Chapter Text
For the longest time it was just him.
His wings breaching the sky. His feathers slicing through clouds, throwing bright rainbow puddles off the sheen of his feathers. His body a sole glimmer on the ocean's bellow.
But now, sometimes, the ocean responds.
Maui's throat audibly cracked.
His beak peeled in the sun. The ocean stretched on, because it was cruel, and his throat burned more each time he glanced at the salted water. He should've taken this trip as a whale. But all there was to eat on the godsforsaken island he'd slept on last night was coconuts and grasses, and a salad wasn't enough to feed the body of a 30-ton beast, so he would've sank right to the bottom of the sea. He was baking enough that almost sounded appealing.
A thin strip jerked further up off his beak and whipped in his eyes. Maui snorted.
He couldn't drink the water, but he could use it to yank this thing off.
Maui slid low in the sky, dipping to switch places with the sun, until his shadow became distinguishable from the millions of tiny waves on the open sea. His talons skimmed the water. His feathers spread, and he dropped his beak to hang low over the sea.
"HA!"
A screech and a gurgle as some iteration of water and tenacity burst out of the sea, capturing and burying his body, water choked down his throat. Maui blinked his eyes full of water. The world frothed before him. His feathers strained to beat through water.
The surface pulled up and away. Maui squinted, and swaddled in the ripples, through the dance and spree of throttling water, he could barely make out with these beady eyes a beast of some sort.
Maui bore his teeth--nope. Still a beak.
The creature darted for him.
He yanked his wings around his body, mind around hook in a tight swoop with talons sparkling with steel blue--
Were those legs?
The beast slowed. Its blurry body was cradled by the sea. The mane took a moment to follow the head, before curling back in a current, thick curls streaming behind and Maui traced the skirt, the legs, the tattoo, the oar--
The smile.
More in her eyes than her mouth.
Maui had sunbeams slicing out from his feathers.
He swung into himself, hard. With a burst of blue his own hair surrounded him in an underwater cloud. A cursory check for shark parts, and Maui lifted his eyes and raised a very human hand in greeting.
Bubbles lurched out of the monster's responding grin.
Tautai Moana of Motunui, Master Wayfinder, Legendary defeater of Te Kā and Nalo, demigod of the sea and all its peoples. And yet it was her stupid smile that knocked the air out of Maui's lungs.
Her skull blocked the sun. It's rays spread through her hair like a halo. The bubbles faded, and only water was left. Clear and solid. It was quiet down here, and there was no one here, no one in the broad expanse to his left and his right and his up and down, but them and the heavy deep blue.
Stillness.
Moana grinned and motioned pointedly to the surface, her eyes and mouth blown wider than a puffer fish.
Except for her, Maui amended. Everything was still except for her.
He pumped his legs and arms and felt his lungs chase the air, rising up, up up until he broke the surface and the world expanded again.
"Oh my gods I was so worried it wasn't you!! But I've been watching the birds the last couple years and they never come out this far from an island so I thought it was you and--" his vision rushed to catch up with her words, and he caught her smiling, vaguely smug, as she tilted her head. "It was."
Maui couldn't help the grin that cracked over his face, and frankly, he didn't want to. "You found me, princess." Damn, this hook was heavy. He debated giving himself a shark tale.
Moana frowned, then shook her head. Her gaze darted maddeningly over his face. It danced over him, giving him barely a minute to breathe before it stopped on his hook.
"Mmm," she started and Maui already didn't like where this was going.
She rose up out of the water and sat cross-legged on it's surface. That was new.
"Is that heavy?" Moana asked, nodding to his hook. She dropped her head onto her fist. "It looks heavy."
There was no way he was busting out the shark tale now.
Moana sighed. "If only a big, strong demigod had a princess around who could help with that."
Maui didn't have to look down to feel Tiny dragging another tally in Moana's ever-expanding scoreboard. The etching of it was familiar.
He grinned and quirked a brow. "Where's your animal sidekick?"
Moana stood up (also on water he will add what the hell) and twirled her oar, designs and heart flashing, before plunging it into the ocean's depths. He only had the ocean's gurgle to prepare himself before he was once again drenched in yet another wave of this girl's.
When he finished parting the limp hair from his eyes, Moana was pulling herself up on the deck of a small canoe. Maui glanced up and yep, same spiral design.
Maui's cheeks were beginning to hurt.
Still, he yanked into a hawk again to swing through the air, above the deck, before dropping down beside her.