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Brae - M Merman x M Human (Reader) // NSFW

The pictures do not belong to me. I only created the mood board. Do not repost my work anywhere.

Content: NSFW/Lemon; flirting, merman’s insecurities from his family, blowjob (+ mention of teeth, nothing too explicit), drinking alcohol, NSFW scene involving handjobs by the merman, mention of touching the merman’s slit, kissing, then angst with thoughts of drowning and a fluffy-ish ending

Wordcount: 6539

“Tropemas” Summary: when the mer insisting on befriending you returned day after day, falling for him was inevitable

Notes: this comes at the beautiful request of @nikipuppeteer and unfortunately I had already planned a soulmate au, but I loved the idea of a mlm mer fic too much to not do it!! This really got ahead of me and I love my boys, but so much I couldn’t let it go without it being up to my really annoying standards. I hope you love them <3

Masterlist // “Tropemas” Masterlist

No matter the dangers accompanied by falling asleep on an unanchored boat, lethargy always overcame you. It was only a small rowboat and one swayed by the gentlest of waves, hardly a comfortable place to rest and your neck always ached the evening after, but time on the sea had become like second nature to you now, and the napping was long ingrained in your afternoons out.

Though waking with water dripping on your face was rare.

Only one cloud needed to mar daylight for you to wait indoors for a brighter day. Beyond the threat of losing yourself at sea, a storm would ruin the sketchbook tucked to your lap. Fragile paper couldn’t survive the wind or rain. Scattered scrawls were no works of art, but after hours rocked at sea and memorising the crags of the cove, it was your treasure, one you took to after moving from the cities and finding peace in the small costal town, and the view was the first you’d had not from cramped flats.

Rare enough, another droplet cool dribbling down your cheek roused you to find the sketchbook damp too, tossed open. Pages wettened still from slender fingertips – clawed, tracing your latest landscaping of cliffs, pencil lines smudging into faded lines. Of all sketches, this hardly finished and quickly ruining one was nothing to prize, but the creature tipping you and your boat precariously lower with every breath seemed enamoured by it.

Watching the creature, you were torn from wanting to scare him off – if you could even scare a thing like him, corded muscle trembling with balancing your boat, sharp-finned where saltwater shone on his dark skin – or wanting to feign sleep longer, just to admire how his teal scales shimmered, clashing and darkening with navy and streaks of black. The darkest scales tipped pectoral fins, sharpened points glinting like the narrow slits in his throat, or the ridged scales rising from the curve of a dark back, down to where his long tail swayed in the water.

You itched to draw him. If portraits were your talent, the sloping of his tail beneath the water would be decorating your papers before night, if he hadn’t ruined them.

Each touch of claws almost tore through the soggy paper and he turned the page. Saltwater dripped from hair curling in the heat of the sun when the creature lurched up and the boat jostled. His hand came to your thigh before you rose from the bench, like he had known you were feigning sleep. Where he was so soaked by the sea, you hadn’t thought it possible the slender fingers stroking up your leg could be so warm, pressing against you to trace a more developed sketch – of the same view, but he admired all the same.

Seasickness had never plagued you before in all your time at sea but how the creature rocked it then made your stomach lurch. He had torn through the paper and some noise tumbled free of you, a panicked cry or curse and you reached to snatch it back before he could damage it more. The merman had stiffened. Claws you hadn’t felt before snagged at you bare thigh and the swaying of your small boat only ceased when he rose and clutched the edge tight. In a small way, you were grateful for that.

You weren’t so thankful that it brought him closer.

For the depth of colours in his scales, the sunlight brightening his rounding eyes forced back your bitterness. Equally dark hair shone a hidden navy with his head canting, though he remained as silent as you. His thin lips pulled back and you thought it a threat with predator’s teeth bared, until a black tongue slid against the points of his teeth and he smiled; a macabre smile, but the beauty of it was like the rest of him.

The sketchbook rested on your lap now, cradled, and that was where he lifted a slender arm, down to the book. Pointing to the paper then to himself, and back to you. Again. Once more, before the boat rocked.

“Do me,” he whispered, soft, disarmingly so that he came an inch more from the water and sunk the boat that much lower. “Do me or I may tip your boat.”

He dizzied your head like the boat had your senses. “You want… you want me to draw you?”

“Draw,” he echoed. When he stretched out to the paper, you let him trace the faded pencil lines and bright eyes peered up at you beneath uneven hair tangling along his forehead. “Draw me. Tomorrow at noon. Or the boat tips,” the merman breathed again through a glinting smile of daggered teeth, not entirely a tease. Smaller claws once on your blank sketchbook traced across your bare thigh, grazing up before nudging the hem of your shorts.

The boat tipped without him to held it steady, and only when he began to retreat did you catch his hand. His fingers slid through yours, claws falling to trace the deeper grooves in your palm when you asked, “do you have a name?”

“Don’t you?” In sharing yours – and hoping he wasn’t in any way fae, he smiled wider. “Brae. Noon.”

The waters carried you another hour before the touch of his thumb tracing along your wrist as he had the sketches left your thoughts. It was harder to banish him from your mind completely and he followed you home, the odd warmth of him smothered to the back of your chest where it ached. Wondering how his scales felt against you in place of his claws did you no good.

Noon came and inevitably, you were settled as far out as the day before, though you hadn’t a real choice in whether you were to return, regardless of this being a day you would nap in the sunlight without his demand.

Mer roamed the cove – it was renowned for them, notorious creatures known for luring humans out to toy with them far from land. If Brae had looked before at your art when you napped, you had no way of knowing, of knowing whether any mer had approached you before. If you left the boat moored today and returned tomorrow, you had no doubt that you would be turned into the sea.

Maybe, a little part of you so far hard to smother, wanted to see him. It was curiosity settling you on the bench of the bench, a pencil twisting through your fingers above a blank page. Most mer, those who made their homes at the cove, shimmered brighter; not so much navy but sky blue, softer hues. Brae’s fins were just that bit sharper, eyes smaller slits with less light to them, his body far stronger than any others – the first like him you knew of.

Time passing beneath the sun worked in convincing you Brae hadn’t been anything more than a hallucination. Only the damp blemishes and ripped pages anchored you a little longer – and the memory of his touch was too hard to forget, until a splash of water tipped the boat and lips pulled back into an attempted smile.

You curled the open page from range of where his head canted and saltwater dripped.

With him leaning closer, now was an opportune moment to tell him that, actually, unfortunately, portraits weren’t you specialty, else he wouldn’t need to ask for his, but the words never came when light warmed his rounding eyes.

“When will you start?”

“Start drawing?”

“Start drawing me,” he said, though his stare had risen from the blank page. Like you had only the day before, Brae appraised from your crown to your toes, tongue caught in his teeth the whole time. The weight of it settled in your chest uncomfortably; whatever mer standards were, you doubted you were anything but unappealing to a creature so beautiful, but no comment came. “Now?”

“If I’m to sketch you-“

“You are.” Deep beneath him, the slow swaying of his tail rose through to his arms curling on the boat’s edge. He rocked with every move and his attention flitted from your towels bundled at your feet to your satchel bag. “To draw me. You are.”

“I need you to-“

“On the beach.” Words overrun as you lost your thought. He hadn’t once stopped moving, dipping under the water and rising the other side of the boat, or reaching out to just brush his hand to yours before rushing back. Only his chin rested on the boat now as he said, “we should do it on the beach. Safer. Dry.”

Safer.

Coughing over your laugh couldn’t muffle it when you turned closer. “Weren’t you threatening to throw me out my boat yesterday?”

He frowned. “Not now. Tomorrow. The beach tomorrow.”

“Brae-“

Claws tipped your chin and all breath rushed from you. They were weapons, like daggers poised to cut as the predator he was, but it felt like a caress how he brought your face closer, near enough the cool air from water clinging to him brushed you. “Tomorrow.”

Being so near, the strength to protest waned. How the pencil hadn’t snapped between your fingers was beyond you; it was all that was left stopping you from returning the touch, wanting to feel his scales – were they smooth or rough, how would they feel against you? – and all you knew was that the touch of claws against the tightness locking your throat didn’t feel like a threat anymore.

If this was how mer lured humans out, you weren’t against following.

“Will you lay still on the beach for me?”

“So you can stare at me?” Brae’s black tongue traced along his teeth with a low hum. “If you wish.” he said, a rising smile binding your throat tighter.

The claws now tracing against your top’s neckline bound your throat tighter. “So I can draw you.”

“Why still?”

“If you move, it’s harder to focus. Harder to draw you. I could- can I take a photo of you?” His answer came without a need to verbalise it; his smile was nothing like a threat, far from the twisting of his face and pressed fins beneath his jaw flaring. Under passing clouds, his darkening face harshened. In an effort to calm his growl, you swallowed. “Won’t people see you on the beach?”

Curiosity drove you to again. Before him, you hadn’t seen another mer so close. Flashes of scales glimmered beneath the water but they were a reclusive kind. Why he demanded a portrait yet refused a photography intrigued you, though not enough to outrightly question.

“See me?” Brae’s cheek turned onto his forearm. Beneath the high sun, seawater glistened on his dark skin, the edges of his gills and faint scales almost glowing. “Why would anyone rather look at me than you?”

The truth tingled on your lips. That he was beautiful, and your art could never do him justice nor any photo, but you swallowed it back. Until daylight fell and left a chill, the merman curled against your side, close enough one tremor could tip your boat. Only small talk passed between glances down, and each turn was returned with a small smile until those teeth earlier bared in threat no longer focused in your thoughts. Brae fell away with a lingering run of claws against your hand and the touch stayed with you long after you found yourself retracing the beginnings of his portrait that night. After the fuss of asking, it turned out you didn’t need a photograph to remember him.

Tales of reclusive mer lessened the popularity of this cove, which had been the enticement to it in moving. Finding a shelter of jagged rocks just beyond sight of anyone passing wasn’t hard, nor was it hard to find Brae among the waves when he crept up the beach- rather inelegantly but you couldn’t have done so any better with the huge tail dragging through wet sand.

“I see you sometimes.”

Brae heeded your plea that afternoon, resting not far from reach. Returning to water wasn’t a pressing urge when he only rested, hardly an exertion, but he thanked you for the slight shelter. His knuckles reached to brush you when he spoke and otherwise cushioned himself on his arms while you contented yourself by marking him.

“Sleeping is dangerous.”

That made your pencil slip. “Have you looked at my art before?”

Brae scoffed but turned away, not before his teeth bit on his lip. Shading came easier with the slight warmth in your chest that blossomed. If he had, he must have liked the art to want his own portrait and after a minute, you looked up to find your muse gone.

Not too far but a length of his tail away, the merman dug through hot sand. Looking beyond the way his scales glowed in this light, differently to when they shimmered beneath water, he cradled dozens of pebbles in his arms, face scrunched in looking for more. The pebbles mirrored him: some dark like coal, others among the occasional shell a soft blue. He continued unaware of your standing, muffling the pain of hot sand beneath your bare feet, how it stung like needles until you crouched and kneeled beside him.

“They’re pretty.” Brae clutched them closer. He attempted a sneak at your paper like he had all afternoon, and, like you had all afternoon, you tucked it away faster. This far, so soon, it was nothing of significance, but it had promise; promise from the evening of tending to it and tonight would be the same. “Will you take them back with you?”

“We gather pebbles.”

“Why?”

Brae’s teeth nibbled on his lip. “Mer secret.”

“Pebbles are a… a mer secret?”

He moved in silence, lifting two shades of pebbles before humming. “Yes. Pick.” One pebbled a blotched black, it was no hard choice to pick the softer teal pebble. Brae slotted it in his pile before his thin lips twitched. “Can I see?”

“No.” His smile fell, and his arm trembled beneath the stones. Had they not threatened to fall, the paper would’ve been in his grasp by then. “How will you take them all with you? Do you have something to carry them in?”

On your next afternoon by his side, Brae fawned over the netting pouch with holes just small enough pebbles wouldn’t slip through. He entrusted them to you overnight for safe keeping, had watched you clutch your bag tight as it weighed you down walking along the cove, and was quick to welcome you back, already settled and sprawled against the sand. He hadn’t understood the purpose of snow angels nor sand angels, but his arms turned out in the sand, close enough to snag your shorts, until he left you again.

From that day, your time together crept earlier. Unintentionally, but he always waited no matter how early you came to the cove, and he began returning your questions. Never telling the mer secret of why he hoarded colourful pebbles, but little questions, the most repeated being why you refused to show him his portrait, and you had to swat him away from your paper each time. On hotter days when the rocky shade didn’t suffice, he crept closer until his cheek nestled to your thigh beneath the shade of your sketchbook and when a quiet overcame you, his fingers ran along your forearm, following the twitching in your hand as you drew him laying against you.

Once, he slept on your lap. The running of claws fell low and only then you succumbed, carefully tucking back the dried ringlets from his smoothed forehead. Little scales scattered his jaw and glided beneath your fingers, though you stopped yourself from following them further when he turned closer and against your palm.

You missed him when you were home. On the evenings with only a nearly finished portrait to call company, you missed laying with him.

It hadn’t taken long for you walk down late one night, a half-opened bottle tucked near your supplies. Being near the cove now helped calm you, even if you came now only to settle against the familiar rocks and close your eyes to the crashing waves. Like the swaying of your boat, the faint warmth of sand beneath you lulled you, and you woke only to a soft whisper of your name.

“I drank… I drank this.”

Damp hair fell to your lap, a quiet groan turned into your thighs. The now emptied bottle fell into the sand and rolled down when Brae laughed, at first quietly, before turning and reaching out to your face. The touch of his claws fell to a loose embrace around your neck, where now he swallowed.

This late, you didn’t want to ask why he was here, how he had known – if he had even known, or if he came just like you. You only wanted to enjoy his company, however… inebriated. It hadn’t been much alcohol, and you would only feel slightly lightheaded had you finished it, but with Brae running his claws down your chest, it had to have been a little much for him.

“Wanna see,” he whispered – slurred, trying and failing to lean up on an elbow. “Me. Show… show me.”

Perhaps through pity, you did. Only through pity, and not from the slow rolling of heat in the pit of your stomach from his claws flexing, drawing you down closer as you opened to the page. It had come a long way, far from ever doing justice to the creature gasping, his defined jaw lowering and dark eyes lifting to you, but you welcomed the flush of pride from his growing smile.

“You make me look pretty. Pretty here,” he tapped the unfinished page. “Am not-not so pretty.”

Your voice came out a whisper as you returned the sketchbook, empty bottle with it. “You don’t think so?”

“Me? Pretty?” Brae huffed, a hot breath blowing his dried hair. Falling in long ringlets, your fingers twitched and in the hopes he wouldn’t remember, you reached out to tuck it back. “My tribe. They’re pretty. Pretty. Not me.”

His cheek turned into your palm when you traced the smoother scales scattering his jaw, down to the dip of his collarbones. “Did they tell you that?”

“Always. Not-I’m not them-like them,” he mumbled, losing himself to the alcohol still thick on his breath. “Never one of them.”

The sincerity sickened you. You wished your art could be better, so Brae saw a true reflection of himself but if it couldn’t be, if your work wasn’t enough, then all you could do was say so. “I think you’re beautiful,” you whispered looking out to the calming see, so lost in it you hadn’t noticed Brae shifting closer until he was level with you. “You are. Your colourings and how you lay in the sun and… you’re beautiful.”

You had more to say, so much more, but sand became your pillow. It dirtied your hair with your head tipping further back, a deeper angle to the kiss with Brae’s thumb pressing down on your chin. His parting lips carried a salty tang, a stronger sense of your emptied alcohol, but it fell away with his breaths hastening when his curling tongue tasted you, too.

Those same lips rose into a sly smile when you found the strength to reopen your fallen eyes and found Brae kissing himself lower. Drunken touches only minutes ago felt coherent now, bunching up your shirt for his lips to warm your stomach. Pressed beneath the muscle of his tail, a slow friction worked you into a heat but he fell further with his kisses nesting lower, a pause when he tugged on your shorts.

Every touch made you tremble. Brae settled between your legs and the sight alone was burning through you. He ran soft fingers down, following your stiffened cock as it twitched and ached. His tongue jutted through his lips to the side almost in thought, a breath before his fingers stroked up your length.

“All this for calling you beautiful?”

The merman’s head canted and that curling tongue flicked up the underside of your cock. Brae’s kiss rounded against your tip until he had you hard in his mouth and your eyes rolling back from the heat of him. For a creature of spines and claws and fangs, he kissed you reverently, deeper breaths growing shallow until he swallowed around you.

Through blurring eyes, barely lifting from the sand feeling hotter beneath you, you watched and felt his lips closing around you, groaning with his flattening of his tongue along the sensitive skin. Brae braced a hand on your tensing thigh and when the other stroked lower, a slight touch of claws grazing, you groaned and rolled your hips deeper against his hollowed throat.

Soft hair threaded around your hand. His growl rumbled deep to your hips as he bowed with your guidance, arching up until his throat tightened against you. Heat rushed in your stomach and his thick tongue swirled across your tip. The warmth of his lips fell down to your thighs the longer your body trembled.

“No.” Gentle fingers pinched your jaw until your lips met his. He tasted of saltwater and you and faint alcohol, nipping your tongue. “For… for being you.”

Until the sheen left his eyes, his smile no longer lopsided, Brae rested against you. Passing whispers came beneath the darkening sky and many were from you; with each whisper of his beauty, though you burned saying it, he turned impossibly closer and ghosted lips down your throat, your chest, wherever you were nearest.

“Remind me to call you beautiful more often,” you said, leaning over him. Weak arms ran up to your neck and it felt like a goodbye when he kissed you sweeter. No teeth caught your lips and no claws curled into your nape, only a touch of foreheads before he struggled into the water.

He had told you not to watch – “it’s embarrassing,” he’d frowned, the dead weight of his tail dragging in the sand – but you watched him go, and it was the last you saw of him for almost a month.

Your corner of the cove remained abandoned by the merman. No marks in the sand were left to show if he had ever come and from there, you couldn’t see far out to the waves, not like a mer could. If he watched you where you waited for him with your heavy bag and a nearly finished portrait, he never came.

Floating no longer felt right. Being on the water wasn’t right. This beach was wrong without a glimmer of navy flitting near you and on the sunniest days, the water almost clear, a hint of scales wouldn’t be missed when you stared down. The portrait was finished now; it had been finished for days.

If something had happened to him-

The thought burned in your throat and you swallowed it back.

Worse: if something hadn’t happened to him, Brae chose not to see you.

And if Brae truly avoided you, he couldn’t stop whatever creature had begun bumping under your boat. The surface barely rose with the smallest of waves but your boat rocked again, until water splashed with every jolt, not so different from the day Brae had almost toppled you, but different in every way.

Brighter scales darted beneath you before you ducked back into the – relative – safety of the boat. This wasn’t your merman, but the churning in your stomach made you think it was his tribe. For whatever reason, they taunted you, and at least two were on you now, countering the other’s hits so all you could was curl your knuckles against the bench until they ached.

You were going to be sick.

What could a frail oar do against creatures like them?

You were going to be really, really sick.

Any option was as bad as the other. Shore was too far to swim to if you wanted to avoid a watery grave. Trying to row and lowering the oar into water would be surrendering your only paddle. You couldn’t leave your boat. The portrait bundled on your lap would be ruined; they would ruin it.

It stopped with a heavier jolt, tipping so far water flooded your feet. The jaunts fell away minutes ago but your head swum too much for you to notice anything more than the shaking in your knees, chest braced against your thighs. One final shove to your boat shoved everything against you forward. Your bag skidded, the bench almost giving out beneath you, towels tangling, but the final shove didn’t topple you.

It surged closer to shore.

Only the faintest glimmer of navy disappeared when you looked back.

Water hadn’t felt right because it wasn’t. The rumours of mer weren’t folktale falsehoods. Maybe Brae wasn’t like them, but they tried to overturn you. They tried to ruin you and your portrait and had they succeeded, the promenade steady under your running feet wouldn’t have been something you were likely to experience again.

Leaving the cities had been your distraction. Leaving your family and friends for a calmer life by the beach had always been your dream, to turn to a simpler, less stressful life, yet the beach couldn’t be your solace anymore. Thinking of even your boat made you lurch to your feet in need of something to occupy you, anything but that merman lurking in the sea, anything but the creature you still wanted to see again, the same whose face mocked you from a hidden sketchbook.

After hardly any time at all, the sudden loss almost brought you to your knees. If this was grief, you didn’t want it. If that pang in your chest was heartbreak, you didn’t want it. Flames came so near to the portrait born of hours and sun and kisses it singed, but burning the paper felt like a burning your heart from your chest.

One last time.

One last hope.

Once more, before you burned him from your thoughts. The same taunts that occupied you like intrusions softened at night, when you imagined that in place of your fist was his touch, slender fingers rolling where you cock twitched beneath him. They came in dreams, in moments you lost concentration, and stalked you down to the cove where you settled the bag, the portrait tucked beside a lighter and driftwood.

Whispers of your name from the stirring waves doused the fire in your chest. Brae made it no further than the reach of waves when you collapsed against him, rambling to his lips, “it’s done. I finished it for you but-“

“It will be beautiful.” Brae framed your face in cold and trembling hands. “Like you.”

There was a haste to his kiss unlike before. When he teased you before with light nips rousing your desire, those touches tore back your shirt and bared you to the cold night. Brae wasted not one breath that was better spent settling against you pushed apart thighs, where the hard palm of his hand fell low to rub over your shorts until he coaxed you to roll up into his touch. Slender fingers curled around your hardening cock and stroked how you had dreamed of for weeks, the pad of his thumb following up to tease the seeping slit at the head.

“I want to touch you too,” you rasped. Brae’s laugh softened in the whistles of wind at your grunt when he rubbed tighter to your thick base, but he was soon to gasp with your fingers curling into the rougher scales on his hips until he dragged against you. “Here?”

Not even the crashing waves at his back could drown out the small whine. Where his taut stomach melded with the lightest of his scales, a slick coated them. The touch of it burned against your fingertips, tracing the swollen slit. He pumped your cock in his tight fist how you teased him, arching up when he ground down, his erection rising thick from the slit.

From laying over you, Brae’s trembling lips brushed yours once more. The slow fall of his forehead brushed your hair, his curls loose against your cheek and fluttering with every deep breath. How long he could breathe without struggle on land changed, and the touch of your hips rolling up, rolling against him, clearly took a toll, shorter gasps nestling into your neck. This was an exertion for him; how he trembled at your thumb following where his hand, rolling over the slick on the swollen, purple head.

Grinding his cock to yours came with difficulty as his tail dragged in sand, but a shock of pleasure bolting up to your crown until you strained to rut against him again. The desperation locked in your bodies wouldn't settle for anything less than his cock against yours. Soft blue and deeper navy nearer the tip, your mouth dried. The memory of his lopsided smile after stealing your alcohol struck you, too similar how he slurred you name from curling his fingers and gripping your cocks together. The cry lodged in your throat muffled against the slope of his throat where you kissed the scales there, chasing the rush of his pulse beneath his jaw.

Slick from his slit and hot, it was too much to bite back every moan and curse when he rolled his hips in time with yours. Brae learned fast. His palm rolled your sac slowly, drawing rougher pants, but it was a tighter rub that made you buck up. Your cock jutted against his base, far thicker and swollen, but against the wetter scales and he cried, “again. Closer, please.”

His hot touch stirred you into a delirious high. Brae was twitching, his body rocking hard and harder when you met him faster, arching up to graze the slick, sensitive skin of his slit.

"I want you," he breathed, disoriented kisses slowing when he trembled. "Come. Come for me."

If not for him, you dragged against his waist so you could feel the heat of him yourself. Brae’s fingers locked and he felt it as you did, your cock stiff when you came against his stomach, his scales, rasping when he rutted into his palm and a thicker release came minutes later against your thighs after you traced where his cock thickened at the slit.

In the moment his final gasp left him and Brae fell against you, he ought to be drawn, to be remembered forever. Soft arms wrapped you close to the warmth of him, away from the colder winds in the shelter of the rocks. Hot sweat glistened on his scales. It stuck your hair to your cheeks, where he brushed it away with kisses and closed eyes.

“Do you think anyone saw us?”

Brae's breath caught, but he swallowed past it. His knuckles grazed down your chest and up again. Stray scratches stung beneath the touch and his parted lips kissed it away. "I hope so," he breathed, and the words stirred something in your chest. Something primal and prideful; you wanted to be seen with him, this merman come to you one day, who decided they wanted you. "You were very loud."

Panting to his chest, you smiled. "And you were beautiful."

If there were mer watching, you hadn't noticed.

No head rested heavy on your chest when you woke. Evening had been a blanket to his embrace, but the stars were your only companion at the cove. Sand settled without hint of a trail leading down to the sea and if it had been windy, you might have excused it, pardoned the long-lasting cold on your bare body.

Those questions he had brushed away with a press of his tail to your hips rose to your throat like a fuel on fire. Brae came back. Brae left, after taking you on the beach. He returned to the sea and he left you alone and bare and shivering. He abandoned you where his tribe could see, where they could reach you and your bag-

Your bag.

It had been right there, right on the rocks and wedged firm. No wind could part it from them. No wind had, and no wind would lay it so carefully by the sloping of the beach, the flap resting open. The bag looked deflated, almost like… like it was empty.

“This isn’t funny,” you called out. It was a joke. It had to be a joke. If not a joke then something far, far crueller and each staggering step nearer the waves was a twist of the knife in your stomach. “Brae?”

Harsh water frothed at your ankles. It rose in spitting shivers up to your knees then thighs, where the evening’s memories dried and washed away. The waters this shallow were clear of mer but not of what you prayed was litter. Up to your hips now, stumbling in choppy waves and the cry that tore from you was unholy. It burned up through throat like bile and stung in your eyes. It stung in your chest where your ribs caved, the soaked papers and hours of nights in your lounge wasted in one, cruel jaunt.

Not just his portrait wrecked on the waters he crawled from, but your sketchbook.

How you found your way home was a miracle. You should have stayed in the water. You should have let Brae drown you, too.

Had his tribe done it? Had they been there while he stroked your cheek and lifted your chin in a soft kiss, his scales warming where your thighs tightened? That was all you could think and all you could bear to think. If it were anything more – if he really was so cruel, you’d rather never know, would rather blame it on his tribe for tearing him away.

You could drown your boat like your sketches. That cove belonged to him. It belonged to his tribe and you wouldn’t go near the water again, not willingly and if you saw him again, it would be in nightmares.

The only family you had lived in the cities far from you and too far for them to consider buying your boat, even taking it off your hands. The wood of it was old and would burn on a fire; best to be burned completely than sunken. Brae didn’t deserve anything of yours. He’d drowned your heart with your treasure.

If this was how mer lured humans out, you weren’t against following.

Finding your boat moored and undamaged rose with a sting. The cruelty of his tribe ruined the wood beneath the water from their earlier taunting. You wished they had done more. If his tribe had sunken it, finding a dark bundle of seaweed cradling pebbles wouldn’t have made your legs sway beneath you. Whatever the mer secret behind them was, it wasn’t enough to entice you back. They weighed down your boat as they weighed on your shoulders but in settling into it before setting it alight, you couldn’t help but lift one.

It was the pebble he had asked you of, choosing from two. In your hand it felt like his scales, smooth and cold and wet.

It was still wet.

Pebbles scattered among larger stones as it fell from your hand but you didn’t watch them fall. You watched the fingertips careful on your arm, how they traced down your tense muscles with an unwelcome familiarity.

“The pebbles,” you seethed. “What do they mean?”

His touch softened and both hands rose to stroke against your unyielding fist. “Do you like them?”

Brae yelped as the favoured pebble smacked his forehead; you held another ready, but you hoped not to use it. Not to hurt him. The pain fresh in your chest urged to you but you couldn’t, and the tenderness in his hands slipping through your unfurling fingers held you closer.

His face scrunched. “When we wish to court a mate, we present pebbles. Do you like them?”

Brae never moved so slowly before – before he had wounded you enough to want nothing more than to hurt him; him, with the claws gentle on your palm and sharp teeth behind lips gracing your knuckles. No smile warmed his harsh face. Some satisfaction warmed you in shadows creeping beneath his eyes, where he lifted your palm. Loose tickled your fingers.

“I left my tribe.”

Brae’s whine quieted when you said, not in question, “taunting me wasn’t enough for them to accept you, was it?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Will they welcome you back if I take your pebbles?” Water splashed with his surging up and it was then you succumbed, lifting your hand to frame his dripping face. Every whisper and clashing apology fell beneath you, blood rushing in your ears from just his lips turning to your wrist. “I’m leaving, Brae. Pretend I accepted. Say you drowned me if it helps you return to your tribe. Why you would want to is beyond me, but-”

“We mate for life. This is me. These,” he whispered, and beneath the water, distorted netting carrying more pebbles swayed when he lifted another. “These are me. Proposal of courtship.”

Approaching you had to be at their insistence. The threat to topple your boat them, too, and why Brae had insisted on land. Safer, he’d said, but that was where he hurt you more than they ever had. They may have told him to use you or trick you to love him, but it hurt the same, at their tricks or his.

He hadn’t looked up from where you stroked his cheekbones until you asked, “what does it mean to leave a tribe?”

“If I stay, I trespass.”

“What do mer do to trespassers?” Brae turned his face into your palm and your stomach fell. The choice before you wasn’t one you welcomed or even wanted to consider, but you were already reaching for the pebble you had thrown at him and curling it in your hand. “If you follow me, that is your choice. I owe you nothing. Even this is more than you deserve.”

The boat was tipping.

“But if you follow me,” you drew in a sharp breath. “I say when the courting is over and if I accept you. If I refuse, you respect that.”

His breath warmed your lips.

“And I will never draw you again.”

It was a lie. That morning, his face plagued every breath. Every fleeting memory of his touch consumed you. Scatterings of scales covered old papers and already your fingers itched for more, to purge him from you, but when you accepted – if you accepted him, only then would you ever consider sharing your art with him again.

Burning your boat could wait until the water dried from the sloping of scales to your chest, lips soft on yours and apologies sweet on his tongue. It could wait until he followed you wherever you chose, offering pebbles and nights sprawled on warm sand, where you always woke with a head nestled against your throat.

When.

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