↳ Summary: Jason asks a favor from his brother’s ex to help revamp his failing fraternity before summer ends.
↳ W.C : 2.7k
↳ Tags + Warnings: College AU - no supers only capes, Jason is capt. of the hockey team and head of his frat, mentions of panic attacks/anxiety, unrequited(?) love, older woman x younger man, ex’s little brother, Dick is your ex, bickering/banter
There was something satisfying about taking something broken and fixing it up so it could become something new. You could take an old house and make it into a home worth making memories in.
The kitchen you were standing in had been the last of the latest renovation project, and your favorite room of any house. You stepped back to admire your handiwork. The finished marble countertop island paired perfectly with the glittering light fixture that now hung from the ceiling. The cabinets had been painted white, and the appliances replaced with stainless steel.
You snapped a few pictures with your phone. It would be a great addition to your website portfolio.
A notification from your email account pinged onto your screen.
RE: Tulane Proposal Follow-up
The Tulanes want to see your final proposal for the lake house. They’re deciding between yours and another. Oh, and that guy Jason keeps calling. Do you want me to forward his calls to you?
You chewed your lip. You had been putting off answering Jason’s calls. In fact, you rarely answered phone calls without the buffer of your assistant, Kelly. You typed back a message:
Thanks for the update. You can give Jason my cell.
Pocketing the phone, you thought back to the last time you had interacted with Jason. It was probably years ago by now. Between being swamped with work and building your business, you barely had time to see Dick, let alone his little brother.
The last time you'd seen him had been years ago when he’d offered to help you flip your first house. And when the call from Jason came in asking you to help him, you thought Dick, your ex, had a medical emergency or something and needed a kidney.
If it were up to you, you’d never have to step foot on GothamU’s frat row ever again. It was a breeding ground for exclusion, sexual assault, and drunken debauchery. But the bulk of your decision to help him wasn’t because of Jason’s talent for guilt-tripping. It was because he’d never asked anything of you before. And the fact that he reached out to you specifically made it harder for you to say no.
Apparently, Jason had screened every call and blocked every form of contact from the Waynes except for Alfred, their estate manager. You knew that offhandedly from Dick. He wasn’t exactly the type to ask anyone for help.
You smiled in pity, as you recounted their conversation. He was so adamant about not asking for money from Bruce, but you wondered if he was aware that grant money was basically Wayne money anyway. The Wayne Foundation made hefty donations to the billionaire’s honorary alma mater every year. You thought it best not to divulge that fact and instead clicked around on your desktop calendar to clear up some time for a site visit.
When you arrived at Gotham University’s Fraternity Row the next week, the street looked abandoned. During the summer, most college campuses looked like ghost towns. Jason was one of the few who would rather stay on campus than go home.
You walked along the sidewalk and passed by mansion-like structures, each uniquely designed to add a bit of character to each fraternity. One of the business frats was a traditional colonial-style building with large white pillars bracketing its front doors. GothamU students termed it “The White House” for its stately presence, neatly manicured lawn, and the members who ironically donned suits at any chance they could get.
Another one was more gothic in structure, like it belonged in a European countryside. Everyone called it “The Castle,” and every Halloween they would play up their spooky aesthetic with a haunted house themed “Freaky FrightNight” party.
SigRho house rounded the end of the street. It was just as you had remembered it. Perhaps even worse. It was quaint enough on the outside, but clearly unkempt and in need of repairs. You noted the uneven cobblestone overgrown with weeds. The roof was due for reshingling, and they’d definitely need to repave the walkway. The yardwork looked like its own beast entirely. Just clearing the underbrush and replenishing the very dead garden would take up a whole month.
As you made your way to the porch you noticed a rather conspicuous hole dug in the ground. You pinched the bridge of your nose. What had you gotten yourself into? If this was what the outside looked like, you would be in for a rude awakening when you saw the interior of the house.
You rapped on the door with the knocker and waited patiently for an answer, but all you could hear was a muffled stereo blasting rap music. You raised your hand to knock again until the door swung open and you were face-to-face with pecks—sweaty ones—filling your vision. A shirtless guy wearing black basketball shorts and a pair of red and black Nike Dunks blinked down at you, clearly surprised. It was like you had just interrupted his workout.
Truthfully, you didn’t know where it was safe to look. You were eye level with his chest, and the slightest glance downward gave you an eyeful of a 6—no, 8—pack. One look at his outfit or…lack thereof, made you feel overdressed in your tailored slacks. Your clothes were casual for an office but Met Gala worthy on a college campus on summer break.
You watched his wide eyes trail from your eyes, linger at your buttoned-up cardigan, then down to your sensible flats, as if he was thinking the exact same thing.
He opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again before finally uttering a “one sec” and then promptly shutting the door.
Was that…Jason? You almost thought you had the wrong person. Did he have a growth spurt? Before he left for college, he was fairly lean, but now he practically filled the entire doorframe. He was imposing in a way his older brother wasn’t. It was hard to believe he was the younger one by stature alone.
The cognitive dissonance was so great that it took you a while to register that you’d just had the door closed on you. A few minutes later, the music turned down to an appropriate level, and the door opened again to the boy now in a sleeveless shirt and loose cargo pants. It seemed like he had freshened up a bit too, given the faint scent of bergamot in the air.
Now that he was properly dressed, you could see him clearly; he still had the same shock of messy curls and blue-green eyes that you remembered.
“Did you forget our meeting?” You eyed Jason warily, slipping past him and letting yourself in. You didn’t know why you were acting so cordially. Was it because you used to have a good 5 inches on him years ago, and now he was twice your size? Was it the awkwardness of seeing Dick’s family when you wanted nothing to do with him anymore? Or maybe it was because a hug would just get his sweat all over you.
“‘Course not.” He stepped aside to make room for you, rubbing at a sore shoulder. “Just…I wasn’t expecting you so soon.”
As you walked through the foyer, you paused to inspect the things that caught your eye. “Not expecting me at the time we scheduled? Just say you forgot.”
“I didn't, I swear.” He brought his hand up in surrender.
The foyer opened into a great room littered with half-packed boxes. The furniture had already been cleared, and all that was left was a rolled-up carpet and gilded frames that had been taken down and covered with cloth.
“Where do you want these, Boss?” a deep voice called out. You directed your attention to a bulky man who was carrying a large box. It seemed you’d missed the “no shirts allowed” memo.
“Leave them by the door. And put a shirt on; we've got company.” Jason directed without batting an eye.
“Boss?” You raised an eyebrow. What is this, the mafia?
He only made a nonchalant shrug. “Team captain privileges”
You watched him direct the guys you assumed were the other frat brothers around the house. It then became clear that he had been preparing the house for renovations by emptying it out before your arrival. Within 20 minutes, each room of the first floor had been emptied and organized into boxes in the foyer.
“We have a truck coming to pick this all up and bring it into storage later today. I was hoping we’d have it all out before you got here, though.”
“It’s good to see that you had a head start.”
“Told ya I didn’t forget.” He said smugly. “Can’t afford you walking out on me.” Jason moved to take a heavy box out of another member’s hands and place it on top of one of the boxes in the foyer.
“You can’t afford me, period.” You snorted.
“I know, I know you’ll never let me forget it.”
Jason paused in setting another box onto a pile to wipe the sweat off his brow.
No central cooling. You noted to yourself. You were starting to feel hot yourself. Why did you think a sweater in the summer heat was a good idea?
“I will say,” you said, clearing the air, “I’m very impressed you’re taking so much initiative.”
His mouth quirked, amused. “You gonna give me a cookie or something?”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself.” You rolled your eyes. “Cookies are for when a job gets done”
“Ouch. You grading me now? What happened to ‘A for Effort’?”
“Effort is a given; Only results get rewarded.” You recited something your Dad always told you. “You should be taking notes; people would pay big money to hear the life advice I’m giving you pro bono.”
“Oh great, another boring lecture to sleep through,” he yawned theatrically, playfully dodging your swat at his arm. “What? I’m listening. I’m listening!”
As Jason finished up clearing the bottom floor, you appraised the house from room to room. It had been the first time you’d stepped foot in a frat house during the day and only the second time you’d been in one. The first time your GothamU roommates had dragged you out to an AlphaKap party, you’d spent the night dodging drunken boys and sipping lukewarm beer in one of the quieter corners of the house. Needless to say, you didn’t quite get the appeal of any of it.
You noted the game room’s pool table that teetered on an uneven leg and the library’s peeling wallpaper and rusty chandelier. The reading room, a small alcove next to the library, was the only room that seemed untouched. The floorboards creaked with every step as you made your way down to the dining area in the basement of the house. Even the banister was splintered and rough to the touch.
At the bottom of the staircase was a row of portraits. At a distance, they looked regal and rivaled the ones that you’d seen the first time you visited Wayne Manor with Dick. But when you examined them closely, you could see that they were less portraits and more caricatures.
In one photo, the active members of SigRho posed solemnly in suits, capturing the gravitas of prewar soldiers going to war. In the frame next to it was a sillier looking one: a beach theme where they posed in brightly colored Hawaiian shirts, tropical flower necklaces draped around their necks. You located Jason, who was holding a surfboard. He had his tongue out and was holding out his hand with a “hang 10” sign.
In the picture, there was also a pit bull being held up by one of the frat members. When you moved to the next portrait, you saw that it was the same dog, photographed as if it were a prize pet. Its mouth hung open, and one of the tropical flowers was pinned behind its ear. The plaque underneath it was simply engraved “Dog” with a "Best Girl" superlative underneath it. That explained the scratches on the hardwood.
It was just sinking in that you were clearly in a frat and you’d brought yourself there on your own volition.
Noticing Jason coming down the stairs behind you, you spoke up. “Please tell me you’re not going to house a dog here after you renovate.”
His eyes shifted from Dog’s portrait back to you. “Dog isn’t just ‘a dog’. She’s family.”
You glowered at him.
“Relax, you won’t have to worry about that anyway. The university already got on our case about it, so one of the brothers took her.”
“You make it sound like I kidnapped her.” Came another voice from behind you. A shorter boy with hair dyed in streaks of green strolled in from the alcove behind you, holding a box of pizza in one hand and munching on a veggie slice with the other. “She came to my arms fair and square.”
The green-haired boy gestured the box out to you in offering. When you politely declined, Jason took a slice instead.
“We circled up, put Dog in the middle, and whoever she ran to first could adopt her.” Jason began to explain in between bites, leading the way to a billiards table that had been stripped bare. “But she ran to Gar even though I’m the one that found her first.”
“Aww, they grow up so fast,” a redhead in a trucker cap and a goatee teased, greeting Jason with an elaborate handshake as a few more guys filed in.
“You still get visitation, bro,” the green-haired boy you now knew as Gar piped up.
The empty billiards table was the only thing left in the room. The dining tables and chairs had already been cleared out, and you could see them clustered through the windowed doors that opened to the outdoor patio. Gar rested the open pizza box in the center of the table, and within seconds, it was devoured.
Jason ushered you to the head of the table and counted heads. “You guys seen Bart? I swear I just saw him.” When no one could respond, he sighed. “Well, anyway, let’s just get started. Y/N, this is SigRho, well, part of it. And SigRho, this is Y/N; she’ll be helping us with the renovation.”
You examined each member as they introduced themselves in a circle.
“I’m Roy,” the redhead began first, “Technically I’m an alum. I’m a grad student in the mechanical engineering department. Just here to help my chapter out.” He held out a hand for you to shake. You nodded and shook his hand, surprised. You were expecting him to be a hockey player like Jason. You made a mental note that he would be useful for any of the more technical fixes.
“Most people call me by my last name, ‘Bizarro’. I’m on the hockey team with Jason and Bart. I study Exercise Science.” The hulking man you’d seen carrying boxes in the foyer spoke up. His voice was surprisingly timid now that all the attention was on him. He’d probably be helpful in demolition and teardowns if needed.
“Vic Stone. Comp Sci. I play football, but I’m sitting out preseason.” He shuffled backwards from the table so you could get a better look at the brace on his right foot. “Sprained my ankle. It’s getting better, though.”
You nodded sympathetically. It was probably best if he didn’t do any strenuous work.
“I’m Gar. I’m not part of any team, by the way.” He gestured to his body as if his stature made that obvious. “Everyone always seems to think so, though. Right, guys?”
A chorus of “nos” and “not reallys” filled the room, but he ignored them. “They’re just joking.” He grinned at you. You struggled to come up with a role for him, but having him around would certainly lighten the mood.
“And you already know me,” Jason concluded. “What do you think? You said you needed a team, so I brought you mine.”
↳ Summary: Jason asks a favor from his brother’s ex to help revamp his failing fraternity before summer ends.
↳ W.C : ongoing
↳ Tags + Warnings: College AU - no supers only capes, Jason is capt. of the hockey team and head of his frat, mentions of panic attacks/anxiety, unrequited(?) love, older woman x younger man, ex’s little brother, Dick is your ex, bickering/banter
🎵 A Bar Song (Tipsy) - Shaboozey
🎵 Summer in July - Yukon Blonde
🎵 The Sound - The 1975
🎵 Lisztomania - Phoenix
🎵 Mr. Brightside - The Killers
🎵 Tongue Tied - Grouplove
🎵 Stay the Night - Zedd
🎵 A Day Late - Anberlin
🎵 Your Love - The Outfield
Whenever Jason needed to destress, he went to the gym. Both his therapist and coach suggested he work out regularly—his therapist to help manage what she diagnosed as “Generalized Anxiety Disorder,” and his coach to curb what he bluntly described as “temper tantrums” on the ice.
The first time he’d been called to Dean Dawes office was for almost causing a brawl with a rival team from Vesper Tech. He’d gotten multiple warnings for breaking his hockey sticks throughout the season. His crashouts became so famous that spectators began to call him “Red-Hot” not only for the candy-red helmet he chose to wear that clashed with Gotham’s dark navy and silver colors, but also because of a meme that went semi-viral of edited steam rising from his head whenever he got angry.
Starting a full-on fist fight with another hockey player was the last straw that jeopardized his position on the team. Dean Dawes was kind enough to waive disciplinary action in exchange for summer sessions with Dr. Shaw. And by the power of mindfulness and intentional exercise, Jason mellowed out—even becoming captain of the Gotham Knights last year.
Now that hockey season was over and school had been let out for almost two months already, Jason shouldn’t have had any reason to be stressed. He should’ve been enjoying his summer vacation with the boys, relaxing at the House, or shout-singing “Sweet Caroline” on road trips to local music festivals. However, here he was now at GothamU’s training room, currently benching the maximum weight allotted for a university gym and breaking a sweat. Even though he had probably hit a new personal record, he couldn’t seem to focus because the second time he'd been called to the Dean's office was not as a hockey player but as President of his fraternity.
"I’m giving you the grant because I trust you will do your best to turn things around. But if you can’t bring your fraternity up to par, good standing included, I’m afraid we’re going to have to shut Sigma Rho House down.”
That meeting had happened back in April. It was June now, and Jason was officially S.O.L.
Sigma Rho (affectionately “SigRho”) had seen better days. It was falling apart, and though Jason had taken up some of the repairs on his own by fixing rickety doors and replacing leaky faucets, there was only so much he and a YouTube tutorial could handle. He needed professional help. But the more companies he called, the more dead ends he ran into.
Jason exhaled as he pushed the weighted barbell away from his chest and placed it back on the holding rack above him. He could always sweat himself out of an oncoming panic attack. He sat up, chest heaving, winded from exertion.
A buzz at his hip drew his attention to his phone. It was a calendar notification reminding him to make a call to his last resort. He chewed his lip as his finger hovered over the name in his contacts list. Pressing down with reluctance, he brought the phone to his ear. After two rings, the line picked up.
“Tell your brother I’m not unblocking his number.”
It was completely like you to get straight to business. Jason furrowed his brows, confused. “Actually, no, I… wait, did something happen?”
“Dick and I broke up.” You said flatly.
Again? The last time he’d seen his brother, Dick, he’d been whisking you off to some European country. What could have possibly happened between then and now?
“What did you need, Jace?” You said, steering the conversation back to the subject at hand.
“I have a favor to ask you.” He hated the way he sounded now, the way the end of his sentence seemed to lift like a question. There was something about talking to you that always made him feel so unsure of himself.
“Well, go on.”
“You remember SigRho, right?”
“Although I’d love to erase frat row from my memory, yes, unfortunately, I do. What about it?”
“We’re looking to do some renovations to the house, and I haven’t had any luck finding a company that can do what I’m looking for. I know it’s short notice and you’re probably super busy, but I know you used to flip houses so—”
“Hold up and slow down. You do know I’m in New York, right? What are you asking for that you can’t find a local company to do it? Gotham has to have contractors that’ll take you up on it.”
“There are. But the budget’s pretty limited for what we need. I haven’t found anyone willing to help us out.” Jason’s mind flickered back to the phone calls he’d had with contractors who laughed in his face when he proposed his budget.
“I don’t know if you forgot, Jason, but your Dad is the richest man in the tristate. Budget shouldn’t even be in your vocabulary. Why don’t you just ask Bruce to–I don't know–spot you?”
Jason closed his eyes and groaned inwardly. This was the exact reason why he didn’t like people knowing about his family or how he grew up in a house so big that his closet was the size of his current room at the frat.
“We had a falling out.”
“Well, fall the fuck back in.” If your voice was any indication, he could hear you rolling your eyes through the phone as if it were the simplest solution in the world. He scoffed; he could say the same for your and his brother’s on-again, off-again relationship.
You don’t just “fall out” of a fortune. If you did, you were an idiot. He knew that. And yet, he despised depending on Bruce for another cent. He did everything he could to defy his expectations and even got a hockey scholarship to play for the GothamU Knights, all on his own.
Now, it’d been three years since he started Gotham, and three years since he’d talked to Bruce. He wasn’t going to ruin his streak now.
“It’s… not that easy.” He chose his words with tact. Jason was frustrated, but he needed your help, and making some smart-ass comment was a one-way ticket to getting iced out by his brother’s girlfriend—well, ex now— who not only had experience in renovating but also had a successful contracting business.
“More like, you’re just making it hard. Why didn’t you ask Dick? You know he wouldn’t say no.”
“He’d just force me to ask Bruce.” Like you’re doing right now, Jason wanted to add but he held his tongue.
“You need the money, Jason.”
“I don’t." He gritted out back.
He couldn’t say he hadn’t thought about it. Bruce had enough money to throw around that a renovation wouldn’t make a dent in his wallet. But flaunting Wayne money around was the furthest thing from his mind. He knew what money did to people, how it transformed people. He hadn’t told his SigRho brothers yet, and he wasn’t planning to for a long time.
"The Office of Greek Life gave us a grant to fix up the place. So as long as we’re in good standing with them, I have plenty. I’ll make sure you get paid, Y/N.”
The other line was quiet for a moment, and Jason had already resigned himself to giving up until you finally spoke up.
“You better, because my services aren’t cheap.”
“Ok!” He tried to conceal how excited he was with a clearing of his throat and a nonchalant deepening of his voice. “And how much would those services cost?”
“Judging by the fact that you probably haven’t renovated since I was going to GothamU, the roof’s going to need repairs. We’re probably going to have to tear out the floors and lay down new hardwood, too. Outdoor landscaping is a separate fee…Not to mention the crew salaries—”
You rambled as you began to rattle off a few figures rapid-fire. The more you spoke, the more Jason’s confidence deflated.
“And how much is it without the crew?” He ran a hand through his hair. That had been one of his nervous tells that his therapist had clocked during their first session. That, along with the pacing he was currently doing across the weight room floor.
“I need my crew, and they don’t work for free.”
“You can use me.” He countered. “Use me and the other members. I’m good with direction. Plus I helped you out before, remember? And, actually now that I think of it, you didn’t even pay me that time.”
“You said, and I quote, ‘not to sweat it.’ Those were your words verbatim.”
“You should’ve gotten it in writing then,” He cooed. “But don’t worry, Y/N, if you help me out, you can consider us even.”
There was a brief pause, and then finally, a sigh—The glorious sound of your resignation and his triumph. “I’ll come down to see the property. It’s not a yes, but you’re getting my very precious time, Jace. Don’t waste it.”
Synopsis: He fell from the sky. She rose from the deep. When an unlikely savior pulls a prince back from death’s door, neither of them can quite stay away from the shore that brought them together.
Word Count: 6.0K
Pairing: Prince!Jacaerys Velaryon x Mermaid!Reader
Genre: Mermaid au, Jace lives!, fluff
Warnings: Mermaid descriptions of reader but nothing too specific about looks, Jace and Baela aren’t betrothed, vermax :(, brief mentions of nudity.
A/N: Based off THIS REQUEST, I hope this doesn’t seem rushed :) lowkey used my physics knowledge to make bs up 🥴
Divider credits to: @uzmacchiato <3
In a world where dragons roamed the sky and stranger things still lurked in the far reaches of Sothoryos, the existence of merfolk was hardly a thing beyond belief.
Yet for centuries the merfolk had kept to themselves, hidden from human eyes by choice rather than necessity, for the sea was their domain, vast and forgiving, older than any castle built of stone, and they had little wish to share it with a race that seemed forever at war with itself and everything around it.
In time, that same secrecy had turned them into little more than legend, tales spun by sailors over cups of watered wine on nights when the wind howled and the deck rolled beneath them. Sirens were known to lure ships onto rocks with voices sweet enough to make a man forget his own name, and feast on whatever remained once the rocks had finished their work.
Mermaids were a gentler breed by comparison, prone to guiding lost sailors safely home as often as they were blamed for storms and ill weather they had no hand in at all. Two natures entirely, wearing similar faces, and precious few humans who lived long enough to learn the difference between them.
They were beautiful creatures beneath the waves, long tails the colour of pearl and coral fading seamlessly into human torsos, faces too fine and too still to belong to any mortal woman, gill feathers tracing delicate lines along their throats that fluttered faintly with every breath of water drawn through them. Webbing caught the light between their fingers and along the curves of their ears, and their eyes, when a sailor was unlucky or lucky enough to catch one open beneath the surface, ethereal was the word men reached for, when they had any words left at all.
It had been pure chance that placed you so close to the Gullet on the day the battle came, chance and your own incurable curiosity, which your sisters had scolded you for since you were small enough to hide behind their tails.
You had always had a weakness for collecting things. Rings slipped from dead men's fingers, buckles and buttons and the little bronze bells that sailors sometimes wore for luck that had done them no good at all in the end, coins gone green and soft with centuries beneath the salt.
You kept them in the hollow belly of an old sunken hull you had claimed as your own years ago, arranging and rearranging them the way a child arranges shells on a beach, and you were forbidden, absolutely forbidden, from ever breaking the surface to retrieve anything that had not already sunk deep enough to be safely yours. The deep waters near the wreck sites were permitted. The world above the waterline was not.
You had seen fleets pass overhead before, dark hulls cutting shadows across the sunlit shallows, and it had never troubled you much. Ships came and went. Men fought their wars on the surface and left their dead to sink down to you eventually, and you had learned not to think too hard about where the trinkets came from.
What startled you that day, what sent ice through your veins even in water still warm from the summer sun, was the sound. A battle breaking out with no warning at all, not the slow grinding approach you were used to but something sudden and enormous, the water shaking with it as though the sea itself had been struck. Fire that should not have been able to burn beneath the waves somehow did, hissing and spitting where it touched the surface, and ash sifted down through the water like grey snow, and wood came apart in great splintering chunks, and bodies. So many bodies, falling and falling, sinking past you like stones dropped from a terrible height, men who had been laughing and cursing and praying only moments before.
You very nearly got swept into the worst of it yourself. Your pale pink tail caught for one heart-stopping instant on a length of trailing rigging, and you fought and thrashed to free yourself, kicking hard for clearer, deeper water, away from the chaos above. It was then that something struck the surface with such force that the shockwave of it rolled straight through your chest, and you turned back despite every instinct screaming at you to keep swimming, and saw a dragon.
Only the one. You did not know his name yet, though you would come to learn it soon enough. Vermax, green as new leaves, thrashing against water he had never been built to fight, wings beating in great useless sweeps, trying and failing again and again to claw his way back up into a sky that no longer wanted him.
And strapped to his back, tangled in leather that should have kept him safe and now threatened only to drown him with the beast, was a boy.
A very pretty boy, you thought, even through the horror of it, because you had always had a weakness for pretty things as well as shiny ones, and some habits did not care what was happening around them.
He fought his harness with a growing, panicked desperation, one leg caught fast beneath a buckle that would not give no matter how he wrenched at it, and you watched the fight slowly bleed out of him as the water rose past his chin and then his mouth. You watched him press his palm flat against his dragon’s scaled hide, whether in farewell or in simple desperate comfort you could not say, and something inside your chest twisted so hard and so suddenly that it hurt, a feeling you had no name for and no time to think about, and you were moving before your brain had caught up to it.
The buckles gave easily enough beneath your fingers, quick clever things built for human hands rather than merfolk ones but simple enough once you understood the shape of them, all but the one pinning his leg fast, which would not release no matter how you pulled. It was your sister's whalebone dagger, tucked always at your hip, that finally cut him free, the leather parting in one long stroke. By then the boy had gone entirely still, his eyes half open and unseeing.
You spared one moment, only one, though it cost you dearly to spare it, to press your palm flat against Vermax’s scales in something like an apology, for jot being able to save him. The great beast simply closed his eyes, as if content that his rider had found safer hands than his own to carry him the rest of the way, and sank without a struggle into the dark below, leaving no trace but a slow drift of green scales catching what little light remained.
Surfacing was a huge mistake. You broke into open air in the very heart of the wreckage, ships burning on every side, smoke thick enough to sting your eyes, and had barely a breath to get your bearings before an arrow split the water beside you, close enough that you felt the wind of its passing against your cheek and almost hitting the boy in the neck.
You looked up into a row of crossbows all trained your way, men shouting words you did not understand but whose meaning was plain enough in the set of their shoulders, and understood with sudden, terrible clarity exactly how little difference they would see between a dragon’s rider and whatever monster had come to finish the work the sea had started.
You went back under. Humans could not breathe water, but neither, you thought grimly, dragging the boy's dead weight down with you, could you survive a volley of bolts meant to end lives.
You swam hard and fast and low, keeping to what cover the drifting wreckage offered, dragging him through water gone thick and stinging with smoke and ash, until the sounds of battle fell away behind you into a dull, distant roar and the nearest shore rose dark and welcoming against the horizon. You hauled him up onto the sand with strength you did not know you possessed, adrenaline lending you what your body alone could not, and only then let yourself look at him properly.
Your stomach dropped. His lips had gone the deep, bruised blue of a man already claimed by the sea, his skin pale as the underbelly of a fish, and his chest did not move at all.
The old stories. Your grandmother had told them half as warning and half as wonder, back when you were young enough to still believe every tale she spun, of how a drowned man's lungs might yet be coaxed back to life if the sea inside them was driven out in time, before the body forgot how to want air at all. You laid both palms flat over the centre of his chest, unsure of your own strength, and pressed down hard.
Once. Nothing happened. Panic clawed up your throat.
Twice. Your own breath caught, tight and painful.
Thrice, and you pressed with everything you had left in you, uncaring now whether you cracked something beneath your palms, because a bruise, even a broken rib, was nothing at all set against death.
On the fourth press he convulsed beneath your hands and turned sharply to one side, retching a lungful of seawater onto the sand, coughing so violently his whole body shook with the force of it. You sat back, tail curling instinctively beneath you, heart hammering, and watched the grey slowly bleed out of his face as air, found its way back into him at last.
He did not understand, in that first hazy moment, anything beyond the fact that he was somehow, impossibly, still alive. The world swam in and out of focus around him, blurred and ringing. The last clear memory he had was of Vermax beneath him and the water closing over them both in a great green rush, of struggling against a harness that would not give no matter how he fought it, and then a blurred pale shape cutting toward him through the murk like something out of a half remembered dream, and then nothing at all.
He sat up too quickly. Pain lanced through his skull bright enough to make him gasp, and he only dimly registered that he had knocked someone backward in the process, hearing a small startled sound beside him.
"I am sorry- I did not mean to- are you..." The words died somewhere in his throat.
A hand still rested lightly against his shoulder, small and cool and strange. He gaze followed it down past a bare collarbone, down a torso, and then no legs at all, only a long tail the colour of pale coral, still trembling faintly where it lay half in the surf, catching what little light the dying sun still offered.
His eyes came back up to meet yours. Yours were already wide with fright, caught somewhere between diving straight back into the water and staying just long enough to see what he would do with the knowledge now sitting plainly on his face.
"You," he breathed, and could not seem to manage a single word more than that.
You did not wait to find out what he would say next. You began dragging yourself backward toward the water on your palms, tail scraping over wet sand, and that seemed to break whatever had held him frozen in place, because he scrambled after you across the shore despite the state of his own battered, aching body.
"Wait, please, don't go, who are you? What is your name? Why did you save me? Why?" The questions tumbled out of him faster than you could possibly have answered even if your voice had worked properly, one tripping over the next, desperation making him clumsy with his words. When you opened your mouth to try anyway, nothing came at all, no sound, not even a whisper. You touched two fingers to your throat and shook your head slowly.
"You cannot speak?"
You nodded, something apologetic in the tilt of your head.
There was no simple way to explain it to him, not with gestures alone, that merfolk voices were shaped and tuned for the weight and pressure of deep water and simply could not survive in air thin and empty as this, so you only looked at him, sorry, and slid a little further back toward the tideline, the cool water lapping welcome against your tail.
"Wait!" He was on his feet now, unsteady, swaying slightly as he turned to take in the shore around him properly for the first time. "This is Driftmark- I think- and that," he pointed to a dark shape rising jagged from the water in the distance, smoke still curling faintly from somewhere within the battle behind them, "that's Dragonstone. That is where I live. I must find some way to thank you properly, I do not even know how yet, but I will. I swear it."
You gave him one last long look, drinking in the sight of him properly now that the worst of the danger had passed, pale and shaking and utterly unlike anyone you had ever pulled from the wreckage before, and nodded once before the water closed silently over your head.
What he did not know, could not have known, was that you had not truly gone. You lingered just beneath the surface, hidden in the shallows where the light still reached, watching as the full weight of what he had lost caught up to him at last.
You watched his shoulders begin to shake, watched him sink slowly to his knees on the wet sand as the grief he had been too shocked to feel finally broke over him, grieving the bond severed so suddenly with his dragon, a bond you understood was not so different from the ones your own kind shared with the great whales that sometimes let mermaids ride upon their backs through the deep currents. You felt sad and helpless and entirely too far away to do anything about either, your own chest aching in sympathy for a boy you did not even know the name of yet.
Trinkets, you thought at last, retreating slowly deeper into the water where the cold and the dark could swallow the strange, unfamiliar feeling sitting heavy in your chest. I will bring him pretty things. Pretty things always help. Everyone knows that.
By the time Jace made it back to Dragonstone, disguised as best his battered state allowed, the sun had long since set and the castle had already begun to mourn a prince presumed lost at sea.
Rhaenyra, who had spent the whole of that day and the one before convincing herself, against every hope, that he was truly gone, very nearly lost her composure entirely at the sight of him standing whole in the doorway of her solar, swaying but breathing, and threatened violence on anyone who dared suggest it a cruel trick before she was even certain of it herself.
Then he was close enough to touch, close enough that she could feel the warmth still clinging to him despite the cold seawater soaked through every layer of his clothes, and she crossed the room in three swift strides and pulled him into an embrace so fierce it near cracked his ribs, one hand cradling the back of his neck the way she had when he was small enough to carry on her hip.
She pulled back only far enough to strike him hard across the face, the sound of it sharp in the quiet room, then dragged him straight back into her arms before he had time to recover from either the blow or the embrace that followed it.
"Never," she whispered fiercely against his hair, "never again. Do you understand me?"
Jace made no complaint about any of it. He only held on, breathing in the familiar smell of her, flowery and something that had always simply meant home no matter where in the world he found himself, and let himself be scolded and forgiven in the very same breath, over and over, until the shaking in his hands finally began to still.
There would be time to explain everything later, the mermaid and the potion he did not yet know he would go looking for and the strange ache already settling in his chest at the thought of never seeing her again. Tonight he only wanted this, his mother’s arms and the solid stone floor beneath his feet and the simple, overwhelming relief of being alive.
It was two full days before he saw you again, two days that felt considerably longer to both of you than their number suggested.
He had taken to walking the shore each evening as the sun went down, though he offered no one an explanation for it beyond a vague murmur about wanting air, and Rhaenyra, watching her son closely for any sign of the grief she knew still sat unresolved in him, chose not to press the matter, not yet.
On the second such evening, with the light turning gold and heavy across the water at the very edge of dusk, a small shape broke the surface some distance out from where he stood. Only your eyes showed at first, wary, scanning the beach with the caution of a creature that had learned, however briefly, exactly what danger humans could pose. Once you were certain he was truly alone, no soldiers, no crossbows waiting in the shadows, you swam closer, arms full of things gathered carefully from the seafloor over the two long days you had spent working up the courage to return.
He laughed before he could help himself, disbelieving, because you had brought him what looked like a small fortune of drowned treasure: coins gone green with centuries of salt, sea glass worn to the smoothness of river stones in every colour from deep emerald to pale, milky blue, pearls still crusted faintly with the ghosts of the shells that had once held them, all of it cradled carefully against your chest as though it were the finest gift any king had ever received.
"For me?" He pressed a hand to his own chest, incredulous, and you beamed and nodded so hard your whole body shook with the force of it, tail flicking once against the shallows in what he would later come to recognise as excitement.
"I have nothing half so precious to give you in return," he said, quieter now, kneeling properly in the wet sand so that he was closer to your level, and you shook your head firmly, as if to tell him that was hardly the point of any of it, that gifts given freely required nothing given back.
He knelt at the waterline for a long while that evening and talked, filling the silence you could not, telling you his name, his House, that he was a prince of Dragonstone and heir to something called an Iron Throne that sounded, from the little he explained, far heavier a burden than any crown ought to be. Your eyes lit at the word prince, delighted, and you pointed to your own chest in turn, tapping it twice for emphasis.
"A princess, then?" he guessed, and you nodded, pleased as anything with yourself, and something in his chest that had been wound painfully tight since the moment the water closed over his head two days before finally began, slowly, to loosen.
You tried, that first proper evening, to tell him other things too, though the telling was slow and clumsy without words. You drew shapes in the wet sand with one finger, a rough sketch of a tail, of waves, of something that might have been a whale or might simply have been a very poor circle, and Jace watched with a fascination that made you strangely warm beneath your scales, guessing at your meaning and laughing softly whenever he guessed wrong, which was often.
When the moon rose high enough that you knew you had to leave, you leaned in and pressed a quick, shy kiss to his cheek, as if to tell him not to be sad any longer, that you would return, that whatever grief still lived behind his eyes need not be carried entirely alone. That Vermax lay peacefully beneath the sea. And if he had been pretty enough to catch a second glance from you even amid the chaos of a burning battlefield, well.
You had always liked pretty things, and you saw no shame in admitting it, even silently, even only to yourself.
In the days that followed, Jace found himself buried in the library far more often than seated at council, a fact that did not escape his mother's notice for long. The war, if it could even still be properly called that, had cooled in the aftermath of the battle into something closer to a wary, watchful peace, both sides circling cautiously around the idea of parley rather than open slaughter, and so Rhaenyra could afford, for the first time in longer than she cared to admit, to spend her worry on her son rather than entirely on her crown.
It was on the seventh day since his return that she finally cornered him about it, finding him hunched over a table stacked high with scrolls he had clearly been picking through for hours, Daemon lounging nearby against a bookshelf with a look of a man who had already scented an amusing story and had no intention whatsoever of leaving before he heard the whole of it.
"The one who saved me from the water," Jace admitted at last, ears burning red under his mother's steady gaze, "was a mermaid. I have been meeting her at dusk every evening since. She brings me gifts."
Silence, and then Daemon's low, delighted laugh rang out across the quiet library. "A fish," he said, "has stolen my son’s heart. Rhaenyra, did you hear that? A fish."
"She is not a fish," Jace snapped, mortified, colour flooding all the way up to the tips of his ears, and would say nothing further no matter how Daemon pressed him for details, though his ears stayed scarlet the rest of the evening and he refused, quite pointedly, to look either of them in the eye.
It was only once they were alone, Daemon finally chased off by some matter of ships needing his attention, that Rhaenyra asked, more gently now, what exactly he hoped to find buried in all those old scrolls.
He confessed it slowly, haltingly, that he was searching for some means of letting you speak properly above the water, because you listened to him so patiently each evening, tilting your head at his every word as though nothing he said could ever bore you, and he found, to his own quiet surprise, that he wanted very badly to hear your voice in return, to know what you sounded like when you laughed instead of simply seeing it in the curve of your mouth.
Something in her face softened at that, the last of the earlier sternness melting away entirely. She crossed the room and pressed a kiss to the crown of his head, something she would often do when he was but a babe and even now.
"I nearly lost you once already," she said quietly. "I do not think I would survive losing you a second time, not truly. If this girl from the sea brings you peace after everything, then that peace is worth more to me than I can properly measure. I will help you find your answer, if I am able. You have only to ask."
He thanked her, throat tight, and went to bed that night lighter than he had felt in a very long time.
By the tenth day, though, his search had turned up nothing but dust and disappointment, page after page of tidal charts and shipping records that told him everything about the sea and nothing at all about the creatures who lived beneath it, and he was scowling so fiercely at a particularly useless scroll that he did not hear Baela approach until she dropped a stack of books onto the table hard enough to make him jump nearly out of his seat.
"What have I told you about pouting, cousin? It hardly befits a prince, especially not one so recently returned from the dead."
"I am not pouting," he said, pouting.
She laughed, unbothered, and pushed the books toward him anyway, settling into the chair across from him with the satisfied air of someone bearing very good news. "Found these buried in the old archive, behind a shelf half the household seems to have forgotten existed. Scrolls on sea creatures, potions, that sort of thing, all written in the old tongue. Some of it looks to go back to Old Valyria itself, if the binding is anything to judge by. Thought they might serve you better than moping about the library like a wet cat."
His whole face changed, disappointment giving way so suddenly to hope that Baela laughed again just watching it happen. He thanked her so earnestly, gripping her hands in both of his, that she looked half embarrassed by the whole display and waved him off with a mock scowl of her own, and then he buried himself in the texts for the rest of the day and well into the night, barely stopping to eat, ink staining his fingers as he copied out passage after passage by candlelight.
The gods, it seemed, had finally decided to smile down upon him after everything, because tucked among the brittle, crumbling pages he found precisely what he had been searching for all along: an old Valyrian draught, described in cramped, faded script, said to grant a creature of the sea, mermaid or siren alike, a brief and temporary span of human legs, the magic bound to fade again once enough days had passed.
Gathering the ingredients took the better part of two more days, some of them common enough to find in any well stocked kitchen and others requiring correspondence sent quietly to a maester on the mainland who asked no questions he clearly did not wish answered, and finding an alchemist both skilled and discreet enough to brew the whole of it properly took longer still. But by the fourteenth day since the battle, Jace stood at the shoreline at dusk with a small vial clutched tight in one hand, its contents glowing faintly violet in the fading light, and his heart hammering somewhere up near his throat.
You surfaced as you always did by then, cautious first, scanning the shore out of old habit, then delighted once you saw him standing alone, swimming in swiftly with your usual haul of shells and drowned bottles clutched against your chest. He knelt at the waterline and, for once, did not simply talk about his day or ask after yours in the halting, gestured way you had both grown so used to.
He explained the potion instead, slowly, carefully, holding the vial up so you could see the strange violet light swirling within it, watching your face closely all the while for any sign that this was too much, too strange, too great a thing to ask of you.
You went very quiet. Your brow furrowed the way it always did when you turned something over carefully in your mind, weighing it from every side, and Jace, who had come to know that expression well over a fortnight of evenings spent together, made himself sit still and wait, though every part of him wanted to fill the silence with reassurance.
"It is only if you wish it," he said softly, when the silence had stretched long enough that he could not help himself any longer. "I would never have you feel forced into anything on my account, not after everything you have already given me. If you would rather not, I will understand completely, and I will still come to see you each evening, just as I have."
You studied the vial a long moment more, turning the choice over one final time, thinking of your sisters and the warnings you had grown up hearing about the dangers of the world above, of legs that were not truly yours and a voice that might vanish again the moment the magic faded.
Then you looked at him, at the earnest hope he could not quite hide no matter how he tried, and something in your face settled at last, resolve chasing out the last of the hesitation, and you nodded.
He could have wept from the sheer relief of it. He handed you the vial with hands that were not entirely steady, and you drank it down in a single determined swallow, immediately screwing your face up at the taste, which was somehow both bitter and sickly sweet beneath it, like rot dressed up in honey, and Jace laughed at the disgusted noise you made.
The change came almost at once, faster than either of you had quite expected. Your tail began to glow faintly from within, the violet light spreading through the coral pink scales, and then, slowly, the scales themselves began to dissolve and reshape, splitting and lengthening before your very eyes.
You watched it happen to your own body with something closer to wonder than fear, propping yourself up on your elbows in the shallow water to see it better. It did not hurt, not truly, only felt strange, an unfamiliar pulling and settling sensation that ran the length of what had been your tail only moments before, and then, quite suddenly, you had legs. Two of them, unfamiliar and entirely new to you, kicking weakly in the shallows as you tried, with no success at all, to make them do anything useful.
It was Jace who first remembered, with a start that nearly gave him whiplash, that you now had absolutely nothing on at all beneath the water. He spun to face the other direction so fast he nearly lost his footing on the wet sand, hurriedly unclasping his own travelling cloak and passing it back over his shoulder to you without turning around, ears burning scarlet all over again.
"Here, please, wrap this around yourself, I am so sorry, I did not think- I should have thought of it before you drank the wretched thing."
You took the cloak, bewildered by the whole strange business of clothing, and wrapped it clumsily about yourself as best you could manage with limbs that still refused to cooperate properly.
"Why," you whispered, voice thin and strange and entirely your own, and both of you went utterly, completely still.
"You spoke," Jace said, turning back around despite himself, eyes wide with wonder, all thought of modesty forgotten entirely.
"I did," you said, marvelling at the strange, thin sound of your own voice carrying through open air, so unlike the way words moved and pressed through water, lighter somehow, and stranger, but yours all the same.
He knelt properly before you then in the wet sand, something almost formal in the gesture despite how thoroughly absurd the whole moment truly was, both of them soaked and shivering and grinning like fools, and asked if he might finally know the proper name of the maiden who had pulled him back so stubbornly from death's door.
You told him. Your name, spoken aloud for the first time in your life, and that you were the seventh daughter of a house that ruled beneath the narrow sea, a true princess in every sense, just as you had claimed all along through nothing but gestures and a proud tilt of your chin.
"I know this may only last a short while," Jace said, still kneeling, still holding your hands as though he feared letting go might undo the magic.
"And I mean to keep searching, if that is what you wish, for some way to make it last longer, or even permanent. But for now, will you come and meet my family properly? They ought to see, with their own eyes, the girl who saved their prince from the bottom of the Gullet."
You tried to stand at that, eager and entirely too confident in limbs you had possessed for all of ten minutes, and discovered immediately that legs demanded a coordination and strength the sea had never once asked of you. You stumbled, pitched forward, and landed hard on your knees in the wet sand with a startled, frustrated huff.
You tried again, gripping his shoulder for balance this time, and managed perhaps three wobbling steps before your legs betrayed you a second time, sending you tumbling sideways with a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a groan of pure exasperation.
Jace, biting back a laugh of his own though it clearly threatened to escape, knelt beside you and tightened the cloak properly around your shoulders, then slid one arm behind your back and the other beneath the crook of your knees, lifting you up into his arms with far more ease than his still-recovering body should reasonably have allowed.
"I will teach you to walk properly," he promised, adjusting his grip as you settled, somewhat stiffly, against his chest, your new legs kicking experimentally against nothing at all. "Though I think that particular lesson is better suited to daylight and a rather softer patch of ground than this. Just now I have limited time before the magic fades, and I intend to make the very most of it while I can."
The jaws that dropped when Jacaerys Velaryon strode into Dragonstone’s great hall carrying a girl in his arms, salt still drying in tangled waves through her hair, wrapped in nothing but his own travelling cloak and kicking her bare feet with open, delighted fascination at the strange new sensation of having feet at all, were a sight none of the household would soon forget, and several among the kitchen staff would still be whispering about weeks later.
Baela nearly dropped the tray she was carrying. Rhaena’s mouth fell open mid sentence and simply stayed that way. You met Rhaenyra and Daemon’s twin looks of open astonishment with wide, curious eyes of your own, entirely unbothered by the attention, as though growing an entirely new pair of legs within the hour were the most ordinary thing in all the world, and gave the queen a doe eyed stare that made it very difficult indeed for anyone in that hall to remain suspicious for long.
Daemon was the first to find his voice, low and disbelieving, a slow grin spreading across his face. “Well- damn. He wasn’t kidding about the fish.”
Rhaenyra’s palm found the back of his head before he had even finished speaking, a sharp, swift smack that made him yelp and rub at the spot, wounded.
“Mind your tongue,” she warned, though there was little real heat in it, her gaze already softening as it moved from Daemon back to her son and the girl held so carefully in his arms.
In the end, there was little else for anyone present to do but believe it, however improbable the tale sounded when spoken aloud: that the lost prince of Dragonstone had indeed been pulled from the bottom of the sea by a little mermaid, and that she, in turn, without quite meaning for it to happen at all, had followed him all the way home.
Hemingway stopped writing every day mid-sentence on purpose. So he always knew where he was going when he sat down the next morning. I thought this was torture. i tried it. it is torture. It is also the reason i no longer stare at a blank page for forty minutes wondering what comes next because the sentence is already half there, already pulling you forward, already open. The blank page is the hardest part. He just made sure he never had to face it. I am begrudgingly a convert.
michael jackson doesn't get jealous. he's michael jackson, for goodness sake!
and sure, he is probably holding onto your waist a little too tight while you engage in a conversation with some famous actor you like. and maybe he is shooting him death-daggers behind his aviators--but, he's not jealous.
michael was supposed to be rubbing elbows with his fellow industry-mates, but once this schmuck wandered over to you, he suddenly had nowhere to be.
michael isn't territorial, though. territory is such a crazy word itself and michael would never think of you like that. never. you’re his precious little p.y.t., the whole reason he wrote the song, obviously.
still he cannot shake the feeling that the man wants you, as if you aren’t already michael jackson’s girl. official, at that.
and michael knows he shouldn’t care. he knows attention comes with the territory of being seen in public with him. people stare. people hover. people flirt because they think it’s harmless or funny or impossible.
but he's human before he's michael jackson.
so he just stays close to you for the rest of the night, closer than he usually does. his hand retires its hold from your waist and finds your lower back instead. every photo taken, he stands to where everyone knows your his.
by the time you get home, after all the glamorous clothes are off and the makeup is wiped, he holds you from behind in the bathroom.
"did you have fun tonight?" translation: did you forget about me?
you turn in his grasp and kiss his lips, "i had fun 'cause you were there."
that was really reassuring.
"i'm sorry if i was too close, i just hate sharing you, girl," he mumbles it into your cheek.
see, michael jackson isn't jealous. maybe a little clingy, but really just in love.
The way I cried watching this movie. I've been a Moonwalker since I was born, my dad grew me up with his music. Watching this movie has been one of the best experiences of my entire life. It felt like being there with Michael. They all did such a good job, I'm sure Michael is smiling from Heaven. This is literally one of the best movies of the entire human history.🫶🏻
i love the romance of just existing in the same space with someone like you're doing yoga while they're folding your laundry and getting distracted every time you downward dog. you're squeezing past them at the sink in the morning, your cold fingers resting against their lower back which ends up with you getting a muffled "hey!" through a mouthful of toothpaste. being plopped down on top of while you're laying on the couch. feeding them bites over your shoulder while you're cooking bc they're resting their chin on it, peppering the side of your face with little kisses. reading together, napping together, doing silly little grooming tasks together. just ugh.
be brutal when editing down your work. you should only keep scenes that advance the plot, demonstrate character, or ones that don't do either of those that you really, really, really, really like
🦋 hopeful romantic 🦋 @blackreaderfics - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
