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Published:
2018-12-04
Updated:
2019-08-28
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2/?
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Catch & Release

Summary:

Neither Tony or Ty like fishing in the first place, so why are they even out here?

 

“But I mean… it’s a shark, not a fish. Don’t you put those back?” Tony presses.

Ty snorts. “Put it back, Tony? Come on.”

Notes:

Another tumblr post moving over. Was going to move it over when I finished it, but... here it is anyway.

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

“Here, lighten up will you?” Ty drawls as he forces a drink into Tony’s hand.

Tony rolls his eyes as he accepts the bottle of beer. Later the actual liquor will come out, but for now they’re drinking beer in the afternoon soon because that’s what you do when on a boat. At least it’s quality microbrewery stuff and not PBR or something equally atrocious.

If Tony had known what Ty had envisioned for the weekend, he would’ve declined. Usually when Ty says ‘weekend on the yacht,’ Ty means his large, gorgeous party yacht with drinking and dancing and sex. This is a boat even if Ty calls it a yacht. This is Ty’s father’s ‘yacht,’ which happens to be used exclusively for deep sea fishing and even if Ty’s father backed out last minute, Ty had taken the boat and Tony along with him for the weekend as some sort of payback.

Tony thinks he’s the one paying the price though, but at least he did spot the cabinet of harder liquor that Ty is holding onto until Tony can convince him otherwise.

“Entertain me then,” Tony replies after taking a long pull of the too-hoppy beer.

Ty grins, sets his drink down, and whips off his shirt.

Tony rolls his eyes. “Yeah, somehow I don’t think the crew is going to enjoy that show.”

There were three other men on the boat with them, making themselves scarce as Tony and Ty occupied the open back deck, but there weren’t any private spaces on a boat this size (and okay, it was probably big enough to be called a small yacht, but still). Paid labor to actually sail the yacht because Ty couldn’t be trusted to do more than a photo-op at the helm, and then to clean and prepare food.

Ty’s father’s habit wasn’t sailing. It was exclusively fishing.

“Lighten up,” Ty says, tone dancing on the edge of an order.

Tony forces a chuckle and takes another drink, holding back his sigh. Ty’s mood swings had been especially mercurial with the last minute backout of his father. And Tony wishes that Ty’s mood hadn’t swung to forcing them out on this boat all weekend.

“And get some color already,” Ty continues. “You’re more blinding than the sun.”

Tony doesn’t bother to argue, and simply takes off his shirt as well. He’d been spending too much of his time lately buried in the basement labs of MIT, and so he might burn but he’ll deal with it later.

Ty, of course, had already put on his baseline tan from weekends spent in Florida and the Caribbean.

Ty opens his mouth and Tony prepares for another insult, but then one of the fishing poles Ty had set up (in hopes to show his father what he’d missed) bends, indicating something was on the line.

Ty curses and lunges for the pole while Tony hovers at a careful distance.

Tony breathes a quiet sigh of relief when one of the crewmembers appears, one who probably knows their way around a fishing pole much better than either Ty or Tony.

“That’s it, Mr. Stone. Nice and steady,” the crewmember - Evan? Edward? Eric? - compliments as he sidles up to Ty.

“Back off, I can handle this,” Ty grunts in return. His pole bends tight, and Ty has a difficult time trying to reel in the line, but he snarls viciously at the hovering.  

Tony sighs and resolves himself to watching Ty fail and then having to put up with that mood afterwards.

Ty struggles trying to reel in whatever is at the other end of his line. E-man cautions Ty for reeling in too fast, saying Ty needs to tire out whatever is at the end of the line, but it already feels like it’s taking forever to Tony. To Ty to, probably, since Ty doesn’t seem to listen or take the advice.

Finally there’s thrashing in the water, and Tony can see the dark shape of whatever Ty has caught doing it’s best to swim away.

“Ha! Got the bastard now,” Ty crows, pulling on the line.

Tony leans over for a good look, and then Ty’s catch breaches the surface again.

“You got a shark!” Tony says, barely stopping himself from scrambling backwards. “What the hell?”

E-whatever steps up to confirm Tony’s call, specifying that it’s a blacktip shark that’s dancing at the end of Ty’s line, and a big one at that. Ty cheers in triumph as he drags the shark through the water, using all his strength to make it follow his line and dance to his tune.

Tony bites his lip and practices his phrasing inside his head before he dares shoot for a curious but nonchalant tone. “What are you going to do with it?”

“String it up and take a picture! I bet it’s taller than you,” Ty says. He grunts as the shark yanks on the line, almost pulling the pole out of Ty’s hand.

“Not taking that bet. But I mean… it’s a shark, not a fish. Don’t you put those back?” Tony presses.

Ty snorts. “Put it back Tony? Come on.”

“These are not badly endangered. Catching is legal,” E-whatever says, eyes on the shark.

Tony grits his teeth. If only Jane hadn’t brought her new boyfriend Thor around the labs. The guy talked about everything and anything, and one of his things was a rant about how shark movies portrayed sharks as villains. Humans killed more sharks per hour than sharks kill humans per year. Tony remembers the numbers, the stats, and even if it’s legal all Ty wants is a trophy anyway.

“Take your picture as evidence and let it go Ty. You really want to deal with a dead shark all night?” Tony shoots for bored and condescending.

“Fuck yeah. I want to see its teeth and if it has anything cool in its stomach.”

Thor’s facts scroll through Tony’s brain: 

For every human killed by a shark, humans kill approximately two million sharks.

You have a 1 in 63 chance of dying from the flu and a 1 in 3,700,000 chance of being killed by a shark during your lifetime.

Only 5 people die from shark attacks yearly.

Sharks are different from bony fish because they have eyelids.

Before Tony thinks anymore about it, he grabs one of the knives that E-whatever has gotten out in preparation for ending the shark’s life. He reaches out and grabs the fishing line from the end of Ty’s pole, almost losing his footing as the shark jerks at the end again. Tony saws at the line.

“Tony! What are you -”

The line snaps, and Ty crashes backwards.

Tony huffs as he watches the shark disappear beneath the surface, but even as he turns to face Ty he doesn’t regret his choice.

“What the fuck was that?” Ty demands as slams the pole on the ground. He leaps to his feet and shoves Tony’s shoulder.

Tony plays it cool with a shrug. “Get over it. Or go hook another one, if you’re such a master fisherman.”

“Get the fuck out of my face, Stark,” Ty says, continuing to shove Tony against the back railing

“Happy to,” Tony sneers. “I’ll go get myself a real drink.”

Tony slips by and heads to one of the inner compartments and opens up the cabinet with the hard liquor, pouring himself a tumblr of whiskey. He’d really done it now. He had to put up with Ty until they made it back to shore, and what really was one shark worth in the grand scheme of things?

Maybe this would have Ty deciding to head back in, though, and then Tony could sleep in his own bed tonight. Or at least not on a boat.

No, of course not. Ty spent the rest of the afternoon and evening fishing, and while he didn’t pull another shark he did catch plenty of fish.

“You planning on cooking any of that?” Tony asks, clutching one of the railing. He’d been slowly drinking all day, with nothing else to do other than watch Ty fish and rant and drink, and now his balance was more precarious than normal thanks to the rocking motion of a boat.

“No. I’m going to chum the waters to catch me a shark,” Ty replies with a grin full of teeth.

 

“The good news is that everyone’s fine, Buck,” Steve tries to comfort.

“But they almost weren’t,” Bucky hisses, and his tail thrashes in anger.

“But they are. And you need to refocus before you do somethin’ stupid.”

Bucky takes a big gulp of water, letting it expel rapidly through his gills. “What corals have you been lickin’? You’re never this mellow.”

A blue flush, the same color as Steve’s tentacles, crawls up his chest. “Sam has been coaching me a bit…”

Bucky laughs, jaw stretching wide. He takes several hiccuping swallows of water to keep his gills happy and ignores Steve’s frown and agitated swishing. “Sam? Someone’s finally gettin’ through to your all your brains, then!”

“Go flip yourself,” Steve mutters as he crawls back against the rock. He starts to shift from his normal blue to the gray scenery, and Bucky can’t help but chuckle over his attempts to hide.

Steve had never been good at hiding, which octo-mers were supposed to be good at. He had also never been good at providing company to the non-mer octopi that had crossed into Steve’s waters, either, like his job is supposed to be. Usually Steve’s ‘counseling sessions’ with the octopi ended up in fights.

Except Sam seems to be coaching Steve into being the therapeutic ear that is Steve’s job.

Still, Steve is doing better at his job than Bucky is. As a blacktip shark-mer, Bucky was in charge of looking after a group of blacktip charges that were in the middle of their juvenile stage.

And Bucky had almost let one of them get killed today by the Surface Dwellers because he hadn’t noticed the hook. He had tried to unhook Sisi before they were brought to the surface, but in their panic Sisi wouldn’t hold still look enough for Bucky to save them. It had taken the one Surface Dweller to free them, and Bucky despises the need for gratitude.

Still, he is thankful for Sisi’s life, and so Bucky admits that at least one Surface Dweller must not be an insane predator.

Tingles race up Bucky’s spine as he senses mass movement in the waters behind him. Bucky turns and notices his charges are racing away in a group, and then Bucky sniffs out the blood in the water.

Lots of blood. Lots of food. A feeding frenzy.

“Go,” Steve urges, and Bucky swims off after them.

Chapter 2

Notes:

Written for the Tony Stark Bingo square: R4 (picture prompt, Tony + tentacles)

Bursting back onto this older WIP for another chapter, thanks to the deadlines of the TSB.

Chapter Text

“This is stupid,” Tony says as Ty pours another bucketful of fish guts behind the boat. 

Tony had kept his distance as Ty caught his pile of fish and then forced Evan (as Tony finally heard his name again) to hack them all into pieces to chum the water, but Tony tries again to talk some sense into Ty. 

“Feel free to jump in and join your shark friends, if you want,” Ty sneers as he searches the waves for any sign of sharks. 

Night had fallen, but the lights on the boat are bright enough to illuminate a few feet of water beyond the sides. Tony can see the darker tint of the water from the blood, as well as the fish parts still floating. 

But there seemed to be no stopping Ty. Tony should’ve just let Ty have the first shark rather than force Ty to up the ante by chumming at night. 

Tony just wants off this boat.

“Here they come,” Evan murmurs as something thrashes in the water. 

Tony is drawn to the back of the boat, unable to resist his curiosity.

It’s a shark, no doubt. And one turns into many, several sharks thrashing and biting and eating just feet from where Tony stands. Evan confirms they’re the same type of shark that Ty caught earlier - blacktips - and Tony thinks he maybe sees the tips of black on the fins, but mostly Tony is caught looking at the rows of teeth and the gaping jaws on display. 

Ty jostles him and laughs when Tony grips the railing tight, but then Ty walks away before Tony can call him out for being a dick. Tony regrets all those drinks, his balance further thrown off as the boat bobs in the water, especially if Ty is going to be pulling pranks. 

Ty comes back with a harpoon in hand, and those drinks slosh in Tony’s stomach. 

He must be developing sea sickness. 

 

 

Food is good, but this is too much of a coincidence after the event with the Surface Dwellers today. The pack won’t listen to him as he tries to rein them back, the feeding frenzy already taking over them. Bucky will be the only one able to deal with the threat.

The pool of blood and remains of fish fish is just off the Surface Dwellers’ floater, and so Bucky hisses in anger as he approaches the surface. The pile of food has his mouth watering, and he sucks in the blood on the water to satisfy the urge. His pack is thrashing in the water, paying no need to the danger just to the side. 

Bucky remains outside the circle of light that comes from the floater, keeping to the surface. He watches as his pack feeds, then looks up at the Surface Dwellers that baited him and his group. 

The Evil One is there, holding a harpoon, and Bucky swims closer. The Less-Evil One, the one who cut SiSi free, is also there, watching. Perhaps the Less-Evil One is still Evil, the cut line a momentary kindness that will never happen again. Bucky is angry at his previous gratitude toward the Less-Evil One. 

Bucky watches, waits. His electro-senses that tell him of movements in the water don’t work in air, and so he will not know it is too late until it is too late.

He tells the pack to leave, to clear out, but none listen. They are feeding, voracious in their blood lust, and Bucky won’t be able to corral them until they have eaten everything or gorged themselves, whichever happens first. 

The harpoon is lifted up, is aimed. Bucky tenses, watching and waiting. He is one of the quickest mers of his kind - and the smartest, at least according to his ma - so if anyone has a chance at protecting his pack from this danger it’s him. He can do this. He will do this. 

The harpoon enters the water, but it’s not the only thing to fall from the Surface Dweller’s floater. 

 

 

“Don’t do this.”

Begging doesn’t work on Ty. Tony already knows this, but Tony isn’t sure what will. Ty has always been better at pushing the right buttons to get what he wants, and Tony is still learning. Rather than studying people, Tony has been too busy with machines. 

Which means Tony knows that the harpoon is fully capable of doing it’s job. How many sharks will Ty kill all because Tony tried to save one? Tony isn’t even sure that this process is legal, but for a guy like Ty it won’t matter. 

Ty snorts and raises the harpoon. Tony isn’t sure why he even bothers to aim - it would be hard to miss with all those sharks on top of each other. 

Tony grabs the harpoon, trying to lower it. He can’t convince the man, so he’ll have to take over the machine. 

“This is dumb. Let’s go back to Boston and hit up the bars. You’re almost out of whiskey, and who the fuck cares about fishing anyway?”

“Get off, Stark,” Ty growls. 

Tony is positioned wrong to block the punch to his face, and so Ty’s fist smacks him high on the cheek. Tony’s head snaps to the side, but he doesn’t let go of the harpoon. It would take a lot more pain than Ty can deal out for Tony to back off. 

Maybe that’s the distraction that Tony can use? But Ty doesn’t give Tony another opportunity. He jerks the harpoon away. 

Tony tightens his grip and follows it, and they’re knocking shoulders and elbows as they fight for the harpoon. Evan shouts at them, orders to be careful or calm down or something, but the blood is rushing in Tony’s ears and it’s taking all his focus to hang on to that harpoon. 

Ty will probably shoot Tony with the harpoon after this, but hopefully that means he won’t aim at the sharks. 

The boat rocks, Tony stumbles, Ty knocks into him. Tony isn’t sure what happens, which one is the last motion, but suddenly he’s falling into open air with the harpoon still in his grasp. 

Tony hits the water, choking on a scream. Panic, frenzy, the slosh of water in his ear and the smell of blood and salt. Tony flails, kicking out and trying to point the harpoon in the most useful direction only he’s surrounded by flashing fins and sharp teeth. He’s pummelled and dragged down, down, down, and at least he can’t feel the pain over the numbing panic. 

 

 

Bucky lunges. He shoots through the water, hoping that his sprint will be fast enough. He grabs the Not-Evil Surface Dweller and dives deep, trying to get under his pack’s frenzy. 

Sisi, out of control, comes at them from the left with her jaws open. Bucky blocks her with his arm, keeping the Not-Evil One from getting a bite to the face. Bucky’s left arm flares with pain, and his blood joins the frenzy. 

Maybe he’ll bleed enough to calm his pack down. As defense, mer blood is meant to taste terrible to their own kind. Some animals go rogue regardless - Bucky had heard stories about tiger sharks - but Bucky’s pack wouldn’t turn on him, even in a feeding frenzy. 

He hopes. 

Not that the Not-Evil Surface Dweller is grateful at Bucky’s risk. He squirms in Bucky’s grasp and tries to turn the harpoon around, but Bucky takes hold of the weapon and drags the Surface Dweller down, down, down until it was safe. 

“You are safe now,” Bucky tells the Surface Dweller, but Bucky gets no response other than wide eyes and another escape attempt. 

It appears the stories are true - Surface Dwellers are not smart enough to understand mer-speak.

Bucky growls. He needs to go back to his pack, to protect them. Saving the Surface Dweller is supposed to be nothing more than a trade of favors, for saving Sisi earlier. 

Bucky turns, feeling the approach of something behind him. 

“Give him here,” Steve directs as his tentacles reach for the Surface Dweller. “He needs to breathe, and you need to get back to your pack. Bucky, you’re bleeding!”

“You shouldn’t be this close to a frenzy,” Bucky hisses in worry. All of Bucky’s pack know Steve as a friend, but in their current state they wouldn’t recognize him. They’d try to take a bite out of Steve, even though they didn’t usually feed on octopi and especially not mer. 

Bucky passes the Surface Dweller to Steve and then circles around them twice, hoping his blood might act as a drifting wall of protection, hoping it will be enough. If the Surface Dweller dies, so be it, Bucky tried, but Steve? Bucky can’t pick between his pack and Steve. 

Steve wrinkles his face in disgust, but doesn’t protest. 

“Go,” Steve orders. 

Bucky doesn’t have time to be grateful. He keeps the harpoon, just in case it comes in handy, and swims back to the surface and his pack. 

 

 

Darkness and water and panic is all Tony knows. He’s running out of air, he’s lost his harpoon, and the feeling of shark skin and human hands - which makes no sense - has changed over to tentacles. 

Is he already dead, or did he really not get eaten by sharks only to be fodder for an octopus?

The tentacles squeeze, the suckers tasting his skin, or this what simply drowning feels like? Tony struggles, weakly, but he’s trapped in this octopus hug or maybe just a delusion. Well, maybe this is preferable than being eaten alive by sharks. Sharks versus octopus - The latest sci-fi channel exclusive in action,  and he has a front row seat. He giggles, air bubbles escaping and he watches as they float up and up and up. 

Where there’s a pack of frenzied sharks waiting for him if he had the strength to swim. 

It won’t matter much longer. Tony’s lungs scream, and the lights from the boat seem so far away. Tony keeps his mouth closed as long as he can. The last half-second of his life, and he regrets - he regrets many things. 

Not saying goodbye to Rhodey.

Not finishing his one-armed robot, or leaving good enough notes so Rhodey could at least finish for him. 

Mom. Jarvis. Dad. 

Tony gulps for air, knowing there’s only water. 

Lips press up against Tony’s. If this is death, then at least it’s gentle, he thinks.

He breathes air.