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The first thing Ronan realizes when comes to is that he’s on land and that is not right at all. They’re not due into port in Hispaniola for another week if the weather is favorable. And yet, here he is, sprawled out on the shore, slowly sinking into the sand as the warm water rushes over him and then back out. When he opens his eyes the clear blue sky is blurry.
His memory of the night before rushes back to him with the next lap of the current: the purple-black sky with its orange-tinged clouds, waves mounting the hull and sweeping the deck, and wind blowing good men off the masts. Gansey plunging down into the water and jumping in after him. Gansey. Ronan sits up too fast and the whole world tilts.
“Fuck,” he groans, grabbing his head with both hands and willing the throbbing to stop. His lungs burn with each breath. He has a coughing fit and a little bit of sea water comes out with the bile.
“Whoa, slow down.” A hand hits his shoulder and he jerks away from it, startled.
Sitting behind him in the rising tide is, well, it looks like an honest to god mermaid. He blinks, rubs his eyes, and blinks again, because mermaids don’t exist. Gansey is going to be so pissed mermaids exist and he wasn’t the one of them to find one first.
“Are you okay?” it asks.
No, not it, he. Ronan has always thought that stories of sirens and their ethereal beauty were the product of bad rum and too many nights spent with your brain being sloshed about by the waves, but true enough to the tales, this half-boy is one of the most beautiful things he’s ever seen. He has hair the color of the sand beneath them and eyes the deep blue of the sea against the horizon. He’s finely etched, all delicate lines traced over thin bones. There’s a tug in Ronan’s gut. He looks away.
“Yeah, just great. Shipwrecked god knows where, missing one of the few people on the planet I give a shit about, and probably hallucinating sirens. I’m fucking fantastic.”
The mermaid scrunches his face up, indignant. “I’m not a siren.”
“Uh huh,” Ronan says. “There can’t be that much of a difference between types of half-people with tails.”
“There’s actually quite a large difference, not that I expect a human to understand. You’re only ever after our females anyway.” The way he says human makes it sound like he’s talking about something that’s well and truly gone off. He glares at Ronan.
Ronan glares back. “You can keep your females,” he mutters. “I don’t have a use for them.” He pulls his knees up to his chest, making sure nothing’s broken. He tries to take a deep breath, but that only starts another coughing fit.
The mermaid’s hand hits his shoulder again and slides down his back. He thumps him a few times to work the water up. Ronan folds forward with the surprising force of it. “Sorry,” he says, pulling away quickly. “I forget your bodies are weaker.”
“I’m not weak,” Ronan grits out. He stands to try and make his point, but immediately stumbles and ends up back on his ass in the sand. The mermaid laughs. It comes out free like the wind. Ronan doesn’t know why it makes him so angry. “Are you just going to sit here all day and enjoy the show?”
The mermaid narrows his eyes. For a moment they seem go black. Ronan shakes his head and when he looks back they’re blue again. Maybe he made it up. God, his head still hurts.
“Look,” he says. “I had a friend. I need to know if he’s safe.”
“You had many friends.” The mermaid looks down at where his hands are splayed in the sand beneath the clear, shimmering water. “Very few of them made it.”
“This one would have.”
“How do you know?”
“He always makes it.” There’s very little in the world that Ronan is certain of, but he is absolutely certain in the unsinkable nature of Richard Campbell Gansey III.
The mermaid looks over his shoulder. “I can go and confer, see if any of the others were pulled out. I’m afraid we don’t really make a habit of cleaning up after foolish men.”
“Then why am I alive?” It comes out of Ronan’s mouth before he’s properly considered it. There are a hundred things he knows he should have asked instead, but for him it always comes down to this: Gansey is unsinkable and he is a stone. They balance each other out. If he's not with Gansey then there’s no reason for him to be alive.
“I liked you,” the mermaid says, as if that explains everything.
“You….”
“What is your name? In case there are others.”
“Ronan. They’ll...anyone from that ship should know me.” They won’t all like him, but that’s just tough shit when there are only so many men left.
“Ronan,” the mermaid confirms. “I’m Adam. Wait here, don’t talk to any others like me.”
Before Ronan can ask why, Adam turns and heaves himself back into the sea, disappearing in the shallow waves. Ronan drags himself up onto the dry sand and sprawls out on his stomach with his cheek on his arm. If he has to wait, he might as well sleep. Sometimes the best solutions wait for him in his dreams.
This time, though, Ronan dreams of drowning. He dreams of his mother’s voice calling him further down into the deep, calm blue near the ocean floor. He lets himself sink until the blue becomes black. He thinks he feels her hand on his cheek, but that can’t be true, because his mother has been back in Ireland sleeping for more than ten years. But maybe that’s because her soul slipped away to somewhere else, somewhere cool and liquid and welcoming. A face looms in the darkness. It is not his mother’s. It has several rows of sharp teeth.
He wakes with a start and finds another face in similar darkness. Night has fallen while he was sleeping and waiting. A woman leans over him, her long blond hair brushing against one of his cheeks and her cool hand against the other. She’s humming his mother’s song. He stares up at her, mesmerized. When she opens her mouth those rows of sharp teeth glint in the moonlight and his heart jackrabbits. He struggles to reclaim control of his body, but it’s no use. She leans into him—
—and suddenly jerks away. She hisses and flashes her teeth again before turning and crawling quickly, like a snake, back to the sea. Ronan watches her go out of the corner of his eye.
“I told you not to talk to anyone like me,” Adam says. He runs his hand over Ronan’s throat and turns his head, inspecting him.
Ronan regains control of himself and sits up, batting Adam’s hand away. “I wouldn’t really call that talking.”
Adam looks unamused. “That song, did she take it from you?”
“What do you—” Ronan starts, but then he thinks about his mother and finds he can’t remember the tune. “It was just...”
“Right there,” Adam says. “That’s what sirens do. They take away parts of you slowly until you’re not you anymore.”
The wind coming over the dunes kicks up, throwing sand at the back of Ronan’s head with insistent, annoying pin pricks. “That’s dark.”
Adam shrugs like a small wave crashing. “They used to dismantle the ships, but they learned it was easier and more effective to dismantle the men.”
“Do you have vampire teeth too?”
“I told you, there’s a difference between us, and I’m not a siren.” His tail slaps against the sand in annoyance with a dull thud.
“Okay, okay, fish boy. I get it. Normal teeth and tails, good. Razor sharp teeth and snake tails, bad.”
Adam grimaces. “Not absolutely, but for the time being. Also, I have literally saved your life twice in one day now.”
“What do you want, a present?”
“A little less hostility would go a long way.”
Ronan looks down and clamps his mouth shut, because what he wants to say is definitely hostile. It’s not personal, it’s just an automatic reaction to situations he can’t control. So far he’s been shipwrecked, almost eaten, and had a primer on mermaids, which do in fact exist. It’s been a long day of situations he can’t control.
He opens his fingers to find a small, elegantly carved five pointed flower sitting in the palm of his hand, plucked perfectly formed from his sleep. He holds it up in the moonlight. It looks like jade, but it’s blue instead of green. It’s hard to tell in the dark, but it might be the blue of Adam’s eyes. It’s not the sort of solution he wanted, but it might not hurt, either. He holds it out between them.
Adam takes the flower and turns it over, also holding it up to the moonlight. “Where did you get this?”
When Ronan shrugs it’s more reminiscent of broken oars bobbing in choppy water than anything graceful like the sea. “Sometimes I dream things.”
Adam stares at him without blinking for what feels like a very long time. It doesn’t make him feel nearly as uncomfortable as he thinks it should, considering Adam is a mythical creature who could probably kill him on a whim if he wanted to. In fact, it feels very pleasant. He feels that tug at his gut again and realizes suddenly and wholly that he wants to feel more. More of whatever this is, anyway. He’s not sure.
Finally, slowly, Adam slips the flower into a small leather bag Ronan hadn’t even realized he had tied about his waist. “Thank you,” he says.
“Yeah, well.” Ronan replies, because he feels like what he wants to say now is less hostile, but possibly just as offensive. “Did you hear anything about any other men?”
“There was one other man saved. A friend of mine found him. He’s on the next island over.”
Something like hope bursts hot in Ronan’s chest. “What is his name?”
Adam shakes his head. “I don’t know. My friend didn’t get it before he upset her, and he wasn’t close enough to shore for me to find him to ask. But he has to still be there. There’s nowhere else for him to go without a boat.”
Ronan sighs and laughs at the same time. “That sounds like him. Can you show me how to get there?”
Adam nods, quick and sure. “You’ll have to walk to the other tip, just down that way,” he points to the east. When Ronan follows the line of his finger he sees the beach disappear into the darkness. “It’s not that far, but I don’t know how long it will take you. It’s always faster swimming than walking.”
“Only for some of us,” Ronan says. He stands up, much slower this time, and steadies himself on shaking legs. It’s been almost twenty-four hours since he had anything to eat. He hopes there’s at least fruit on Gansey’s island. He feels like it would be rude to eat fish in front of his new companion. “Meet me there?”
“Yes.” Adam reaches a hand out and grabs Ronan’s ankle. He squeezes it, and then turns to drag himself back to the water. It’s much less snakelike than the siren.
Ronan watches until he disappears, then he turns and starts walking. His boots are still soaked through and rubbing painfully at his heels with every step. He makes it about a hundred paces before he has to do away with them altogether. He hurriedly undoes the laces and kicks them off, leaving them behind as he keeps going.
The moon is high above Ronan when he reaches what he thinks is the far shore. He stares out into the inky darkness, trying to catch a glimpse of the other island. He’s not actually sure he’ll be able to swim any distance, feeling the way he does. He’s starving, he’s shivering in spite of the warm breeze, and his legs just get shakier the longer he stands on them. But the alternative is to not make it back to Gansey, which is unacceptable. Ronan has done a great many impossible things for Gansey and he's not about to stop now.
He walks to the edge of where the water is lapping at the sand and keeps going. He’s in up to his waist before Adam appears again. There’s another mermaid with him. This one is smaller, with dark hair that’s long enough to be plastered to the sides of her neck. Here in the water he feels like he’s on more even ground with Adam, if that’s even the right term. Like this, Adam is just a few inches shorter than Ronan. If he moves in further they’ll eventually be the same height. It will eventually be nothing for Ronan to lean in and press their lips together. He feels a heat creep up into his face and looks away, deciding instead to sum up the newcomer. She scowls at him.
“This is Blue,” Adam says. “She’s the one who pulled your friend out.”
“Thanks,” Ronan says.
Blue studies him, mouth set in a serious, thin line. “I thought you said this one didn’t do that either.”
“Maybe he’s just warmed to you faster,” Adam suggests.
Blue laughs and it sounds like the slide and clatter of a blade scraping barnacles off the hull. “No man has ever warmed to me.”
“His life means more to me than mine,” Ronan says, voice quiet like the hushed lap of the water at his elbows. He’s not sure they can even hear him, but the words won’t come out any louder. Ronan’s love has never been about words. “And whether it’s fair or not, I feel I owe you more gratitude for saving him.”
They both stare at him. Blue tilts her head and knits her eyebrows together in confusion. Adam’s face goes entirely blank. His eyes go black again and Ronan is sure it’s happened this time. It makes him completely unreadable.
“Ah,” Blue says. “You did mention he didn’t want women.”
“No, that's not right.” Ronan grimaces and Blue’s mouth dips into a frown. She glides away from him a few feet. “I mean, yes, I don’t. But it’s not like that. He’s...he’s my brother. Sort of.”
Blue wrinkles her nose. “You humans, so concerned with designations. You make the simple things entirely too complicated.”
The gentle swell and roll of the water as it heads to shore is starting to get to Ronan. He feels like his pulse is syncing up to it, along with the increasing pressure of the throbbing in his head. There’s a pounding in his ears that he thinks isn’t about his blood. The horizon tilts and he stumbles forward, trying to keep his feet planted in the soft, shifting sands beneath them.
Adam reaches out and catches his shoulders. He slides himself under one of Ronan’s arms and grips him about the waist. “Come on,” he says. “You can make it. Just one more sprint,”
Blue takes him by the other side. Her breath and skin are cold where Adam’s is warm. Ronan shivers more violently caught there between them. “You’ve already made it this far,” she says.
Adam squeezes Ronan’s hip. “Take a deep breath. It’ll be faster if we do it under water.”
Ronan does as he’s told and they’re off, plunging down into the waves and shooting away from the shore. They break the surface at regular intervals, but it feels like Ronan lasts for fewer and fewer seconds with each consecutive dive. He’s flagging fast. He knows it’s his strength and not his will slipping away from him, but it still feels like he’s failed both Gansey and himself by not being able to make his convictions manifest as solidly as his dreams. By the time they make it to a sandbar just a few hundred yards from Gansey’s island Ronan is panting and shaking. His ribs feel like they’re clamped around the barrel of his lungs too tightly. His heart pounds in his chest, threatening to break in half under the pressure.
“This is as close as I’ll get,” Blue says. She pulls away and Ronan’s arm floats down to his side. “If I have to see that man again I’m feeding him to a siren.”
Ronan tries to laugh, but it comes out as more of a cough rattling low in his throat. “He always did have that effect on women.”
“It’s fine, I’ll take it from here.” Adam grips Ronan’s waist with both hands to keep him from drifting in the current. Ronan is thankful he does, because even though his feet are in the sand they’re still scrabbling for purchase against the ebb and flow.
Blue slips below the water without another word and then it’s just Adam and Ronan again. Ronan lays his head against Adam’s shoulder and gulps in air, trying to catch his breath.
“I can only take you so far here. The current between the islands collects all of the shell debris and I’ll cut up my hands and tail trying to make it to shore.” He leaves out the glaring fact that Blue had done just that to save Gansey the first time.
It is utterly baffling to Ronan how Gansey seems to have earned the loyalty and protection of the entire universe, even when the other beings in said universe don’t think very much of him at all. It’s no longer a surprise. If anything, Ronan is the universe’s will made manifest in regards to Gansey, in that he both loves and wants to protect him, but that doesn’t mean he’s ever worked out why.
“Just take me as far as you can,” Ronan says. “I’ll close the distance. I always do.”
“I don’t doubt that.” Adam lifts one hand from the water and slides his thumb across the sharp ridge of Ronan’s jaw.
Ronan’s mind tumbles, unraveling the bit of hope he’s been holding at bay all day. He can see the light of a small fire, glowing low like embers in a pipe, against the dark backdrop of sea and trees and sky. He doesn’t have to search, he just has to move. If there’s one thing Ronan’s good at, it’s dragging himself toward light.
“What you said before,” he starts, hesitant. It feels like the wrong time to be doing this, but it also feels like it might be the only time. He has to know. “That you like me. How is that possible? You’d never seen me before.”
Adam slides his thumb up to Ronan’s cheek and swipes at his earlobe before curling his hand around the nape of Ronan’s neck. “No,” he says. “You’ve never seen me before. I’ve seen you plenty of times. Of course, I never expected you to see me. It was easier when you hadn’t. When you were way up on your soaring deck it was easier to pretend it was admiration. Having you here it’s, it’s impossible. Go to your friend.”
He lets Ronan go and tries to pull away. Ronan reaches out and wraps his fingers around Adam’s wrist. He gets tugged along a few feet before Adam stops trying to escape.
“Thank you,” Ronan says.
He tugs on Adam's arm, pulling him closer, and kisses him. It's mostly salt and grit. They both taste of the sea right now. It’s the purest dedication Ronan can think to extend to someone as marvelous as this creature, just himself, just every last piece of himself that Adam has saved. The end of Adam’s tail winds around Ronan's calves, holding him in place. He wraps his arms around Ronan’s waist and pulls him close. Their hearts beat together in time with the sea.
Ronan wants to keep this for his own, but it doesn’t belong to him any more than his dream flower. He is a catalyst, but he is not a cause. So he pulls away and Adam lets him go. A few seconds later Adam is holding a large pearl up in front of his face. It reflects the light from the moon so brightly that it looks like the moon has cloned itself so that it too can go to sea.
Adam reaches under the water to find Ronan’s hand and presses the pearl into it. “If you ever need to find me again, swallow it. It will lead you to me.”
“I will,” Ronan says, because he knows it’s true. He doesn’t know when it’s true, he just knows that time isn’t always a straight line and that it’s already true somewhere. Everything he wants is already true somewhere.
“Good luck,” Adam says. He slips under the water as Blue had and then Ronan is alone.
He takes a deep breath and focuses on the fire ahead of him.