imagining that in exchange for land-dweller trinkets, a merman agrees to teach you how to swim. he's oddly fascinated by things that make noise: snow globes, music boxes, and even the strange rectangle you carry around with you obsessively. he wants something that makes beautiful noise, but you explain to him that they won't make the same sounds underwater because of the electrical components.
to remedy this, you both agree to a secret spot where you'll bury these new treasures of his, so he can visit them anytime he likes. however, he reserves listening to them only when you're around.
warnings; frightening descriptions of water, inaccurate descriptions of surfing probably, some frightful moments, detail heavy, the merman is a tad stalkerish (implied), sudden kiss, homeboy falls fast and hard here man, you got a dawg
wc; 2,049
divider; @/dividers-are-us
if you want a second part, pls check the a/n
please interact and reblog if you enjoyed this little piece! I'd love to hear your thoughts! 💙
It had all started one evening when you took your dog out to the beach to shit in the sand.
The beauty of dusk had already come and gone in a great wreath of fire snuffed by the heavy blues of nightfall. Distantly, out into the sea, the final remnants of the orange sunset were smothered between the blackening sea and the coming darkness. As the day faded, a sense of ease came over you as you listened to the rush of waves lash against land; wind carrying the sea-spray to you, speckling you with foam.
Kermit, a gangly mutt of some years old and unknown genetics, was typically the most playful at these hours, opting to spend most of his time camped out in front of the air conditioner during daytime heatwaves. He enjoyed frolicking through the shallow water and rolling in the damp sand, sometimes chomping at writhing waves with his jowls and letting the salty water gush out of his mouth.
You couldn't say you were particularly thrilled by the smell of wet dog permeating every surface of the house each night after the fact, but you couldn't deny the goofy guy his fun, either.
It was another evening following the same routine: keep the dog leashed until your flip-flops filled with sand, turn on the flashlight, unleash the beast, and watch him charge the distance from where you stood to the water. He would thrash around in the froth for a while before taking his nightly shit, leaving the unsavory cleanup to you.
That was what you expected to happen. It did not.
You unclasped the leash from Kermit's harness, anticipating for him to gallop away, ears flopping in the breeze, but he stayed sitting at your feet. On your feet, actually. He only did this when he wasn't feeling confident, or something spooked him. When you focused your light down on him, he licked his lips and started to pant, staring straight ahead.
The scope of your flashlight illuminated the tawny sand and craggy boulders and wadded fast-food wrappers tourists left behind before you caught movement within the light. It was a large creature wrenching around in the shallow water behind a cluster of stones, only its tail visible. You recognized this spot immediately as one that local fishermen liked to use to lure bait-fish into nets.
Ahead of you, the creature continued to lurch and throw its body around, but was beginning to slow, showing signs of fatigue. In the yolk brightness of your light, an iridescent sheen reflected off its enormous tail as it whipped through the air. You couldn't discern exactly what it was. It couldn't have been a shark because they didn't wander in this close to land; it could've been a dolphin since they're curious enough to interact with humans, though you suspected that that wasn't the case, either.
"Poor thing, Kermit," you said to the dog, whose ears perked at the syllables of his name, "it probably won't make it through the night at this rate. There's not a lot that can be done when they get caught in those nets, though. Let's get back home."
You reattached Kermit's leash and pulled him in the direction of the house without giving him a chance to shit. Inevitably, you would regret it in the morning when you were on your hands and knees, scrubbing brown stains out of high-pile carpet, but it seemed to be the better option as opposed to standing there while something slowly died.
Perhaps it was that feeling of helplessness that brought you back to it an hour later, sans the dog. While brushing your teeth, you realized that you couldn't look at your reflection. Be it from self-loathing or guilt, you attributed this shame to that big fish and your unwillingness to help it because it was just a fish, and the net would've been too difficult for you to unravel with your own hands.
So, you left again with a big kitchen knife, a pair of pliers, and gardening shears. Those nets weren't made of Kevlar; they weren't indestructible. One of these options was going to work, even if you had to hack and saw at the netting throughout the night. The only thing that worried you was being able to get the creature back into the water before it died, by yourself.
It was with great relief that you saw its tail still thumping across the sand, albeit weaker than it had been before. You didn't have much time to do this; if you were going to do it, it needed to happen now. You'd deal with the consequences of pissed-off fishermen in the morning.
You situated the flashlight in your mouth, clenched between your teeth, and unlocked the pliers and gardening shears so they were ready to snip. As you approached, sand crunching under your weight, the creature abruptly stopped moving—not sudden death, not rest, but a complete, total stop as if it understood that someone was coming. That sort of rigidity that came with fear gripping your spine and stopping you in your tracks.
This made you take it slow as you peered around the stones, nearly losing the flashlight as your jaw went slack.
It was a man caught in the net! No, that couldn't be right because the gigantic tail still swished across the sand impatiently. Your light whisked from the upper half of the body, an unmistakably masculine, defined physique with a deep-olive complexion, to the long tail, which was seamlessly attached to his midsection, scales glinting twilight indigo and silver over black.
His face was beautiful, clear, and angular with an aquiline nose and pupil-less milky green eyes watching you distrustfully, but without fright. Along both sides of his neck and between his ribs were feathery gills that had started to quiver and flare when you captured him in your light.
Your first instinct was to continue marveling at this man, gawking at all of his strangeness and lovely parts, because who knew if you'd ever see him again once he returned to wherever he belonged. But there was no way of knowing how long he could sustain himself on land before those gills of his finally shriveled up with the rest of him.
"Hey, I'm going to help you out, but you can't move around," you said to the fish-man, whose expression never changed from intense watchfulness. You didn't know if he had understood a word you said, but you pulled out the gardening shears and started clipping away at the diamond mesh that bound him.
The fish-man only flinched and hissed at you once, when you were too unmindful of the shears being close to his face. He relented to the idea of your help quickly by lying still, tail gone flat in the sand, but those eyes of his never stopped observing you. You tried to concentrate on snipping the individual loops in the mesh, avoiding his skin and scales as you went, but the longer he stared at you, sized you up, hated you, or adored you, it was difficult to keep focused.
And, when you managed to cut the last of the threads, you locked the shears and backed away to give him space to move.
His only audible noise was a grunt of pleasure when he stretched his arms wide, revealing his long webbed fingers attached to claws, silky fins attached near the elbow, and clusters of those same iridescent scales as on his tail. You could see the muscles shift under his skin.
"How did you even get caught in that net, dude?" You asked him, receiving an uncomprehending smile and loving look. Then, he reached for one of your legs and pulled it, as if to bring you down onto the sand with him.
You gasped, ripping out of his grasp and tottering back towards the beach.
"Nope! No! Get out of here, you're free now." Suddenly, you felt that bringing the knife had been a brilliant idea. You remembered where it was on your body: In a sheath in your jacket pocket. "Seriously, fucking go before someone else finds you and turns you into a museum exhibit."
But there was no inter-species communication here. Only a fish-man determined to yank you off your feet, and your desire to have nothing to do with that.
So, when he next tried to drag his body and heavy tail closer to you, you turned and sprinted away towards the beach, towards safety. With your flashlight pointed ahead, you could only rely on your hearing to perceive the world around you.
A coarse shuffling sound erupted from behind you just before an immense splash, something large breaking the surface of the water. When you turned back with your light, the fish-man had gone without a trace, and the nighttime tide continued to creep higher onto the beach.
Nobody would believe this. You'd get accused of taking shrooms from that hippie-dippie lady with a truck on the boardwalk again.
So, the thought of him stayed with you in silence for some weeks. Even as you climbed to your feet on your surfboard and rode the crest of the wave until it sloped down, piling back into the sea, and flattened out. Your board skimmed the surface of the water, slowing gradually, drifting with the rise and fall of mounting waves.
You were already swimming for the next one before your heart rate could even begin to settle.
There was never a good time to be distracted while surfing, but the thought of the fish-man pervaded your mind; gnawed at your thoughts with curiosity and wonderment and smugness, because you were the one who was able to witness him that night, nobody else. Then, you imagined that he could be out there with you right now, watching from somewhere beneath the surface.
As the tail of your surfboard lifted, you rose to your feet with it and tried to gather your balance. What was ordinarily muscle memory, a simple process that you'd practiced hundreds of times over the years, suddenly felt insurmountable—like every bit of strength in your body had abandoned you all at once, and you could not control the trajectory of your board.
You wiped out, sucking in a hard breath as your back broke through the surface of the water and you went under. As the world around you became muffled with seawater filling your ears, your body thrashed weightlessly against the turbulent undercurrent.
Just then, you felt solid arms surround your body as if in a protective embrace. Your instinct was to try to scream, but opening your mouth would inevitably turn you into a coroner's report in a filing cabinet. That fact didn't keep you from struggling in that thing's arms, nails sinking between scales and carving crescents into flesh. You felt muscles tense under your hands, yet you were held fast and firm as you were propelled through the water towards the surface.
You were thrown across your surfboard, the water already beginning to calm as the lip of the wave had already reached the distant shore. You weren't entirely coherent as you climbed up and straddled the board, legs gently paddling towards land.
That was when you felt long fingers lightly graze one of your legs, startling you to the point of a shriek. You drew your legs up behind you and flattened your body to the board, believing the solid surface to be safer than having any part of your body submerged.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Fingernails rapping at the underside of your board.
You lifted your chest from the board to see over both sides of it, finding nothing until you turned your head to the right, and a familiar face stared back at you. He was swimming flush with your board, inches from your face, still beautiful and still just as strange.
His proximity nearly made you topple off the other side, heart lunging into your throat, stifling anything you could think to say aside from: "It's—It's you."
Once again, he didn't seem to understand spoken words, but smiled at you adoringly despite it, and grabbed the back of your head to pull you in for a kiss.
------------------
a/n: so I've got an idea for a second part where, like, perhaps mc is trying to get to know him better for the sake of understanding him, but merman bro here is just trying his hardest to court MC with all he's got and mc is just like "haha awww" when he hands them a pearl or some shit akdjaejwhehh
I remember reading a merman fic on here a few years ago, it was about a homeless merman living in a fountain and the reader had a farm they brought him to. It was 2 chapters and I think it had a Christmas special. If anyone remembers what it was called let me know
Prehistorical!Mermaid X GN!Caveperson!Reader (POC friendly)
Pronouns: You/Your
Summary: Separated from your pack, you spend the night alone, or... not?
Warnings: None.
Word Count: 1172
A/N: Shhhh, I know I'm late...
Three suns ago, your pack had crossed the open plain, following a herd of great woolly beasts north toward dryer grass. You had followed too, until the storm came with rain hard enough to blind and thunder that shook your bones. In the confusion, with everyone shouting and the smell of wet earth and fear thick in the air, you lost them.
You had searched until your feet bled through the wrappings of hide. Now, with dusk creeping over the valley, the river is all you have. It cuts silver through the land, wide and slow, its banks lined with patches of reeds taller than your shoulders.
Mammoth tracks press deep into the mud nearby, old enough not to worry you. Fresh deer droppings cross near the shallows. Good signs. Water means life, you remember your elders told you, and life means food.
You glance toward the darkening current as you drop your bundle of furs beside a flat stone. The air already starting to smell cold. If you don’t make fire before the sun vanishes, the chill would take you before dawn.
You gather dry grass and break branches from a dead tree. Thankfully, you carry embers wrapped in bark whenever you travel, but after unwrapping yours you find they had died in the storm. So you kneel in the dirt with a sigh and work from scratch.
Flint strikes pyrite. Once. Twice. By the third strike, a spark catches, and smoke curls upward. You bend low, breathing gently until the dry grass glows orange and finally bursts into flame. Relief loosens your shoulders as the warmth brings a vague sense of comfort.
The fire crackles warmly as darkness settles over the valley. Somewhere far away, wolves call to one another. You add thicker branches to your fire and wrap your furs tighter around yourself. Your pack would make camp tonight too, perhaps beyond the hills. Perhaps searching for you. Or perhaps believing something had already taken you. Your stomach twists at the thought.
A sudden ripple disturbs the water, instantly catching your attention. The river moves strangely near the reeds, as though no wind touched them. You rise slowly, gripping your spear tight. The fire snaps behind you as you step closer to the bank.
Nothing.
Only black water reflecting the first stars of the night. Still, the unsettling feeling of being watched remains. You scan the reeds again. The old hunters in your pack spoke often to beware of eyes hidden in darkness; big cats, cave hyenas, crocodiles farther south where the weather stayed warm. They could all kill you in seconds.
You were taught early to trust fear, because those who ignored it don’t usually get to tell the tale. Though your fear of what lingers in the water seems to be unjustified, as after several long moments, the river stills completely.
With one last lingering look, you back away and return to the fire. The warmth wraps around you as exhaustion finally takes over. You curl up beside the flames, tucking your knees close beneath heavy furs. Smoke drifts upward through the cold air, carrying sparks toward the night sky.
Above you, the stars spread endlessly across the vast darkness above you. You know their patterns, they help guide your pack through migrations. Your people see stories in their wake. They are important. You stare at them until your eyes close, wondering if your pack is looking up at them as well right now.
After a few hours, you wake up, having survived your first sleep. Your hand curls around your spear before you fully open your eyes. The fire has burned low, glowing red beneath ash. Cold air bites at your exposed face. For a moment you remain still, listening.
The valley breathes quietly around you; no sign of danger. You slowly push yourself upright, properly looking around before feeding some more wood to the dying embers. The flames rise again, casting a trembling light across the mud.
Uneasy, you get up and slowly circle your campsite. Still, the damp earth holds no fresh tracks except your own. The river whispers softly nearby. You exhale and tip your head back toward the stars. Without the sun, the sky seems impossibly large. You crouch near the fire and absently drag your fingertip through the dirt, drawing patterns into the earth with no real purpose.
Then, you are pulled out of your daze by a splash. You spin toward the river, spear clutched tightly and raised above your head. The reeds sway slightly in the wind. Your pulse hammers in your chest as you slowly approach the bank again, feet silent against damp mud. Moonlight paints the water with pale silver streaks.
You search carefully along the shoreline, but find nothing. Not a ripple. Not a sound. Only your reflection. You retreat once more to the safety of the fire. Sleep comes harder after that. Every sound seems sharper, alerting your senses. Every movement of water draws your attention. Still, exhaustion wins eventually.
Morning arrives cold and damp. You blink awake beneath your furs and sit up slowly, rubbing the sleep from your eyes. Mist drifts low across the river, turning the world soft and pale. You lay still for a moment longer, enjoying the quiet dawn, before something, once again, moves in the water.
You freeze. Not far from shore, half-hidden by the reeds, you see a figure watching you. Human, you notice. At least… almost. Slowly, carefully, you rise to your feet. The figure does not flee this time.
Long strands of dark, wet hair cling to a narrow face smoother than any you have seen among your people. It almost seems to shine as it reflects the sunlight breaking through the fog. Her eyes are large and fixed curiously upon you.
You carefully inch closer. She remains still in the shallows, water lapping quietly around her shoulders as she tilts her head slightly. You mirror the motion, barely noticing as you do. Her lips curve upward into a smile and something warm flickers unexpectedly through your chest. You can’t stop yourself smiling back.
Your gaze drifts lower. The water shifts around… not legs? A powerful tail moves beneath the surface, scaled like a fish, golden beneath the morning sun. Your breath catches sharply in your throat. Realization strikes you all at once. You remember the stories. The strange creatures in the river old hunters whispered about beside fires.
Then, you both startle form noises behind you. You turn instinctively toward the sound. Familiar voices echo across the valley as figures appear in the distance. Relief surges through you.
Your pack has found you.
You look back toward the river, finding the woman of the river gone. Only widening ripples remain upon the water; pitiful proof of the creature that enchanted you so. You never see her again, though not for lack of searching. Still, you keep this story alive, telling it again and again in front of the fire until you yourself are an elder.
At the aquarium, you get a darling old lady on the phone.
"Hello! Would you mind coming to take a look at the fish in my pond? He's been living with me for years now but he's gotten rather big, you see. I don't think I can feed him anymore."
You want to redirect her to a number for pet services, but she laughs.
"Oh, by fish I mean a merman! Yes, yes. He does have a human half. I just forget sometimes."
You write her address down and prepare to swing by to see exactly what she's dealing with. She greets you with a big glass of icy lemonade, and you exchange some small talk in the kitchen before she takes you to the backyard.
"My husband Ed and I practically raised him, you see. Ed is gone now, and I'm getting a little too old to manage," she says, hobbling down the creaky back steps.
She leads you to the pond. It's not that the pond is small, it's that the merman is huge. You stop short. The old lady laughs and clucks her tongue.
"Look at you, Penny! Having a nice little bask in the sun, eh?"
'Penny' rolls over lazily and opens his eyes, his slick scales shining in the sunlight. Each scale is edged with a rusty red. To the untrained eye, it looks like he's missing a couple of scales here and there, but you know that those spots are where the blood glands are. He's a rare breed of river mer with the ability to secrete acid blood, which wards off predators.
You stifle a gasp when the old lady goes right up to him, bending on her creaky knees to give him a good scritch on the tail, cooing at him like he's an adorable puppy, not a fifteen-foot-long death sentence. At any moment, he could start secreting blood that would strip her hands to the bone. You can tell she's been handling him like this for years, though, and for whatever reason, this normally elusive breed is perfectly content to inhabit a tiny pond and tolerate this human.
"So, what have you been feeding him?" You ask quietly, keeping your distance so as not to startle the mer.
"Mostly chicken breasts and beef mince," she says, pushing the mer's shaggy hair out of his eyes. "But he likes yoghurt cups too! He gets one every now and then for dessert. Cranberry is his favorite flavor."
Goodness. You feel your eyelid twitch. You really don't know what to say. "I see."
"So, do you think you could take him? I might be moving in with my daughter soon, and there'll be no one to take care of him," she says.
"Yes, we'll take him," you say, feeling for the tranquilizer in your pocket.
"Come here and let him smell you," she says. "That way he won't be scared."
"Uh... I don't think that's a good idea..."
"Oh, he's harmless!" She coos. "Aren't you, Penny?"
He coos back at her, rubbing his cheek against her palm and turning his vibrant green eyes in your direction. You take a few steps closer, carefully watching to make sure he isn't going to start spraying blood everywhere. Once you're as close as you dare, you crouch down and hold your hand out.
"Hi," you say softly.
He hauls himself over the lawn to get to you, his tail weaving through the overgrown grass like a snake. He curls around you in a way that suggests he's curious but not scared. You hold very still as he leans in and rubs his cheek against yours. He smells of mud and a trace of yoghurt, disturbingly enough. After a moment, he decides you're alright and piles into your lap to demand that you pet him as well. You take the opportunity to tranquilize him, using years of experience–and a bit of numbing cream–to make sure he doesn't even notice the needle going in. He puddles in your lap, falling asleep almost immediately, his face pressed into your stomach. You call for backup.
"Hey," you say to your coworker on the phone. "You'll never believe what kind of mer I've found."
🖊️ by @hodaiasuh
🏷️NSFW Choose-Your-Own-Adventure
CW: Mpreg
A beautiful merman waits in the shallows, unable to leave the water.
So what happens when he starts waiting for you instead in this NSFW Choose Your Own Adventure?
🔗 READ/PLAY HERE
📖 Episode 1 of 12
❤️ A Love Labyrinth: Physical Touch submission! ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡
Howdy howdy! Can we know more about Thalass plz (O ~ O) ? I really liked the Aquatic Caregiver fic!!
(P.s Never forget you’re awesome!)
yes!!
Thalass facts (And some Merman lore I made up)
𓅓 He has long, wavy black hair, webbed fingers and a large blue tail. His teeth are also a bit sharp. His skin tone is rather pale.
𓅓 Thalass is curious to humans and a bit of a show off.
𓅓 Sirens and merfolk are different creatures in my lore! Sirens are a bit more human-looking and like to lure them to their deaths. Merfolk are water humans and protectors of the sea.
𓅓 Merfolk used to be more powerful and wield magic but humanity drove them deeper and they became a bit more animalistic.
𓅓 Despite this they CAN relearn these issues.
𓅓 They have a diet of primarily fish.
𓅓 They are actually much smarter than humans, especially if allowed to remember their past.
𓅓 They have one life partner so good luck getting rid of one if they get in your pants.
𓅓 They can draw power from the other side, yet can no longer reach it.
𓅓 Large numbers of their populations taken out by humanity. Therefore most merfolk hate and fear humans, since the power balance between the two species shifted.
