Chapter Text
They were sitting at the moonpool, their tails long dried up by now as they rested by the water, talking aimlessly about school, swimming, stupid boys, all of the above. Cleo was talking about Lewis—as she did sometimes when she needed advice—meanwhile Emma and Rikki were playing Tic-Tac-Toe in the sand.
“I win!” Rikki smirked and pumped her fist in the air, crossing down her diagonal line of three x’s in the sand.
Emma crossed her arms and ruffled the sand on the tic-tac-toe board so the game was reset. “Only because you keep going first!”
“Guys, what are we planning for the full moon tonight?” Cleo asked, interrupting their game. The sunlight from above the moonpool shone down into the water and reflected windows on her skin. Even though the sun was up now, it would only be a little under two hours before the moon came up and made them go crazy yet again.
“Locking ourselves in?” Rikki asked, and wiped sand off of her fingertips from where she had been drawing a tic-tac-toe board again. “Hm, you know, I have a particularly scary movie we could watch.”
“You know Cleo doesn’t like scary movies.” Emma protested, giving Rikki a firm glare.
Cleo shook her head, “You guys are forgetting. It’s family game night tonight at my house!”
“Oh, right. Well, we can go, too, and get everything set up with Lewis.” Emma nodded back to Cleo, who just wrung her hand together.
“Dad says no friends tonight. He says he hasn’t hung out with me and Kim in ages!” the girl protested, her braids swinging down her back as she shook her head. “I begged him but he said no.”
Rikki frowned, noticing that Emma was no longer paying attention to their game, and sighed. “Well, I guess we could sneak you out.”
“Guys. My dad would ground me for life.”
“I don’t think there’s a way we can be there, Cleo,” Emma bit her lip and pushed herself to her feet. “Maybe you could convince your dad to let Lewis in so there’s someone looking out for you.”
The brunette chewed on her bottom lip, fidgeting with her hands as she paced around the moonpool. “I know. I just can’t think of an excuse. And you two will need someone with you, too. I can’t just… take Lewis.”
“Yeah you can,” Rikki said, her eyebrow furrowing down as she swirled her finger around in the sand, drawing little shapes in her boredom. “Me and Em will be just fine. We’re big girls. We have all the stuff to block the moon already, from last time.”
“Are you sure?” Cleo’s face downturned in worry, and Rikki just grinned. She’d never had someone care about her so much, but, she was glad that someone did. She stood up and clasped a hand over her friend’s shoulder. “You’ll need Lewis more than we will. Plus, he won’t be able to stand the scary movie we’re gonna watch.”
“Scary movie? I didn’t agree to that,” Emma cut in, crossing her arms.
“You scared?” Rikki replied, quirking an eyebrow with a wicked smile.
“Huh,” Emma scoffed and rolled her eyes to the side. “Bring it on.”
Once the cardboard was up over the windows, and all of the reflective surfaces had been put away or covered on duct tape, they could finally just rest. The moon had risen just a couple of minutes before they finished barricading up the house, but they were lucky to have avoided seeing it.
"Alright," Emma said, admiring the windows. It sucked that they had to do this every full moon, and then take it down, and then redo it, but she guessed that it came with being a mermaid. "I'm gonna call Cleo and make sure she's set up okay."
"Right, did she manage to convince her dad to let Lewis come?" Rikki asked, and plopped down on the couch, putting her feet up on Emma's coffee table.
Emma pushed the other girl's feet off with a grumble, "Yeah. Lewis convinced him by saying they needed an even amount of players for most board games." she said and waved her hand aimlessly, barely recalling Cleo's text.
Flipping open her phone, she dialed Cleo's number, which was on speed-dial for emergencies. It barely even rang for a few seconds before Cleo picked up on the other end.
"Hey, Emma. Everything okay?"
"Yeah, we just wanted to make sure you were set up over there." Emma said into the phone, sharing a look with Rikki, who had put her feet back up on the coffee table while Emma was distracted.
"Oh, everything's fine over here." Cleo's voice came, and from the background there was an audible smash. "Uh…"
"Cleo? You alright?" Emma asked, cradling the phone closer to her ear. "Hello?"
"Yeah, Em, I have to go, sorry!" Cleo said frantically, and then hung up, leaving Emma's phone to beep loudly in her ear at the lost connection.
"Trouble in the Sertori home?" Rikki hummed, her head perked up. Emma thought it was funny that the other girl would never admit she cared about Cleo when it was so obvious that she did.
"I'm sure she's alright. She's got Lewis." Emma shrugged and placed her phone face-down down on the counter, her ringer on the max volume in case Cleo called.
“Right, are you ready for this?” Rikki smirked and dangled a case of a movie between her thumb and forefinger. The cover had knives and bloody-dripping handprints all over it. “Slaughter Village!”
“Oh, come on, are you still on that idea?” she chuckled into her hand and bent down to look at the cover’s gruesome pictures. It looked tacky, in her opinion. “Don’t you want to do something else?”
“What? Are you scared?” the other blonde raised a stray eyebrow, her face tilted up in a joking grin. Her hair was braided down in two parts over her shoulders, tied off with black ties. Stray hairs escaped from her braids and her hairline, framing her face with fluffy strands. Emma tried not to be mesmerized by her energy—so carefree and willing to do whatever, even when a full moon blazed outside.
“I’m not scared.” Emma rolled her eyes, and her answer seemed to be all Rikki needed to stand up and push the movie disc into the DVR player, the methodic whirring of the machine filling the once silent room. Elliot and Emma’s parents would have been asleep by now, for sure, so now the house was all theirs.
Rikki’s eyes glinted as she jumped to sit back down on the couch, and Emma joined next to her after a while, tired of standing. The other blonde placed her feet up on the coffee table, despite Emma’s glare of warning.
“This will be fun .” she grinned back at the other mermaid, who just rolled her eyes and pulled a blanket over her lap as she focused on the opening scene of the horror movie.
Near the end of the movie, they had pulled the blanket into their chests, reluctantly sharing the same one as there were no others in sight. It meant, to both be under the blanket, they’d have to huddle, their shoulders pressed together. And though they’d never admit it, they were happy to do so—it made them feel less alone as they watched the scary movie.
The main character in the movie was walking through a dark hallway currently, and they both watched the screen anxiously, Emma’s house filled entirely with the sounds of the movie’s sounds. The dwindling footsteps, scary music, creakings of the floorboards. As they watched on, their faces flashing with desaturated color as the screen changed shots, their teeth clenched up in fear…
Emma’s phone rang, the sharp, high-pitched DING DING DING of her ringtone, and they both jumped up in fear, screaming, set on edge by the movie. They had grabbed onto each other when the phone had rung, Rikki clutching onto Emma’s arm and Emma’s hands covering the ones grabbing onto her arm.
When they realized it was just the phone, they abruptly let go. Embarrassing. Rikki stalked towards the kitchen, where Emma had left the device before the movie started. She ran her fingers through her hair with a laugh, trying to cure the embarrassment of what she'd done in her fear-stricken moment. What could she say? It was really scary. She reached for the phone on the counter and passed it to Emma, who still seemed a bit shaken up.
“It’s Cleo,” she said as she looked down at the caller-ID, and snapped open the phone, gaining the strength. “Cleo, is everything okay?”
“Uh—it’s me.” a male voice came from the other line, and Emma’s eyebrows furrowed down towards her eyes.
“Lewis? Where’s Cleo? Is she alright?”
“What? What’s wrong with Cleo?” Rikki asked, clearing her throat of any fear that may have been left in her from the movie.
“Shh,” Emma replied, waving her hand as she listened to Lewis’s rapid rambling.
“Well—she saw the moon. And I could really use your help down here, please.” Lewis said into the phone, and Emma heard a huge splashing sound, then a girly scream from him. “No, Cleo! Put the water down!”
And then the line went dead, abruptly. Emma pulled the phone away from her face, staring at it with a scrunched-up face.
“Is Cleo alright?” Rikki asked, taking in the confusion lacing Emma’s features and then the hung-up phone. She’d tried to listen in on the phone call, but hadn’t caught anything to alleviate her worries. Rikki made a noise of protest as Emma rushed off in the opposite direction, putting on her shoes that were in the entryway of her house.
“Lewis says we need to get over to Cleo’s.” Emma filled in for Rikki, reaching into her bag that was hanging on the stairwell.
“What? What about the moon?” Rikki shook her head, bewildered by the sudden change of pace. “How are we going to avoid going all werewolf-y?”
Emma pulled out two pairs of sunglasses from her bag—the extremely dark ones that were almost impossible to see out of, especially at night. Rikki groaned. “These.”
“Aw, not those,” she whined as Emma slipped her pair onto her face, and pushed a pair onto Rikki’s face as well while she was pouting.
“Come on, Lewis wouldn’t call us unless it was an emergency.” the blonde said firmly, as Rikki slipped her shoes on. Yeah, yeah, she knew that.
She took a deep breath before opening the door, keeping a hand over her sunglasses and her head pointed towards the floor. She couldn’t advise going out on a full moon, but she knew she didn’t have a choice. Lewis could usually handle things like this by himself, so calling Rikki and Emma to come help showed that he was really in over his head.
Rikki followed after Emma, although she couldn’t see anything out of the black-tinted lenses, so she fumbled her arms around in the air until her fingers met the skin of Emma’s hands. She didn’t really have any other choice if she didn’t want to get lost, so she clasped their hands together, letting Emma lead the way through the shrubbery of her house and to the sidewalk, rushing to Cleo’s house.
“Do you know the way by heart or something?” Rikki asked, trying to put her trust in Emma’s navigation skills, although trusting was very hard for her. She kept wanting to take off the sunglasses and make sure she wasn’t about to trip on rocks or jutted edges of the streets. Luckily, her brain told her that, logically, it wasn’t a good idea.
“Yeah, I’ve walked here every day since I was a kid,” she replied, and Rikki could hear her voice echo around the empty streets of the night. Emma squeezed their hands and stopped, leaving Rikki to smack into her back unceremoniously, not getting the memo that they had paused until too late. “Sorry. We’re here.”
Rikki didn’t ask how she knew, just let herself be led up some stairs to Cleo’s doorway, where she heard Emma knock on a door. She really didn’t know how someone could walk without any sort of vision for so long, and make it to the destination unharmed. Rikki would just have to add it to the list of amazing things about Emma, which, she found, was starting to get long. She still had to look up the address to Cleo's house sometimes.
“You can take off the glasses,” she heard Emma’s voice whisper to her, and she didn’t waste a second before she pulled them off, her vision of the moon blocked out by a huge building by Cleo’s house. The first thing she saw was Emma’s face, smiling back at her, before she turned back to stare at the door, knocking again for good measure. It really was a relief to see again, Rikki thought.
The door finally opened, the face of Mr. Sertori coming into view. He had bags under his eyes, and he didn’t look too pleased to see them.
“Girls, you know it’s Sertori family game night,” he said, crossing his arms. “You can visit Cleo tomorrow.”
“Um, we’re actually here, because,” Emma began, and swallowed thickly, struggling to come up with an excuse.
“It’s shark week, Mr. Sertori.” Rikki cut in, looking at Cleo’s father with a shrug, and then a frowning, disappointed nod of her head.
“Shark week? No, it’s still Febru—”
“ Cleo’s shark week.” Rikki cleared her throat. “We were in the neighborhood and thought we could help.”
Emma tried her best to hold back a grin, just the tips of her lips curling up instead at Rikki’s excuse. It was so stupid, but, knowing Mr. Sertori, it may just work. It was Rikki’s kind of genius that Emma could never hope to replicate.
Mr. Sertori’s eyes went as wide as saucers, and he stammered, not knowing what to say. “That’s why she was acting so weird,” he exclaimed, like he’d just had a moment of understanding. He opened the door wide and stepped back. “Please, come in.”
The two eagerly stepped in at that, happy to be out of the moonlight and into safety again. They trusted Cleo to have barricaded her house from moonbeams, especially if Lewis was around.
“Ever since my wife…” he sighed and looked down, rubbing the side of his nose. “You girls know I’m not good with the… womanly issues… that Cleo might have…”
Rikki made a half-smile half-grimace at Cleo’s father and nodded. “That’s why we’re here to help, Mr. Sertori.”
“We should probably see Cleo. And check if she’s alright,” Emma interrupted, and rushed towards the stairs, not wanting to waste any more time down here when Cleo could be in danger. Rikki gave him a salute and followed after her friend, fidgeting with the hem of her shirt as she rushed off.
“Wait, Emma, Rikki—” Mr. Sertori stopped them as they tried to go, and his face looked sad. “Is there anything I should do? I don’t want you both to think that I’m a bad father, but I could really use some advice about this kind of thing.”
“Emma, go up there,” Rikki said with a barely-contained grimace, and Emma hesitated for a second before she jogged up the stairs, towards the room where she could hear Lewis babbling from.
Rikki, on the other hand, descended the one step she’d gotten to before she had been stopped, and looked to Mr. Sertori, who looked just as pained to be having the conversation as she was.
“Alright, so, uh, periods…” Rikki began, clearing her throat. She wasn’t thrilled to have to talk about this with an old man, but, she supposed it could help him with Kim, or, whatever.
Emma pushed open the bathroom door, where she was greeted with a red-faced Cleo who was tied up in the bathtub with impromptu ropes. Her hand was swirling around in the unscrewing motion she used for her powers, and a string of rope was choking Lewis around the throat.
“ Cleo !” Emma shouted, and jumped forward in surprise.
She froze the water around Lewis’s neck in a spur of quick-thinking, which allowed him to yank at the ice that was choking him until it shattered into pieces. He coughed and sputtered, falling to the ground as he wheezed.
“Emma!” Cleo purred and her fingers curled around the lip of the tub, trying to pull herself out of the ropes. “I’m so glad you’re here! Let me out, please?”
Her eyebrows curled down and she looked at Lewis, who was frantically shaking his head. Usually, she’d be opposed to tying her friend up like this, but after seeing her choke Lewis with no remorse on her face, she wasn’t exactly certain in her friend’s ability to control herself if she was untied.
“Cleo… Why were you trying to choke Lewis?” Emma asked as she stepped closer, sparing a glance at Lewis’s shaking form.
“Because he tied me up.” Cleo frowned and struggled against the ropes again. “Like an animal, Emma! I’m not an animal! I just want to swim!”
Emma exhaled sharply and kneeled beside the tub. She still didn’t understand why Lewis had tied her up—it surely wasn’t just because she wanted to swim. It would take a lot more than that to get him to the state where he felt like he had to tie her up. “Cleo, the full moon’s got you. Give me a second, alright?”
Cleo’s face darkened as she frowned. “You’re betraying me just like Lewis did. Aren’t you, Emma?”
“No, I’m not,” Emma said back in confusion, and suddenly a shot of water hit her in the face from the ice that had melted on the floor. It felt much like a slap that she hadn't been expecting, and she gasped in pain. Her cheek burned red and curdled with heat at the new mark. “Cleo!"
“I’m so tired of everyone thinking they can walk all over me.” Cleo snarled, and Emma nearly gaped at her, not understanding how a full moon could turn her sweet friend into such a violent person.
“No one is walking over you, I promise.” Emma tried to say, and she was starting to see why Lewis had tied her up now, with the way she was babbling and thrashing around like a… well, no offense to Cleo, but, an animal. She brushed her fingers over the raw mark on her face again, unbelievingly.
“ No ! You’re a liar, just like him, so join him!” she screamed, shaking her head wildly as she cupped her hand, and Emma could feel a rope of water tie tightly around her neck, constricting her and choking her just like it had done for Lewis.
“Cleo, stop!” Lewis said dazedly from the floor, trying to push himself to his feet. Despite his best efforts to rush to her aid, he just fell back to the floor, his body wobbling around as he tried to right himself up.
Emma could feel her head spinning as she tried to freeze the water rope around her neck, only to find that her hands were surrounded in Cleo’s water, unmoving and unable to be used as the vortex peeled around her skin and kept it paralyzed. Her hands stayed in a fist by her sides, and she couldn't even unfurl her fingers more than a centimeter. No powers. And in less than ten seconds, she'd be a mermaid too. A dead mermaid. How... ironic.
Was this really what was going to happen? Was Cleo really going to do this to her? A tear escaped from the corner of her eye as her throat tightened up, her body shaking as black dots curled around her vision and made her eyes blur. She could feel the sounds of everything starting to fade away—Lewis’s cries, the sound of the water moving…
A sizzling sound ripped through her mind, and suddenly her neck was released from tight water, instead replaced by a burst of heated steam. Emma took a shaky breath in once she could, collapsing to the floor, her hands shaking and quivering. She watched the steam rise to the ceiling, the last of the water in the room, her vision slowly fading back to normal as more breath entered her lungs.
A hand rested between her shoulder blades, and she looked up, seeing Rikki’s face, painted in thick worry that Emma thought she’d never see so much of on her.
“Are you okay, Em?” Rikki asked, and her vision tunneled in and out until it was clearer, and she was panting, trying to regain the oxygen that she had left. Cleo hummed from the side, and struggled against her restraints again, just lightly.
“Cleo, what the hell ?” Rikki snapped after a while, her hand reluctantly leaving Emma’s back so she could stomp over to Cleo, who was still restrained in the tub, but was gazing brilliantly up at her friend, not a single look of remorse in her eyes. “Are you insane?”
Lewis leaned into Emma, then, whispering in her ear, “Freeze the pipes.”
Emma didn’t even think twice about it, gathering a bit more strength before she used her powers on the running water in the pipes. She wasn’t going to doubt Lewis again. Not after what had just happened. She didn’t know what was happening to Cleo, but to think that her life could’ve been over if Rikki hadn’t shown up? It was terrifying. She could feel the pipes scrunch up under her powers, until they stopped fully, making a creaky, hissing sound.
“Rikki… are you going to betray me like they did?” Cleo asked, her tone wobbly as she looked up at her friend.
“Of course not?” the blonde tilted her head, confused. Why would she do that? Well, after she’d just seen Cleo try to choke Emma to death, she was slightly reconsidering. She guessed she should’ve said that she’d never betray sober Cleo.
“Then untie me,” she whispered specifically to Rikki, lashing her wrists against the ties. “And we can swim to Mako, like the moon waaaants!”
“You just tried to kill Emma,” a protest ruptured from Rikki’s throat, and she stepped back, her lip curled. She knew it wasn’t Cleo, but, it didn’t matter. If Rikki had been just a few seconds later, Emma could’ve… she really didn’t want to think about it.
Cleo frowned, and then bit her lip as a half-smile graced her features. “I forgot you two were so close, didn’t I? I’m sorry. You both can come to Mako with me, then.”
“Don’t listen to her.” Lewis coughed and stood to his feet, wobbling. “Tonight, the full moon is in retrograde with Mars. It’s what’s making her violent. Right as I figured it out, she…” He trailed off, then, and then shot a look back at Rikki. “You can’t go with her.”
“ Shut up, Lewis !” Cleo hissed, and she thrashed against the bounds, cupping her hand, trying to grab water from the pipes—since all the water in the room had been evaporated by Rikki—only to find that they had been frozen over. She snarled in rage, and thrashed harder, until she was thrashing her head on the tub.
Rikki tried to grab her to stop her, after all, it was still Cleo in there, but it was basically useless. She hadn’t known that Cleo could be so strong . Eventually, tears were streaming down the brunette’s face as she screamed and thrashed around, and her face was reddening up from the exertion, even when she relaxed once the tears flooded down.
Rikki looked around, to Lewis, to Emma, and shook her head, utterly perturbed by the events. And when Cleo cackled, a purely horrifying laugh that they weren’t aware could even come from her mouth, she used her powers again, taking the source from the tears that had just streamed down her face. Her lips were upturned in a proud grin as she directed the tears towards Rikki, this time, the same method of choking coming forth yet again.
“Stop! Cleo, Cleo,” Emma broke out in a hissing shout as the girl’s tears formed into the familiar rope of water. She wasn’t going to let this go on for any longer. She nudged herself up to her feet and put her hands up in front of her, in surrender. “We’ll go to Mako with you. Okay?”
"Yay!" Cleo grinned, and flicked her finger, pulling the water away from Rikki, who was panting and staring at Emma in fear. She didn't have it in her to evaporate any more water, after doing the whole room.
“Let me untie you,” Emma said, gently, trying not to push any buttons, and she leaned over the tub, over Cleo’s mermaid form. She winced at what she was about to do, but, something needed to be done. She could hear Lewis shaking his head and protesting in the back, grabbing at the cuffs of her pants, a feeble attempt to stop her. “Sorry, Cleo.”
“What?” the brunette demanded, right before Emma grabbed the mermaid’s forehead and slammed her head into the back of the tub, knocking her unconscious. The back of the neck. She remembered her parents teaching her that self-defense trick when she was only ten. She could swear she saw Cleo begin to snarl before her head swirled and she laid asleep, limp in the tub.
“Emma!” Lewis sputtered in shock, and scampered to Cleo’s side, checking her pulse without another thought. Emma was just surprised that he could still be so worried about her after she had tried to choke them all to death, but, she wasn’t necessarily surprised. To be fair, it wasn’t like they weren’t worried either.
“I didn’t do it hard!” the blonde protested when Lewis gave her a half-glare, fear coursing through his veins. “But I couldn’t just let her continue trying to kill us all night."
“She’s going to be angry when she wakes up,” Rikki noted, finally, her arms crossed over her chest, one leg kicked up against the wall. She was surprised that Emma had the guts to do that, but, she wasn’t complaining. She was sure even Cleo wouldn’t complain when they told her the story. “So, about what you said. Mars is doing this to her?”
“It’s a theory I was working on,” Lewis sighed, and finally slumped down in rest against the bathtub once he made sure Cleo’s vitals were alright. “I was wondering if the planets’ retrogrades have effects on what kind of symptoms the full moon has on you, and… I think I was right.”
“So… tonight was Mars?” Emma clarified, and rested a hand on Cleo’s arm, feeling horrible for her. She just knew that it would be terrible for her to hear that she’d tried to kill them all. It was obvious that Cleo would hate knowing that she tried to do something like that, and Emma almost didn’t want to tell her when she woke up.
“Yeah, listen to this: the day that Cleo got the ability to sing, the sun was in retrograde. When Emma kissed Byron at her party, it was Venus.” Lewis explained eagerly, although his eyes were rimmed with black bags, likely from exhaustion.
Emma flushed a little at the memory of kissing Byron, and she pointed her gaze to the tub in embarrassment. To this day, she wasn’t even sure why she had done it. She thought that maybe she was trying to prove something to herself, or something like that. She can’t remember if she ever proved it, or not.
“All this planet hodge-podge. Are we not going to talk about how Cleo just tried to murder us?” Rikki cut in, and she rubbed at her throat absently, like she was wondering how it would feel if Cleo had gotten her plan of choking her to death, too.
“It’s not her.” Emma said, looking down at her friend, who was now sleeping peacefully in the tub.
Emma’s eyes looked filled with immeasurable sorrow as she watched her friend’s breaths rise and fall, and Rikki couldn’t help but walk over to place a hand on her shoulder. “I know. She’ll be back before we know it.”
Emma looked up to Rikki, and smiled weakly, their eyes meeting and swirling together as they stared at each other.
Rikki thought Emma was brave—braver than she was, at least, for being able to knock Cleo out. She would’ve never been able to muster the courage to hurt that sweet girl, even if she wanted to. She supposed that Emma knew that Cleo would forgive her for it, which was something Rikki couldn’t say was the same for herself. She was always afraid of doing something wrong and losing the new friends she’d made in just a little over a year ago.
Emma thought that Rikki was kind. And it wasn’t a word a lot of people would use to describe the hot-head, but, it was one that Emma would use. Because she was , even if she didn’t show it most of the time. She was worried for her, and Cleo, and Lewis, and it was… nice to have. Even if Emma didn’t know exactly what she felt, or how it all worked out inside of her mind. Rikki cared, in the ways that a lot of people thought she didn’t, and Emma appreciated it tenfold.
Lewis cut himself into their moment, “I’m gonna go get my notes so I can show you all what I’ve been theorizing.”
The girls snapped out of their moment then, and sat next to each other, trying to ignore the palpable tension that Lewis had just simply not noticed. He always had a bit of an issue with that kind of thing, they’d noticed.
Lewis rushed from the room to the living room to grab his things, and all Emma and Rikki could do was just pointedly ignore their pining feelings for the rest of the night.
You know, as usual.