Chapter Text
Eight years ago, a family crashed into the ocean. A mother, father, and son were thrown into the waves of the Atlantic. The water was far too rough for anyone to survive. Freezing cold, mid-December weather was to blame. They had been driving over the bridge connecting the two local beaches overlooking a bay. Abruptly hitting an icy spot of road, they were thrown off the bridge, landing in the water below.
Minutes prior, the car had been filled with the mumbles of a ten-year-old boy playing mindlessly in the backseat, while the parents engaged in small talk about the family party they were returning from. The young boy had wild chocolate hair that curled in the salt air. He looked as though he was too small for his body, but everyone around him constantly said, “he’ll grow into it one day.”
The radio mumbled White Christmas, and everything in the world seemed content. The only thing on the child’s mind was the presents he would be receiving later this month (as any other ten-year-old would). He couldn’t have imagined that his life would soon take a full turn for the worst.
Everything happened so fast. One second was peaceful; the next, the car was flipped over the barrier. Falling was an ethereal experience for the young child. At first, it felt like flying, then terror set in. The water hit him hard, feeling as though a thousand different cuts were being carved into his fragile skin.
He was thrown much further to the left than his parents. The darkness of night surrounded him, and the depth of the water below made him feel smaller than he ever had in his short life. He looked up at the bridge, desperate for any sign of help. Usually, there was someone working the bridge traffic, but it was far too late for anyone to be there now. The only other living being in the immediate area was a gray seagull perched on the broken rails of the bridge. The bird’s screeches pierced the boy’s ears, making the entire situation worse than it already was.
Breaking through the waves, he looked around for his parents. They remained in the car, knocked out cold. The windshield must have collided with their heads. He remembered seeing his mother’s blond hair being tinted shades of red from the blood dripping from the gash in her forehead. The waves blurred his vision, and his little arms tried desperately to stay afloat, longing to be in his mother’s embrace, even if it was for one last time.
He kept telling himself to be brave, but it became very hard when he was surrounded by open water, where anything could be lurking below. He tried not to think about the fact that he had always been afraid of the ocean, not to mention he was a very weak swimmer. Water filled his mouth, and he spat it out quickly, his arms moving faster than ever to stay above the ocean’s rage. Twenty feet to the left of him, he realized the car was fully submerged, stealing his parents away from him forever. His vision worsened, and panic set in. He couldn’t bear to live without them.
All hope drained as he continued to struggle. The water pounded his face, and his mind wandered to his parents’ bodies being pulled to the seafloor below. His head felt like it was going to explode, and he gasped, pulling in the bitter salt water into his lungs. He coughed, unable to stay calm. Everything he had ever known in life had been pulled away from him, so fast. After a few short seconds, he sank again, his legs tired as they attempted to bring him back toward the moonlit surface. He couldn’t hear the angry seagull anymore, and his brown curls rose like seaweed, rippling in the currents.
A wave clasped his petite body, this time causing him to sink faster. Nobody was looking, no one had seen him, he was going to die.
When he could no longer hold his breath, the cold water rushed in, and all illusions of surviving vanished. Soon, the oxygen deprivation took him away to his parents’ graveyard below.
⸻
To the young boy’s surprise, he awoke to the sunlight rising in the east. Its rays shone over the rocks his mother would take him to when his father was at work. He coughed out the water that had been trapped inside his lungs for the past few hours.
The waves had carried him to the north side of the bay, closer to the center of town. The bay side of the beach was rarely crowded, and he remained alone in the sand. He had no desire to get up. He knew deep down his parents were gone. It killed him that there was nothing he could do about it. He closed his eyes, trying to push those thoughts away.
Once the grogginess of waking faded, he was met with the freezing winter air of morning and a strange sensation in his legs. He opened his eyes and slowly pushed himself into a sitting position, but what he saw was not the same person he had been hours before.
Below his torso were no longer two legs, but a tail. A fish tail.
His first thought went to the obvious fact: he was a merman now. But how? And why? He placed his shaking hand on his new tail, the slimeiness causing him to shudder. It didn’t feel real, it didn’t feel like his body at all.
He felt that at any minute he would wake up from this nightmare. Or maybe he was dead. Was this what dying felt like? A giant hallucination?
His thoughts swirled as he sat on the sand. He didn’t know how much time had passed when he heard noises coming from the other side of the rocks. He snapped out of his daze and began dragging himself as best he could to the nearest rock to conceal his newly transformed body. For a ten-year-old, he still had common sense.
His tail was heavy. He had imagined moving as a merman would be easy and graceful. He was wrong. It took all his strength, but he finally made it safely to a weird-looking rock that was the perfect size for him to squeeze under.
The sand stuck to his lower half as he lay on his stomach, peeking out and turning his head toward where the voices were coming from.
Both were deep, manly voices. However, he recognized one of them. His little brain searched deep, trying to remember how he knew this person before. Maybe it was a family friend.
“Ah,” a grumpy, coarse voice rose across the rocks, “I hope they find the boy’s body soon. The parents have already been pulled ashore.”
This statement caused hope to course through the child’s veins. My parents are alive? And have been pulled ashore?
The recognizable voice spoke solemnly, “It would be a real shame to bury the parents without Steve.”
Bury? And this guy knew his name? His parents were gone. They were dead, and there was absolutely nothing Steve could do about it. Tears welled in his eyes and he slammed them shut, letting them glide down his face. For a moment, he almost forgot about the other problem he had to deal with.
The voices picked up again as the men walked closer to the ocean, now nearer in Steve’s view. He could see the bottoms of their feet and the beige tan pants they were wearing.
“This type of stuff happens all the time, Hop. There’s nothing we can do to control it. The ocean is a scary place.”
A sigh escaped from the younger man’s mouth. Steve observed how he kicked the sand up in his boots. The older man, Jim Hopper, shook his head, his face grim under the pale morning sun. “It’s never easy,” Hop muttered, “but we can’t save everyone.”
Steve’s heart sank as he realized the truth behind their words. His parents were gone. That was certain. The men had come here to deal with the aftermath, and there was nothing he could do to change it. Panic rose again, but it was tempered by the strange weight of his new form. His tail throbbed and twitched as if it had a mind of its own, reminding him that survival meant different things now.
He stayed still, hidden under the rock, listening to their boots crunch the sand. The men began to walk away, talking about paperwork and the families’ insurance, the mundane details of death that felt cruelly indifferent to a ten-year-old boy now trapped between human life and something else.
Steve’s eyes stung with tears, but he didn’t move. He was too weak to think, too shocked to fully process what had happened. Hours, or maybe minutes, passed and the sounds of human voices faded, leaving him alone with the soft crash of waves and the cold bite of winter air.
Tentatively, he moved his tail, then another inch. The sensation was strange but somehow freeing. He was alive, and while it wasn’t the life he had known, it was life nonetheless. He tested his strength in the water near the shore, slipping beneath the surface. It was easier than moving on land, his body sliding through the water with a smooth, fluid grace. The cold didn’t sting so sharply underwater, and for the first time since the accident, Steve felt a spark of hope.
Yet fear lingered. He couldn’t go back to town—not now, not like this. He couldn’t face anyone, couldn’t face the world as a boy with a fish tail. And what if someone discovered him? What if he was studied, trapped, turned into a spectacle? Survival meant staying hidden.
Steve pushed himself further into the bay, letting the waves carry him. He needed time. Time to understand what he had become, time to adapt, and maybe, just maybe, time to find a way to live with it. The memory of his parents pressed in his chest, sharp and painful, but it also gave him a reason to keep moving. He had to live. If he didn’t, no one would remember them.
The sun climbed higher, glinting off the water, and Steve let himself drift in its warmth. He wasn’t a boy anymore. He wasn’t fully a man either. He was something in between—something new. And while fear clung to him, so did curiosity. There was a world beneath the waves he had never known, a life that might still hold joy and discovery.
Steve kicked his tail once, then again, and felt the thrill of movement, of freedom. He didn’t know how long he could stay in this form, or what dangers the ocean might hold, but he knew one thing: he would survive. Somehow, he would survive.
And with that thought, the young merman swam deeper into the bay, leaving the shore and the memory of his old life behind him.
Steve stayed in the bay for hours, floating in the chill winter water, letting the waves cradle him. The pain of losing his parents was still raw, but the ocean’s rhythm was strangely comforting. For the first time since the crash, he wasn’t completely terrified.
It wasn’t until nightfall that he noticed something strange. The moon had risen, casting a silver glow across the bay, and a tingling sensation ran through his body. It started in his chest and moved down into his tail. At first, he thought it was a cramp, or maybe a chill from the cold water but then he felt something impossible: the scales along his tail were melting, the slime vanishing like mist.
Panicked but curious, Steve dove beneath the surface, then shot upward toward the shore. His tail was gone. In its place… two legs. Real, human legs. He stumbled onto the sand, shivering, completely disbelieving. He was human again, alive in the form he had once known.
His heart raced as he looked around. The beach was empty, the moonlight reflecting off the waves. He tested his legs, then ran along the shore, the sand cold under his feet, the wind whipping his hair. He had to understand. Every night, he found, he transformed back into a human. And every morning, without fail, he returned to the water as a merman.
For several nights, Steve experimented alone. The ocean had become his classroom, cruel and merciless in its lessons. He learned how to fold himself beneath ledges of rock, how to let the currents carry him without fighting, how to keep his head above the roar of panic. But when he crawled ashore each night, skin prickling with salt and loneliness, there was no one waiting. No one to tell him this wasn’t a nightmare he’d made up.
That night, the moon carved a silver path over the waves. Steve staggered out of the surf on shaky legs, dripping, hair plastered to his forehead. He expected silence. Instead, he saw a figure hunched against a driftwood log, a faint orange glow of a cigarette ember cutting the dark.
The man didn’t move at first, just sat watching the tide roll in. But when Steve shifted in the sand, Hopper turned his head.
Steve’s breath caught. He recognized him, though the memory was vague, an old family friend, maybe. He remembered his mom laughing with him in the backyard once, her hand on Hopper’s arm as they shared a beer. Steve had been six, maybe seven. Hopper or Jimmy, his mom had called him, had ruffled his hair and said something about how kids grow like weeds.
Now Hopper was bigger, heavier around the middle, his beard flecked with gray. But his eyes hadn’t changed.
For a heartbeat, Steve wanted to bolt. But then Hopper’s mouth tugged into the faintest of smiles.
“Well,” Hopper rumbled, voice low and rough from smoke, “you’re faster than I thought you’d be.”
Steve stiffened. His legs trembled, wet sand caking to his ankles. “You—you were watching me?”
“Yeah,” Hopper said, like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Been keeping an eye out. Thought I saw something the other night. Guess I was right.”
Steve’s pulse pounded in his throat. “I… I’m not—” His chest heaved as panic pressed in. “I’m not like other kids.”
Hopper didn’t laugh. Didn’t scoff. Just leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, studying Steve like he was trying to piece together a puzzle.
“No. You’re not. And that’s okay.”
Steve’s breath shook. “No, you don’t get it. My legs—they—” He looked down at his bare feet as if they might betray him even here. “In the water, I change. I don’t even know what I am. It’s—” His voice cracked. “It’s a monster thing.”
Hopper’s eyes softened. He took a drag from his cigarette, then ground it into the sand beside him. “Kid… I’ve seen monsters. Real ones. You’re not that.”
Steve flinched at the word kid. Nobody called him that anymore. Not since his dad stopped trying, not since his mom had retreated into polite smiles and silence. The word hit deeper than he expected.
“You don’t understand,” Steve whispered, fighting the burn of tears. “I don’t want this. I don’t know why it’s happening. Every night I’m human again, but the next day—” He broke off, shaking his head. “I’m trapped.”
For a long time Hopper said nothing. His silence wasn’t empty though—it was steady, deliberate. He let Steve’s words hang in the air, like they mattered. Then finally he said, voice low but firm, “That’s a hell of a lot for one kid to deal with. Too much for anyone. But you’re not alone in it anymore. You’ve got me.”
Steve blinked, throat tight. “Why? Why would you—”
“Because I knew your mom,” Hopper interrupted gently. “Because I remember you. And because nobody deserves to go through something like this without someone watching their back.” His gaze softened even more. “You’ve been carrying this by yourself, huh?”
Steve’s shoulders shook. He hated how weak he sounded, hated how young. But he managed a small nod.
Hopper leaned back, exhaling through his nose. “All right. Then here’s the deal: I’m not gonna pretend I have all the answers. I don’t. But I can teach you how to handle it. How to survive it. I’ll help you keep safe. You trust me, I’ll trust you. Simple as that.”
Steve stared at him, stunned. No ridicule. No disgust. Just a straight, solid offer. For the first time in weeks, the pressure in his chest loosened.
“You’d really help me?” His voice cracked on the help.
“Yeah,” Hopper said, steady as a promise. “You’re not alone, Steve. Not anymore.”
Steve felt tears sting his eyes, but they weren’t only fear this time. Something steadier bloomed in his chest—fragile, but real. He almost laughed, shaky and breathless. “I… I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t have to,” Hopper replied. He pushed himself to his feet, brushing sand off his jeans. “Just show up. Keep trying. And don’t give up on yourself. Deal?”
Steve hesitated, then nodded. “Deal.”
Hopper gave him a rare, crooked grin. “Good. Then let’s get to work. We’ve got tides to read, and I’m betting you’ve got a lot to learn.”
And from that night on, Hopper became his anchor: steady, gruff, and stubbornly protective. He taught Steve how to move with the ocean instead of against it, how to listen to its moods, how to slip unseen when danger stirred. But more than that, he gave Steve something he hadn’t dared hope for.
Not just survival. Not just guidance. But trust.
And with it, a flicker of hope that maybe, just maybe, he could live in both worlds without being broken in two.