#Undercurrent

[thicctails]

><((((º>‿︵‿︵‿︵Undercurrent‿︵‿︵‿︵<º))))><

A Merformers x Reader Fanfiction

Chapter 2 ° Coastguard

Blessed be Randy the coffee machine, your holy god of caffeine. May His hazel liquid flow eternally into graceous Bartholomew, vessel of Randy's divine lifeblood; discount noname brand coffee that had expired last week.

Taking another sip of your beloved breakfast drink, you forced yourself to walk towards the greeting area of your clinic, praying to any deity that was listening that you looked at least passably presentable. You'd taken far longer to pull yourself away from the tender embrace of your nearly flat air mattress than you should have, and both your nerves and back were paying for it.

The head researcher of A.E.R.O. was meeting with you today to discuss your collaboration effort with them, and finally tell you exactly what species you'd be getting to work with. You hoped it would be something exciting, like sharks, dolphins, whales, or nudibranchs.

Taking a shaky breath, you shoved your anxiety down into the pit of your gut where it could, hopefully, only be noticed by you as your hand grasped the handle of the door. You pulled, ready to take the first proper step towards your new life.

Ka-thunk!

Ah. It was a push door.

Willing the colour that had suddenly flooded your cheeks to kindly fuck off, you meekly pushed the door open.

A man was standing in the main entrance room, leaning against Desk the desk and scrolling through something on his phone. He was dressed fairly casual for someone in his position, sporting tan cargo shorts, a forest green t-shirt, and a black lab coat, his company's acronym emblazoned in crisp vinyl across his breast pocket. He had tousled light brown hair and deep brown eyes that were framed by square glasses. At the sound of your approach, he lifted his gaze from his cellphone and gave you a warm smile, pocketing the device and turning his body towards you.

"Doctor L/N! It's nice to finally meet you!" he greeted, extending his hand to you. "My name is Dr. Burns, but please, just call me Graham."

Though it had been difficult to tell sometimes, you had not actually been raised by a pack of rabid wolves, so you returned the gesture, gripping the man's hand and giving it a shake.

"It's a pleasure to acquatence your make."

Oh, Jesus Christ.

Hey, God? Could you do a little smiting? Yeah, right here please.

"I- I'm so sorry, I swear I didn't mean to say that." You managed to get out, almost shocked that you hadn't fucked that sentence up as well.

Breaking News! Local PhD holder flubbs basic greeting! Becomes World Champion speedrunner for ruining first impressions and instantly loses any chance of being considered for further employment and any shred of respect this man had for them!

"It's fine. Honestly, I was just as nervous as you when I first started." Graham laughed, startling you out of your own mental spiral, "I was so preoccupied with my own worries that I tripped and fell face first into a pool on my first day."

You stared at Graham for a moment, stunned that he was still talking to by choice and not out of obligation, before a small, strangled chuckle left your throat, sounding more like the dying squak of a strangled seabird than a laugh.

"Come on, the rest of the team is waiting for us in town." the brunette said, gesturing for you to follow him.

You arched a brow but obediently followed after him, trailing after the researcher like a duckling waddling after a pair of boots.

"Oh? I was under the impression this meeting was to discuss my contract." you replied, trying to scrape together a professional-ish sentence while simultaneously praying that you weren't coming off as rude.

"It is, but once everyone got wind that we would be working with someone new, they got a little," he paused, hand waving about as he searched for the right word, "excited. It's been a while since anyone besides Marissa worked close enough for us to talk to them on a semi-regular basis."

"Can't wait to meet them!" you said cheerfully, lying through your teeth.

The idea of having to interact with another human being today had been draining enough, but to have to converse with several? When their opinions of you could impact your career?

Your hands twitched around Bartholomew's smooth, ceramic body, wishing you'd added a few ounces of pure caffeine to your coffee. Maybe you'd get lucky and get struck by a bus.

Unfortunately, God wasn't known for being kind to you, so you arrived at a small diner completely unharmed.

The worn bell above the door dinged as you and Graham stepped inside, the smell of greasy fries and cheap burgers wafting all around you as he led you over to one of the booths, the cracked red leather seats occupied by three other people in various states of dress.

There was a younger woman with russet skin and shockingly red hair that was pulled back in a loose ponytail, a few hairclips keeping her bangs out of her bright blue eyes. She was dressed in a cream and light orange dress, matching knee-high boots complementing her outfit. She was scrolling on her phone, but put the device down when she noticed your approach.

Ah, the mortifying feeling of being known. It never failed to make you uncomfortable.

The other two, who were seemingly in the middle of seeing who could chug a milkshake faster, were men, light skinned and with almost identically brown hair. It was easy to pick them apart, though, seeing as one was built like a brick shithouse and looked as though he was cosplaying some strange cross between a soldier and a Ghostbuster, and the other was a twink that also happened to be absolutely rocking some sun-bleached overalls and a set of the most obnoxiously yellow rubber boots you'd ever seen in your entire life.

"Hey, dingbats!" the woman hissed, nudging her closest colleague, who happened to be the rubber boots guy, "The new vet is here!"

While the two guys attempted to swallow their drinks without getting a brain freeze, Graham gave you a somewhat sheepish smile. "Dr. L/N, I'd like to introduce you to Doctor Sari Sumdac, Doctor Spike Witwicky, and Doctor Blaine L. Parker."

"Mainframe." Blaine said, slamming his cup down with a satisfied sigh, "Call me Mainframe. Only my Mama calls me Blaine."

"I'm still good with Spike." the other man chimed in, extending his hand to you as you and Graham slid into the opposite booth seat. You shook it, quickly repeating the action with Sari and Mainframe.

"So, you're the new guy, eh?" Mainframe asked, "We've been waitn' for Marissa to finally pick someone. She's too picky, if you ask me."

"Not picky enough if she hired you." Sari shot back, and for a moment you stiffened, afraid you were about to have front row seats for a fight, but Mainframe's laughter and Sari's teasing expression quickly calmed your nerves. She looked back at you, her face taking on a more genuine look, "He's not wrong about us waiting, though. A.E.R.O. has been around for a few years now, but you're the first vet we've gotten assigned to work with us."

Your eyebrows shot up, mouth opening slightly in surprise before you remembered to shut it, "Really? Why?"

The gathered marine biologists looked at each other for a moment, before Spike leaned in closer to you. You matched his action, wondering what exactly he had to say.

"Did Marissa fill you in on what exactly A.E.R.O. means?" he asked in a low whisper.

You thought for a moment, then shook your head. Actually, your employer had told you very little, just enough to get you to sign a contract with her. You didn't regret your decision; anything would be better than the place you'd come from, but this secrecy did make you wonder what exactly you'd gotten yourself into.

"A.E.R.O.," Spike continued, "stands for Aquatic Extraterrestrial Research Outpost."

You blinked, leaning back as you turned over what Spike had just told you. Had you heard him correctly? No, surely not. Clearly you hadn't had enough coffee yet.

"I'm sorry," you apologized, chuckling a little "I must still be a bit groggy, because I thought you said extraterrestrial for a moment there."

The four shared another look, then once again focused their attention back on you.

"You heard correctly, Dr. L/N." Graham said, producing an envelope from the interior of his jacket. He quickly glanced around the diner, before sliding the envelope over to you. He continued speaking as you picked it up, hands shaking slightly.

"Five years ago, several objects from deep space suddenly entered our atmosphere and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. It was presumed that they were abnormal meteors of some kind, but a government owned dive team discovered that they were actually pods of some kind, made of materials not found on Earth.

"They were empty by the time they were found, but not long after they were discovered and retrieved, strange signals began to be picked up by sonar sensors, and sailors around this area began to report seeing bizzare creatures swimming beneath their boats, some of them claiming that their vessels were attacked, which was corroborated by several documented cases of boats coming in with scratch marks on their hulls."

You opened the envelope and reached inside, withdrawing several polaroid photographs. Each one was of a different boat, ranging from dinky little sailboats to bulky fishing trawlers. However, they all shared one unique feature; a set of deep gouges that tore through wood and metal, left behind by something that had to be absolutely huge.

Well shit, slap a tinfoil hat on your head and call you a believer, because there wasn't much in the ocean that had claws to begin with, and certainly nothing with claws large enough to do that kind of damage.

As you began to tuck the photos back into the envelope, you noticed that one of them was drastically different. It was blurry, taken on the coast during what looked like a storm, but not even those hindrances could mask the appearance of the... thing that had been captured on camera.

It was big. Like, really big.

The closest thing you could compare it to would be some kind of whale, but it looked so wholly unlike any species you knew of that you immediately tossed that idea out the window. It had a long, silvery body, covered in large, armour-like scales that almost gave the appearance of it being segmented. Thick, spiny fins jutted out along most of its tail, purple webbing torn and ragged. It's upper half was obscured, as the creature was diving back down beneath the surface, but the very beginnings of its torso hadn't quite been submerged when the photo was taken, and you could see a long row of crimson gills that glowed in the moonless dark.

"What the fuck." you breathed out, shoving the photos back into the envelope before tossing it away from you like you were playing the world's strangest game of Hot Potato.

"Yeah, that was pretty much our reaction too." Sari said, picking up the envelope. "We've been calling that one 'The Meg', since you could almost mistake it for an overgrown shark, if you only caught a glimpse of it.

You pinched the bridge of your nose and groaned softly as you considered everything you'd just been told.

"Let me get this straight," you started slowly, dragging your hand down your face before resting it on your chin, "You and Marissa want me to find a way to study and treat a highly aggressive, barely studied, extremely dangerous alien, let me repeat that for you, alien species with no prior experience and, since you four work at a separate facility, no team?"

A pregnant silence met your question for a moment, before being broken by a very timid, very nervous "Yes?" from Graham, who was rubbing the back of his head.

You looked at him, looked at the rest of his team, looked at the exit of the diner, and considered your options; accept this batshit insane, borderline suicidal offer and risk getting torn limb from limb by sea monsters from beyond the stars, or move back in with your parents.

"Well Christ on a bike, sign me up." you replied, before snagging the nearby coffee pot and, after checking that it wouldn't give you third degree burns, chugged the whole damn thing, determined to get enough caffeine in your body to drown out that little voice in your head that alway nagged that you should have been a lawyer.

[thicctails]

><((((º>‿︵‿︵‿︵Undercurrent‿︵‿︵‿︵<º))))><

A Merformers x Reader Fanfiction

Chapter 1 ° Shoreline

The worn leather of your car's steering wheel was almost uncomfortably warm beneath your touch, the heat of the sun causing beads of sweat to roll down your neck and dampen your shirt. You wiped at your brow, eyes squinting as you tried to see through the bright glare.

You, in your infinite wisdom, had packed your sunglasses up with all of your other belongings instead of keeping them with you for the week-long drive to your new home. In your defense, you'd been so eager to leave after you'd gotten the confirmation call that you'd basically just grabbed everything and chucked into into your old beat up pickup truck.

Sandwind was a tiny, coastal town that was miles and miles away from any other settlement, it's population in the low hundreds and mostly consisting of elderly folk who wanted somewhere warm to live out their golden years. It was an insignificant blip on a map.

Which is to say that it was perfect for you.

People fucking sucked. If they weren't ignoring you, and they often were, they were either being complete douchebags or trying to get into your pants. Usually both. It didn't matter that you had excelled both academically and in the workplace, you were still seen as just an object or tool by almost everyone. If you were seen at all, that was.

Even when you finally managed to break into your field, veterinary care for aquatic creatures, you'd found yourself struggling to find opportunities to move up the ladder. Your colleagues were uninterested in you, and your old boss had been too interested, which had led to you jumping ship and starting again under someone new. It had hurt like hell to do that; to abandon all the hard work you'd done just because some old creep couldn't keep his hands off you, but it had a silver lining.

Marissa Faireborn was a godsend. She saw your potential, saw how hard you worked and the quality of care you provided to the wildlife that were brought to you, and after a few years of being employed by her, she'd given you the opportunity of a lifetime. A chance to start your own wildlife care clinic, under the condition that you move immediately, handle your own housing situation, and work with a military research team that were currently set up on an island not too far away from the mainland.

You weren't exactly sure what they were researching, but you'd figured that you could ask when you met up with the head researcher in a few days.

The research team had been stationed at the property previously, and Marissa had used her influence to gain the authority to purchase the building after they'd relocated. You'd been given a grant to fund your work, but you'd had to arrange for everything to be bought and set up yourself.

It had been difficult, especially since your now ex partner had thrown you out of your shared apartment after a particularly nasty argument over your job, which had snowballed into a screaming match when he'd let slip that he'd been sleeping with one of your coworkers, forcing you to temporarily move back in with your family, something as unpleasant as stepping into a snakepit.

Needless to say, once you knew that you were good to go, you'd leapt into your old shitbox truck and hit the gas pedal with the speed of a thousand coked-up cheetahs.

Now, free of all the comments about your looks or your weight or any other thing your parents loved to pick at, you found that a smile had begun to tug at the corners of your mouth. You were out. You were finally out. And you were never going back.

By the time you'd finished unpacking, the sun had lowered from its place in the middle of the sky, now skimming the horizon line as the first shades of pink and orange hues began to appear. The warmth of your skin told you that you had likely gotten a sunburn from hauling boxes back and forth between your truck and the dusty little shack that was your new living space, but that was a small price to pay for the feeling of immense satisfaction and excitement that was currently thrumming through you.

The facility was amazing. The central building consisted of a walk in area at the entrance with a desk and some filling cabinets, a stocked cold storage room for various medications, a regular storage room, a large room in the back with several decently sized aquariums and metal tables, a kitchen/food pantry, washrooms that included showers, and a fenced outdoor area with two large inground pools and one smaller above ground pool.

All of the necessary equipment that you had ordered months ago had been delivered recently, and the mail carrier had even been nice enough to not just dump the packages at the small mailbox located outside the main facility, taking the time to make sure that they were neatly stacked beneath the shelter overhang of the main entrance.

Now, it was up to you to set everything up.

You started with the medicine and various medical supplies that didn't need to be kept cold, dragging box after box into the storage room and organizing the different pill bottles and tools.

You'd purchased a label gun before the move, and were now labelling anything and everything that you could get your grubby little paws on. In the beginning, you'd been completely professional and responsible with your labels, but by the time you'd gotten around to setting up various water pumps, heaters, and monitoring machines hours later, you'd started to act a little bit silly.

There was now a stethoscope named Steve in a drawer, a mug named Bartholomew sat empty next to your much beloved coffee machine, Randy. Sarah the clipboard was held in your hands, helpless to stop you from gluing a pair of googly eyes onto the top of her as you giggled quietly.

Okay, mayyyybe it was time to turn in for the night. This was odd behavior, even for you.

Setting Sarah down on the desk (which sported a little label that said 'Desk') you yawned and cracked your knuckles. You hadn't gotten around to installing a clock yet, so you reached into one of your pant pockets and retrieved your phone. Clicking the power button, you gaped at the time the device displayed.

"It's 2 AM?!" you squeaked, wondering how it had gotten so late without you noticing. You quickly pocketed your phone once more and made a beeline for the door. You were no stranger to staying up late, often times pulling an all-nighter to study or read fanfiction, but you had to actually act like a somewhat put together human being tomorrow, so that wasn't really an option tonight.

You stepped out into the night air, the smell of salt hitting you immediately. The once clear sky had become cloudy, and the very distant rumble of thunder met your ears. A storm was coming, and you had no intention of getting caught out in it.

Skittering across the sand like a seagull honing in on a French Fry in a Walmart parking lot, you quickly dashed towards your shitty little cottage, praying to God that if there were any spiders in here, that you didn't see them until tomorrow. You snagged your phone charger, set an alarm for Stupid o'clock In The Morning, plugged in your phone and crashed onto your shitty, half inflated blowup mattress. Silently agonizing over the back pain you knew would be coming tomorrow, you let your eyes slip shut as sleep claimed you.