is all.” You swallow the saliva in your throat and turn to look at Gaz in question. “Not every day somethin’ like this happens.”
“Johnny ‘Soap’ MacTavish,” the man offers, rubbing at his neck apologetically. “Served with John and I. You can trust him.”
You blink and turn back to Johnny, and, sure enough, around his neck were the common silver discs that Gaz and John wore over the tunic and apron.
“A…” You try to remember what your Fisherman had told you about human customs. With a frown, you carefully extend a hand and hold it aloft while your tail rests and your other limb keeps you up. “A pleasure, Johnny.”
A wide grin meets your eyes and a hand is clapped into your own; shaking it firmly as yours remains limp.
“Ah, please, the pleasure’s all mine.” When his grip leaves you look down at the various stitches and thick wrappings around your body before thinning your lips and gazing back at Gaz. He stares and tilts his head when you lock eyes with him.
“Thank you, Garrick. I…I owe you a large debt.” He’s already shaking his chin at you.
“Negative, Ma’am,” Kyle denies. “The only thing we need to be focusing on is getting the Captain back. Simon should be along by the evening.”
“Sure the man’ll show?” Johnny raises a brow and stands to his full height, going over to the small table in the middle of the room and sitting down with a huff. He picks up a flagon and takes a sip of ale. “He’s far off cuttin’ stone.”
“I sent a rider out and said it was urgent. He should be getting it about now, yeah?”
“Well, hell, I’d sure hope so else we’re out of our favorite Ghost. Can’t have that.” You watch and stare at the ease these two converse with the other, years seem to bleed from their mouths like waves in water. They had it all figured out, and noticeably, they weren’t at all panicked.
“How are the both of you so calm?” You can’t help but ask. Brown and blue turn to furrow their brows at you.
“They took the bloody Captain. Only person worse than that to steal away would be Simon.” A chuckle. “I’m more worried about the bastards themselves than him.” And it was left at that.
At times throughout the day, Gaz would bring you bread to nibble on to help settle your stomach, water, and ale whenever you needed it. When the dryness of the air and the fireplace got too warm for you, Johnny would be the one to carry you down the hill to the water where you’d soak your wounds in the surf. In those moments you could finally take in the pure silence under the waves and let your anguish take hold.
But you always had to break the surface at some point, shimmy into the dry tunic that Soap offers with respectfully averted eyes, and let him carry you back with his bulky arms.
As it always did, the water let your wounds heal far faster than a man’s, though the aches were still intense.
John’s eyes would not leave you. His crown of stars or the lantern light on his face—the way he whisked you away from danger and put himself dead center into it. Keeping you to his large chest as he held aloft a sword in your honor.
“...I think he loves the beast!”
Oh, and you loved right back and you hadn’t told him.
It’s hours upon hours later when the door is shoved open as you sit up in the bed; tail limp and dim on the floor below. You look up in shock at the man whose frame nearly takes up the entire doorway, shoulders wide and thighs vast under work pants and a large tunic, cowl over his head and clasped with a brooch at his left pec. Under shined a deep brown gaze and pale brows, but his entire lower face was covered by cloth.
Intimidating, his visible expression was entirely blank. You wondered if perhaps a vampire had walked into this place without proper entry, but then you remembered the man Johnny and Gaz mentioned.
Simon. Ghost.
Well, he certainly fits the part, stone dust on his clothes and large boots stacked with scrapes. A Stonemason.
“There’s the man!” Johnny exclaims, raising his hand which has another cup of ale in it as he’d downed the other some time ago.
“Where’s Price?” Deep was Simon’s voice, and he spares you a glance but nothing more. Gaze falling down your tail with hidden flickers of intrigue and wafting back up to stop at John’s necklace. His brows pull in as he turns.
“Gone—taken to the King,” Gaz explains from where he leans against the fireplace, face serious.
“Fuckin’ hell,” Simon grunts, walking in and closing the door behind him. “Where was he last?” It’s mildly amusing to you that he doesn’t seem bothered or even surprised by a mermaid in Gaz’s home.
“Just off Harpies Nest,” Johnny pipes in, itching at shaved sides of his scalp. “Where the old beasts used to fly from.”
“I’m guessing she’s the reason for that, then?” Everyone was anxious to act, even you. These men were close, and while circumstance had forced them away from one another the loyalties still lay.
“Affirmative. Price’s been in good company, seems.” A stale glare is sent his way and he chuckles and puts up his hands.
“Is there anything we can do?” You ask, looking at each in turn. Seeming to still hold that ingrained ranking that all men in the service do, Johnny and Gaz look to Simon. Brown eyes blink slowly, turning to look at you in a narrowed thought.
After a while, he speaks in a monotone.
“They’ll be bringing ‘em to the castle to stand trial. We’ve already lost a day’s time and there’ll be no ship that can sail as fast as we need it to.”
“By land?” Gaz wonders. Johnny’s shaking his head.
“How do you expect we get the Lady through that?” Eyes turn to your lack of legs. Body stiff, you huff and grit your teeth. If they thought you weren’t going along, that was foolish of them.
“I can swim to the docks,” you pause, “but you’ll have to tell me the way, for I do not know it.”
John had talked about docks—places ships went to rest. You’re sure you can make it, even like this. You had to.
Johnny stares before he chuckles twice, sharing a glance with the others and motioning to you. “I like ‘er.”
Gaz and Simon look at one another with a side-eye, before Kyle sighs and shakes his head. Simon hooks his thumbs into his pants and huffs out, “Sure you’re up for that?”
“I’m helping John.” Pushing, you meet those brown eyes head-on and steel yourself. “I need him back.”
There’s no further fight, and Ghost takes everything you say at face value. “Fine.”
And that was that.
—
The plan was so stupid you wondered if these men had gone brain-dead, but inside the castle dungeons, John had no way of knowing that.
He frowned deeply as his pounding skull tipped back to connect with the cobblestone wall, blood dried over the right side of his face. A growl on his lips as the chains keep his hands high above him and hanging as his backside stays seated on the floor. His limbs had long since gone numb, circulation cut out in an uncomfortable state of numbness.
But inside of him, there was a sense of accomplishment despite everything. He’d gotten you away from dirty hands—away from hooks. Away from danger.
John could die happy with that.
On the ship, before he’d been brought to the castle, the crew had tied him to the mainsail mast with a ragged rope that had skinned his flesh in just minutes of the rocking waves. They’d taken his vessel as well, and all of his belongings were confiscated in the docks. From there it had been amused jabs at his stomach with fists and knife-throwing practice.
John had cuts along the sides of his arms and the meat of his thighs—clothes shredded and torn from blades. His forehead had a long gash from the scalp to the temple, dried now but pulling with red aggression.
The fisherman hums under his breath and thinks only of you.
It was a fact that you had brought music into his life; a melody of waves and scales that could not be denied. Songs that sounded like sea-foam and a lapping of a tail across the water. When he’d seen you that day from behind the black rocks, John had lost a piece of himself to your wide eyes and tilted head. That spark of connection.
He had never been so thankful for choosing a new place to cast his nets, because he’d unwittingly caught the greatest creature he ever could have—one people have been running after for years.
You.
John’s lips pull in a tiny smile, eyes going soft. Above him his chains rattle and his arms flinch, wounds burning, but for the life of him, he can’t stop smiling. Wherever you were, he hoped you were safe and that he gave you the best chance of survival. He hoped you could forgive him.
Footsteps echo off the ground, and John looks over to the iron bars of his cell stiffly, mask re-falling to his stern face like a curtain. Two guards in armor clink down the hallway, expressions hidden by hoods and cloth. One produces a rusted key from his belt and slips it into the door, the metal rattling as it gets forced back and forth until the telltale click signifies the opening of the lock.
“Finally letting me out, then?” John speaks dryly, voice holding a rasp.
No one answers, and soon John’s chains are dropped and his arms seized. Yanked up, the fisherman grunts in pain as his legs drag behind him across the cobble—being taken somewhere. Probably, if John had to guess, the noose.
Desertion isn’t something you can get out of shy of a life sentence; to hell or to a cell was entirely up to the King. And the King wasn’t entirely fond of John and his One Hundred and Forty-First.
John was forced out into the open courtyard, a dichotomy of brightly flowering bushes and expensive finery to the platform placed in the very middle. The brunette's lips thinned at the sight of the large and imposing body made of wood and rope belonging to the gallows, a grim reaper of earthly material. There would be no great fight from him, no roar of a death rattle, just a kicking of his feet and tight wheezes, but no more.
He knows his final thoughts will be of you—what you’re doing right now, how you’ll live the rest of your life. John hopes you don’t cry for him.
The two guards shove him forward, and already a crowd has formed below the viewing platform for the monarch himself, who sits in all of his finery. Wyvern leather for his gloves, unicorn horn for a scepter, and…John’s eyes go tight, scales that make up a crown of opal and gold. Vibrant scales.
Unmistakingly Merfolk, anyone who’s met one of the species would know it. It has the same shine as the one John holds in the pouch on his belt; the fisherman clings to the fact that, against all of it, you were still with him in even a small sense. You’d be with him.
So John grits his teeth and glares up to the dias defiantly as the guards hold him under the noose, shoving his head to the side to grab the rope. He feels no fear.
“Fuckin’ watch it, Muppet,” the fisherman hisses, snapping his head to the side to stare into the glinting brown eyes from under the hood. He pauses, brows furrowing. “What…?”
As his hands are forced behind him, they’re not tied as the excited murmuring from the crowd begins, the King’s forward-leaning attention.
They’re given a knife.
John hides his surprise and looks over to the other guard as he fits the noose over his neck. Amused blue, and around his neck the glint of silver discs.
“Oh, bloody hell, you’re takin’ the piss,” the former Captain growls lowly. He knows those damned eyes, just as he knows his former Lieutenant’s.
MacTavish and Simon.
“Chin up, Captain,” Johnny jokes under his breath hidden by cloth. “Show’s about to start. Let’s give ‘em a proper scare, yeah.”
Blue eye glare, but they lack the venom. A barred-teeth smile grows. How had this happened? Johnny steps back and goes to his side, the wood under their feet creaking. The crowd falls silent, looking to the King for the verdict.
The King’s fingers raise and John memorizes his face in that instant…because it’s only then that he sees Gaz.
Gaz, who was on the upper terrace of the courtyard’s walls, holding a musket with the stock trained to his cheek; body still and ready—tutored to a perfectly motionless trance. There aren’t any guards to be seen near him. It’s a moment of pure silence, a ruling energy. The crowd is waiting for the King to verbalize an answer that he’s never able to give.
As the monarch’s lips open there is an eardrum-bursting boom that shatters the call for John’s doom and instead spells his own in his very castle from one of his former men. A poetic ending, John would say, but he’s unable to verbalize it as he’s suddenly falling through the gallows hatch as Simon reems on the handle.
“Knife!” It’s all the Ghost yells in warning.
With a rush of air, there’s a split second to cut the rope before it breaks his neck, and with a snapping motion, John perfects it in an instant—instinct as sharp as any blade that could be put into his hand. He hits the ground with a loud grunt of pain and struggles to sit up until Johnny and Simon jerk at him from where they’d jumped down as well. Not a second too soon, as lead balls from rival guns were already hitting the gallows.
Not all the guards were dead, then, and apparently, the three had known that would be a possibility.
John would have to scold them later.
“What in the hell is going on?!” The fisherman barks, but he’s being dragged before he shoves their hands off of him and follows to where they beeline into the fleeing crowd.
“What?” Johnny belts out laughter. “No ‘thank you?’ We just saved your neck!”
“Left!” Simon shouts, and although John’s body can’t take much more, they all dart into the cover of the castle walkways. “Make for the docks—the Sergeant’s meeting us there.”
“Bloody fucking Christ!” John growls but quickly goes onto the most important topic. “She’s behind this, isn’t she?” Johnny’s smirk only confirms it.
“Proper girl you’ve got there, Gaz found her on the shore. Else we’d never have heard about it all before you were dead and gone.” John blinks at him. “Getting reckless without us, now?”
The former Captain ignores the remark. “Where is she?”
“Oi!” Ghost hisses, looking over his shoulder as the three hurry on as shouting rings from behind them. “Get your head in the game. Focus on not getting shot, yeah?”
Brown meets blue.
“You’ll see ‘er soon.” Simon ends, dead eyes shifting to a form that rampages through the hallway behind them. “Behind!” He calls loudly, and John ducks just as a knife is thrown with pinpoint accuracy. A sound of a body hitting the floor echoes over the distant screaming and calls of alarm.
The King is dead.
All of the men reach their destination by sheer luck and the knowledge of how to use a blade, cobblestone leading to open streets and back alleys. Finally, the wide stretch of sea was visible, and a shadow slinked out of a corner quickly.
“Hell,” Gaz blinks at them, “do you think I’ll ever be let back into the castle?”
Johnny pants a laugh. “You’ll be lucky to get into the province, ya sneaky Bastard. Fine fuckin’ shot.”
Simon looks at them. “Gaz, Johnny, get to it.”
They’re by the open water of the dock, long wooden walkways stretching out with ships shifting in the waves. John wonders if his boat is here in the back of his mind, but his eyes are already combing the waves greedily in search of you.
Were you here? Oh, he hoped you weren’t. You’d be placing yourself in the middle of a very real and present danger.
“Get to what?” John questions, looking at each man in turn. “What ‘ave you planned, eh? Seems I’ve missed the meeting where we decide to assassinate the bloody monarch in broad daylight.”
Gaz places a hand on his shoulder as he shimmies past. “Best to leave the heavy lifting to the ones who can stand fully, Captain.”
“Aye,” Johnny confirms. “You’ll want to be here more than anywhere, bet ya.”
Simon shares a look with the blacksmith and grabs John by one shoulder, leading him to the water as Johnny takes the other. The brunette blinks quickly in confusion and grunts an expletive.
“Get your hands off of me you pair of—!”
“Have fun!” Johnny and Simon both shove him into the water with a final push and dart off like wisps.
Water rushes into his ears, covering his head and soaking his clothes before it drags him under. John’s arms flailed to propel him back to the surface. A jolt later, his head is breaching the water with a venomous glare and a barked order on his lips to a vacant audience. The boys had already sprinted off to who knows where.
“Son of a…” John trials, weak legs kicking to keep him afloat. Something brushes his thigh as water drips from his nose, cleaning away the blood with a reddish tint to the liquid.
The fisherman startles, head snapping down just as your hands grasp at his abdomen, sliding up as you press your lips deeply into his in one swift motion. He gasps, grip instinctually moving to hold onto the small of your back.
You press into him tightly, pushing every emotion into the locking of your mouths with desperation and longing. Sighing deeply into the kiss, John melts into you as your tail brushes his legs, torn fins visible and shimmering stitches pulling at flesh. Scales glint somewhat brighter under the waves, water dripping along your shoulders and wetting your hair.
John brings you closer when he realizes it’s your form around him, eyes fluttering closed and fingers weaving behind the base of your skull. It’s as if the world stills for that quick and reverent second as if everything is right. The both of you break the kiss with soft eyes, and after a moment of staring your chest releases a chuckle; hands coming up to capture your fisherman’s cheeks, weaving through those beard hairs once more.
The brunette stares at you and lays his forehead into yours, not knowing what to say. A smile plays on his lips.
“...It seems my fisherman had more of a reckless side than I anticipated,” you speak for him, whispering into the air. Your eyes flicker over the cuts and bruises visible on his pale flesh and a flash of fear alights in your expression. “Oh, John…What have they done to you?”
“Just scratches,” the man reassures delicately. “It’s alright, Love. I’ll live.”
But you both know this conversation can’t happen here. With a few more pecks of kisses to his lips, you ask in an ethereal voice, “Do you trust me?”
Your hand is locked to his wrist, pulling him along the waters as your head tilts at him and tail sliding along his flesh.
John wastes no time. “Of course.”
Lips flicker to a small, loving, grin and then you drag him under the water.
—
“Do they hurt?” He asks you carefully, running a calloused hand along the tears in your fins you know will never heal fully. You sit on the rocks below Gaz’s home, the water still dripping off of both of your bodies.
Out farther in the water the three other men are sailing back in John’s fishing boat, a few minutes out. You blink down at him and move a hand to shift his jaw upward to you, humming.
“Not when you touch them like that,” confessing, you keep close to him, held tightly under the crook of his arm and breathing in that scent of rope and wood oil. You practically vibrate with comfort, all of your worries able to be put aside at last.
John looks down at you and chuckles, putting a deep kiss on your scalp and taking a deep inhale.
“Cheeky,” he teases. You smile.
“And yours?” Your voice speaks out in question as the water brushes your tail.
The man peels back to look down at you slowly. “Already better…I owe you, Sweetheart.”
Huffing, you shake your head, “You owe me nothing. The only reason you were there was because of me.”
John’s brows furrow, taking your chin in his fingers and tilting your head back to him. He stares into your eyes for a long while until your face starts to heat with emotion, blinking up at him innocently. His blues dart over the healing cuts and marks with hidden emotion.
“I’d do it again,” John whispers. “A million times over, you hear? I’d be a bloody fool not to.”
He kisses you as you both wait in the setting twilight for the others, bloody and beaten—more scar tissue than anything else—but still your John.
“Thank you,” he mutters into your lips, and then again when he nips at your flesh. The man plays with his necklace at your collarbone as he traces patterns in your scales and smirks when you shiver.
He wonders how he got so lucky when the others anchor the boat near the shore, hopping off and wading the rest of the way to the beach. John kisses your forehead and says he’d be right back.
You watch him with glinting eyes as he walks over to his men, taking each in a heartfelt handshake and conversing honestly. Your eyes blink at the care they display for one another and raise a hand when they peel off, back up to Gaz’s home to rest.
They reciprocate and disappear atop the hill.
What’s he doing? You ask as you watch John climb aboard his vessel and rummage around his fishing barrels, opening some and tossing the tops to the deck. Hands shifting along the rocks, you can’t hide the amusement or affection in your eyes at the sight of his ramping annoyance. What was he looking for?
Your fingers go up to play with his necklace and watch.
You can’t say you feel much heartache at the loss of your cove—even with the king dead, you were still hunted for your scales—though you had grown to see it in a new light. The place was only a home when John was there, and you knew wherever you went as long as he was there it would be alright.
The both of you wouldn’t let anything happen to one another.
John comes back carrying something tucked in cloth, a small parcel held in one hand and longer than it is wide. Your interest is immediately piqued, curiosity straining your eyes.
He holds it out to you with a mischievous glint and a smirk.
“Go on,” John motions. Blinking at him, your brows furrow as you carefully take the item from his hands, settling it in your lap before you shift the cloth away.
Your fingers go to cover your mouth, small gasp entering the air.
It was a golden box, engraved with movements that resemble lace and waves—shimmering in the low light.
“John,” you stutter, “what is…?”’
“Open it,” the man insists, kneeling down in front of you as if his muscles didn’t ache. “It’s the reason I was late that day.” John grunts, rubbing at the bottom of his beard and watching intently; crinkles beside his eyes.
You stare for a moment with burning tear ducts before you grasp ahold of the lid and open it after running a digit over the make.
Inside sits blue velvet and, strangely, your own scales, but atop that…the blinding gold of a pair of twin cuff bracelets—stones the same shade as your tail. It was perhaps the most elegant piece of jewelry you had ever seen.
For a solid minute you’re rendered speechless, mouth opening and closing as your tail hangs limp in the low tide. Chucking, John takes the pieces out and your ears twitch to the sound of your scales clacking together like glass.
“Why would you…” You can’t make sense of it.
John slips them over your wrists and you gape in wonder. They fit just perfectly.
You look up into your Fisherman’s face and feel tears drip down your chin. A hard hand comes to wipe them away as you laugh through a sniffle.
“Do you like them, then, Love?” He asks lowly, beard pulled back in a smile.
“Yes,” you say immediately, giggling. “How could I not? John, they’re lovely. Far too beautiful for me.”
The former Captain grunts and his brows pull in, frowning. “Now why would you say that?” He brings your hands to his lips and kisses your knuckles. “You’re the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen. Can’t make me change my mind on that, eh?”
Your eyes bore into him, lips parted. After a moment your face feels like it’s on fire and you cover your cheeks.
John laughs loudly, grabbing your arms and lightly squeezing the flesh before taking your grip back down to your lap. You smile so widely you’re afraid your face might crack open.
“No need to hide,” he hums. “Let me see that face.”
“You’re good to me, John.” His face softens, wrinkles fall away, and his chest swells with pride. You kiss his lips and whisper, “I bare my soul to you.”
It wasn’t an ‘I love you’ but something far more precious.
The man’s face deepens with devotion, gruff figure more than easily leaning over yours as you’re carefully laid back to the tiny pebbles behind you—a hand behind your head and at the swell of what would be a hip.
In the darkening night, the sun shines its dying light across the waves just like the extending fingers of John’s firm grip; dragging you into him as sea-currents would. Wrapping you both in kelp and a salty grave. His voice is the grating of sand, the slide of a rope across a wooden deck.
“Then I’ll take care of it for as long as I live.”
Your fisherman damns you to a crypt of land and air, and you couldn’t worship it more. To live and to die beside him is to have existed just as you should have.
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