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Fuck superyachts, Harry thinks.
Actually, fuck all yachts, he amends. He has no idea if this is a superyacht or a regular yacht. Or possibly just a really fancy speedboat. All he knows is that he’s hurtling along at a dizzying speed, pulled by a rope tangled around his tail.
I am never getting on a yacht, he thinks as he whizzes by a school of fish. Nothing good comes from a yacht.
—
By the time the boat slows down, Harry is so motion sick he feels like he’s going to vomit. He lets himself float, limp in the water, hoping the feeling passes. If he vomits, it’s going to be gross. Vomiting under water is much worse than vomiting on land.
He watches a catfish mosey by beneath him. Catfish are assholes as a rule, but they’re good to have nearby if you vomit.
Okay. Harry really needs to focus on something else.
The motor of the boat above him is idling now, the gentle hum of the engine warped and distorted underwater. It casts a huge shadow over the otherwise clear waters. Most of the people Harry has seen on yachts are rich snobs who talk about investment accounts and women named Sheila. They throw their empty beer cans into the water and play loud music with a heavy bass that makes all the fish scatter. He hasn’t heard anything from this one yet, but he had barely breached the surface before his tail had become the unfortunate dance partner of a loose rope.
Why there was a loose rope is also an excellent question.
Damn, Harry hates yachts.
Okay. He breathes deep. He doesn’t feel like vomiting anymore, at least.
—
The rope is well and truly tight around his tail. Harry’s been working at it with his fingers for a while, and nothing is budging. It probably tightened from Harry being dragged along for so long, and it’s scratching at his scales in an uncomfy way. Probably good that the fins at the end of his tail are all cartilage, because they’d definitely be cut off from circulation by now.
Fuck, Harry was supposed to hang out with Harris this afternoon. He’s going to be so late.
He growls in frustration, letting loose a string of air bubbles, considers just gnawing through the rope. It’d taste disgusting, but it’d get the job done. He’s almost resolved to, when there’s a tug.
Another tug.
Ugh. Shit.
It’s undignified, being pulled above the water, upside down, by his tail. Harry lets himself go limp as he’s slowly cinched upward. Maybe he’ll bare his teeth a little, make whoever is up there think he’s going to eat them.
Gross.
He bumps along the side of the yacht as he’s hauled above the waves. Undignified. This is so undignified.
—
Harry lands on the deck with a hard smack.
The sun is blazing hot in comparison to the cool safety of underwater, and Harry grits his teeth, squinting to try to figure out his surroundings.
“Holy shit,” says a voice.
It’s a nice, rather melodic voice. But that is not the point. Harry is not pleased to be here.
Harry flaps his tail uselessly against the rope. The sun is going to dry his tail out way too fast at this temperature. His eyes have adjusted enough to see the figure towering over him. Or, not really towering. They’re just not that tall.
Harry jabs a finger in his direction. “Don’t you dare kill me,” he seethes.
“I’m not going to kill you — is this a prank? Is this some sort of rich person prank?”
The person has brown hair down to his shoulders and scruff on his cheeks. He’s looking with alarm at Harry. Good.
“What, have you just been inducted into the rich person society and now you think you’re being hazed? Is this your first yacht?” Harry asks. He curls forward and starts pulling at the knots again, since this stranger clearly isn’t going to help.
The stranger snorts. “Do you know what a yacht is?” he asks. “This is barely even a speedboard. It’s a fishing boat with a speedboat motor stuck underneath. It apparently doesn’t even have an anchor since the rope pulled you up instead.”
Harry huffs. “Seems pretty irresponsible to be driving around without an anchor,” he supplies.
The stranger splutters. “What— How was I supposed to know? I was literally here to check and see if the boat worked and if there were any holes! I’m not here to fucking picnic on the water!”
Harry eyes him. “This is a private lake,” he says. He’s realising he can feel his scales fading. He’s drying too fast and doesn’t want to be caught dry on this flimsy excuse for a poor man’s yacht. “How did you even get in here?”
He’s given a flat, unimpressed look. “You’re saying a lot for a man dressed as a merman and caught in a rope.”
Harry splutters. His whole body is covered in scales, from face to fins, and this man thinks he’s in fancy dress? The nerve. “Well cut me out already,” he demands. “It’s your fucking rope. Let me go swim in my lake in peace.”
He can see the tip of his nose starting to go from green to tan, his scales receding. He does not want to end up with two legs and no pants in front of this man.
“Christ, hold on,” the stranger says, rummaging around on the admittedly small deck. He comes up with a knife eventually, squatting down at Harry’s tail and pushing his hands away. “These are fucking tight,” he says, “What’d you do to them?”
“Got dragged a good half mile in the water I’d say,” Harry grumbles.
The man doesn’t look at him, but Harry sees him roll his eyes. He’s sticking his tongue out a little as he saws away at the rope. It takes a while before it’s thin enough he’s able to just take both ends and pull until it snaps, coming apart and falling off of Harry’s tail.
Most of Harry’s face and chest are back to his peachy human undertones at this point, and it’s getting uncomfortably close to dissolving his tail. He slaps it like a seal on the deck of the boat, narrowly missing the man in the process.
“Well,” he says. “I can’t say it was nice knowing you.”
He turns onto his tummy and starts to propel himself on his palms toward the edge, but very quickly he feels something grip his tail.
Something firm and strong but soft.
Harry turns back and glares daggers at the stranger who is now holding onto the end of his tail, where the rope was. “Fuck off,” he says, going for menacing.
And apparently failing.
“I want to see how it’s attached,” the man says, raising an eyebrow.
“It’s attached by skin and scale and fucking bone,” Harry growls. He can see his whole back and waist are just skin now, closer to the mermaids in fairy tale books. “You’ll have to cut me in half to detach it.”
“Come on, it’s a good act,” the man says. “What, are you hired out for parties? Do you go on people’s yachts to scare them?”
Only late at night, Harry thinks. He’s about to expose his whole ass to the stranger at this point. “I want to go back in the water,” he says like he’s speaking to a guppy. “Let me go.”
“I want to know why you’re being so secretive,” the man says. “Are you trying to start an urban legend?”
Harry snorts. “Try to avoid it, actually.” He props himself up on his hands, twisting to look straight at him. “I’m going to flash you,” he says simply.
It was getting that way anyway, he’s just pushing along the process as he wills his human skin to emerge. It only takes a few seconds before he’s entirely tailless and the man is holding onto both his ankles.
“Holy shit,” shouts the man, losing his grip and letting Harry go.
“Thank you, I’ll be going now,” Harry says, standing up on wobbly legs. He knows he’s giving the stranger a view, but he doesn’t care. “This has been a terrible first meeting and I hope we never meet again.”
He doesn’t wait for an answer, simply dives over the side of the boat and disappears.
His scales return the second he makes contact, turning him green and iridescent. He’ll be nearly invisible to anyone trying to see him from above.
Good riddance.
—
The lake is nearly 100 feet deep, and has tunnels at the bottom that connect it to the surrounding river, if you know where to look.
(Humans do not know where to look, hence why they still call it a lake).
Harry was only a little late to Harris’ that afternoon, which of course Harris was fine with because he’s terribly sweet like that. Still, Harry does keep thinking about that stubborn man on the boat.
It was an ugly little boat, that’s for sure, but not a yacht apparently.
Maybe that’s why he takes interest in the dumb things that the man on the boat starts doing.
First, it’s a fishing line with a muffin. In a plastic bag. On the hook.
Harry stares at it for a long time. It’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever seen.
He takes the muffin.
It isn’t particularly good.
Then, it’s a banana.
It’s not in a plastic bag this time, which is good because Harry doesn’t exactly have rubbish bins at the bottom of a lake. He takes the banana.
It’s pretty good.
The third, fourth and fifth times it’s flowers. A rose, a sunflower, and something blue that he’s never seen. Harry hopes he’s not actually trying to catch fish with these. It won’t work.
But the petals look nice floating in the water.
The sixth time it’s another plastic bag. It’s got a note in it.
Harry takes the note.
He has to raise above the surface to read it, but makes sure to break far enough away that no boat would be in danger of seeing him. When he unfolds it, he finds veritable chicken scratch.
Merman,
Sorry I said you were fake.
Meet me at my dock? At midnight?
Louis
Harry rolls his eyes. He doesn’t have a fucking clock, what kind of a merman keeps time?
He puts the letter back in the bag and seals it, diving beneath the surface again. What a ridiculous ask from a rude human.
Named Louis.
A rude human named Louis.
Harry is going to need to find a clock.
—
Zayn has a clock.
“I can’t guarantee it’s accurate,” he says. “I have to wind it myself, and the current does weird things to the gears.”
“Okay but I also don’t know how to read it,” Harry says.
Zayn points to the shorter hand. “Midnight is when that one is facing upward,” he says.
“So it’s midnight right now?”
“No, it’s noon right now.”
“What the fuck is noon?”
“It’s the opposite of midnight.”
Harry glares at Zayn.
“Listen,” Zayn says patiently. “Midnight is when noon happens at night, It’s like four hours after the sun sets. Just… Wait a bit after the sun sets and go up on his dock and wait for him.”
“That’s so unhelpful,” Harry says.
“Well you can wait here until it’s actually midnight, but then you might miss him.”
Harry huffs. Human Louis is not worth all this hassle.
—
He’s under the dock just after the sun sets.
It’s not his fault he’s a curious person.
A curious merperson.
A curious merson.
He plays with the little silver fish in the shallows, watching them dance around his fingers. He’s buried himself half under the sand, feels the tickle of submerged grass around his middle.
It’s terribly boring up here but telling time is hard, okay?
“Hey,” says a voice.
That is Louis’ voice.
Harry looks up.
Louis is on the dock, looking through the planks down at him.
“I can’t tell time,” Harry says accusingly. “I don’t know when midnight is.”
Louis grimaces. “Whoops,” he says.
He jumps down straight into the water next to the dock, landing up to his waist and turning up churning clouds of dirt and sand that blind Harry’s vision until he hoists his top half above the water.
“I wanted to apologise,” Louis says.
“You should,” Harry agrees.
“I assumed you were a rich person thing,” Louis says. “Rich people are fucking weird.”
“I assumed you were a rich person,” Harry says. Just to even the score. “Are you?”
Louis snorts. “I’m very much not,” he says. “I just happen to have inherited a small cabin on a lake surrounded by rich people. Came up here to fix it up to sell.”
“You know whoever buys it will just tear it down,” Harry points out. That means more construction. He hates construction. The noise is unbearable.
“Thought I might sell it to someone who wasn’t rich,” Louis says. “But fair point.” He sits down next to Harry, up to his shoulders in water. “You live in this lake?”
“Sometimes,” Harry says. “It’s a pretty nice lake.”
Louis nods, looking out at the lilypad covered waters. “I think so too,” he says.
“When are you going to sell it?” Harry asks.
Louis shrugs. “I dunno,” he says. “Was thinking about autumn, but also there’s something weird about this lake. Like, it’s full of weird shit.”
Harry thinks of Zayn’s clocks. “Yeah, I agree,” he says.
“Thought I might want to stick around and find out more about it,” Louis says. “Plus, this place belonged to like, my great great grandpa. Might as well keep it in the family.”
Harry’s home was dug out by a small family of beavers that he paid handsomely for. But Louis probably doesn’t need to know that.
“I’ll show you around maybe,” Harry says. “If you bring me another banana.”
Louis brightens. “Yeah?” he asks.
“Not a muffin though. It wasn’t a good muffin.”
Louis nods. “I know,” he says. “I threw out the rest.”
Harry slaps his tail across Louis’ knees. “If you insult my tail again though,” he says. “I’m gone forever.”
“Deal.”
—
Louis actually insults his tail quite a lot.
But by the time he starts, they’ve already kissed once. So like, Harry can’t leave then.
Plus, inside of Louis’ house are a lot of clocks, and Zayn has to see those, so Harry has to stick around to steal them.
Also inside of Louis’ house is a very soft bed.
Harry likes beds, he decides. They’re good for many things.
(Like kissing).
(And pushing people off of when they insult his tail).