Chapter Text
aeternum hoc sanctae foedus amicitiae; through all our life this eternal compact of hallowed friendship
Catullus CIX, Loeb Classical Library
The first summer you spend at your grandma’s house changes your life irrevocably.
It ruins you forever, though you don’t know it yet—not at fourteen and a half, not when white sand calls to you like a siren-song. It’s warm under your feet, loose silica and grit spread unevenly between your toes as you cross the shore, waves foaming gently against volcanic rock.
Already, the beach stretches before you, tranquil and sprawling, cut different from a cloth you’re not quite used to. Already, do you find yourself settling into this quiet, sea-side town like it’s second nature.
It’s summer break when your ma asks you to stay with your grandma (Mam, as you would lovingly call her) for the summer. A career change, she’d explained, an overseas business trip that left no room for you in her plans. Only one time, she’d promised. One summer without them, and the rest would be yours again.
It hadn’t really mattered what they had said, you were going east regardless. A quiet fishing town, six hours from home, and a life completely unknown to you.
Despite the circumstances that brought you here, staying with Grandma is nice. The first few days are anxious, but you learn quickly that her name carries weight. When you offer it, slip it carefully into a conversation, you notice people’s faces soften, and the village feels like something you’ve inherited.
Seaspray mists you with the quiet realisation that you won’t see this again for most of the year.
The horizon slicing cleanly across a cloudless sky, an old weatherboard pier reaching straight into the sun at dusk, the fishing boats drifting a few hundred metres offshore, never larger than a truck, never more than two, never out after five.
It almost feels like the world is entirely yours—almost, because before you can lunge further into the cold water, sink deeper into some half-formed longing, something stirs on a rock fifty metres ahead of you.
Someone.
The shape of a boy stretching lazily across the boulder comes into focus. The entire surface is lit with the warmth of the midday sun and you watch the boy—watch as his arms relax over his head, dark hair plastered damp against his forehead, eyes closed in complete surrender.
For a moment you think he might be sleeping. For a moment you think he might be human.
Then the light catches a flash of iridescence and a tail comes into view.
Colonies of merfolk are common in warm coastal waters and this place is no exception. The sight of him shouldn’t startle you. It shouldn’t have your mouth dry when his thick cerulean tail lifts, spraying seawater like it’s a nuisance. It shouldn’t have your fingers tremble when his scales fracture sunlight into a glimmer.
But it does. His tail fans across the stone, his back glittering with saltwater as he turns onto his stomach, smiling like the sun itself is in on his secret.
Perhaps the worst of it are all the gentle angles of his face. He looks your age, or some equivalent for his species, because the roundness of his cheeks is all too familiar, a softness you recognise in the mirror.
He’s beautiful. Almost otherworldly, definitely ethereal, and you feel you’ve been witness to a miracle. Or maybe it’s a punishment—that for all the cosmos has to offer, the prettiest boy you’ve ever laid your eyes on is lounging sweetly across a metamorphic boulder you’ll never be able to reach.
At fourteen and a half, your heart doesn’t stand a chance.
It feels inevitable—how, with a single glance, with a crush so sudden and so damning, you feel your summer sink its teeth into you. It will hold you with its jaw buried bloody in your shoulder, and you know for the rest of the months you are there, you will search every crevice, scan every rock rising from the horizon for a glimpse of a boy you don’t know.
Going back to the beach so soon feels like a death sentence.
You had voiced your reluctance to your grandma that day with little success. Dismissed how impressive the beaches were, explained how you disliked the way sand felt beneath your skin.
She knew you were lying.
The next morning—this morning—she presses a kiss against your forehead, and places a bucket into your hands, heavy with bait.
She asks you to drop it off at the pier. Says that a fisherman had requested it and she had forgotten to get it to him earlier in the morning. It’ll only be a short errand, she promises. You’ll barely have to talk to anyone, she reassures.
Unfortunately, that isn’t quite what you are afraid of.
He’s there when you arrive.
Half-submerged by the pier, dark hair plastered damp to his forehead, talking easily with a fisherman you’ve seen before. You stop midway across the sand and there’s an urge to turn, to lament an excuse to your grandma when the fisherman looks up and waves.
That unceremonious gesture seals your fate.
The remainder of the way feels excessively short, wooden planks appearing underneath your feet within a few strides and the length of the shore seems to have halved underneath you.
Salt. Algal bloom. Something bitter, something sweet. You cling to every smell, every shift of air. It’s all you can do to ground your thoughts—keep your heart at least within your chest, eyes trained still on the floor, unable to risk a glance at the boy who has undone you so quickly.
“Here she is,” the fisherman calls, plucking the bucket from your hands. He ruffles your hair like you’re kin. “Bringing bait for us poor sods.”
He grins, bearded face creased deep from sun and age. “Name’s David. Friend o’ your mam. said you’d be comin’ down. Didn’t think she’d undersell you, but she has.”
You nod meekly, raising your gaze just enough to smile at him. “I also brought lunch,” you say, fumbling in your tote for a deli-wrapped sandwich.
David chuckles, taking it from your hands, giving the filling a quick glance. “Ah, lucky man I am. Mam make this?”
Again, you nod, mouth opening on a word you aren’t quite able to finish. You turn, already retreating, afraid a second longer might drag your eyes downwards—towards the sea-line.
“Robin,” David says, behind you, pausing your movements. “You ever have a sandwich?”
A hum, and it’s a sound akin to a windchime, and under it a low resonance, like strings drawn taut on a viola. It is unmistakably inhuman.
God, you are so unfair.
You turn.
“Can’t say I have,” the boy says, head tilted. His eyes slide to the food in David’s hand, then to you. “That’s what’s in the paper?”
David laughs. “Aye. That’s a sandwich. I’m afraid I can’t share, lad. Don’t want your folks after me.”
They’re talking, and you start to edge backwards, feet light against the boards. Run. Apologise and run. Don’t come back. Never come back.
But your relief never seems to last.
“Ah, c’mere,” David says, gesturing with his hand for you to return. “This here’s Robin. Robin, Mam’s granddaughter—”
When he says your name, announces it like it’s nothing—like he hasn’t just set your world ablaze with a single word, you have to stop yourself from retching. It’s petulant, you know, that ugly sense of attachment to your name, turning a greeting into a deathtrap.
Still, that information was not Robin’s to know. You didn’t want to know him. Didn’t want to spend the next nine months itching to come back to this sand, to come back to this shoreline, all to run straight down the pier just to listen to him hum.
When you lift your eyes, Robin is suddenly closer than you ever imagined. His gaze meets yours, a blue that feels bottomless, and it feels like your soul has been ripped straight from your spine. You were right. You won’t survive this.
“Are you from here?” he asks. His voice carries over the lapping water, but there’s an edge to it, each syllable a little too clear, undercut by a low whiny clicking. He speaks like he’s not quite used to forming these words just yet, like he’s not quite used to talking to humans.
You look towards your feet, cheeks flushing warm as the snap of his attention coils around you.
It squeezes. “Just here for the summer,” you say, quietly.
He hums again, that flute-like note vibrating through half-lucid thoughts. The sound silences any notions that you might be able to leave—to turn, or run from this destiny. It has your stomach churn, has your whole body standing on edge.
You want to hear it again.
Let me hear it again.
“Do you like it?”
You swallow. “It’s…not what I’m used to. Pretty.”
That earns you a tilt of his head. “Is it not pretty on land?”
“It’s different,” you answer, mouth dry. When you look up to face him again, his face is void of any movement. You feel like you’ve been caught under his gaze, a stillness to it that echoes a predator standing poised over its prey.
“You should see the whales,” he says, finally, eyes still secured on your trembling form. “They pass close in the summer.”
There’s something about his razor sharp focus that threatens to swallow you whole. All you can do is flit your eyes away, a vain attempt to deflect some of the tension, and press your clammy hands together like in prayer. Like you’ve begged for a miracle, and you’ve received it, peering out from rolling waves.
“Okay.”
And then he smiles, the whites of his teeth catching bright in a flash of sunlight. They’re not flat like yours, but edged to points, like every tooth has been filed sharp—like his mouth belongs in flesh.
The sight sends your pulse thrashing uneven beneath your skin. You’re torn, unequally, between wanting to inch closer and wanting to run from him; he is beautiful and he is built like a predator, and you don’t know which part of that scares you more.
It becomes too much, too quickly—the dark water around him, the gleam of his smile, the sense of being pinned in place beneyouath his gaze. “I should—” you stammer, turning before your voice can betray you further. “Bye.”
You all but flee, the pier creaking under your steps, heart racing a million miles an hour, feet landing harsh on the floor until sand turns to gravel turns to tar.
Back on the beach you’ve deserted, the David chuckles.
“She likes you.”
Robin’s tail breaches the surface, spraying droplets across the boardwalk. His smile widens when he answers, “if that’s what liking looks like, I don’t know how you people ever manage to repopulate.”
It stops becoming funny the third time.
No, that’s not quite right. It was never funny. But it’s cruel when you see him again for the third time.
A few days have passed since the incident at the pier. You had arrived home, pretending to nurse a fever (though it was less pretend than you’d like) and begged Mam to let you stay home for the next few days. She had agreed almost immediately, worry etched onto her face like it was her fault that you had willingly caught yourself a cold in the middle of Summer. Was there even a way to tell her the truth? That you were a cowardly teenager, barely capable of forming a full sentence in front of a boy you liked? That he looked like he had risen from sea foam, that he was etched from a mythos?
Instead, you found yourself flicking through the channels on an analogue tv that didn’t quite seem to interest you. There was a sizable amount of housework to complete, and oftentimes you would join your Mam in stirring stew for the night, or dusting through her collection of antiques just for fun.
But it wasn’t enough, not enough to warrant the soft buzzing of cicadas over the caw of a seagull. Not enough to keep your wandering legs pressing forward over the hill, and it certainly wasn’t enough to keep you from hoping, just enough, that you'll catch sight of blue scales against black rock.
This third time, the merboy isn’t submerged in water or perched on a rock, but sprawled shamelessly on the sand. Beached, you think at first, and your feet move instinctively towards him.
You’re about to reach him when he yawns, turning over idly onto his stomach and you realise he doesn’t look stranded.
If anything, he looks comfortable, semi-buried in warm sand, the tide licking lazily at the curve of his tail. His arms are pillowed behind his head, chest rising and falling with comfort, letting the warmth roll over his tan skin like he owns it—like the sun moves at his behest.
There are few events in your life that will mark your future with such unrelenting force. Why each meeting with him feels like a violent undoing, only to reassemble your world with unerring precision around the shape of him, is something you cannot yet name.
When you see his comfort, a lazy smile as he props his face to the side, his cheek resting atop wet sand, you’re able to stop yourself from moving forward any further.
You swallow, inhaling a last lungful of the salt-sprayed air, turning slowly so as to not make a sound, taking a singular step in the opposite direction but—as it seems to always be with you—Robin calls out, the ocean itself whistling over you as he says your name.
It sounds like it’s never belonged on land when the word leaves his mouth.
He says it like he’s been waiting, like he knew you’d be here eventually.
Your voice finds you before your mind can argue, before your body can turn to face him.
“Hi,” you breathe out, back against him.
You dare not turn around.
But then Robin chirps, clicks—the sound skipping strange through the air. It takes you a moment to realise he’s laughing.
“You know I can’t chase you from here.”
A sigh shudders out of you, your heels digging into the shore. Of course you turn.
It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair.
Not fair that you are devastated by his boyish charm, not fair that summer will end and he’ll remain only in memory, not fair that your body fights for breath when his eyes rest too long on yours.
All you can muster is a quiet, “I know.”
He props himself on his elbows, chest streaked in sand as he tilts his chin toward you. “You’ve been thinking about the whales?”
As if you could think of anything other than him. As if breaching whales could be anything more beautiful than the boy sprawled in front of you.
“Yes,” you answer. Against all better judgment, you close the distance between you, your feet sinking softly into the ground as you reach him.
With that, he smiles, the row of sharp teeth hidden by innocent lips.
“I have thought about it. But… it’s up to Grandma. Not me.”
He cocks his head, eyes flitting downwards to the space beside him, as if in invitation to sit.
You don’t know it yet, but you’ll never be able to say no him.
So, you sit, a few feet away from him. Your shorts are immediately wet at the contact with the sand, but you don’t mind. You don’t even mind when the waves seem to reach past you, greeting your feet with a wash of salt water.
Robin turns once more, and you watch the ripple of muscle down his abdomen and tail as he sits up. You really are the same height sitting down.
“It’s always someone else’s choice, hm?” he asks, leaning backwards on his elbow, tail flicking calmly against the sand. It’s like he’s fidgeting with it, watching the sand pull at the fin, and fall as he moves it.
You plant your toes into the sand. “I’m only fourteen.”
“Ten and four? I’m just a bit older.”
“Yeah, I—I don’t get to make a lot of decisions at the moment.”
“But do you want to go?”
You nod.
He seems content with that answer, throwing his head back with a smile. The sun’s rays are warm against your body, and certainly warmer when it hits his face, highlighting the soft curve of his jaw, kissing the tip of his upturned nose. The sight of it has you thinking he was made by the sun, or made the sun itself—you aren’t quite sure.
“Then you should. The pod in these waters don’t stay for long.”
“Do you… Can you talk to them?”
He grins, and then there’s that assortment of clicking sounds. Laughter.
“Can you talk to your animals?”
“No,” you say quietly.
“Then that’s your answer.”
Yeah, you’re never coming back here after this. His response is met with silence, some mix of embarrassment and shame (how could you not know this!) lingering too far up your head to make sense of an answer.
Robin doesn’t let your quiet deter him, because he talks again.
“Are you familiar with my kind?”
You shake your head, clutching at a shell buried in the sand—an attempt to busy your hands. “Not really. You’re the first merfolk I’ve seen.”
That earns you another laugh.
“The first? Figures. We keep out of sight. Mostly.” He shrugs, brushing sand from his arm, eyes never leaving you. “But I like the shore, like talking to people. Humans are—” his smile lifts, exposing the faintest edge of teeth “—a funny bunch.”
There’s something almost disarming about the way danger seems to exude from him. Something like watching a cub take its first bounding leap, a threat in its juvenile form, not quite aged enough to warrant fear. You think the most frightening thing about him is his beauty, or the almost unnatural sounds that beckons you forward.
He looks at you like he’s waiting for you to say something back, eyes narrowing as he gauges whether you’ve taken offence to his slight. Instead, you fiddle with a calcified shell between your fingers. It feels almost impossible to say anything back. Your tongue feels too big for your mouth, your throat too dry for the air you keep swallowing.
You are fourteen, and he is… this, sprawled in front of you like the sea has decided to offer you something it never meant to.
“So,” he starts, tentative as if he might still offend you, “you really don’t know much about us?”
The shell crumbles like limestone in your hands, tough grains scattered against your palm. You shake your head.
His tail flicks, the fin dragging a soft line through the wet sand. He does it once more, deliberate and slow before he glances back at you. “Mam ever warn you about the ocean?”
Your voice is quieter than you remember. “The usual.”
“Usual,” he echoes, amused. “What? That it’s cold, or that it’s deep, or that it doesn’t care if you’re a good swimmer?”
One particular wave—as if on cue—breaks a little harder than usual, reaching far up the shore and soaking your hands with salty foam. “Yeah. And that I shouldn’t wander off.”
He hums again, and God, why does it sing to you so?
“Smart girl.”
The compliment shouldn’t make you flush but it does, because he said it, because his eyes are on you and the tide is cold and uninviting but it pulls and tugs and forces you to reckon with your feelings.
You feel your face redden. Damn this crush. Your mouth opens and closes around air in a futile attempt to speak.
Robin shifts towards you an inch. Close enough that you catch the faint salt crusts dusting his bronze skin, and his scent—not like rot or fish, but like the sea from afar. A curse nearly escapes you as the sight of him nestles into your heart.
Does he know you like him? Does he even have an ounce of a clue as to how he has rendered you?
He brackets his hands beside him, leaning back as he soaks the feverish sunlight. “My name isn’t actually Robin,” he confesses.
You tilt your head instinctively at that, and a little of that unseen danger bleeds through as you realise how little anyone really knows of him.
“What is it then?”
He laughs softly, flicking his tail deliberately to spray wet sand across your feet. “You think I’d tell you? Merfolk are cautious with landwalkers, it’d be stupid to give my name to your kind.”
It shouldn’t sting, the way he throws landwalker out like it bothers him. But it does. Because the vitriol he spits with it reminds you, very sharply, that you are two opposing kin. Merfolk and humans are cautious of each other, if ever in a tentative alliance. There’s history in that caution; tales of oceanfolk luring sea-bound humans to their deaths and the excessive retaliation have circulated long since before you were born.
You swallow uneasily, fingers resting on the serrated edge of the split seashell. You’re about to mumble an apology, about to stand, sand clinging to your thighs, and walk away before you can embarrass yourself any further when—
“It’s Richard.”
The words ring cleanly through the space between you.
Your head lifts immediately, eyes fixing on him, wide for a moment before you remember what your face is doing.
“My name,” he clarifies quickly, and his gaze darts, imperceptibly brief, towards the rolling waves as if he can feel something moving beneath them. It lands back on you. “Everyone calls me Dick, though.”
A laugh almost escapes you. Richard? What an earnest name for a young merboy. “What do you prefer?” you ask, voice still guarded.
It doesn’t faze him—whatever anxiety or nerves you’re hiding in your posture or your tone has no bearing on how vulnerable he chooses to be in this moment. “Does it matter if I’m Robin or Dick or Richard to you?”
“Okay,” you reply, relaxing a touch. “Can I call you Dick?”
“Depends,” he grins, turning onto his stomach and stretching out his tail, like he’s settled into the decision of staying. By this point in the day, you think he might sink further into the sand as the tide creeps forward into the shoreline. Where your feet were tickled by the cresting roll of water, it now stays submerged. You should probably leave.
Still, you dare to ask.
“On what?”
“Whether or not I’ll see you again.”
Your heart races. If it was at a high jog before, it’s very clearly sprinting now. You drag your thumbnail along the shell’s edge until it snags, just to give your hands something else to do.
“I’m here for another month,” you reply quietly.
“Good.” And then he’s grinning, his smile eating into his cheeks, sharp teeth glinting in the light. “It’s about time I make a landwalker friend my age.”
Something constricts in your chest. Your breathing is short, hands sweaty, mouth dry with all but a confession on the precipice of spilling.
A particularly strong wave reminds you that you should probably leave. But you don’t. Neither does he.
He watches you like he’s waiting for you to bolt (which is completely within your character) and when you don’t run, he presses his cheek to the wet sand. His tail lifts once more—this time, a deliberate motion to spray you with cold seawater as if he’s deciding on a promise.
“Tomorrow,” he says, finally. “Same time.”
Your throat tightens and you nod before you can talk yourself out of it. Dick gives you one last, lazy smile before he shuts his eyes, bathing in the sun once more as you scramble to your feet.
By the time you reach home, your first words to your Mam are:
“Please let me come back again next year.”
She doesn’t refuse you.
That is how it begins.
One month is all you’re afforded with Dick, and all future years are not a given.
You meet him most days, at the same spot, at the same time. Sometimes he’s half on the shore, half in the surf, elbows sunk into wet sand like he’s been waiting long enough for the world to arrange itself around you. Other times, you catch him lounging on the rocky outcropping, tail looping back and forth against the current, smiling gently as he bathes in the sunlight.
This time, when you arrive at the beach, he’s nowhere to be seen. All his usual loafing spots are bereft of his dishevelled black hair and his heaving, cerulean tail. Your heart sinks. He never said he’d be there every day, you’re aware, but surely he would have confided in you if he would be absent.
You’re reluctant to turn back. Though it is self-evident that the sole reason you frequent this side of town is for him; it is too nice a warm day to not bury your toes into white sand. The grains are hot, almost intolerable, and you skip across the sand towards the pier.
Despite his absence, you find yourself still half-hoping he’ll emerge from under the waterline—eyes still scanning the horizon and each cresting wave. The wooden boards of the pier creak under your feet. Salt wind threads through the gaps, almost whistling as it rises and tousles your hair.
Halfway. You make it only halfway before a large blue fin whips out the water. The sudden appearance of it, the speed and the sound it makes as it breaches the surface has you stumbling back, one foot caught behind another and before you know it—
You’re falling. Back first, skin colliding hard against the surface.
Cold swallows you whole.
It steals your breath before you can take it, knocks the air clean out of your lungs, saltwater flooding your mouth as you flail on instinct, limbs kicking without rhythm.
The pier above becomes a blur of slats and spotted sunlight, the water quickly clouded by your panicked movement and the world is quickly reduced to something frigid and uncaring.
A hand seizes your wrist, and you’re hoisted to the surface in one strong tug. Dick’s grip doesn’t relent. You have half a mind to scream at him but the feel of his scaled tail brushing past your kicking legs has any complaint dying in your throat. He steers you, almost apologetically tender, towards the dock ladder.
Your fingers find the rung and slip on it. He is there immediately, his hand shifting to your elbow, steadying you when your grip fails, keeping you close to the wood until you can haul yourself up, coughing and spluttering.
Then, he laughs.
The worst part is that it’s not cruel. Rather, the sound—a scatter of clicks and a whistle that arcs and dips like a call—is almost fond, as if your indignation is something he has already decided to like.
By the time you are back on the boards, dripping seawater onto old, bleached wood, you can barely form a sentence through the way your heart is trying to climb out of your throat. You turn to face him anyway, blinking away the stinging of saltwater from your eyes, a scowl etched on your face.
He only props his chin on the pier’s edge, eyes bright and glassy, and a grin somewhat rueful.
“What the hell was that for?”
You’ve never been so direct, the words tear through you, emboldened by his awful prank.
He winces, faintly. “I didn’t think you’d fall.”
Whatever anger you’re holding onto slips dangerously fast from you as he smiles guiltily, supplementing his excuse with a quiet, “sorry.”
You sigh. “I can’t swim, so please, please, don’t do that again.”
He tilts his head, brows lifting, and the confusion on his face is almost offended.
Heat surges up your neck. “It’s not much to be surprised about,” you insist quickly. “Swimming lessons are redundant for a landlocked state.”
It doesn’t change much because he looks aghast anyway, mouth now dropping lightly, clearly still stunned by the revelation.
You continue, as if anything else you could possibly add would help him understand. “The closest body of water is still far from where I live, and even then, the river current is far too strong for any practice.”
He pulls away from the pier, eyes clouded by some foreboding thought. The pause fills you with dread.
“I’ll teach you,” he says after a moment, his infuriating smirk finding its home again.
Your response is immediate. “No.”
“Look, if you’re going to the beach anyway, you might as well learn to swim. I won’t even charge!”
“No.”
“What’s the harm?” he continues, midnight hair plastered to his forehead as he swims forward. “Worst case scenario, you’ve learned a skill you won’t need to use again. Best case scenario, well,” he whistles, “you’ll swim.”
You’ll never be able to say no to him. Not when he was inviting you to sit beside him a week ago, and especially not now, as he looks upon you with a gaze that completely unarms you. Whatever hand that sculpted him has unfairly ruined your life.
It is therefore inevitable that you answer him.
“Fine,” you mutter, shaking off your drenched clothes.
He laughs, clicking and whistling and—how are you to do it? To not capture the sounds of his species and memories each intonation and note with a fastidious accuracy. You are hopelessly, irrevocably taken with him, in the way a fourteen-year-old can only be, all awe and fluttering nerves and wanting more than you can possibly understand.
And well, he’s a good teacher.
He’s not gentle or particularly kind, but you think that has less to do with his character, and more to do with the fact he’s a boyish fourteen.
The first lesson is not graceful. He teaches you to kick before you can float, which he rectifies swiftly when you deliver a mouthful of sand unto his face as you begin to sink.
Dick is there at once, grip tight on your arm as you gather your bearings, the way “up” finally settling back into place.
“You told me to kick,” you cough, throat burning with saline.
He only responds with a laugh. “I told you to kick,” he echoes, flashing his pointed teeth, “not sink.”
You glare at him. It doesn’t last.
There are times, more often than not, that he forgets you do not have a tail. He demonstrates with a flick of his own, translucent fins breaching the surface in a dazzling display. When you pause, obviously unable to replicate with your own two legs, he looks genuinely startled. It goes like this for a few days. Each time he tells you it’s easy or that it’s all instincts, you have half a mind to yank on his scales. You are half fish, you think to yourself, we do not share the same nature.
The first time you finally manage, for five whole seconds, to float on your back without flailing, Dick goes very still. For a moment, you think he’s disappointed that for all his efforts, all you can manage is a tentative starfish—rising and falling with each rolling wave.
Instead, he speaks softly. “See?” he says, circling around you, voice pleased in a way that makes your cheeks warm in the frigid water. “Told you.”
It is almost strange how a person can go from unknowing and terrified, and feeling like they’ve never belonged elsewhere in a single moment. How prior to this, the feeling of lapping water against your sun-warmed skin was something terrifying and disquieting, but it feels like home right now. Feels like the sudden change in barometric pressure before rain lands, feels like the way wood dries in the heat—warm and steady.
And him.
Alien, but a constant you’re reluctant to let go of. Kind, and cruel the way kids are, but never intentional.
By the end of that week, you can tread water for well over a minute. You find yourself scurrying out the door the moment Mam rouses from her sleep, pressing a quick kiss to her cheek as you excuse yourself. Your summer is quickly defined by the way Mam calls your name from the porch at dusk, and by the way you keep your swimmers under your clothes and your heart in your mouth as you cut down the beach and find him waiting in the surf.
The following days become routine. Worse, it becomes something akin to religion. The shoreline is an altar you worship at, the clicks of his laugh your gospel.
And then, without warning, the days become counted.
Your last day comes with all the fanfare of your arrival. That is to say, none. It sneaks up on you despite your diligent counting of the hours, heart so lost in his presence that time bleeds into nothing. A suitcase sits half-open in the living room—a subtle reminder that you were only ever a visitor here. Mam moves around the house with a bittersweet song, humming to herself as she folds your shirts and tells you to eat something.
You do, but the taste is bland on your tongue. It is almost impossible to eat, not with the ocean in your blood and his name caught behind your teeth.
When Mam turns her back, you take two slices of bread and assemble something quick, fingers moving with little precision as you slap together the same sandwich you brought to David. The one he’d shared without asking, splitting it and handing half to Robin, and somehow changing your life with something so small. You wrap it in paper and tuck it into your bag. Mam only chuckles when she watches you dismiss yourself, your feet hitting the gravel as you beeline for the beach
The walk to the beach feels sharper than it should. The transition of gravel to sand feels like something you’ll sorely miss. The sky is clear, bluer than you’ve ever recalled it, and the gulls caw like they’re mocking you for how sentimental you’ve become. Even the wind seems to howl around you as if it wants to keep you.
And God, you really don’t want to go.
When you reach the waterline, he’s already there. Half on the shore, half in the surf, elbows sunk into the wet sand like he’s been waiting long enough for the familiar sound of your footfall. His tail glimmers in the sunlight, kaleidoscopic colour sliding over him as the light catches at the edge of each scale. Cerulean at the fins, darker along the spine, navy as it fans out into the fluke. You will not see this for the next nine months and so you must, must, not forget this.
His eyes flick to your bag immediately.
“You brought something,” he says, head tilting curiously as you walk towards him.
You hesitate, fingers tightening around the strap. Then you kneel, pulling it out with trembling fingers. From exertion or nerves, you’re not sure. The bread is a little squashed from the walk; the paper damp at the edges.
“A sandwich,” you say, proffering it to him.
His brows lift. “For me?”
You nod, suddenly too shy to say yes out loud.
He turns it in his hands, his thumb leaving an indent as it presses into the bread.
“It’s warm,” he says, almost surprised, as if he expected human food to be cold by nature. He must be referring to the one you had brought to the pier not that long ago.
You shuffle on your feet before sinking down beside him. “The filling is different. Ham and cheese and butter.”
Dick peels the paper back an inch, leaning in as if to smell it. The subtle change in his expression as the salt wind carries the scent towards him has you holding your breath.
“You say that like I know what any of those words mean,” he laughs, “though I am familiar with cheese. We hear a lot about it.” A moment passes. “It smells nice though."
Your heart lifts in a stupid little jump.
“What do you usually eat?” you ask before you can stop yourself.
Dick’s eyes brighten. He shifts, tail flicking lazily in front of him. “Depends where we are,” he says. “Coastal dishes are different from open water. Some of my kin don’t like anything that used to have a shell.”
“Does the shell make a difference?”
He shrugs, gaze focused on the infinite stretch of sky above you.
Then, he looks down at the sandwich again, and his smile softens into something almost earnest. “I like sea grapes,” he tells you, grinning like he’s confessing to a secret. “And urchin. And the thin fish that hide under rocks. They taste sweet.”
“Sweet,” you repeat. The townsfolk have often commented on the sweetness of the local sculpin population. You wonder if that’s the fish he describes.
The sandwich rises to his mouth, his lips barely touching the crust. Your eyes trace the way his fingers end in claws, the way his mouth opens, a little too wide, a little too unnatural—
A seagull swoops in.
It’s so fast it hardly feels real. One second the sandwich is there, the next it’s gone, ripped clean from his hand in a screech and a blur of wings. Dick freezes, blinking at his empty palm as if it’s betrayed him. “They’re never afraid of us,” he mumbles, eyes following the bird as it flies away. “Not the way they are you.”
For a moment, you manage to hold it in, lips pressed tight as you stare at his hand, still outstretched, flexing almost involuntarily at the missing weight.
Then your eyes flick to his face. His brows are drawn tight in petulant frustration, mouth still parted in disbelief, and, and—
Something in you breaks.
You laugh, and it is not the intentional, controlled laugh you normally keep tucked behind your teeth. It erupts out of you; whole-body and unashamed, chest tightening, shoulders shaking, your feet stamping at the sand as you rake in each sharp breath, laughter spilling louder every time your eyes flick back to his empty palm.
The crease in his brows softens at the sound. Whatever anger he was nursing falters immediately as he joins in too, the clicks and whistles of his laugh harmonising with your own.
“Here,” you say, still recovering as you hand him your half of the sandwich.
He shakes his head, chuckling as he nudges your offering away. His flitting gaze and thick swallow are enough to tell you he’s reluctant to take from you. You press the sandwich into his palm before he can refuse again.
Dick finally relents, taking a bite—finally uninterrupted.
He chews slowly, that familiar head-tilt in full force as he considers the flavour. The sun catches on the wet of his lips. You cannot look away.
“I prefer this one,” he says, swallowing finally, “over the other, I mean.”
Your chest warms with a quiet pride that sends heat to your face. “The butter helps. And the ham.”
He shakes his head. “It’s not that,” he asserts, but he pauses there.
It’s you. Dick doesn’t have to say it, but you know. It is a momentous confession he hasn’t verbalised, but it’s there, hidden in the crinkles of his eyes as he smiles, in the way his fingers grip the bread too tight, and the way his tail can’t quite stay still. You make this better, it reads.
Fuck.
You look away first, because you have to, because if you continue staring at him like this you will give yourself away in some louder, worse way. The waves ebb and flow against your feet, the tide uncaring that your life has changed, again, in the presence of a merfolk you now call friend. It does not matter that your heart will hold no other space for anyone else—that you cannot imagine a life without the receding shoreline, or the rhythmic crash of the waves against silica. Worse, unforgivably, is that you do not wish for a summer without him. That you will beg—on your knees if you must—to visit this side of the country, this side of the town for three months of every year.
You are dramatic, you know in part because you are fourteen, but how often can one comfortably say that their life was forever upturned at that age?
The gulls cry overhead. The wind lifts your hair. The day persists.
Dick chews the last of his bite slowly. “I like your sandwiches.”
You don’t know if your refers to you personally, or your species as a whole.
You stay a while longer after that, letting the conversation drift where it wants to drift because you cannot bear to steer it towards tomorrow. Tomorrow, where you won’t be here. The paper grows soft with saltwater and the heat of your hands, and he nudges your foot once with the edge of his fin, absent-minded, as though you are something familiar enough to touch without thinking.
“I have to go,” you say, watching as the sun dips low in the horizon.
Dick doesn’t argue or tease, and that is what nearly undoes you; he only watches as you rise onto your knees, sand clinging to your calves, the paper in your hands folded and refolded a thousand times.
Up close, he smells like salt and clean water and sun-tanned skin, and you think with a sudden, sick clarity that it is cruel you have to leave him here. That you’ll return to endless stretches of corn and wheat and red weatherboard barns and there will be no thick scent of salt or his carefree smile or the feel of seawater as it sprays against you.
Your throat tightens, voice strained as it warbles out of stiff chords.
“Hey,” you whisper, because you need something simple to hold onto before your courage runs out. “Thanks.”
His eyes widen, surprised by the seriousness that has found you, and you swallow hard, fingers curling at your sides.
“Thanks for being my friend,” you finish. The sentence is awkward and too honest and it has you wanting to turn on your heels and run without a second to spare.
For a second he only stares, as if recalibrating. Dick’s expression softens at the edges, the sharp rows of his teeth tucked safely out of view.
He reaches for you before you can register it, and the hug is careful at first, a tentative wrapping of arms that feels cool and solid. You stiffen on instinct and then you soften into it, cheek pressed to his shoulder, letting yourself relax.
When he pulls back it is only by a fraction, his hands at your arms, face sincere and hopeful and beautiful.
“You’ll come back,” he says.
You nod hard. ”Next year,” you promise, voice quivering with unspoken certainty. “Same place. Same time. If you’re still around.”
His mouth lifts, half grin and half something you do not have the language for yet. “I’ll be around.”
You watch him like you are trying to memorise him properly this time; the curve of his jaw and the uneven way his hair dries, the way colour shifts across his scales when the sun catches them, blues and sea-glass greens. He taps two fingers lightly against your wrist, exactly where he grabbed you under the pier a week ago, and the gesture makes your chest tighten all over again.
“A promise,” he says.
“A promise,” you answer.
With that, with the tender sing-song timbre of his voice, you know you will find yourself at this beach for years to come with the unrelenting certainty of your next breath.
Before you can change your mind, or cry, or do something truly humiliating like beg him to follow you home, you turn away. The sand gives way under your feet as you force yourself to walk onwards, salt drying tight on your skin. Even after a mile, you think you can hear the whispers of his siren song from the ocean.
Mam's house comes into view slowly, bathed in the soft afterglow of dusk. She moves about inside as if nothing in the world has changed, and when you step through the door, she looks up. Her expression softens into something knowing as she takes in your damp hair and the way you’re holding yourself too carefully.
“There you are,” she says, gently.
You manage a sound that is a bit too impassive for your liking, shrugging off your bag and letting it thud against the timber floor. Mam doesn’t press. She only reaches out, smooths your hair back from your face with the kind of tenderness that makes your throat ache, and turns back to the kitchen as if giving you room is its own kind of love.
That night, as you climb aboard the bus with your suitcase knocking your shins, Mam presses a kiss on your forehead as if she could ease the ache of the passing year. It helps, if not a little, but you cannot fight the quiet as the tyres skid along the tar.
You turn back anyway, watching as the town fades out of view, and beyond it the ocean holding steady at the horizon, dark and indifferent, as if it hasn’t just rearranged the shape of your life. Somewhere beneath that line of water is a boy with a name you were never meant to have, and his laughter comes back to you in pieces, a chime and a click and a long looping whistle, and you breathe around it like a promise.