sunblockbabe

[sunblockbabe]

Lighthouse keeperJohn! x mermaid reader pt.2

4.4k words

Pt. 1

Contents: nudity (non-sexual), semi-graphic descriptions of wounds/wound care, cuddling w/ John (mostly non-sexual)

A/N: This is roughly edited so forgive any mistakes please. For some reason this took forever to write and I just wanted to get it posted so I could work on the next part!

Your eyes are kept firmly on John as he carries you back to the house. Looking up at him from where he carries you in his arms you stare unblinkingly, making it abundantly clear that despite your exhaustion, nothing he does will escape your notice. While you were yet still alive, years of survival in the ocean meant you wouldn’t relax so easily. 

Frequently, John looks down at your form, examining your injuries. The bleeding that had somewhat abated had started anew from your struggle to get away, and John watches as the rain, rapturous as it was, was washing away the blood slower than it dripped from you. 

Every so often, John’s eyes flicker up to meet your gaze, and you stubbornly refuse to look away. 

“Don’t worry, lovie.” He tells you, a warm smile breaks out over his face as you cross the threshold back into his home. “We’ll get you all fixed up.” 

You scowl, intent on making your displeasure known.

The scowl remains through the climb up the stairs, across the hallway, and only deepens when he places you on a wooden stool dragged from the corner of the bathroom. The water had become dingy from when you had transfigured and crawled from the bathtub, dyed a dark red from your blood. Stray scales and membranes float around in the tepid water. The rays that had been nestled between your fingers and within your tail lie dormant on the floor of the bathtub. 

You sit perched on the stool, and you watch as John bends over the tub to drain the water and collect the scraps, placing them in a trash bin. He tugs some knobs, and water begins to fill the tub again. You try to watch the process impassively, but can’t help but marvel a little at the strange setting, like you had been transported to a different world.

Intently watching the water fill the bathtub, you almost don’t notice John reaching for you. Whirling towards him, you hold your hands out warningly, teeth bared just the slightest. The sight pauses John in his steps, though he appears almost enlivened rather than afraid, eyes twinkling. 

Holding his own hands up in a placating mirror to your own, he crouches down so that you’re level.

“Easy now. Just going to get you back into the bathtub.” He soothes, voice low and steady.

You study his face intensely. Along with his soft-spoken tone, his eyes are crinkled with friendliness, face calm. Nothing about his behavior indicates to you that he means to harm you. And with you bleeding all over the bathroom tile, feeling woozier by the second, there’s not much you can do to resist the urge to just let your guard down, if only for a bit. 

Your hands fall into your lap as your head droops slightly, caving in.

John lifts you off the stool, mindful to not touch any of your injuries, and maneuvers you into the bathtub. 

The warm, clean water rises to your hips, and you swish your fingers through the water as you watch John reach under the bathroom sink, retrieving a first aid kit.

You turn onto your side, head resting atop the back of your hand where you’ve placed it against the tub. Watching him rifle through the kit stuffed to the brim, you try your best to examine the various tools and ointments spilling from the case.

When John has gathered everything he needs, he starts his work.

John cleans the wound on your abdomen, pouring a saline mix to wash away the blood and debris. 

Sitting patiently, you watch him, resisting the urge to push at his hands whenever a shock of pain or discomfort ripples through you.

“My name is John.” He tells you as he smooths a bandage across your stomach.

You look up at him, not understanding. Has he not yet realized you don’t understand?

Human language was not something you had ever extensively learned, or ever used. In a constant state of travel below the waves, the need to communicate rarely arising at all, your kind had their own versatile methods and language for interactions.

What spoken words you had picked up, you had solely heard them from the chattering of those that dwelled in warm-water reefs. Their proximity to land made them more inclined to transfigure into a human form to explore the coast, the bravest of them even choosing to mingle with humans. Those that returned to the reefs would share their experiences and travels, and others were always eager to hear. Talk of the spoken languages they had heard was common, and frequently a small group would perch atop rocks, enthusiastically soaking up the strange sounds, practicing making the noises themselves.

You never took much interest in the lessons, only at times passively listening while you’d gnaw on a particularly stubborn clam shell, picking up only the simplest of words. You never had any intention of interacting with a human. And, with how infrequently you were ever exposed in the air asides for your occasional trips to shallow waters, had no need to learn a method of communication that could only be used above the waves.

You tilt your head at him, mouth fixed into a frown. You make a questioning sound.

“My name, it’s John.” He repeats, this time pointing to himself.

You extend a claw to him.

“Name?” You ask, trying to repeat the foreign word, tongue tripping over the sounds.

He shakes his head, mirth spilling across his face.

“John.” He tells you, hand still pointing to himself.

You realize that must be what he calls himself. You try the name out yourself, feeling the way your mouth opens around the ‘J’ and comes to a close at the end of the syllable. You repeat it again, this time more confident.

He smiles in satisfaction, then points to you.

“What’s your name?” He asks.

You sit, unsure.

You weren’t given a name at birth. Born to a solitary mother, you had been left on your own nearly as soon as your independent survival was viable. Like many other roving mermaids, you lived a nomadic and independent lifestyle, rarely witnessing community apart from rare instances in reefs and shallow oceans, or traveling pods of your kind. And what you had experienced, you had mainly viewed on the fringe, unwilling to overcome the caution within you. With that life lived you never had received a name, nor had needed one.

One reef you visited more commonly than others, the mermaids living there had come to accept you, even as an outsider. While skittish and afraid during your first visits, they had warmed to your presence, particularly so after you had chased off a predator larger than yourself who had been intently preying on the denizens of the colorful reef.

During one of your visits, a mermaid had asked you what you call yourself in the shared native tongue. When you had replied that you had no way you referred to yourself, you had been gifted a name, a pretty series of underwater chirps and clicks that had danced across the waves. Ever since then, that is how you referred to yourself.

John begins to clean the wound torn across your shoulder as you continue to think, pondering his question like a wonder of the earth.

You had been given a human name, you remember. Laying atop a sun-bleached rock, soaking up the warmth on a sunny day, a particularly chattery mermaid had been sitting next to you. She and you were surrounded by other mermaids, some lounging on rocks and others floating in the water on their backs. She had just returned from her latest escapade to humanity, chirping and humming, telling her stories in excitement. You had been captive to her talking. You had just been trying to take a midday nap in warmth when she had pulled herself up next to you, and other mermaids had followed suit. Where originally they had given you a wide berth, their caution has seemingly been replaced by a safety they now found in your presence. With how much the mermaid next to you was talking now, you weren’t sure if you preferred the change.

Still, while your eyes were closed as you persistently chased rest, you couldn’t help but listen as she shared stories of exciting and exotic cultures and experiences. While you had no intention of witnessing any of it yourself, you still couldn’t help but get swept up in the enchant of it. 

She had shared the names of many people she had both met and reunited with in her latest excursion, and after another mermaid had inquired about the name she had picked for herself, it had kicked off a rapid-fire sharing of the names mermaids had chosen, and those that had not picked a human name for themselves were gifted their own by those more experienced with human languages. While curiosity prickled at your skin, you swatted away the sensation in favor of rolling onto your side, cracking an eye open to examine the bright blue water, pondering if it was worth it to surrender your spot on the rock to seek out a quieter place to nap. 

You’re pulled out of your reverie as John plucks free a piece of coral stuck deep in your flesh, and you watch him for a moment before sinking back down into your thoughts.

A hand on your shoulder tugged at you, and you begrudgingly rolled onto your back again. The mermaid pointed a finger in your face, her shell bracelet threaded with plant fiber clacking as she waved her finger in a circle.

The name she had given you fell from her lips, breathed across your face as you scrunched your nose. 

The other mermaids had cheered in concurrence, your name relayed like a chant. You had rolled off the rock in exasperation, grumbling your complaints about being given such a useless thing before diving into the chilled water to find a different napping spot.

If you had murmured the name to yourself later, lying under a beautiful moon and stars, water lapping at your tail from where you lay on a different rock further from the reef, then that was nobody’s business but your own. 

You mull the human name over in your mind, poring over each sound within.

When you tell John your name, your voice is uncertain, unpracticed.

John repeats your name, satisfied. It sounds better coming from him, you think.

From there, John continues his work in silence, seemingly pleased by the brief and stilted conversation. You try your best not to wriggle away when you catch a glimpse of John holding a suture thread and needle, suspicion gripping you. Your claws clench the side of the bathtub as he stitches the wound across your shoulder. From there, it’s smoother sailing, John cleaning and tending to the smaller scraps and cuts that litter the rest of your body, finally cleaning the damaged sections of scales on your tail as best as he could. By the time you feel tweezers prodding at the dead scales and pieces of ocean grit, your head has leaned back against the lip of the bathtub, eyelids dipping closed.

Finished with his work, John tends to his own wounds before he begins a vigil. Resting in his own bed for short periods, drifting off before blinking awake, he traverses to the bathroom to check on you before retreating back to bed. The cycle continues late into the night.

Each time he checks on you, you are roused slightly by the noise and movement, but not enough to fully wake. Hour by hour, however, your body recovers and your mind recoups. The next time John paces back through the doorway into the hallway, your eyes squint open, now fully awake.

For a while, you keep yourself occupied. The water has cooled, though it’s nowhere near as chilling as the ocean water in which you live. You twitch your hands absently, watching the disruption ripple across the water.

You try to consider what you’ll do next, where you’ll go from here. You could try to leave again, return to the ocean. Though you know, while the sea would embrace you once again, you would not be able to embrace her back in return. Your body has been damaged, your mettle still shaken. Throwing yourself back into the ocean unprepared would be unwise, so for now you must wait.

You lie in the tub, growing more and more horribly antsy with each passing second.

You turn your head onto your side, and look at the door left slightly cracked. The bathroom lights had been dimmed to give you some rest, and you can see where the hallway is dark, lights shut off even before your first arrival.

You turn your gaze back onto the ceilings, picking apart the peeling paint with your gaze. 

You look down at your tail. John had cleaned it and removed dead scales, leaving it unbandaged as it rests submerged in the bath water. You flick your tail idly, sending weak ripples skimming across the water’s surface.

Contemplating for a moment, but with your restlessness overwhelming, it’s not long before you're leaning forward, finding a deciduous scale to pluck.

The transition this time is less jarring, though surreal all the same. You feel your flesh stretch and tear, taking on new shape as old is transformed and discarded. The process is no more clean than last time, and the water becomes bloodied and dirty.

You flex your feet and stretch your legs. Getting out of the bathtub is an easier task this time, you’re able to swing both legs over the side, bracing your hands on the tub to carefully rise to your feet. Always keeping your hand on something, whether it’s the bathtub, tile countertop, or the bathroom wall, you manage to keep your balance and shuffle towards the door, leaving a trail of wet and bloody footprints behind you. Nudging the door open with a hand, you peer into the dark hall. Cold tile turns to a fuzzy carpet beneath your feet as you trek along the narrow persian runner.

You take in the hallway, old paintings and photographs of the lighthouse and surrounding seascape adorn the walls. Keeping one hand gripped on the bannister, you stare at the console table settled against the wall, stacked with dying plants and more old photos of strangers set in tarnished-gold frames.

Pacing through the first of the unexplored rooms on the top floor, the cold floorboards creak their quiet protests. It’s John’s office, a mahogany desk in the center of the room. Large windows on all walls, the light from the lighthouse cascades in near-blindingly, making you squint and stumble. The large desk is nearly not enough to accommodate the scores of papers and equipment atop it. You stare down at the pages, tracing a finger over the ink, but can’t make heads or tails of what it means, written in a language you don’t understand with tables and charts that make your head spin. 

Another blinding spin of light irritates you, and you retreat from the room back into the hallway.

You blindly creak open the next of the doors, this one long and skinny, nearly hidden against the faded wallpaper as only the brass doorknob you grasp sticks out from the wall. You’re puzzled as you stare at the shelves stacked high with blankets, sheets, and towels. You run a hand against each neatly folded cotton pile, feeling the textures beneath your fingers.

Walking quietly despite the old wooden floor, you eventually trek into his bedroom. You eye where he’s laid on the bed, lying on his back and a hand folded neatly across his chest, blankets tucked around his waist. He’s asleep, even if he doesn’t necessarily look peaceful.

Venturing through the doorway, your eyes wander around the sparse bedroom. A bookshelf crammed into a dusty corner, just beside a white-curtained window sill, was entirely vacant save for a stack of cloth-bound books and a dusty Coleman lantern. You trace your finger along the books, feeling the rough binding against the pad of your forefinger. 

Curiosity then wanders you over to his dresser. Grasping the worn knobs of a drawer, much similar to the door knobs, you give an experimental pull. You peer inside the drawer finding more neatly folded piles of fabric. You pull one out and unravel it, holding a cotton sleep-shirt between your claws. It bears a resemblance to the one John now wears, and when you toss a glance over your shoulder you confirm that, yes, it’s nearly the exact same. 

Folding the shirt back up as best you could, you tuck it back into the drawer, hoping your folding was good enough to hide the displacement of his belonging. You slide the drawer shut with a soft click, your attention turning elsewhere.

You wander over to his bedside table, crouching onto your hands and knees, you prod at the items scattered across. You nudge a drinking glass filled with water, breaking the surface of the tepid liquid with one claw before grasping the glass, tilting the water forward to take a drink. When you set the glass down your attention is drawn to another book, this one half open on the table, pages worn and innumerably dogeared. 

You grab the book, moving back on your haunches as you set the book on the ground and lean over it. Using two hands, you carefully separate and flip through the yellowed and delicate pages. The book is dense, filled with long paragraphs and extensive footnotes. It’s nothing you can make sense of as you study the old thing, and a bit of disappointment pricks at your heart as you set the book back on the table, a quiet sigh escaping your chest.

With your antsy curiosity waning, you finally turn your attention to where John sleeps.

His snoring has remained constant, chest rising and falling in an endless pattern. When you lean in closer, you can see that his sleep is restless. Fingertips twitching at nothing, jaw clenching and unclenching at random, a fitfulness having overtaken him. You can relate of course, resting in the open sea often meant you needed to stay on edge even as you slept in a light and permeable sleep. But you don’t understand what you see now. He sleeps on an isolated and naturally fortified island, is nearly untouchable in his size as a predator, what does he have to be wary of? 

You pace to the opposite side of the bed, footsteps as quiet as you can make them. You press your knuckles against the quilt, feeling the softness of the fabric and the generous give of the mattress.

Tiredness and a renewed curiosity mesh as you now fist the quilt, tugging at it slightly. You glance over at John again, the quilt and a blanket tangled around his waist, and pull the quilt down.

Climbing into the bed without waking John is a gambit. You know that you shouldn’t be encroaching in his space. If he were half as territorial as many of those living in the ocean could be, he would be much less than pleased at the way you pull the quilt up and over your shoulders once you manage to lie down without waking him.

The bed is warm, and you greedily soak up the heat, the coldness of the house affecting you more than you had anticipated. You rest your head on a pillow, mirroring John and laying flat on your back, arms crossed over your chest like a mummy. 

You stare up at the ceiling a moment, relishing the comfort of the bed, before closing your eyes. You count each of John’s snores that becomes a metronome to put you to sleep.

When an arm is suddenly thrown over your waist, you awake with an undignified squawk of alarm, bolting upright as best you can with the mushiness of the mattress. 

It turns out, while John was very surprised to find you in his bed, blinking briefly into consciousness to turn on his side and stretch an arm out only to find it around your waist, he wasn’t angry like you had fretted. 

He did however, shoo you out of the bed to re-check your bandages, afraid you had jostled them in your wakefulness. Once you were medically cleared, he had herded you back into the bathroom where you thought he was going to make you go back into the bathtub to wait. Instead, he had drained the water from the bathtub and grabbed a washcloth, dampening it in the sink. You stood there awkwardly as he scrubbed down your legs, washing away the dry leftover blood from your transformation.

You followed him where he retreated from the bathroom and to the linen closet you had explored, where he drew sheets and a quilt from the space.

When he throws on the light in the bedroom, your eyes squint as you cast a hand across your face to shield them. But the time you recover, John has pulled a shirt from the dresser and approaches you as you take half a step back in worry.

He grasps an elbow to anchor you in place and tugs the oversized shirt over your head, even as you try to wriggle away like a miffed cat. 

When he manages to draw your arms through the correct holes, he steps out of your space while you tug at the hem of the shirt. Engulfing you, John’s worn cotton shirt comes to rest at your thighs. 

When John returns to you, this time there is less resistance as John helps you into a pair of his boxers. You brace one hand against a broad shoulder as he kneels on the ground, guiding your legs into the shorts.

Now fully clothed, you’re better shielded from the frigidness of the room.

John then begins to strip the bed, pulling the now-messy and bloody sheets from the mattress and piling the quilt along with it. You watch curiously until you watch him unfold the sheets from the linen closet, when it clicks.

Chagrined, you cautiously step forward, ignoring his inquiring expression in favor of trying to mirror his actions as he makes the bed.

You do what you can to help, feeling a bit guilty. Isolated as you were, you know better than to shun or drive away a companion, far and few as they come. You focus intensely as you try to tuck the fitted cotton sheet against the aged mattress, frowning as your claws get caught in the fabric as you try to copy John’s movements. Despite your clumsiness, you hope John understands your good intentions.

When the bed is made he takes a step back, and you follow suit.

“Thank you, sweetheart.” He tells you, voice warm.

You hum, his tone relieving you as you know now that, yes, all seems to be forgotten.

John shuts off the bedroom light. When he lets you back into the bed, he lies flat on his back. You curl into bed next to him, his weight creating a depression in the mattress, and with the springs being shot, you're drawn closer into his side like a whirlpool.

You have few complaints, warm as he is. The clothes and blanket are soft against your skin, the pillow you half-commandeered that John now shares with you cradling your head. 

Swaddled in comfort, sleep finds you easily.

When you wake in the morning, you’re half on top of John. Legs straddling his brawny thigh, your chest is pressed to his abdomen as your head is nestled against his chest, cheek pressed into a pectoral.

His breathing is deep and steady, reverberating through you. With each rise and fall of his chest your body moves too as you’re rocked with him. 

Every part of you feels warm, and despite your injuries twinging a little as soreness settles in with disuse, you don’t think you’ve ever slept so soundly in your life.

Light is just barely seeping through the closed curtains, and you take the opportunity to stretch, relishing in the sensation. You stretch like a cat, pushing your hips back and pressing your chest down, arms stretching in front of you. You stretch your legs a second time, this time coming to straddle the entirety of his hips. 

You stay like that. His hips are wide and strong, the stretch to accommodate him is a pleasant one in your own hips. Now fully on top of him, though mindful not to put weight on his own injury, you rest both hands on either shoulder, head tucked into his collar bone.

A big hand comes down to rest across your back, caressing up to your shoulder blades and down to the small of your back, back and forth. Uncaring of whether or not it means John is awake, you drift off again.

You’re roused only slightly when John wraps his other hand under a thigh, moving your leg so that you’re only atop one thigh once more so that you don’t feel the hardness aching between his legs. 

John lets you rest another half hour, warm hand in constant motion across your back. When the light strengthens he grasps your hips in both hands, lifting you up and off of him to lay you gently on your side. 

This time, John moving you rouses you fully from sleep, and you peer up at him curiously as he props himself up on an elbow, overlooking you. 

He reaches to press the back of his hand to your forehead, feeling for something. You look at his face where it’s concentrated on the contact, eyes squinted slightly in focus. Whatever he feels or notices, it apparently satisfies him, the tension dripping from his face as he gives you a warm smile, eyes crinkling.

“No fever.” He tells you, voice rough with sleep.

“No fever.” You echo, even if you didn’t share the same relief as him, not having the same burden of worry as him in the first place.

“You hungry for food?” He asks.

There were few human words you understood, but the word ‘food’ was one you knew well.

“Food.” You affirm.

[sunblockbabe]

Lighthouse keeper!John x mermaid reader

4k words

Contents: nudity (nonsexual), semi-graphic descriptions of injury, description of a kinda graphic transformation you undergo but it's not painful i swear, softie john

Lighthouse keeper!John that has been taking care of an aging lighthouse.

The lighthouse is cast out on a lonely, scraggly islet, a mile or two off the coast. Shrouded by constant fog and sharp rocks that break the waves into shards of salt water, the island is dreary and near-abandoned.

It was the perfect fit for John, at least at first. Long years of brutal work in the military had aged him to the point of exhaustion. Seeking complete isolation from the world, he took his pension and retreated to the isolated post that felt banished to a far-off corner of the world.

The islet, covered in thick grass and patches of stout shrubs, was unable to support any life besides a few chickens and a rooster. Every month, John was sent a small boat stocked with rations and supplies, always unloaded in the dead of night and without his presence.

His days blurred together in an endless haze of reading, pacing the island, and tending to the lighthouse and chickens. Every morning, John would trace the rocky shores and small sandy pocket beaches that dotted the island, a monocular in hand as he’d survey the endless seascape in search of any wayward vessels that had gotten caught on the deceptively unimposing rocks below the dark water. In his two years manning the island, John has never seen any wreckage. 

In passing moments he missed having company but found he valued his solitude more. However, over time, the gnawing loneliness inside of him grew the longer his isolation lasted, until he had at last found himself settled into a chilling depression. Like the absence of an old friend, it clung to him, never hard enough to stall him, but an everlasting presence, a phantom hand clasped on his shoulder. 

Still, years of warring and conflict had made thoughts of returning to the mainland apathetic, and he was hesitant to rejoin society. He didn't know where he would go besides back to the military, but his bones would ache whenever he thought of returning to that life. So he stayed.

Storms frequently wracked the island, and this time seemed no different, as brutal as it was. John lies in bed, awake, listening to the harsh winds and rain, watching the light from the beacon cast his room in a yellow glow every half minute.

Despite the lighthouse operating electrically, John usually opted to stay awake until the early hours of the morning, even when the vessel schedule delivered every month alongside the rations indicated another period of scarce passage. 

One arm rests across his broad torso, scratching at his side absently, idly, he ponders if he should bother dragging himself out of bed to make himself a tea.

Out of the blue, a bright flare of lightning followed by an impossibly loud crack of thunder erupts overhead, shaking the room.

Sitting suddenly upright his heart can’t help but race at the shock before he quickly schools himself into a calmer state. Pulling himself out of bed his feet touch the cold wood of the ground. He paces over to his bedroom window, needing to survey if the lightning caused any damage to the islet, close as it struck.

Squinting into the darkness, another round of lightning, this time further away, illuminates the land and the sea, and John swears he sees a body-shaped lump on the rocky shore.

John’s eyebrows raise and he briefly stutters in place, unsure of what he really saw. Another flash of lightning, and there truly is a body cast upon the shore.

Backing away quickly from the window, a noise of disbelief escapes him, and John is out of his bedroom and making his way down the staircase in seconds. He yanks his coat from a hook as he barrels out the front door, the wind snatching the door from his hand and slamming it open against the frame.

Fighting through freezing rain and painfully sharp wind, John makes his way to the shore where he saw you.

In the darkness and rain, John makes out your limp form in the coarse sand, surrounded by debris and seaweed washed up by violent waves. Waves crash over you, and pink foam froths to frame you as seawater mingles with blood. As you lay unresponsive, John fears you may already be dead.

John drops his coat onto the sand. Bare feet and ankles in the waves, he rushes into the water until he reaches you. He bends his knees and hooks his arms under yours, rearing you up halfway until your upper body meets his, your head lolling against his chest. He immediately can feel how cold your skin is, even compared to the frigid waters and through his now-soaked nightshirt.

John begins to pull you out of the water, wind whipping around you both. The waves recess for a moment of respite and your shrouded lower half is revealed.

In the darkness, Joel is unsure of what he sees. His first thoughts are that your legs have been injured or marred to a point of strange form that's unrecognizable in the night sky. John stops and reaches to pick you up fully, instead.

A crack of thunder and lightning overhead unveils your true nature, and John stops, would drop you in astonishment if he had any less self-control. You have a tail. A powerful, gorgeously glittering tail, reflecting the light thrown by the storm’s lightning. The lightning ends and the light again wanes, leaving John to blink helplessly in the dark, pulse racketing higher despite his will.

Another crack of lightning, and Joel this time the damage to your tail is revealed. The symmetrical, beautiful pattern of your scales was damaged in swathes on your tail, where chunks of scale were extensively damaged or missing completely. The flesh beneath was exposed and pale and blood-drained, pieces of scale still flaking off and washing ashore. Another injury spanned half of your torso, forming a jagged crescent of puncture wounds across your navel. A messier tear of flesh was impressed along your shoulder.

Carefully, Joel regains his nerves and reaches for you, with one arm secured under your tail, and picks you up bridal style to carry you from the waves.

Balancing you in his arms, Joel bends to scoop up the jacket he had deposited on the shore, blanketing it over you to shield you from the freezing gusts and rain.

The wind now billows at his back, trying to sweep up under his legs as if Mother Nature herself were trying to force him to relinquish his hold on you, his broad back shielding you from her wrath. 

Dutifully, John trudges across the small grassy plain to the cabin, knocking the door open with a foot. He stands a moment in the doorway, water cascading off you both, and eyes the couch for a moment.

Readjusting his grip from where your body begins to slip from his hands, he climbs the creaky wooden staircase, each step protesting louder than normal at the extra weight. He warily eyes the weak fluttering of the gills on your neck, but the rise and fall of your chest, even shallow as it was, abated some of his concern. Still, if you live in water, John doesn’t want to risk leaving you to dry out on his couch.

Bare feet padding across the upstairs hallway, he nudges open the bathroom door. Moving carefully in the cramped space, he lowers you gently into a clawfoot bath. While the thing was almost obnoxiously oversized in the small bathroom, John is now grateful that a previous owner had enough taste for luxury and overpriced items to bother to haul such a thing and have it installed on the island. 

He adjusts your head where it lulls forward to instead lean back against the lip of the tub, mouth pursing as the injuries to your human form are still dripping blood, thin rivulets already trickling towards the drain. 

John crouches further down, old knees creaking their protests loudly, and reaches to the side to tug on the faucets. John hears the clicking and moaning as the water heater engages from a place deep in the house, pilot light igniting the main burner to warm the water. 

Sparing a few seconds to twist the faucets so that lukewarm water poured from the spigot, John cups the water in his hands, reaching up to trickle the water over your gills before he gives pause.

If you’re similar to other ocean-dwelling creatures, feeding tap water through your gills would do more harm than good. While not a man of extensive academic pursuits, he possesses enough worldly knowledge to fill a library. Freshwater through your gills would kill you rather than resuscitate you.

Dropping the rest of the water that hasn’t already drained from his hands, John can’t help but let out a groan at his oversight as he scrubs a wet hand over his eyes, feeling stupid in a way he hasn’t felt for decades. 

Getting to his feet, he hurries from the bathroom, yanking two rusty buckets from the coat closet at the base of the stairs, trekking outside.

Through your closed eyelids, a bright light shines through, and briefly, through a barely lucid haze, you think you’re facing the sun. But you know that’s not right, water doesn’t flow around you and over your gills as they should, the cold and lively sea water that is so persistent it feels like it’s constantly melding with your skin is absent, replaced by warmer, sterile water that laps gently at your ribs. If you remain still enough, you can almost ignore the pain that pulses through your body like a second heartbeat. Wherever you are, you can’t bring yourself to care and fall back asleep.

Seconds later, consciousness insistent, you’re snapped back to awareness, head jolting slightly from where it rests against something hard and uncomfortable, an unwelcome pressure at the base of your neck.

Eyes begrudgingly peeling open, you experience a short moment of confusion before it explodes into fear like your synapses have been electrocuted. You’re not in the ocean at all. Your hands shoot up, claws gripping the lip of the tub. You have no clue where you are, no clue what you're in, but you know you’re on land, and you know whatever space you occupy is manmade.

Head whipping around and eyes fervent, you see no sign of human life, but have no intention of waiting around. The reputations of humans preceded itself, and you had no interactions with humans to be bold enough to permit an encounter.

Ignoring the ache that ripples up and down your body at the movement, you lean up further in the tub. Using the hand opposite your mangled shoulder, you reach a webbed hand along the length of your tail. Patches of scale are missing, with your more delicate scales towards the base of your tail fairing the worst. You pick out an already half-removed deciduous scale that had managed to survive your escape. Trapping it between two sharp claws, you pluck it free, the sensation barely twinging.

Despite possessing the instinctual knowledge, you had never put yourself through the transfiguration. You clutch the scale in your fingers, keeping it for later. You wait a few moments before the moments turn into an anxious minute. Was it supposed to take this long? Was it possible you messed up? 

You grow antsier with every second that passes, paranoid the human was only a half a breath returning to where you wait. Then, suddenly, a shiver washes over you. Instantly feverish, you swear you feel your scales ripple. With a strange disassociation, you hold up your hands and you watch as the membrane between your digits tingle and slough and melt off as they turn almost gelatinous in quality, the single, thin ray between each finger detaching and falling to the floor of the tub with a plink, plink, plink.

You feel your gills flatten and press into your neck, an uncomfortable stitching sensation as they mend together and close, and you take a deeper breath through your mouth as what minimal oxygen being supplied through your gills in the cold air vanishes. 

The strange sensation is pushed to the back of your mind as you watch your bottom half in horror. Your scales tightened impossibly for a moment, like they were suddenly shrinking, and you were certain that the pressure would make them pop off, leaving your vulnerable dermis exposed. But before the tightness becomes so immense your eyes roll back, the scales suddenly sink down and into your dermis. The corpse-white skin makes you pause as your tail becomes scaleless, and you think you may puke. 

The transition pauses, and for a moment you fear you will be stuck at a horrifying in-between.

Suddenly, the exposed skin distends briefly before concaving through the center of your tail, cleaving through the white muscle and tendons. Thin, watery, blood seeps out from the fissure and overflows, spilling warm over your dermis, and you feel a sudden pop and pressure release as your tail is fully separated in two, and you gasp in shock. You feel the skin wrap closed under each of your thighs and calves, fully encasing each human leg. The skin remains a bloodless white a few seconds longer before you feel your heart start hammering and blood flooding to your legs, color slowly blooming across the surface of your skin as it thickens from the thin epidermis of your tail to a tone the same color and durability as your torso. 

Finally, you watch the now halved thicker spines and scales of your tail crinkle and mold, painlessly snapping and reforming to wrap around bony ankles and delicate toes, the emergence of human feet marking the finale of your transition.

Eyes wide, you wiggle your toes the same way you’d flex your tail, watching in fascination as they move.

The transition, jarring as it was, had been shockingly painless. It felt no more uncomfortable than how it felt when you’d reach out an arm deep into the pore of a coral, trying to stretch your limb a few inches further than it could naturally reach to try to snatch a fish hiding within.

Wasting no more time, you brace your arms once again against the sides of the tub. It’s a struggle to draw your knees up, fighting to get your feet under you. Your thighs tingle as you hoist yourself to a crouch, nearly keeling forward as your center of balance has been plucked from you. 

You take a deep breath. 

Taking a few attempts, you manage to throw a thigh over the side of the tub and lift yourself. You rest your stomach precariously on the lip of the tub as you straddle the side. Your foot presses against the cold tile of the floor, and you briefly test your weight on it, your foot giving out and sliding out from under you. You struggle to right yourself, hands clutching the side. Instead, you bring your other leg up to bring over the tub. The shift in weight twists and slides you off the tub, and the sudden weight causes your first-moved leg to give out and slide out from under you, and you land on your side with a huff as the air is knocked from your lungs. 

Recovering, you roll onto your side and prop yourself on your hands and knees. You begin a mad-crawl towards the door. Crawl through the frame, tile transitioning to wood, you move towards the staircase at the end of the hall. You peer down the steps as you near, the steepness intimidating you, but from beyond where the steps end you see where the front door is swung open, rain splattering the wood from outside, and recognition lights up your brain.

Gripping the wooden banister with both hands, you manage to hoist yourself to your feet, wobbling slightly and gripping tighter. You eye the stairs warily, and take one cautious step down, followed by another, and then another, blood fleeing your knuckles from how tight you handle the banister with both hands. 

You make it halfway down the stairs before your next step leads to disaster. A foot placed too far forward, it slips and your legs fall out from under you, the banister ripped from your grasp. You twist and roll down the stairs, hitting each step with a resounding thump.

By the time you reach the bottom, coming to a rest on your stomach, your head is spinning.  You’ve never been subjected to such gravity-fueled disorientation. The pain of the fall ripples through you, rattling your spine and echoing in your injuries. 

You lift your head from where it rests on your forearms, blinking blearily. Your heart lurches at how close your escape now is, the crashing of waves sounding out over the storm, beckoning you home. 

You get back on your hands and knees to crawl out of the door and to your freedom. The hope soaring in your chest is struck dead as you catch a glimpse of a figure struggling through the storm and toward the house. The silhouette is imposing, strong, and big, and a primordial warning flares inside of you. You’re an imposing predator in the water, outmatched by few, but a hissing warning in your head tells you that being spotted by the human would be a deadly mistake, and you’re urged to hide. To find a dark and secluded space in the rocks and hide.

Your head whips around, big rocks or coral outcroppings in sight, and instead find the small coat closet nearby. Crawling and nearly throwing yourself into the closet with the urgency your legs move with, you nestle yourself between long coats and atop rubber boots, motionless.

The closet smells like mothballs and old blankets, the kind of nostalgic familiarity many would associate with childhood comforts, but instead it just has you crinkling your nose to avoid sneezing.

Heavy footsteps near, and your breathing goes silent, ears perked. You run a tongue over your teeth, feeling where they’ve dulled only slightly with your human transformation, and your claws, surviving the change, flex slightly.

You hear the footsteps pass you, unaware of your presence, and instead climb the stairs. The steps grow distant with each passing second, you risk a glance outside of the closet and spot no one near. 

Your chance, fleeting, is taken. You quietly remove yourself from the closet, crawling and making it to the doorframe. 

Freedom is close now, and you feel yourself shiver with adrenaline, wind howling around you.

Quick and heavy footsteps rush from above you, and you nearly puke your heart out.

“What’re you doing, sweetheart?”

A scream of fright escapes you, foreign to your ears, as you begin to hear a fast descent down the stairs, and you don’t waste time looking back.

Slipping on the grass, instinct takes over as you manage to rise to your feet and break out into a sprint. It’s unsightly, an awkward gait that has you lurching forward like a woman possessed, arms pumping painfully as your shoulder sings, barely managing to keep yourself upright as feet pound against sodden grass. The man is in hot pursuit, and you hear the pounding of his feet behind you, getting louder and quicker like the blood rushing through your ears.

Suddenly, an arm wraps around your waist, stopping you in place as you’re hauled back against a chest, feet slipping out from under you. The vice is above the gory wound on your side, you think the man must be an idiot for not taking advantage of your obvious vulnerability.

Your eyes roll back as you attack, claws blindly swiping through the rain. You gnash your teeth and throw your head backward, hoping to close around flesh. Your teeth only bite air, and your claws miss until you swing them again, this time catching on his side.

With a grunt, the man’s grip on you only tightens, and you kick out before you bring your claws to his side again, fingers digging into torn flesh. 

This time, his hold weakens, just marginally, just for a split second, but it’s all you need as your feet kick again and you pry yourself free. 

Landing hard on your knees, you waste no time staggering to your feet. As you run the water comes within sight. You take the scale that had been clenched in your hand and shove it in your mouth, tongue dry as you swallow. Immediately, you begin to feel a change, a twitch up and down the muscles in your legs as your gills wiggle back to life. You hope you’ve timed it right, not too early you become beached on the island or too late that your human form is bludgeoned against the jagged rocks that are perilously close where the white caps break.

Within meters of your escape, your legs burn with exhaustion, unfamiliar with use, but you push yourself forward. 

An impossibly heavy weight is bowled into your back, sending you careening forward. Arms wrap around your waist again, and you're tucked back into a chest and twisted sideways. Instead of colliding with the earth, you land atop the man, who takes on the brunt of the fall. Your head rebounds off his collarbone as you hiss in pain at the contact. Your bodies slide a few feet against the soaked grass, but not close enough for you to escape.

Your arms are restrained at your sides, a heavy forearm wrapped around you, and a strong hand grasps your jaw to keep your head in place, preventing you from twisting your head to the side to take a chunk out his neck.

“Calm down, m’not gonna hurt you, sweetheart.” 

You growled through your closed mouth, not understanding. Your knowledge of human languages was scarce. 

You thrash against him, a whine escaping your throat as it only serves to put you in more pain.

“I know you’re injured. Just settle down.” 

His words are nonsense to you, but you feel them reverberate through his chest more than you hear them. Like seismic waves rippling through the ocean floor and lulling you to sleep when you press your head against the soft sand, you feel the vibrations of his voice nearly vibrate through you. It’s slightly placating to you. Slightly.

When you struggle again, you hear him shush you, thumb rubbing against your jaw, slow and firm, grounding.

The transformation bubbles, insistent, just below the surface of your skin and at the forefront of your mind, but you shove it back down relentlessly. A stubborn, hopeful, part of you, a part that’s always been more mushy than hardened instinct, still believes in a chance at freedom. That you may yet throw yourself from the burly arms that restrain you and make it the final few meters to meet the ocean.

The resistance to your reversion strains you, and you give another struggle as your strength wanes.

“Come on,” His voice urges, soft, “Just relax for me.”

His voice makes your eyes flutter weakly as you yearn to be returned to the icy, dark waters.

Your will sapped, you give in. 

You feel your form change, webbing growing between your fingers, rays emerging between digits, gills now bristling, demanding seawater. Your legs fuse, skin peeling and flesh merging and hardening to tough muscle, dermis membrane stretching and scales poking through. You hear a wet crack as your feet twist and fold and morph back into a caudal fin. The sound of it is worse than it feels, nothing more than a series of slightly disconcerting pressures and snaps.

If your reversion was anything like your first transformation, you imagine the man’s pants and the grass around must be soaked in blood and gore. Whatever the man sees, silently observes, he doesn’t comment on, thumb stroking your jaw like an endless metronome, while you take heavy breaths, tiredness soaking through.

“There you go, sweetheart.” He coos. “Probably feels a bit more natural, hm?”

You don’t dignify his speech with any reaction, petulantly stubborn in the face of being overpowered. When he removes his hand from your jaw, you do one last snap of finality, a punctuation to your struggle that had been fruitless, and a laugh ripples from beneath, up through your chest until it rattles in your mouth, as strong as the thrum of the earth.

“Attagirl.” He says, voice pleased. 

You growl at him.