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paperstarwriters · 4 months

Text

Abyssmal

short and sweet fic lol. It's been difficult squeezing time to write in between my classes as of late, but I wanted to write something out for MerMay. Just to try it, since I've never done MerMay before. Hopefully I'll be able to another one next year and onwards and all that <3

anyways I hope you enjoy!

Pairing: Mer!Muriel x reader

Warnings: protective Muriel, bittersweet ending

Summary: You want to protect Muriel and his fellow Mer-folk from getting caught in traps set out by wealthy billionaires hoping to be able to present a spectacle at their next dinner.

Muriel wants to protect you from getting murdered by the people with harpoons sent by those same wealthy billionaires. Unfortunately for you Muriel has more of an advantage in keeping you for himself safe.

He's trying to keep you safe.

Masterlists | The Arcana Masterlist

Word count: 2,666

𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟

You dream of water sometimes.

All consuming, all encompassing, filling your lungs, filling your ears, nothing but the muted swirl of bubbles around you as you float in near weightlessness, watching sunbeams pierce the veil that ripples between one shade of blue and another.

Some would call it drowning, but there’s no need for air when you dream.

A bubble escapes your lips. Your lungs burn with the need for air.

So how do you survive?

How are you—

A hand presses against your back, cradling you as you feel the pressure of the water pull past you. It’s worse than wind as it presses through your face at the sudden onset of speed, it’s worse than the biting chill that wind presses against your cheeks, for the water clings, and pulls much harder than air would ever dare to.

Your lungs, all too suddenly begin to burn, the hands around you tightening as if it knows, pushing you forward to all the more sooner let you breech the surface.

And breech you do.

Water sprays around you as you surface, gasping for air, in big heavy gulps, warring with the need to cough out the water that had slipped through your nose. Clinging to a shoulder—who’s you aren’t quite sure—you cough and hack struggling to wipe the water from your face and nose and mouth, trying to see through the fat droplets that cling to your eyelashes and threaten to drop into your eyes blinding you all over again.

You pry an eye open and find yourself immediately blinded by sunlight.

It takes a few blinks to adapt to the brightness, fluttering open and closed as you furiously wipe the water from your eyes. Your eyes flutter open and you catch a bright gleam of blue—light glittering off the water’s surface forcing your eyes back closed. Another attempt at prying them open earns you a glittering eyeful of green, glass shards perhaps, you can’t quite tell, eyes promptly forced back closed before you can get a good look.

Your eyes are still closed, still being scrubbed from the water and sunlight when the arms that held you press you against the ledge of a rocky surface allowing you, to finally feel the cold and rough embrace of land a stark contrast to the hands that once held you. It takes you a moment, coughing water and shivering, as the hand that saves you gives you a rough pat on the back, encouraging as much water as they can from your lungs, encouraging another mouthful of water from out of your stomach.

It takes a while, but your eyes finally flutter open once more, even if the water stings as it slips past your eyelashes, even if you have to furiously blink to get it out of your eyes, you still manage to open them.

And in the shadows of the cavern you find yourself in, his green eyes glow familiarly bright.

Dark hair floats around him, almost looking like dark tendrils reaching out from around him, but his eyes, bright green cut through the shadows, unblinking even as water sloshes over them.

He watches you in silence, as if staring at something new and unknown, despite the number of times you’ve met before. At the very least he no longer bears his sharp jagged teeth.

You offer him your hand and watch as he pulls away for a moment, frightened like a small animal, as if the body hidden below the water’s surface wasn’t massive. As if it didn’t surround you with it’s size. Still he waits until you dip your hand beneath it’s surface and wait for him to approach, before his hand entwines with yours, and he pulls himself, to the surface’s edge.

He needs no help up, capable of hauling his upper body to the stony surface with one thick arm alone, resting his chest on the stony edge as he peers up at you still holding your hand. He seems relaxed, holding himself up by that water’s edge, though then again, perhaps his tail helps with the support.

He runs his fingers over your hands in careful curious little strokes, rubbing at your short nails with the pads of his fingers, half scales and half flesh. His own nails are more akin to talons, ones he carefully holds away from your skin.

He touches you as if he’s never held you before, as if he’s worried that you might run away, and yet, as soon as you reciprocate, as soon as you trace your fingers along a familiar pattern along his hand, you find him squeezing your hand and pressing his cheek against the softness of your palm, a small smile growing on his lips.

You wonder if it’s his name. If it’s how you can say Muriel in his absence of words and speech.

Though mer-folk are capable of speech, as seen by their ability to trade and argue against overfishing in their oceans Muriel remains silent, the pale streak around the skin of his neck the likely source of his agony. Though you converse easily with words carved into dirt, it doesn’t stop you from lamenting his injury. You don’t know what had hurt him there, some stray piece of plastic, the webbing of a net, or some malicious human behaviour you cannot tell, but you resent it all the same.

It’s why you keep returning here after all. Why you keep meeting.

“Thank you.” Your words are soft, hoarse as you cough up another lungful of water. Muriel watches in quiet horror as you do. He reaches up, as if hoping to do something to aid you, but hesitates a look of confusion crossing his face before he pulls back returning his hold to entwine with yours and squeeze acting as a form of comfort in lieu of a hug. You squeeze in turn offering him a small smile, and another “thank you” as your sputtering finally draws to a close.

Once more the silence returns, and though you squeeze his hand to offer reassurance, and he squeezes yours in turn, the silence is heavy with unspoken words. The faint crash of waves against the stoney ledge and the cavern’s walls echoes, the sound of birds and trees and wind is audible from the opening above, but the absence of words and the weight of his stare on you still breed a wealth of discomfort.

He squeezes your hand.

He knows what you want to say.

You still say it. Of course you do.

“I have to go back.” And his eyes narrow, levelling a bitter glare your way. “Muriel, please. It’s not safe for you down there.” He gestures sharply at you and you bite the urge to roll your eyes. “I know, I know, it’s not safe for anyone, but someone has to dismantle it, and it’s better that a human gets trapped than a mer.”

He pushes himself further up to the surface, shaking his head furiously hands gesturing wildly, before he pauses and presses a sharp nail into the dirt.

’They want to hurt you too.’ He scribbles out.

“They will hurt me regardless,” you retort. He begins to write but you interrupt him before he can. “Muriel. I know how you feel about that cage. I promise I’ll be fine okay?” His eyes flicker up to you almost pleading for a moment as his hand furiously tries to scribble out more words. “Really Muriel. I saw the logo, I saw the chains around your wrist, I know that—”

“No.” He grabs you with his free hand. Pulling you close as if you wouldn’t be able to hear the rough gravel of his voice otherwise. As if you did not turn your whole attention to the low rumble of his voice. “No. You don’t. You don’t know.” He pulls you closer, holds you tightly, and yet you don’t find yourself worried at the threat of pain. You trust him too much perhaps, too used to him saving you from troubles. To used to returning the favour. “They hurt humans too. They’ll hurt you. I don’t want to lose you.”

It’s only when your hand dips into water where you expected stone that you yank yourself backwards, surprised at how far he had pulled you away, too entranced by the intensity of his eyes how he looked like he was almost going to cry, and the way he pulled you close as if offering a hug.

You want to hug him. You’re tempted to dip back into the water if only to offer him that hug, but he holds you back now, pressing you away where he once held you close.

“It’s dangerous,” he insists, voice somehow both smooth and strained. Strained with emotion. Smooth as if well-used. You’re tempted to reach forth and touch his neck, trace your fingers over that scar. Perhaps it’s old. Perhaps it had long since healed.

Perhaps—

“Stop.” The strain grows stronger, his hold on you firmer as one hand pulls away to catch your stray wrist, fingers following temptation before your mind could stop them, before you were even aware of what you were really doing. Yet, even aware of it now, you can’t find it in you to want to stop.

You just want to hug him. To hold him. Can he not see that?

Maybe it was underhanded, but maybe it could convince him. A hug, or perhaps even a kiss. An appeal to his heart, an appeal to the friendship you’ve built over so many—

Your stomach growls, the sound of it echoing through the cavern, like the growl of some beast. A growl that was somehow only scary to the tension resting on Muriel’s shoulders as they finally sag and a soft smile is sent your way. With gentle care, Muriel sets you back firmly upon dry land as he retreats into the water. He waves to you, making an eating motion, as if he couldn’t just tell you that he was going to get you food. With a sharp turn and a flash his tail, Muriel dives into the cold water below, leaving you watch his figure fade into the blue-green waters as he swims deeper and deeper away from you.

And once again, you find yourself alone in the familiar shadow of the cavern. It’s not all too bad of a place to linger. There is an opening above that lets in sunlight and moonlight, and Muriel had brought you the softest pillow and blanket you had ever used—after they had been dried out of course—but there is very little to do all on your own without Muriel to keep you company.

Not that you intend to stay here too long, but it would at the very least help measure the time. If you had a ball perhaps, you could measure how many times you could bounce and catch a ball to see how long it took Muriel to leave and return. If you had a ball you could figure more accurately how long until he was a reasonable distance from the cave.

Instead you measure by your heartbeat. It’s erratic now, anxious in the face of what you were about to do, and the possible time limit you had to get all your gear. You wouldn’t be able to get your abandoned wetsuit on in time, but you could probably grab your goggles, and your flippers maybe. Oxygen was no go, with canisters empty and unusable but you wouldn’t need to go that deep anyways—not compared to the depth of the cavern at least. You knew what mechanism you needed to trigger, just a simple pin you needed to pull. In and out, a simple task.

You dove beneath the water’s surface.

And Muriel watched you dive.

Again, he watches you swim

He understood why you were doing it, he knew full well your intentions—you had argued them to him time and time and time again, but it still pained him to watch, to see you try to sneak around him, to see you fail to recognize the danger posed to you.

You’re dealing with cruel humans. Humans who would not hesitate to hurt and maim anyone who got in their way, anyone who stopped them from collecting the mer-folk they sought to harvest.

He can’t exactly blame you for trying though. Maybe he could have been more explicit in his warning, maybe he could have told you, used his voice for once in his life.

But would you even listen to him then?

He still recalls the phantom sensations of your hands reaching for him, holding him, cradling him as if he were something soft and reverent—something worthy of reverence. You traced your fingers over his scales with the most gentle touch, uncaring that they may cut your softer skin. And the way you leaned in as if you wanted more. A hug a kiss, whatever, the mere thought alone filled him with that wretchedly dark sense of greed.

But… he could be greedy now, couldn’t he?

His teeth and tongue itch, longing to taste the very thing he’s wanted since he’s met you—since you told him your name. Precious, precious thing to have. A valuable gift he will never forget. For so long he’s longed to feel the sound of it his mouth, to feel the ridges of the syllables and the hollows of the vowels. He wants to engrave the very shape of it on his tongue.

He wants to sing you your name.

He knows what it will do to you, he knows what will happen.

But your recklessness makes his greed seem noble in comparison, and none of his other songs seem to last long enough.

He’s just trying to keep you safe. To keep you from getting killed by those divers that you still don’t know about, wielding harpoons, and the same symbols that litter those cages. He sings to keep you safe, he sings to keep you alive.

He sings to bring you back to him.

He sings your name, and the melody—the praise the words of fond affection sung in a tongue you’d never understand—all come almost second nature to him. Like breathing.

A pang of pain strikes his chest. He breathes easy as you suffocate. But only for a little while. Only to keep you safe. To keep you from dying; from being captured, tortured and killed.

He watches as your body falls slack in the water, as your feet and arms drop to a halt and begin to float as you no longer exert effort to keep them close to you. When you turn it is slow and lazy as if you have no regard for the breath burning in your lungs, before you slowly begin to kick your feet and swim his way. Your lips part, and a small smile graces your lips as your very breath escapes you a swirling bubble of silver, but Muriel is quicker than you underwater, and he’s in front of you before you can dare breathe.

He presses his lips against yours.

He fills your lungs with his breath, shares the oxygen his gills pull from the water around you, and he carries you back up to the surface where you can breathe and he will not speak.

And again you will forget that you’ve tried this.

And again he gets to pull you back into his arms.

Maybe this time you’ll linger longer. Maybe this time he’ll let himself sing to you more, stopping you before you even begin to try.

Maybe this time he can make his offer. For you to become something that can explore and wander the water you love so dearly. For you to stay where it’s safe.

For you to stay with him.

Ah, the greed of a siren. He doesn’t want to ever let you go.

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