A/N: Well, this is an Aquaman fic, but it’s completely Vulko x reader (who is Arthur’s sister, as she is in all my Aquaman fics. I’ve made him a little younger to fit it better. As for the ‘AUness’, let’s just say that Atlanna kept Tom a secret a lot longer than she did in the movie, and that resulted in two children instead of one).
I’m not sure how many will read this because of that, but I can promise you it’s FULL of fluff. ;) Vulko is quite honestly my favourite DC character, so I still would have written this even if I knew it wouldn’t get a response, but either way, it’s here, and I hope you enjoy! :D
Summary: The worst thing about being Princess of Atlantis is the godawful time Vulko wakes you up at in the morning to train on the beach.
A huge breath of air was forced from your lungs as you fell face-first on the sand. The cold, wet sand. Eyes squeezed shut, you groaned loudly before coughing, spitting out a mouthful of beach. The feeling of something hard and cool resting against the base of your neck did not help quench your mood, either.
You opened your eyes purely to roll them before feeling the trident move away from your neck and turning over onto your back. Your hands reached up to shield your eyes from the blinding sun as you glared harshly at your opponent, who had since stepped back and was readying himself to fight once again. “For the fourth time in half an hour,” you ground out.
Rolling your eyes once again, you heaved yourself up, but did not move any further than a sitting position. Your own trident was lying beside you, but your gritty hands did not reach over to pick it up. “Yippee for me,” you said, sarcasm dripping from your voice like the water droplets from your hair, “Princess of Atlantis, here I come.”
“You’re already the Princess of Atlantis.” He moved forward, nudging the trident closer to you with a bare foot. “Come on, now. Let’s go again.”
“I know you don’t. But you need to.”
“Says everyone with sense.” He tilted his head forward slightly, a dark eyebrow raised, and you found yourself groaning yet again before falling – quite dramatically – back into the sand.
The King’s chief advisor sighed, sending a quick prayer to whoever was listening and absently asking them to give you a dose of willpower. And perhaps a touch of confidence, too. For the sister of a king, you sure were lacking in both those departments, though he supposed it had something to do with the fact that you really just weren’t the royal type, if there even was one. Where Arthur had discovered his powers quite young and was consequently able to train and practice more, you’d been busy on land, going to school and hanging out with your friends... all things a normal teenager would be doing. Nevertheless, you most definitely were not a normal teenager. Of course, you’d always known you’d shared your brother’s powers – whatever those were – but you’d never quite taken to making use of them. Now that you were older, however, and your roles as Princess were only increasing, so were your responsibilities.
Apparently staying alive was one of those responsibilities, or so training seemed to present the idea of. It was doubtful that anything similar to the whole Orm fiasco would happen again, but you supposed it was understandable how a princess who didn’t know how to defend herself or how to properly hold a trident wouldn’t be very beneficial to the Kingdom.
It didn’t mean you had to like it.
Vulko turned his head and glanced across the sea, watching the waves roll in for a moment before averting his gaze to the almost fully risen sun. The only reason he’d placed your training sessions first thing in the morning was so that you’d be able to enjoy the rest of the day without the dreaded ‘sparring with the fish’ (as you so eloquently put it) looming over you like a storm cloud. Apparently, however, he’d taken Arthur’s comment of ‘you know, lie-ins are her entire existence and she seriously will not appreciate you waking her at such a shitty time as half-past six’ as an understatement.
It most certainly had not been an understatement.
Returning his gaze back down to the ground, he wondered briefly if your sudden silence meant you’d fallen asleep. He wouldn’t have been surprised.
He walked up to you, crossing his arms over his chest once he’d stopped. “You’re not sleeping,” he said, posing it as both a question and as a way of telling you it was not happening.
“I wasn’t,” you said, “but stay right about there and I will be soon. You’re blocking the sun perfectly.”
“A good sense of humour isn’t a necessary characteristic of the Princess of Atlantis,” Vulko told you, twisting his trident around and poking you in the stomach with its hilt. You jolted in surprise and opened your eyes to glare up at him.
“Yeah, well, it’s the only good characteristic I have.” It was nothing more than a grumble, but Vulko heard it nonetheless as you begrudgingly heaved yourself up and onto your feet, rubbing your hands to attempt to free them of the wet sand before grabbing your trident and dragging your feet over to stand a little way apart from him. The stance you proceeded to get yourself into was a lousy one, even you knew that, but when you glanced up and looked over to the man, he was surprisingly letting the smallest of smiles grace his lips. Visibly deflating, you heaved a sigh and glared at him. “What?”
“Nothing,” Vulko replied, righting his trident and stepping to the side, “you’re just very endearing when you’re half asleep.”
“I wonder whose fault that is.”
“Certainly not mine.” He stood as he had done before, and you mirrored him.
“Sure it isn’t, Mister ‘get up, dressed, and meet me outside in ten minutes’. I mean, ten minutes? As if waking me up at half six every damn morning isn’t enough! Just because you can get up early doesn’t mean I can.” You huffed in annoyance as his little smile grew. “Do you know what? I’m just not gonna get up next time.”
“I’m just not gonna get up to- tomorrow?” You stared at him wide-eyed. “What happened to training every two days?”
Vulko crossed his arms over his chest and looked at you. “Well, I don’t see why it matters considering you’re apparently not going to get up.” He rose a dark eyebrow as you seemed to realise you had, in actuality, said that and completely sobered your expression. In all honesty, the both of you knew he would indeed get you up the next morning if that was what he wished. Despite your defiant streak, he had known you since you were a baby, holding you in his arms while Arthur practiced his own training on the exact beach you were on now, and building sand castles with the both of you after he was done. He’d taught you to swim, how to catch your first fish without a fishing rod… he was a father to you in all but name, and you a daughter to him. Getting you up in the morning was not a difficulty for him and he was, quite frankly, very experienced in the matter.
“Why tomorrow?” you asked almost meekly, an underlying hint of a whine in your voice.
“Because by the time we have to go back to eat breakfast, we’ll have barely done anything this session. Tomorrow’s will make up for that.” He looked at you, almost daring you to challenge him on that, and was greatly satisfied when you sighed in defeat and moved back into position, holding your trident out like he’d taught you and schooling your expression to look more… well. Like you didn’t currently want to curl up in a corner and sleep.
“There we go!” Vulko grinned, and he gave you a wink that almost made you break. He waited until you were ready – or at least as ready as you could possibly be – before attacking.
Training you was different to how he had trained Arthur, and so he was often learning things from your sessions as much as you were. Arthur had had lessons on using his trident, among martial-arts and other fighting techniques, from quite a young age, purely because he was the heir to Atlantis. He seemed to have adopted many of your mother’s traits – those being all the ones that came with being an Atlantean; super speed, super strength, increased vision… you had them all, of course, but you clearly took after your father more in that those traits seemed to be coming at you a lot slower than they had Arthur. Perhaps that was why you disliked training so much. That and other things. You’d always been a little less interested in the royalty side of your life, preferring to stay on land, but, as your brother liked to say so often: ‘the fish people need their princess as much as they need their king.’
So, he was going a lot slower with you, taking things at your own pace and only increasing it when he believed you were able. Orm had been defeated five months ago, and he’d taken up your training a few weeks after at both Arthur’s request and his own decision. It was going to take more time, he knew that, and it was lucky really that he was patient, because you certainly weren’t.
"Left, left, block, right, and block again- good! Very good, Y/N!” You couldn’t stop the slight smile at his praise once you’d successfully blocked his trident with your own before pushing hard and causing him to take a step back. Shoving your wet hair away from your face, you jumped back into position and waited for him once again. In all honesty, once you got started, it wasn’t as terrible as you made it out to be, and Vulko was well aware of that fact. Arthur had been the exact same.
The two of you continued for a time, blocking and parrying and sparring, and, after you’d fallen to the mercy of his trident about four or so times – an improvement, he assured you – he finally decided that perhaps this time, you really had had enough.
Smiling down at you from where you were lying, panting on the sand after being knocked over, he lifted his trident and tossed it to the ground. You made no move as he came to sit beside you, stretching his legs out and glancing back over at the sun, which had risen a considerable amount since the last time he’d looked over.
“Done?” He turned his head down to where you were staring at him, chest still rising heavily with each breath.
“Ah, praise be to whoever was listening out there!”
“And what exactly did you say to this ‘whoever’?”
“That I need help because a crazy old fish had dragged me out of bed at an ungodly hour and then proceeded to force me to throw a three-pointed stick around on the wet beach.” You shrugged as best you could lying on your back, and Vulko, despite the insult about his age that he really should not have let go, smiled and fondly shook his head.
“You really aren’t as bad with the trident as you think.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Everything and more.” He sat back, bracing his arms behind him. “If you just believed in yourself a little, then perhaps you wouldn’t find it so difficult to let yourself enjoy these training exercises.”
“’Enjoy’ and ‘training’ aren’t words that should be used in the same sentence.”
Vulko’s eyebrows rose, but he said nothing more on the matter, choosing simply to reply with a barely audible sigh and turn his head back to face the water. He remembered times years before where he’d sit with you in his lap as a small child, letting the waves lull you to sleep while he called out commands to Arthur and watched him practise solo moves with his trident.
Your brother had used to bring you down to the beach with him each time he met with Vulko while your father worked. Of course, he’d known his son wasn’t actually intending to build sandcastles with you, and was instead leaning more on the side towards ‘train with a man from a kingdom under the sea’. He’d always been certain that the both of you had never been anything but safe with Vulko.
He glanced down as he felt something on his legs, and watched, waiting patiently while you scooted the small distance over to him, lay your head down in his lap and shifted into a comfier position. Almost on instinct, his hand came to rest on your forehead, smoothing your wild hair back – Atlanna’s, he couldn’t help but add.
“Do you think I’ll ever be a good princess?”
“A good princess? What exactly does that mean?”
You scrunched your face up a little in thought. “I just… feel so useless sometimes. Arthur can do all these things that I can’t, and he’s such a great king that I… I don’t know. I don’t know how I can ever be like him. But I want to.”
“In what way do you feel useless?” He moved his hand to your wet hair splayed across his lap, absently running his fingers through it while he quietly regarded you. It was definitely a big change in topic, but he wasn’t complaining. Any chance he got to make you spill your troubles to him so he was able to help was truly a blessing, considering your tendency to keep your feelings hidden.
“Well… for one, I can’t fight. I mean, how many times did you get me on the floor today? I lost count after a hundred. Arthur’s… magical with his trident. He moves so fluidly, and he never once is beaten… just like you.”
Vulko watched as you stared up at the cloudless sky, eyes squinting slightly against the sun. “Tell me how old you are,” he said, and you gave him a look.
“I do, but I’d like you to tell me either way.”
Rolling your eyes at the pure mystery of Atlanteans – or maybe it was just Vulko – you shook your head in defeat. “Seventeen.”
“How long has he been training with me?”
“Uhh… I don’t know. Fifteen years or so?”
You moved to open your mouth, before evidently realising the point he was attempting to make and shutting it once again. You heaved a sigh. “Five months?”
“Four,” he corrected. “You see, there’s quite a significant difference between fifteen years and four months, isn’t there? A lot can happen in that time. Arthur was just as inexperienced as you are now four months into training… perhaps even more so considering I didn’t train him nearly as much as I do you.”
“Well, he wasn’t a king back then, and he was barely a prince. I taught him as much as I could without Orvax growing suspicious of my whereabouts, but soon enough he became exactly the trident-master I had expected him to be, just as you will. It isn’t going to be easy – it never is – but in time you’ll get better, and you’ll learn new strategies and moves to better defend yourself. You’ve already shown improvement. You could barely lift your trident four months ago.”
He smiled at that. “And is it so heavy now?”
You glanced over at your trident, which was laying next to Vulko’s by his feet. “Not really.”
“But… but it’s not just about fighting, though. I mean… you know me. You’ve seen how I can’t swim as fast as the Atlanteans, or swing that damn trident around as well as-”
“Don’t forget that you have human inside you, too,” Vulko interrupted, patting your shoulder. “Arthur’s Atlantean side is especially prominent… he’s been in the water since he was a child. For you, however, your human side seems to have won out, which is maybe why you’re feeling as though you’re slower in some areas.” He contemplated you for a moment, watching as you stared sullenly at the sky. As much as your rebellious and disobedient nature had altogether increased as of late, he knew it was because you were under a lot of stress, and though you attempted to hide behind it and act as though it didn’t bother you… well. He didn’t need to have known you for seventeen years to tell something was off. He sighed slightly. “That doesn’t make you any less Atlantean, though. Being human isn’t a bad thing, and neither is showing more human traits than Atlantean. Being a good princess isn’t dependent on how Atlantean you are… or how fast you can swim or when you began your training. You’re already a good princess because you are you, and as much royalty as your mother and Arthur are.”
You tilted your head up slightly to stare at him. “Really?”
He tapped your nose, earning a feeble slap at his hand. “Don’t ever doubt it. This life isn’t easy to jump into. It will take time, and I know you know that, but it doesn’t have to be rushed. You may have been a princess since your birth, but you’ve only really recently taken on that responsibility. Take each day as it comes, and soon enough things will start getting better, yes?”
“Maybe they will if you wake me up a bit later,” you mumbled nonchalantly, fidgeting with the sleeve of your shirt. That nonchalance was quickly changed as you felt Vulko abruptly dig two of his fingers into your side, and you immediately screamed, hands rushing down to grab onto his while you involuntarily curled into a ball. “Don’t do that!”
“Do what?” he asked, an impish grin on his face, and you immediately stuck your tongue out at him, causing him to dart his hand back to wiggle his fingers into your sensitive skin again, your grip on him doing absolutely nothing to thwart him. A string of giggles left your lips and he found himself chuckling along with you, never one to miss an opportunity to make you laugh.
“Thihihihihis!” you just about managed to say in between your increasing hysteria, all the while battling with the hand that was both effectively dodging yours while also managing to hit all the right spots. Experience was everything. Damn old man.
“I think perhaps I might magically wake up an hour earlier than usual tomorrow morning, just in time for a wonderful training session,” he said loudly over your laughter. “And this time, I’ll come with a shoal of little fish to nibble you until you wake up.”
“D-dohon’t be mehehEAN!” Vulko’s chuckles only grew as you struggled to get your words out. He supposed rolling around like a fish out of water while simultaneously still trying to remove his hand from you could do that to a person. It was always a marvel how quickly the Princess of Atlantis could be reduced to a ball of absolute giggles, but he wouldn’t change it for the world.
He paused for the briefest of moments, but it was apparently enough time for you to scramble to your feet, clumsily launch yourself over him, grab up his boots from where they’d been left near the tide, and then quickly run into the sea, leaping over waves.
Vulko immediately got up and raced after you. “Don’t you dare hide them in another rock crevice!” he called out. “I’m warning you, Y/N!” Your mischievous laughter was a clear sign you were going to do exactly that. “Five o’clock in the morning! I swear to you! Five!”
And you were gone, submerged under the waves and definitely on your way to some hiding place he hadn’t noticed before. “Little urchin,” he couldn’t help but growl to himself, a smile on his face, before he dove in after you.
It was only later when he realised the both of you had left your tridents on the beach and they were most likely currently on their way to some museum.
