A note is that the selkies are modified to be a little more mer-like. Vega is based off a harbor seal. Warren is based off of a North Atlantic Octopus. Doomguy goes by Johnathan and is just a completely normal, non demi god, human person.
Contains: Kidnapping (with good intent, but still kidnapping), Selkie!Vega, Mer!Warren, and human!Doomguy (named Johnathan). Mentions of death/humans eating fish, but it’s all Vega and Warren being scared
Word Count: 2.5K
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Jonathan certainly hadn’t expected to kick off his weekend by finding a mythical creature in a tide pool. On his days off he would go check on some of the beaches close to his house to clean up any garbage or debris that would wash up, especially after a storm like there had been last night. He had found some cool stuff, some gross stuff, but this was the first time he had found a mer.
Mers generally had been thought to be extinct. Died out sometime around the roman empire. All that were left were remnants of their underwater civilization. Evidence had shown that mers were enormous creatures of high intelligence, but the mer that Johnathan had found in the tide pool was… well… teeny.
There was what looked like blood in the shallow water. Long brown hair was plastered to its little face. Pale skin felt worryingly warm to the touch as Johnathan slipped his hand under the tiny mer and lifted it up out of the tide pool. Tentacles that didn’t even get a quarter of the way down his forearm had turned a sandy color at the tips, but that probably was camouflage. A tiny dribble of blood was leaking out of a cut on his little chest.
Poor little thing.
Jonathan glanced around before walking over to some of the stuff he had already put in garbage bags. After a little one hand shuffling around, he managed to find a plastic pail that had been abandoned by some family earlier in the week. He walked into the shallows and filled the bucket most of the way with sea water.
Hopefully this kept the little guy okay enough to make it back home. He very carefully set the little mer into the pail, gently pulling his tentacles off his wrist. After gathering up the trash bags in his free hand, he went back to his truck. The trash bags were thrown in the flat bed, and the little pail was set in the cupholder.
Carefully, he started his truck and started the drive back home, where he had some ointment and bandages and an empty fish tank for the little guy to recover in. He might currently have his little bunny, Daisy, at home with him, but he hadn't thrown out the fish stuff once he got her.
As the truck left the gravel lot, Jonathan missed the very angry looking selkie walking out of the ocean in the rearview mirror.
--
Warren woke slowly. He felt groggy and stiff. The water he was in felt pleasantly warm. Good. That meant Vega had found him and he was back in his home.
That storm had been awful. Getting thrown around in the waves. He had slammed into the sharp rocks near shore before ending up on the beach. Thankfully he had been able to crawl into one of the tide pools so he wouldn’t dry out before Vega found him.
He turned over, expecting the well worn and smooth stone that was Vega’s cave. Or Warren’s nest. Sometimes Vega would take Warren to his own home and settle him in his nest. Instead, he felt what was unmistakably sand against his back and side.
There was no sand in his nest, or in the nest he had made in Vega’s cave. He opened his eyes, expecting to be back in the tide pool or perhaps trapped in another plastic bottle, but instead found himself in an even stranger place. It was much deeper water than the tide pools, and warmer, and it was shaped like a cube, and...
Warren gasped. This was a fish tank.
He shot up off the fine sand that was in the bottom and glanced around in a panic. There were a few plastic plants softly waving in the water, and the hum of some kind of filtration thing on the edge of the tank. Warren glanced down at himself and suddenly realized why his chest felt so stiff. There was a large white bandage over his chest, where there had been pain. He softly whined and looked past the glass.
He was in a human house. He saw that he was on some kind of big table. After a little more staring, he realized that the room the tank was in was the kitchen. There were knives out on the counter, and something was bubbling away at the stove. It felt like ice had dropped into his stomach. “No.”
This human was going to kill him. This human was going to eat him. He had to get out of there before the human came back.
Warren swam to the top of the water and stuck his hands through it. There wasn’t a lid on the tank. Thank the ocean! He hauled himself up onto the edge and glanced around. It wasn’t that far of a drop down and then he could just get onto the floor and find a door to squeeze under and then find the ocean. Easy peasy.
With a grunt, Warren managed to get up on the rim of the tank. His tentacles slipped onto the other side and with a little lunge he fell from the edge of the tank onto the table with a splat.
A beat passed where Warren tensed up in fear, and then he relaxed. The human didn’t hear. Warren dragged himself over to the edge of the table and looked down. It didn’t have four legs at the very corners like he had thought. There was just one big leg in the middle of the underside of the table. That means he couldn’t just climb down.
Warren felt a soft whimper in his throat. He screwed his eyes shut and then heaved himself off the edge of the table before he could think about it for too long. He hit the floor with a loud, wet slap. It hadn’t hurt as much as he had been thinking it would have, but it was way louder than he would have thought.
For a second, it was okay, and then Warren heard footsteps. Enormous, booming footsteps. The human was coming, and it was gonna be mad when it saw that Warren was trying to run away.
He whimpered and crawled towards the center of the table where the thick table leg was. Maybe he could hide under there and once the human left to look elsewhere, Warren could find some way to get out of here. He saw the human’s feet approach, and then after a moment where it stood by the edge of the table, it crouched down. Its eyes locked onto Warren nearly instantly.
Enormous, scarred hands reached out and Warren tried his hardest to crawl away, but tentacles on dry land didn’t get him very far, and this human was just so big. Vega would sometimes hold Warren in closed hands, and his hands comfortably fit around Warren’s body, but this human’s hands completely engulfed Warren’s entire body save for the very end of his tentacles.
He was trapped.
Warren tried to struggle free, wriggling with everything he had, but the human just tightened its grip. Warren was unwillingly brought before its face. There was short, dark brown hair. Startlingly green eyes. Pale skin that had been tanned by the sun. A thick scar across its cheek. A shudder shot down Warren’s back as the human scowled down at him.
It was taking everything to not cry. Vega would tell Warren about how humans were just the worst all the time, especially after a long visit in the human world. How humans would slaughter fish-creatures like him and then chop them up for meat if given the chance. How violent they were. How much they feared what they didn’t understand.
That was it!
Warren would just… make the human understand he wasn’t just a fish and then he’d be let go! He felt the human move and instantly jolted out of his thoughts. “Let me go!”
The human stopped moving. Warren saw its eyes widen.
“Please!” Warren squirmed a little more. “I - I’m not just a fish. I’m a person, like you. Surely you wouldn’t try and eat someone who can talk, right? I mean, I have a name and everything. It - it’s Warren, by the way. What’s, uhm, what’s your name?”
The human raised its other hand and moved it a certain way. Warren was sure it had meaning, but he couldn’t understand.
“Uhm… I don’t understand hand movements? I can speak human and I can kinda read human, but I don’t know the visual version of… human.” Warren bit his lip. Of course he had been captured by a human who didn’t understand. Just his luck. A human that didn’t even care he was trying to plead for his life because the human didn’t know because they couldn’t understand each other!
While Warren was trying to figure out if it was even worth trying to speak merlish at the human, the human moved over to the table and dropped Warren back into the tank he had woken up in. The small mer thrashed a little bit in the water at the unexpected release, but soon was right side up and holding onto the side of the tank. At least the human wasn’t going to kill him yet. The human rattled around in a drawer for a moment before coming up with a notepad and a pen. After a second, the human turned the pad over to show Warren something.
The paper read Johnathan. Warren squinted hard at it. He only kind of could understand written human. “Joe-ha-na-than. Johanathan? Is that your name?”
The human shook his head and then scribbled something underneath it. The human had written “Ja-nah-than” underneath the previous name.
“Johnathan?” Warren tilted his head. “Is your name Johnathan?”
The human nodded and turned to a new page. After a moment with a pen, he turned it around. ‘I am happy you are okay, Warren.’
“Oh. Thank you. I guess you rescued me from the tide pool.” Warren breathed a sigh of relief. He was gonna be okay. He turned the human onto his side. “I was really worried there for a moment. With the whole waking up in a tank in a human kitchen thing, I thought I was about to die.”
The human turned away from the tank and gathered something up off the counter. When he turned around, Warren saw bits of raw fish meat in his hands. It smelled fresh and delicious too.
Warren perked up. He didn’t want to push his luck with this human, Jonathan, but when he pulled up a chair and tore up the fish meat and held out a little bit for Warren, he had to take it and start eating it. It tasted so good, filling Warren’s little belly. Once the little scrap of meat was gone, Warren hopefully held his hands out for more. The human smiled softly and held out another scrap.
This human was pretty okay, for a kidnapper.
---
Vega was fuming, to put it mildly. Well, he had been fuming for the first half of the journey up towards wherever the human had taken Warren to. Now he was trembling.
What-ifs had started to creep into his mind. What if the human had hurt Warren? What if the human had…. Vega had decided not to think about whether or not he was too late. He just had to find where the human had taken Warren and then rescue him.
After about an hour or so of walking, following the roads that the human’s trucks had left tire tracks in, Vega came across the house that the human’s truck was parked at. A little bit of rage blossomed in his chest. This human had his friend in there. He had to go in there and find him. Bring him back to the ocean.
There was a moment where Vega thought about removing his seal skin just in case the human tried to grab it, but then decided to tie the skin, currently shaped like a coat, tightly around his waist. He could shift like this if need be.
Vega would turn into a seal and bite the human if it came down to it. He couldn’t just leave Warren in the hands of this human.
He puffed out his chest and stormed up to the door. He raised a fist and knocked heavily on the door.
There was movement inside and then he heard the door unlatch. Vega’s mouth went dry when the heavy wooden door opened to reveal probably the biggest human that he had ever seen in his life. Vega knew that his human form was a little small, only five feet tall, but this human was just big. Vega literally was eye level with the human’s stomach.
The human raised an eyebrow at Vega.
Vega swallowed softly, and straightened his back. “You stole my friend, and you’re going to give him back.”
The human didn’t move.
“The octopus mer that you took from the beach earlier today. Where is he?” Vega tried peering around the enormous human. He could smell some fish cooking in the kitchen, and he prayed that Warren was safe. “He needs to come back to the ocean, where he belongs.”
“Vega!” Warren’s soft voice came from back in the house.
Anxiety twisted in his chest. Vega looked up at the human, eyes wide and pleading. After a second, the human moved aside and gestured for Vega to come inside. Vega strode into the house and went directly back to where he heard Warren’s voice. He found Warren clinging to the side of a fish tank, eating a piece of seared fish. He looked fine, except for the thick, white bandage that was across his chest.
“Oh thank goodness.” Vega softly petted Warren on the head. “You’re alright. The human didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“No, he’s actually pretty nice, for a human.” Warren climbed up onto the side of the tank. “His name is Johnathan.”
Vega glanced at the human, who had wordlessly gone over to the stove and was messing with something on it. “Johnathan?”
“Mhm. He doesn’t talk, but he’s pretty nice.” Warren finished off the little piece of fish he had been eating. “Would you like some fish? He cooked a whole piece for me, but I’m kinda full.”
Vega glanced at the piece of seared fish that was sitting on a plate near the fish tank on the table with a chunk missing. He looked up at Johnathan, who was eyeing him out of the corner of his eye. “Just one moment.”
Jonathan had moved some fish onto a plate next to a pile of pasta and turned to look at Vega. He raised an eyebrow.
“I should… apologize for being so brash.” Vega grip the arm of his coat shaped skin. “I was just scared for Warren. We haven’t had the best experience with humans.”
Jonathan patted Vega on the back before sitting down on the table. Vega hesitated before sitting down in the other chair. Warren hopped down onto a damp towel before crawling over to where Vega was sitting.
It was a strange friendship between the three of them, but it was going to blossom into something beautiful.
