Catch of the Day - Part One of Five

[sonora_coneja]

Pairing: Hannibal/Face
Rating: R
Warnings: merman AU - but no merman sex here, I swear
Summary: Part One of Five for a fill for this prompt on the kink meme.

Hannibal is a rugged angler whose catch of the day is a merman, Face. There is an instant attraction, but Face is terrified at first that Hannibal is going to kill him. He grows legs, does not grow legs, whatev.

Right as Hannibal is beginning to make progress with Face, big bad Lynch or Pike gets news of Hannibal’s discovery and tries to steal Face away for experimentation purposes. The more angst the better :D

Second prompt (I’m new to the fandom) I hope its okay! *Hides*

Hannibal Smith lands himself a merman one dark afternoon as he’s pulling in his last few lobster pots, injuring the young man in the process. What on earth is he supposed to do now?



Hannibal shook his hand out, cramped on the wheel of his small boat, sharp eye scanning the darkening ocean in front of him.

One more buoy to go. One more pot. And then he could go home. Back to port, back to his snug little house and a hot shower and a big mug of tea and a decent sleep, before getting up and doing it again tomorrow.

He liked it. Quiet nights, quiet days, open waters, nothing to bother him but his thoughts. Not even another crew member. Some of the younger guys laughed at him, said he’d get himself thrown into the drink and drowned one of these days, fishing alone.

Even that he wouldn’t really mind. He’d given up on company a long time ago. It was impossible to find anyone that fit with him, not the way he wanted, anyway. It was his life, the sea. And if it was to be his death as well, well, he had a certain measure of peace with that.

Not a worry tonight, though. Clear skies and smooth waters.

A good few hours to get back, though. He normally didn’t set traps out this far, so distant, but the catches hadn’t been as good as he needed them to be lately, and the other five buoys he’d set out here today had all had high yields. It would be worth it, he told himself, it really would be.

A bright spot of orange, streaked with blue, bobbed up into his vision. His colors. Location confirmed on the GPS. And with a relieved sigh, he steamed for it. He hooked the connecting rope up, just enough to get it in the winch, and settled back to wait.

The remains of his latest cigar in hand, Hannibal watched yards of wet cable rolling up into neat coils on the deck, boat swaying a little as it rode the waves.

It was all fine, the winch just starting to whine a little, like it always did when a pot was really, really heavy, and he smiled a little to himself. That would be nice, especially if they were all of the right size, fat and big...

Then the winch stuck, like something was pulling hard against it. The markings on the rope showed the pot not four feet below the surface, and Hannibal immediately threw the engines to neutral. Pulled the rope in a little further and, cigar tight between his teeth, reached out with the long, hooked pole, searching down blind for the metal frame of the...

Then he heard something scream. A man’s scream, loud, exploding up out of the water, and the force of it threw him back on his ass, flat out on the deck.

But the winch started working again.

And something flopped, hard, onto the deck next to him in the gathering night.

A man, dark in the gathering evening, whimpering now. He was obviously stuck in the trap, tugging a it frantically, trying to free a long, long fin from inside. A diver who’d gotten trapped or something, Hannibal thought, but as he ran back over, there was no dive gear, no SCUBA tanks or face mask, and his chest was bare from the waist up. That gave him a second of pause. Free diving this late in the year, this far north, was sheer suicide. What the hell was this young man doing out here?

The man was thrashing, too, thrashing hard as he fought with the trap, and the fisherman laid a hand on his shoulder, squatting down next to him, hoping he could settle him down.

“Hey, hey,” Hannibal said as gently as he could, flicking out his long pocket knife to take care of the plastic-wrapped wires of the trap. “Calm down, kid. It’s okay. We’ll get you out of here in a...”

But the man looked at him then, and down at the knife, and instead of quieting, as Hannibal had hoped, he threw himself - and the trap - back up into the shadows of the wheelhouse, up against the bulkhead, hands scrambling and eyes wide, chest fighting. Like he couldn’t get a decent breath.

And Hannibal could get even less of a decent view on the man now, tucked back into the shadows like he was, but he did catch a flash of pale blue eyes, bright with fear. The fisherman had the insane thought, right then, that this young man was beautiful...

But not the time. Not appropriate at all. Couldn’t think that. Couldn’t think that at all.

So he shoved it away.

The fisherman tucked the blade back into its handle and pocketed it, easing forward slowly on hands and knees in his now-soaked waders. All the way in. Until he could tuck himself right up against the panicked diver, holding him still in the corner of the little space.

“Shh,” he said again in his most soothing voice, dropping a hand to where he thought a knee should be, his other falling softly back on the man’s shoulder, rubbing gently. That skin was cold, almost scaly, beneath his own rough hands. “You’re out of the water now, kid. Take a deep breath. You’re going to be okay. I’m going to get you out of this...”

The diver’s chest heaved again, throat clenching, like he was trying to speak. A trembling hand closed down Hannibal’s, palm bleeding. The fisherman realized belatedly his hook must have caught him there, and a wave of shame washed over him. But before he got a chance to apologize or go for the first aid kit or anything like that, the young man pitched forward, onto his side and vomited sea water.

A vast quantity of sea water.

Hannibal was staring at the huge puddle, sliding towards one of the deck drains, when the first little words shook loose from the young man at his side.

“...please...”

His head snapped around. “What was that, kid?

The young man had propped himself up on an elbow, still trembling, staring with those pale blue eyes up at the metal edge of the rail, curving high above them. He reached up for it, but couldn’t quite make it. His legs kicked out together against the trap, useless. His breathing was still hard and labored.

And his eyes squeezed shut.

His body sagged.

Not fight left in him at all.

“Please...please don’t..” he said haltingly, licking his lips, like he was trying to remember the words. “Please... let me go.” And he rolled his head over to the edge of the boat.

Indicating the open ocean.

“Don’t be stupid, kid,” Hannibal said, reaching up above him slowly for the wheelhouse light. “You’d die out there, temperature of the water out here.” His fingers closed around the chain. “Don’t know how you’ve been out here all this time as it i...”

The light flickered on.

And the fisherman went back to his knife and the trap, telling himself to be very careful this time, but with the first snip of wire, he noticed.

It wasn’t a dive suit, and those weren’t rubber diving fins.

Unless that sort of thing was starting to come in a scale-textured, dark green, fused-leg style that extended a good two feet below where his soles should have been and very, very closely resembled...

He looked up at the young man, now cast in the dim blue glow of the halogen overhead. He was beautiful, just as Hannibal had thought, lean waist and wide shoulders, built like a swimmer, water-dark hair just starting to dry into loose curls around his forehead, pale eyes and fine cheekbones. It was more than just that, though. There was something mesmerizing about him, something otherworldly, something very clearly not human...

Then he turned his face into his good hand, groaning a little in defeat. And the fisherman noticed a set of gills flaring wide on that sculpted neck. “If you...if you aren’t gonna... let me go...can...you....at least...dry me off?” The gills flared again. “Need...need...hard to breath...”

He had towels, a few, and a spare set of clothes here in the wheelhouse. But Hannibal couldn’t move, couldn’t breath himself.

It was impossible, but...

Had he actually just landed a merman?

+++++

As they steamed for home and dry land, Hannibal wondered what the hell he was going to do about this.

He got the trap off fairly fast, after recovering from that little revelation. He wasn’t quite sure he believed it until he’d cut through the lobster trap and seen the young man’s tail, felt the thin translucency of the wide, spreading fins, seen all the damage the neck of the wire basket had done. Cut and bleeding all around the wires dug in, and some of the fin had shredded apart, in his attempt to get loose. He hadn’t made a sound as Hannibal pulled the ends his fishing gear free.

Not a single sound.

He was clearly in pain, though, and asked again to be dried off, choking a little now. Hannibal had propped him up into the small pilot’s chair, covered with a towel, and placed a few more in the merman’s scaled lap. He’d started on his own hair and torso while Hannibal rubbed down his tail, not really sure what it was all about until he’d noticed the wide, flat green scales on the thick tail, trailing up onto that flat, hard belly, start to change into a pale, human pink.

Breath started coming easier then, the gills fading away, and Hannibal tried not to think about how such a thing was possible as, all of the sudden, something separated and he was faced with a pair of very, very human legs.

The merman took a deep, deep lungful of air right then, and sighed, voice heavy. “That answers that question,” he said, looking down at his newly exposed feet.

Both ankles were bleeding, bruised and battered purple, just like his tail had been.

“What’s that mean?” Hannibal had asked, tugging a pair of sweatpants and waterproof waders up around exposed, narrow hips, trying not to look at the young man. “How does that...”

“I’d thought maybe it’ll heal up or something, changing forms, but...” and he touched one, wincing as he did so. “Still hurts.”

“Does this always happen when you get dry?” he asked.

The young man, who now looked like any other normal, handsome, twenty-something year old male of the human species, a little small in the oversized sweatshirt he’d just pulled over his head, grinned unexpectedly. “The legs? Yeah. Every time. At least, it’s supposed to. That’s what I’ve always heard.”

“You’ve never...”

“...come to the surface?” the merman finished for him, and rubbed that good hand of his across his chin, Hannibal swabbing the other down with antiseptic. “Can’t recall. Some of us like it. But I prefer the ocean.”

“So do I,” the fisherman told him.

The young man locked eyes with him for a moment.

That pale blue held him as he pulled in to the Seal Harbor port.

It was late enough now that all of the other boats had already come in, much to Hannibal’s relief. The merman was getting more and more agitated, the closer they got to the docks, and as the fisherman moored his little craft, raising an arm in greeting to BA, who was already coming over from his little warehouse. He’d have to have the man’s crew unload the catch, Hannibal mused. He wanted to get the merman to the town doctor as soon as...

“I should... I should go...” the young man stammered just then, interrupting his thoughts.

“Shh, kid, it’s okay,” the fisherman reassured him. “I have to drop off my catch, and we’re going to go get you patched up.”

“But...”

“I won’t tell anyone what you are. I promise.”

Sitting in the wheelhouse chair, the young man cast a longing glance at the water. “Maybe I could just...”

“You’ve got a sprained or broken...tail, kid and your hand’s not so good either,” Hannibal replied, something locking up inside him at the thought of losing the merman now. After only just finding him. And he didn’t know why. “I don’t want to send you back out there hurt, especially not when I’m the one who hurt you.”

He bit his lip. "But..."

So human, the fisherman thought, seeing that little gesture of nervousness, and couldn’t resist touching that salt-heavy hair, drying to a light caramel. “I’m going to take care of you kid."

Pale eyes met his own again. A little nod.

And then Hannibal had to think fast, because there BA was. Right there.

“Hey! Hannibal, man! What you...”

Hannibal swung his strange catch of the day up into his arms right as the big black man drew up along side with clipboard and calculator.

“Can you handle the hold, BA?” the fisherman asked, trying not to think about the way those swimmer’s arms were sliding around his neck right now, and kept going, right up the dock. The merman was light, lighter than he would have expected. “Need to get the kid to the doctor.”

“What...”

“Skin diving out in the sound. Some damn MTV, Fear Factor, frat boy stunt,” he grumbled, and BA laughed. So what if he was playing up the whole grouchy old man thing, even if he wasn't that old? If it kept the harder questions from being asked... “Probably would’a drowned if I hadn’t happened to find him.”

The merman clung tighter to him as they left the wood slats of the dock, onto the asphalt, up onto the half-lit main street of the little Maine town. The doc wasn’t too far away, maybe half a mile or so, easy distance. And somehow, it seemed better to him, right then, to have the contact with the merman. He could almost feel the kid’s nervousness leaking in to him. Never been ashore before, he reminded himself, and made to ask, if he was doing okay.

But the kid got there first.

“Hannibal?” he asked quietly. “That’s your name?”

“My name’s John, actually. Everybody calls me Hannibal, though.”

“They call me Face,” the merman replied, and nuzzled into his neck. “Just Face.”

Hannibal had to take a deep breath. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had somebody, anybody, this close. It was, oh god, it was... but again, he forced it away. “Nice to meet you, Face.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” the man in his arms murmured, and clung even tighter. "You sure you aren't going to kill me, Hannibal?"

"Does death come easy, in...

"In the ocean? It comes. Sharks sometimes, our own little wars." Face squeezed as he said it, hands ridiculously strong. "And humans kill us. My parents were killed by humans, in their big whaling ships. Others disappear..."

"Not me, kid. I'm not going to kill you," Hannibal said tightly, and turned the street to Murdock's house, reaching the door in what seemed like an instant, ringing the bell insistently. "I'm going to help you."

But the merman didn't say anything more. Just held on for dear life and wouldn't let go.

+++++

Hannibal laid his burden of young merman very, very carefully down in his own bed, covers thrown back, right down on the fitted sheet. He’d washed them a few days ago, figured it would probably be okay for his guest.

And Face would be his guest for at least a month. That’s what Murdock, the town’s family practice doctor, had said. That the wounds to the kid’s hand were fairly superficial, but he’d torn a few ligaments in his feet. Almost separated the joints entirely.

“He will require absolute rest for the first few days. Limited activity only, after that for at least a month, maybe longer, depending on how he heals up,” the doctor had explained in a faked British accent as he finished wrapping the kid’s left ankle. “Any idea how you managed to get yourself into this shape, old boy?”

“I, I was...” Face had stammered, but the merman’s eyes had turned onto Hannibal in desperation and the fisherman lied for him as best he could.

“I found him like this, near one of my buoys. Bad accident. He says he doesn’t remember what happened.”

Murdock had nodded and clucked a little in the back of his throat, giving Hannibal a bottle of ibuprofen for the pain and the swelling, directions to come back in a week for a check-up and to get the cuts examined, and asking him again, before he could leave, “who is he?”

“Some dumb college kid,” the fisherman had shrugged back.

Somehow, the two mile walk home had never seemed so short. Or so necessary.

He lived far out of town, far beyond the pleasant little main street that filled up with rich people from New York and Boston in the summer. Hannibal liked it out here. A good little house, with a clear view of a shallow bay, right from his wide sun room. That’s all the house really was. A sun room with an old, huge sofa and a small bed a tiny kitchen and the bathroom with it’s huge, claw-footed bath tub. Good enough for a place to sleep, and to weather out the warm months between end and beginning of the lobster season.

Peaceful.

Like Face himself.

That was, until the kid woke up.

Face had been sleeping against his shoulder on the walk, lulled by the movement or coerced by the pain, but the moment his body slid onto the bed, he woke with a start.

And started fighting

Hannibal had to pin him down, use every ounce of his own strength to keep him still, and hated himself for noticing the way that hard body felt under his, wrapped up in its layers of soft sweats. “Shh, kid, kid, it’s just me.”

The blue eyes looked frantic, right before sliding shut and falling to the side. “That man hurt me...”

“He was just trying to check to see that you were okay. That's why he was poking your new feet,” the fisherman soothed, easing off to take his boots off, to pad on socked feet into the kitchen for a glass of water. “He gave me some pills to help with the pai...”

“Pills?”

“Medication,” Hannibal told him, filling up a glass at the sink. He opened the fridge too, searching for any kind of fish he might have on hand, something the kid might be able to eat to keep the pills from coming right back up. He had some raw cod from the day before yesterday, and a small tub of fresh-steamed crab. He grabbed the crab. Who knew how merfolk ate? But he was willing to bet they didn't refrigerate their fish for days after they killed it. And the kid was going to have to get used to cooked food. “Do...do your people have things they eat, to make them feel better when they’re not well?”

Face’s eyes didn’t open, but he did nod as Hannibal sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Pills are what humans use to make ourselves better. You’ll heal faster if you take this,” Hannibal urged and pulled the merman up a bit, offering him the water and the pill and the shellfish. “And you need something to settle your stomach.”

He cautiously took a little bit of the crab, chewing thoughtfully, wincing a little. “It tastes different.”

“Different bad?”

“Just...just different,” he said slowly, taking a big handful and eating it out of his palm with a surprisingly delicate display. Hannibal sighed internally; he was going to have to teach the kid some table manners. And the kid picked up the pill. “How do I...”

“Put it on your tongue, kid. Take a sip of water. Swallow the lot.”

The merman did exactly that, gagging a little on the water. “That’s...that’s fresh. What...”

“Humans only drink fresh, kid. Salt water can kill us. Finish that, too, or you might get sick.”

“Am I human now?” the young man whispered fearfully, eyes wide as he forced himself to eat the rest of his handful. “Is that what I am?”

“I don’t know, kid," the fisherman replied honestly. "I don’t know how any of this works.”

With a nod, Face stuffed the last of the crab into his mouth and laid back down, shifting uncomfortably on his side, chewing slowly as the tears started rolling down the crease of his nose, onto the sheets.

Hannibal sat there until he was sure the young man had dropped off into sleep, helped by the painkillers, and even then, he didn’t move away.

Not an inch.

Watching his young merman struggle fitfully through his first night on dry land.

+++++

“Oooh! What’s this one?”

Any concerns that Hannibal might have had that Face wasn’t going to take to human food were completely eradicated the next morning, as the kid sat on the small house’s wheeling desk chair, his pill already proudly - and properly - taken, pushing himself between pantry and fridge, digging through boxes and cans and plastic containers curiously, tasting what he could.

Not that Hannibal stocked up all that much, not really. Usually coffee and sandwich meat, bread, for the days on the ocean, super something from the market or deli or at the pub down on main street, where the prices weren’t too high for the locals to eat.

But then the kid was examining the carton of milk. “What is it?” he asked, sniffing, and his eyes went wide. “Whoa...”

“What is what?”

“It’s like I can taste all of it, but, but, like, in my...this thing,” he replied, tapping his nose, nearly upending the carton before Hannibal jumped in to save it. “I’ve never...”

Huh, the fisherman thought to himself. “It’s smell,” he said. “One of the five senses.”

“Five?”

“Touch, taste, hearing, sight, smell,” Hannibal replied, and, figuring this was as good a time as any to give the kid a quick tutorial on some of the more important points of human eating habits, went for a couple of bowls. And spoons. “Smell’s in the nose,” he said, unable to resist leaning over from his perch by the coffee pot, tapping the very tip of the merman’s very fine facial feature. “And they say that scent the one scent is linked strongest to memory, even though us humans seem to notice it the least.”

“Really?”

His shifted, a little uncomfortable at saying so much about a simple thing. Was this what life was going to be like with the merman? Sharp kid. Very inquisitive. So... “Yeah, that’s what I remember from...”

“Those are the five human senses?” he laughed. “What about...what are your words... like the way dolphins see? What about how sharks feel the currents that flow north?”

Hannibal couldn’t even touch that one. Didn’t make any sense to him. So he shrugged. “But you don’t have human, err, taste through the nose,” he pointed out instead, taking that laugh as a good sign, and set the bowls down on the table with the spoons beside. “C’mon kid, lesson time.”

But he heard a soft noise, like a whimper, and when he turned around, the merman was back in the corner.

Damn.

“Face...”

The kid just swallowed, staring down at his new, very puffy, very purple feet. “Did I...did I do something wrong, Hannibal?”

“No, why?”

He poked at his toes, wriggling them a little, like it was amazing. Like everything was amazing to him which, Hannibal supposed, it was. “Lessons? In what?”

“Nothing bad, kid. But if you’re going to be here for a while...”

Those beautiful blue eyes got huge. “How long?”

“At least a month, maybe more, for everything to heal up right. Maybe more.”

“...more?” the merman whispered through his fingers.

Hannibal pressed on, tugging one of those dexterous hands away, folding it into his. “And if you’re going to be with me that long, Face, you’re going to need to pass as human. There’s...rules, things, that humans do, that have to be followed.”

The young man’s mouth formed a little o, and he nodded once, slowly. “Like what?”

“Like breakfast,” Hannibal said, pushing the rolling chair over to the table, grabbing a box of cheerios along with the milk, positioning the kid right in front of one of the empty bowls. “Like how we eat breakfast.”

“Breakfast?”

“Three meals a day, kid,” the fisherman said, pouring them both a bowl, cereal, then milk. “And this is the first one, in the morning. Milk, Honey-nut Cheerios. Good for you and tasty. We..” and he caught the kid’s hand as it was going for one of the little floating o’s, fitting the utensil into it properly, softly, like he was teaching a child. “...we eat it a certain way. With this. A spoon.”

Face smirked. “We stick with our hands, my people. You humans are complicated.”

Hannibal smiled back. “Brave new world, kid. Come on, watch, so, spoon down...”

He spent the next five minutes showing the merman how to herd the cereal up into the flat round of the soup spoon, the young man laughing as he dropped one or got it into his mouth, the first taste bending the corners of his lips up into a happy little smile, Hannibal laughing right along with him, relaxing enough to eventually reach over and grab a napkin.

“Hey, you can’t dribble on yourself either,” he teased gently, wiping away a little trail of milk from that truly perfect chin. “No ocean to help us out with that, right?”

Face caught his hand, taking the napkin away and dabbing at the moisture, again, so delicate, so deliberate, so articulate, those hands of his. He crumpled the used tissue, tossing it away. “I still think you’re going to kill me,” he said in a soft voice, and picked the spoon back up.

Scooping up a piece of cereal with perfect form.

And he swung the chair around a bit, humming some tune to himself, an old sea shanty or something like that, low and haunting and familiar and so, so strange.

All Hannibal could do was stare. And wonder what he could do to win this beautiful creature’s trust. To take away that fear.

To win him over.

Even though he had no logical reason for doing something like that. At all.

Face looked up at him then, smiling, humming a little louder, and finished that entire bowl of cereal in between those sweet, sweet notes.

+++++

A stream of cold March air blew through the half-open window, swirling the line of smoke off the end of Hannibal’s cigar, curling through the little sun room. His most recent novel lay untouched on his lap.

The fisherman just wasn’t in the mood to read. He felt restless, somehow.

He’d stayed back that day, not going out, staying with the kid. Staying to make sure Face was okay. Staying - if he was very, very honest with himself - to make sure Face didn’t disappear on him.

The fisherman didn’t think he could bear something like that. Knowing that his injured merman was alone and in pain. Either in the late winter ocean or laying on Hannibal’s floor, trying and failing to walk. Who would help the kid, the fisherman told himself, if not him?

He wouldn’t let something bad happen to the merman. Not right now. Get him healthy, let him go. That was part of being a fisherman, he told himself, knowing when to keep and when to throw back. And sooner or later, he was going to have to throw Face back.

But, Hannibal thought with a small measure of relief, that was yet a ways off.

He was in his favorite armchair, the one he had under the window for the very purpose of cigar and book, and usually, he’d be staring out at the setting sun and rising moon and the soft waves of the ocean and thinking about nothing but the evening ahead.

But instead, there was Face to consider.

And there was a lot to consider there.

Face seemed so young, so innocent, with his little prodding questions about dry land and humans and all the differences and things around the fisherman’s little house, like the way he was examining an old chess set right then. But the way his eyes had darkened when he’d spoken of his parents’ murder at the hands of human, the way he would be laughing with the fisherman one minute and shying away the next, the way he seemed to expect Hannibal to just out and kill him all seemed very suspicious.

What was life like out there, in the ocean, he wondered, far removed from the cameras of Discovery Channel specials and the hulls of cruise ships?

“Things I don’t know your words for,” the kid said, looking up from his study of the antique set. He was playing with the knight, turning it over and over. “Deep, old things. Monsters, maybe, you might call them.”

The fisherman started a little, not realizing he’d spoken aloud, but shrugged it off as best he could. “Do your people live out there?”

The kid’s attention was very focused on the knight, one cheek rested against a water-slim hand, and those blue eyes slid shut. “Some of us do. We all wander, but you’ve got have a good reason to stray out into the depths, where the water goes black. It’s harder to find food out there.”

“What’s a good reason?”

“Traveling across it,” the kid replied in a low voice, slow and measured. “Or if you’re working with somebody else, like the dolphins or the whales that...”

“That what?” Hannibal asked, genuinely interested in what a merman might be doing, working with whales, but sensing it wasn’t the time to push.

Right call.

The knight went flying across the room, flicked away by a clever hand. “Then nothing,” he saidly flatly, and met the older man’s gaze. There was sadness there. Some old pain. “There’s no good reason to cross the dark waters, really. Bad things wait for you out there.”

“Kid, I wasn’t...”

“Life’s tough this far north, you know? I’ve always wanted to go south,” and he smiled again, whatever had been working its way to the surface diving down and away again. “Heard stories my whole life. Warm, shallow waters, lots of sun, lots of food...”

It was Hannibal’s turn to smile, a bit sad. “I think all those places are taken up by humans now, kid.”

“Merfolk are better at hiding than you might think. And humans aren’t everywhere. I’d find myself a nice little place,” Face said with a yawn and a sniff, his nose curling up a little bit. He looked up at the fisherman in confusion. “I can smell...is that me?”

Hannibal laughed a little around one last mouthful of sweet smoke, and leaving his cigar in the closest ashtray, got up, going over to the kid. “That is you, kid. Sorry, but humans do tend to stink a bit.”

“It’s gross,” the merman replied seriously. “Can I make it go away?”

“I can get you some deodorant tomorrow, if you’d like. And I can get you washed up right now,” Hannibal said, making to pick him up.

“Ooh, water?” and Face responded automatically, holding out his arms and letting Hannibal draw him up. And damn, if that young man didn’t feel just right, tucked up against his chest like that. But...

“Yeah kid, water,” the fisherman chuckled, and set the kid down on the top of the closed toilet lid. “But not too much.”

Bright blue eyes followed his moves, as he tugged the too-large shirt off the young man’, as wet down a washcloth in the sink, as he stroked the damp terrycloth over that exposed chest, just once, to see what would happen.

The merman inhaled sharply, and ran a shaking hand over the spot that Hannibal just wet down. There was the faintest glimmer there down around his belly button, green, sparkling in the bathroom’s light, but nothing too major. And Hannibal felt his own breath catch a little at the simple motion.

Fortunately, Face didn’t seem to notice it at all. “It...it tickles a little, but not bad,” and he grinned. “And I won’t smell, right?”

“No kid,” Hannibal told him, going back to work, soaping the cloth a bit and bringing it back to glide across that lean, strong body. “You’re going to be fine.”

“You smell,” the merman replied in that inocent way of his. “Why don’t I smell like you?”

Hannibal bit his lip and didn’t meet the young man’s eyes. “All people smell different.”

“Can you tell people apart, by their smell?”

“We don’t generally talk about the way other people smell, kid, unless we know them very, very well,” the fisherman said gruffly, trying desperately not to think about all the things his brain wanted to think about.

That flat expanse of belly pulled away from him, and Face gasped a little as more scales popped out and subsumed again. “I said something wrong again. You’re going to be angry with me now.”

Hannibal sighed, dipping the washcloth back in the sink and wringing it out, moving back in. No way forward with this kid, he figured, but forward. “No, kid, it’s not...”

But Face just shut those brilliant eyes of his and leaned back, letting his head hit the medicine cabinet behind, and didn’t talk again.

It was another restless night for Hannibal. The kid started humming to himself a little while after the fisherman put him to bed, sad and mournful this time. And somehow, the fisherman figured, the haunting lilt of the tune sunk into him as he felt asleep himself, sinking into troubled dreams of deep water and dark shapes above him against weak light, moving south to some purpose that would never be met.

+++++

“Can you feel that?”

“No?”

“That?”

“No.”

“This?”

“Oww!”

Hannibal chuckled, and offered the doctor a mug of fresh coffee. “Don’t hurt the kid, Murdock. You only just got him patched up.”

“Doctors hit you on the knee with a rubber hammer, no matter what’s wrong with you,” was the mock-defensive reply, and Hannibal rolled his eyes at Face, who looked a little like he was pouting about the town doctor just about driving a rubber mallet through his knee.

A set of high knee braces were sitting on the counter next to him, brought over by Murdock to help with the whole mobility issue. The doctor had said he didn’t expect the swelling to go down enough for a few more days, for face to use them.

“You should know he’s crazy,” the fisherman said affectionately, lighting up a fresh cigar.

Murdock grinned that lopsided grin at Hannibal. “Me or him?”

“Both of you,” he huffed, almost choking on his first mouthful. “You should get along great. You sure you don’t mind staying with him for a while, doc?”

Murdock lit up. Like Hannibal had just offered him a lollipop or something. The Texas was a little unhinged, and everyone in town knew it, but the affluent summer crowd evidently found it just so fitting to have an eccentric family practitioner in a small town like Seal Harbor. So he'd stayed. Against all apparent logic. But Murdock was a good doctor and charged next to nothing for his services and could get children to take their shots without complaint. And would do just about anything for anyone.

Like babysitting patients while their caregivers had to go into town for a few things, after coming up to just do a quick check-up.

“We can play chess!”

And Face smiled a little, rocking in his wheeling chair. “My parents were doctors,” he said. “But they never hit anybody with a rubber hammer.”

“Really?” Murdock asked, getting up, following his own eyes to the chess board. “What kind?”

“They, uhh,” and Hannibal caught a little glance that was thrown his way. “They were whale doctors.”

“Marine veterinarians?” the Texas asked, lighting up as he went for the chess board. “They ever work with Shamu or some other famous celebrity?”

Hannibal sucked in air, wondering if Face was going to say something...

“Naw,” the merman drawled out, in fair imitation of Murdock’s own accent, saving himself perfectly. “Their clients were all relatively obscure...”

Hannibal shook his head. Like they’d already forgotten he was here, he thought with a slight smile, and wrapped his big gortex jacket around his Irish sweater, grabbing his house keys as he went for the door. “You boys have fun. Face, did you have any requests for dinner?”

“Fish!” he said, helping Murdock set the pieces up. “Lots of fish!”

“I make a killer cioppino, if you’d like,” the doctor offered offhandedly.

“Ooh, what’s that?”

“Divine, Faceman, absolutely...hey, where’s the white knight?”

“Uhh...”

“Never mind. We can use the salt shaker.”

And that image, of Face’s concealed confusion and evident amusement at a doctor kept Hannibal smiling.

On his way into town. Down to the little dockside deli, right next to the dockside fish market. As he slotted in to line.

All the way.

Until the girl behind the counter asked him, “so, Hannibal, what’s up with that cute NYU student you rescued a couple days ago?”

Until the man standing behind asked, “rescued from where?”

“Oh, Professor Burress! One of BA’s guys saw Hannibal here pulling some super hot guy off his boat the other night and totally had to take him to go see Doc Murdock and evidently he’s really hot and...”

And Hannibal had the sudden sinking feeling that this wasn’t going to be good for Face.

At all.

The small deli was suddenly awash in speculation, loud questions and hushed little murmurs, looks being thrown his way, and the fisherman felt his irritation growing.

Hannibal never failed to be amazed by how quick rumors spread around here, especially in the off-season, when it was only perennial locals and everyone was bored stupid. Any news was big news. But this...

“A house guest, huh, Hannibal?” Vance Buress asked, leaning on one elbow, right on the glass case next to him. “Sounds interesting.”

Arrogant bastard, Buress. One of the researchers up at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, grown fat on government grants, published in half the professional magazines in the country, if his stories were to be believed. Did work for the CIA, some of the ladies in town liked to giggle to themselves, and his background seemed to change every time he got drunk at the pub. Hannibal had never liked him, arrogant elitist who looked down on anyone who didn’t have an Ivy League doctorate, at anybody who worked with their hands for a living.

The fisherman preferred, on the whole, to pretend like Buress didn’t exist. Things were easier that way.

So he turned his back on the man and went back to the girl behind the counter, who was vapidly chattering away about his house guest to some other customer, and Hannibal felt that irritation start to swell again. “Amy, sweetheart, can you get me the usual order but doubled. And a couple extra pounds of whatever fish is freshest today, maybe?”

She winked and started walking down the long counter, basket in hand, going for the first shelf. Bigger towns on the island, like Bar Harbor, had regular grocery stores. Here, everybody got their weekly staples down at the dockside market, in the little shops. Amy might have been a litle vapid, but she somehow managed to memorize the usual list of all her regulars, and Hannibal hardly ever deviated from the basics.

“I’ll throw a few extra things in there if you put in a good word with him for me,” she threw back at him playfully.

Hannibal shook his head, smiling a little in spite of himself. “As soon as he’s better, he’s out of my place!” he called back.

But as soon as he spoke, he realized that the entire place had gone silent again.

Everybody waiting.

Hannibal could have kicked himself.

And then Buress, calm and collected in his LL Bean high-necked sweater, didn’t miss a beat.

“So, Hannibal, why, exactly, is he at your place?”

That was one of the other things the fisherman hated about Buress. Man talked like he already knew the fucking answer, and was just waiting for everyone else to catch up.

He wanted to tell him where to shove it. But the bastard wanted an answer. And Hannibal knew from experience that not providing at least some version of an answer would result in more and more and more questions. Like that one god-awful summer when a couple of Buress’s New York environmental lawyers buddies came out to try to sue BA for animal cruelty, over some batch of lobsters that arrived dead. Vance had stood by while they turned the entire town upside down, and then published a paper using a lot of the confidential data they’d collected during their investigation.

He couldn’t afford to have this man digging into Face’s past.

Better to just answer with something.

“Stupid college kid got himself hurt doing some stupid stunt out on the sound, and I just happened to find him,” he grunted, and tried his best to not look at the man. “Doc says he needs absolute rest for a few weeks. He’s here until he can leave.” Hannibal pushed back and turned around, taking in the faces of everyone around him. Curious. Morbidly curious. Everyone wanting to know. What business of it was theirs? “Couple of weeks, that’s it.”

Amy set a very heavy basket down on the counter, and starting ringing stuff up, sorting it out into bags. “He got a name?”

“Templeton Peck,” Hannibal said, grabbing for the first two words that came to mind and going for his wallet. He hoped it all sounded off-handed, like he didn't care. Like this wasn't prickling against every protective instinct in his body. “But he goes by his frat nickname, Face. Amy, how much do I owe you?”

“Depends on whether or not I get that date!”

Hannibal chuckled, aping a humor he didn’t feel at the girl’s words, and waved his credit card at her. “Just ring it up.

She took the plastic with a little shake of her hips. “You’re no fun at all, Hannibal.”

“Yeah, Hannibal,” Buress echoed. “No fun at all.”

He just grunted again, and headed out to the nearby parking lot, where he'd left his truck the morning he'd found Face, laden down, knowing that everyone was still watching him as he left.

Especially Buress.

+++++

Hannibal didn’t leave his house again.

Not in to town, anyway.

Not until the time came for another check-up.

And for those five days life slid quickly into a rhythm he found himself almost enjoying.

Getting up in the morning, the merman awake first, humming to himself a little as he played with the bedsheets. Simple breakfast. A game or two of chess. Questions. Walking lesson with the boot braces on. Lunch. More questions. More chess. Conversation. Peaceful silence. Dinner. A book and a cigar and old songs the kid sang to himself. Bath time, a series of quick passes, wet cloth over that lithe body, just glimpsing the impossibility of it all before Face laughed and lifted and Hannibal had to carry him to bed. A little query, if Hannibal was going to kill him, less and less frightened every night. Sleep. Dreams that didn’t quite seem like his. Wake up. Do it again.

Face seemed fine with it all, too, as long as he got his painkillers on time and raw fish at least once a day. Raw. Right out of the fridge, a big chunk of it he just munched on, like it was a piece of fruit, and his eyes always seemed to shine.

That was what he was doing that morning, before Murdock was scheduled to come by, and Hannibal was watching him close. Kid was walking around slowly as he ate, testing his legs, boots on, the big black things designed to keep all those little ends of tissue he’d ripped on the lobster trap right where they were supposed to be. The cuts had already healed up, the fisherman had noticed last night as he was washing the kid down. Down to bright pink scars.

“What’s wrong, Hannibal?” the kid had asked, looking down at him with curious eyes.

“Nothing,” he’d said.

Even if that wasn’t strictly true.

Something about that, the kid mobile, able, that upset Hannibal in a way he knew he had no right to be. When Face got better, when Face was whole again, he’d go back to the ocean. He’d leave. Gone. Hannibal wouldn’t see him again.

And the longer the kid was around, the less and less the fisherman wanted that to see that happen. He’d actually been wondering, almost, when he wasn’t catching himself, if maybe the kid possibly might, if merfolk had allowances for, if it wasn’t maybe contrary to all laws of god and nature for the kid to be interested in m...

“Hey!” and the boots stopped their clumping against the worn wood floor. “Hey, who’s this?”

Hannibal looked away from the window where he was smoking his cigar, over to where Face had paused by one of the bookcases, stretched up, grabbing out for the wall to brace himself as he grabbed up for something on the top shelf. Still so unsteady, and as the older man came over, he saw a subtle pinch of pain on the merman’s brow.

He was back to eating his fish now, though, like he didn’t even notice.

Staring down at the picture frame he’d taken off the top shelf.

“My parents,” Hannibal sighed, taking a quick look at it, and then taking it away. It was the only photo he had of the pair of them, taken some time before they’d had him, both of them out by some lighthouse somewhere, his mother’s hair almost green in the faded print, her arms thrown up around his dad’s neck, kissing his cheek. He’d thrown all the other pictures he had away - he liked to remember them like this, the way his dad had always described her, rather than what had happened. “Mom and dad.”

“She’s pretty,” the merman observed quietly, touching the glass of the frame, right over her face, smudging it a little with residual fish juice. “Is she pretty by human standards, too?”

The phrasing was a bit odd, but Hannibal didn’t feel like calling him on it. He was too busy thinking, remembering, the fights they’d had when he was a child, the screaming he’d hear on the back porch when they thought he was asleep, the way he’d see her crying to herself after his dad went to work, the time she’d thrown a casserole at him, the time he’d hit her, the way his father started drinking the day she left, the day he’d told her to go, and never really stopped...

“Yeah, kid,” he replied sadly, wiping the smudge off the glass with a corner of his shirt, and putting it back up where it belonged; high enough so he didn’t have to look at it. He inhaled and exhaled a dense mouthful of warm smoke, feeling the nicotine calm him down a little. “She was real beautiful.”

“What happened to her? She die, too?”

“I don’t know, kid.”

“Why not?”

Hannibal sighed again. It wasn’t something he wanted to talk about. At all, and he looked at his watch. “We need to get going, Face, if we’re going to make your appointment.”

Face didn’t let it go, though, not as he eased himself up into the passenger seat of Hannibal’s truck, not as they pulled out on the short road to town.

“How can you not know what happened to your parents?” he asked, staring out the window. Hannibal had taken him out for a drive or two before. The kid seemed to love it. Like everything in the world was amazing. It was strangely endearing, watching somebody wonder like that. “I mean, they’re your parents.”

The fisherman gripped the steering wheel a little harder, cigar tight in his teeth, but reminded himself it was better just to answer. “They fought a lot. She wasn’t from around here, Iceland or the Faroe Islands, something like that, and she wanted to go home. Dad wouldn’t let her.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. So mom got angrier and angrier, they argued, they hit each other, and one day, he told her to go.”

“He let her go?”

Again with the odd wording, but Hannibal was too lost in the memory of that day. The day he’d come home from school and she’d been gone. Nothing packed. All her clothes in the drawers. Like she’d just walked out. Dad in the living room with a bottle of vodka. A note on his pillow, in his mom’s rough handwriting.

I’m so sorry I have to go. I’m so sorry I can’t take you with me. Be a good boy for your father, Johnny. Remember always that I love you.

“Maybe,” he shrugged, and tapped the growing ash on the end of his cigar out the window. “I was ten.”

“Why didn’t she take you with her?” Face asked.

Hannibal cast his merman a glance as he tapped his brakes at the stop sign, and rolled right through. Kid had a hand on the glass now, studiously not looking over to the left. Very odd. Face was being very odd about it. Probably just the fact that he lost his own parents. “I used to ask my dad that all the time. When I was sixteen, he told me that she’d wanted to, but he wouldn’t let her. Some bullshit about not wanting his son to be raised that way.” He took the next left, down on to Main Street, still fairly empty this time of day. “I went down to the nearest Amry recruiting office the next day and signed up. By the time I got back from the Gulf, dad was dead. Drunk himself to death...”

Hannibal stumbled to a halt then, not sure what else to say about his parents, and felt a hand on his knee.

Face was smiling at him. Somewhat sad. Somewhat...well, Hannibal didn’t have a word for whatever he was seeing there. Like the kid was excited or something. Which didn’t make a damn bit of sense. “I’m sorry about your father,” he finally said.

“It’s okay. Long time ago,” he said brusquely, and pulled into a narrow little parking space on the street, threw the ignition off, and turned to the kid. “Are you going to be okay? This is your first time out in the town with people around and...”

“...and I promise not to embarrass you,” the kid said, grinning.

“No, Face, I don’t want anybody figuring out you’re...”

“Oh, come on,” the merman scoffed, and snapped open the door. “You said human don’t even know about merfolk to begin with. Your people think we’re... what did you call it?”

“Fairytales. Imaginary creatures. Not real.”

“Right, so, who’s going to guess I’m some kind of non-existent creature?” And he laughed.

Hannibal wanted to laugh a little too, because yeah, the intuitive leap it would take to go from hot college student to merman was almost too ridiculous to even think about.

Yet there was the way Buress had been looking at Hannibal that day in the deli, the probing little questions that weren’t quite on the level, and something about that, looking back on that, suddenly made the fisherman incredibly nervous. The man was some kind of biologist, specializing in all kinds of weird shit. Wasn’t he on the team that had found the vampire squid a few years back? What else could he know about the deep ocean? The things that lived there?

“You just never know, kid,” Hannibal cautioned instead. “I don’t want anybody asking questions about you. Remember what we talked about?”

The kid rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, Templeton Peck, third year undeclared major at New York University, taking the semester off for some traveling and stuff, got hurt diving...”

“You okay with all that?”

He rubbed his hand across his chin, not laughing any more. “Your father let your mother go, right?”

It threw Hannibal completely off-balance. “I... I guess you could say that. Although...”

“Cause he loved her?”

“I don’t know. I was pretty young when it happened.”

The merman looked up at him with big eyes. “Would you let me go like that, if I asked?”

“Face, my mom wasn’t...it was a different situation. You’re a guest, not married to me or leaving your son...”

Face looked out the window again. A couple of older women were walking by together, little dogs trotting out ahead of them. One of them waved at Hannibal’s truck, and the other one whispered something to the first, and they both kept going, giggling to each other. So obviously about the younger man that his hand came off the handle of the door, and he was sinking back into the seat.

“Can I leave, like your mom did?”

Fuck, Hannibal thought to himself, and got out of the truck, walking around to Face’s side of the cab, opening his door and leaning against the opening with both arms. “Face. Kid. You trust me?”

Nothing.

He sighed, and reached out, squeezing the merman’s shoulder reassuringly. “When you’re better, I promise I will take you right back out to where I found you, or north or south or anywhere else you want to go, and you’ll be free to swim where you will. Okay?” And he lifted back and away, giving the merman space to get out. “But for that to happen, we need to get you better. So you want to go see Murdock now or not?”

Face poked his head around the door, staring after the two women, half a block away now. “Are all the women here going to look at me like that?”

“Probably,” Hannibal acknowledged, taking another look for himself at those fine features, that tempered elegance in the swimmer’s frame. “By human standards, you’re... attractive.”

“Really?” the kid asked, like he couldn’t believe it, and grinned. Really, really wide. And worked his way out of the car, easing down to the pavement as fast as he could. “Sounds like fun.”

Answers that question, Hannibal thought to himself, and not even the way the kid stumbled and had to hold on to his shoulder, body warm and close, could make him feel better about that little revelation.

+++++

Hannibal went up and spoke to the receptionist, once they got to Murdock’s little one-doctor office. It was a pleasant enough little place, and Face seemed to relax significantly once they got in the door, collapsing into a chair, eyes closed.

Maybe it was the music, Hannibal thought, that soft and New Age-y crap filing the little waiting area. Kid seemed to love music. He’d laughed with delight when Hannibal had introduced him to the old records in his house. And this was... pleasant. Not Murdock’s usual style.

Odd. But then, it was Murdock, after all.

The receptionist handed Hannibal a clipboard, for Face to fill out, and the fisherman carefully positioned himself between her and his merman, blocking her line of sight so she couldn’t tell he was filling it out himself. The young man’s strangely comprehensive grasp of the English language only extended to the spoken word - the kid had already admitted he couldn’t read or write worth a damn.

He was smiling right then, Hannibal noticed, rubbing his hands together.

“What is it, kid?”

“I didn’t know humans listened to whale. I didn’t know you people even spoke it,” he said, pointing at the little Bose radio in the corner that was playing on low volume. “That’s awesome. I’m not entirely familiar with this particular dialect, but...”

Right then, the peaceful piano music was punctuated again by something sharp and deep that, yeah, sounded like a whale,

The fisherman concentrated on the form. Damn formal check-up. What the fuck was he supposed to put for date of birth, middle initial, medical history, on the merman? “You can understand them?”

“Sure,” the kid said. “Can’t everybody?”

Hannibal decided that Face was twenty-three, and put down a date of June 18th. June was a nice month. “No, kid, we don’t understand whales.” And he put down the pen, suddenly realizing it might be a chance to learn something about the merman. “What’s it saying?”

“She’s telling her baby a story, about a journey ahead,” Face said, closing his eyes. “About how the warm waters of the planet’s fat will turn cold and deep and dark and thin...”

All that, from just a few little embedded cries? Hannibal wondered. “That a skill your people have, talking to whales?”

“Not exactly. We can all kind of understand them.” The kid shifted at that, like he was uncomfortable. “But my dad taught me how to speak it, you know, so I could work with them, too.”

And Hannibal went for it, something that had been bugging him for the last few days. “He teach you English, too?”

Those blue eyes snapped open, something angry and dark there, but just then the officer door opened and Murdock was calling Face back and whatever was coming to the surface vanished back under a dazzling smile.

The one that Hannibal was quickly learning was entirely, entirely false.

So different from that sweet, shy one he saw sometimes, watching him.

Focused only on him.

But then even the fake happiness was gone, and the kid, clipboard in hand, passed back into the little hallway that led to the exam room. Hannibal was left with nothing but the whale song to keep him company, and as he leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes, he thought he could almost hear it, too. A mother humpback, baby under one flipper, dark shapes against the fading sun above, heading north to the colder waters of home...

He grunted and leaned back further in the chair. Had to be that damn Discovery Channel Planet Earth special creeping out in his memory for some reason. And he thought about asking the receptionist to turn the damn music off.

Didn’t do it, though.

And the fisherman grabbed for a magazine instead, and tried to tell himself he wasn’t listening to it.