cw: poly 141 adjacent. Mer!Ghost x Soap x Gaz. Mer!Ghost with underdeveloped instincts and Mer!NikPrice x mer!ghost too? Fluff! (Maybe probably multiple parts idk). Genuinely don't know what this is other than two idiots in love and their pining mer admirer.
The first nest Ghost made for them dissolved before their boat even crested the horizon.
He'd worked at it for the better part of an hour, weaving the bubbles the way he'd seen done a couple time, pressing them together with careful, deliberate exhales. When he finally surfaced to check, it looked... fine. He thought it looked fine. It was small, maybe, but fine.
It was gone by the time the Bravo came into view, Soap's laugh carrying across the water before the boat did.
Ghost sank back below the surface and ignored his pod mates and refused to eat until he could try again.
He tried again three days later, a smaller one. More careful. The bubbles kept slipping loose from each other, drifting apart in lazy spirals while he watched with clenched teeth.
Nikolai found him like that, hovering over the wreckage of his third attempt, which had lasted approximately four minutes.
He didn't say anything. Just called for Price with a click of his tongue.
Price came, took one long look, and made a short little chirp of a laugh.
"What," Ghost said flatly.
"Nothing," Price said. He exchanged a look with Nikolai that Ghost chose not to acknowledge. Then Price lowered himself down to Ghost's level, smoothed back his hair, and said, "Right. Watch."
It was embarrassing, was what it was, being taught like a pup by his pod mates. Nik on one side of him showing him the correct pressure, the way you had to mean it from the chest and not just the throat, and Price on the other demonstrating the weave with practiced ease, the bubbles catching and holding like they were glad to.
"You're rushing," Nik said, gently. "You want it to last, yes? So you don't rush."
Ghost did not point out that he'd been trying for eleven days. Trying desperately so that the two-leggeds he's seen fishing in the waters finally stay longer. And maybe notice his efforts.
The nest he made that evening wasn't impressive. It was still small. But it held through the night, and it was still there, glimmering in the sunrise, when the Bravo came in with the morning.
Soap leaned over the side of the boat and spotted it. He was quiet for a moment, which was unusual enough that Kyle looked up from the line he was working.
Kyle set the line down and came to look. It was small, modest, really, but unmistakably deliberate. He frowned at it, then at the water around them, calm and unhelpful.
"Bit early for that," he said.
"That's what I'm thinking." Soap straightened up, scanning the surface. "We've only ever seen the three of them out this way. The bonded pair and—"
"Aye." Soap's frown deepened, curious consideration. "Didn't think he was unmated. Just assumed he was part of their pod somehow."
Kyle looked at the nest again. Already beginning to lose its shape at the edges. "Maybe it's not his."
"There's that group further east," Soap said, nodding slowly. "Could be one of them ranging out."
"Must be." Kyle picked his line back up. "Early in the season for it but stranger things."
Soap took one last look at the little nest, already half-dissolved, and shrugged. "Aye. Stranger things."
Below them, Ghost held very still under driftwood and watched them sail away, and tried to decide if this counted as progress. Maybe it was...
