Catch of the Day - Part Four of Five

[sonora_coneja]

Pairing: Hannibal/Face
Rating: R
Warnings: merman AU - but no merman sex here, I swear
Summary: Part Four 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 thinks Face has left him, but soon figures out there are far more nefarious reasons for the merman’s departure. And Face, despite everything, is still holding out hope that his mate will find him...



“Hannibal, you’ve got the worst spice rack known to man!” Murdock hollered, waist-deep in one of Hannibal’s cabinets, his kiss the cook apron gathering up around his knees. “How do you survive?”

“Fool, ain’t his fault you forgot the oregano!” BA grunted, dropping into the chair pulled out, the one next to Hannibal’s own.

He wasn’t sure when they’d gotten here. What they were doing here. With their big box of shrimps and mussels and whitefish and good, good diver scallops. Something about that dinner Murdock had promised Face at one point. A surprise, they’d said. But Face wasn’t here to be surprised. Face wasn’t here to enjoy everything they’d brought over, and the kid had loved it all so...

The fisherman’s hands tightened down around the mug of steaming hot tea Murdock had made for him, the one BA had put down in front of him. Around the base, the handle, burning his roughed callouses.

Face wasn’t here.

“You can’t do cioppino with oregano! How can I do cioppino without the oregano?” He sounded just a little frantic.

“Shuttup, Murdock! Can’t you see the man’s upset?”

“BA, you clearly don’t understand the finer points of culinary skill. Alls I’m sayin’ is that a man can’t live on salt and pepper alone.” the doctor said, definitely starting to trip over his words, and a bang issued from the cabinet, like he’d jerked up and hit his head. “You do have salt, dontcha, Hannibal? Can’t find that either, and you know how hard it is to sweat garlic without a little salt...”

“Bathroom,” he said automatically, squeezing down harder, thinking about his merman, his beautiful merman, sighing with relief into the hot water, splashing, smiling. “It’s in the bathroom...”

Face, those keen blue eyes, watching him over the copper rim, pulling him in, that wondrous tail sliding against the fisherman’s legs,

I’ve got you, kid...

The ocean calls us home...

And the handle snapped off.

Both BA and Murdock were staring at him, and the older man let the pieces of ceramic fall helplessly out from between his fingers. “I, uhh, it should be in there,” he said lamely.

Murdock moved first, coming over to kiss BA lightly on the cheek. “Be a dear and get it for me.”

BA didn’t shoot him one of his normal glares, some smart comeback, like Hannibal had come to expect. No, the black man went, Murdock slipping into his chair just as soon as he vacated it.

Hannibal felt a hand on his shoulder. It felt very, very fall away.

“What’s wrong, John?” that soft Texas accent drawled, the unfamiliar sound of his first name on the doctor’s tongue enough for Hannibal to look up. Get a slight smile for his trouble. “You ain’t said two words since we got here, and Face isn’t here...”

“Right,” Hannibal said, hollow inside. “Face isn’t here.”

“You never talked to me about him,” the doctor said, and leaned forward, patting Hannibal’s shoulder. “You should have.”

Hannibal didn’t meet Murdock’s gaze. “I don’t know what you’re...”

“Never talked to us, fool,” BA grunted, dropping the half-full canister of salt into his lover’s hands, and shooing him out of the chair. “You could’a.”

“No, boys, it's...”

"I get it, man." BA covered one of Hannibal’s hands, clenching and unclenching against the table, stopping it. “But Hannibal, kid like that, he gotta have a Facebook account or somethin’. Maybe we could...”

"BA, Face is a merman," Murdock said from the stove, in the same voice he used when explaining immunization shots to the kids. "We've been over this."

"You crazy, Everybody know, Murdock. Face ain't no merman."

"Actually, BA..."

"Facebook," the big black harbor master stted flatly. “Or NYU. They gotta have a record of where he staying, something like that. It’d be no deal to call and hunt around...”

“BA...”

“Come on, you don’t even wanna look? Hannibal, you loved that...”

“Stop it!” Hannibal practically yelled, slamming a fist down on his kitchen table, making the ruined mug and BA both jump from the force of the impact. “Just...just stop it, BA. He's...he's gone.”

BA and Murdock exchanged a look, and Murdock moved away from the steaming pans on the stove top, coming over to lean down on his elbows on the other side of Hannibal’s chair. Where the fisherman was quietly praying that they just fucking leave, leave him alone, leave him with the empty house and the empty bed that still smelled of Face, leave him to the phantom memories of the kid, holding a hand out to him, beckoning him, the dreams, those fucking dreams, teasing him with something he could never have...

“Hannibal...”

And at the next light touch, meant to be comforting, something white hot and dull boiled up inside of him. Rushing out to his eyes, and Hannibal sniffed once. Hard. Brushed one salty tear away. Had to be all that garlic in the air.

“No,” he said quietly, feeling more defeated than he could ever recall feeling in his life. “No, boys. Face was just here to heal up. He healed up. He left. What difference does it make now?”

“Because he loved you,” Murdock said gently. “He wouldn’t have just left.”

Hannibal took a long, shuddering breath, and sagged forward. “He...I didn’t... he was just here...”

“To heal up, yeah, you said,” Murdock cut in, almost...almost angry, and the fisherman looked up in surprise. The doctor was leaning down on the table, palms flat and fingers wide. “Did he say anything, the mornin’ he left?”

Hannibal groaned, dropping his face into his hands and scrubbing. Of course he remembered. He remembered every damn second of it. Practically the only thing he did remember from the last four days.

I’ll be with you, you can stay with me, as long as you want...”

Stay with you?

But what could he say? Without saying everything?

“It was me,” he said slowly, fumbling for the words, finding them coming regardless, uncontrolled, raw. “I fucked up. We, that night after the karaoke thing...” and he realized he really, really needed a cigar. “We...we came back here, it was raining, I...I said all the wrong things, I pissed him off, I...” and he trailed off, unable to finish it, the words settling like so much dust.

And they were all silent for a while, dinner forgotten.

“Don’t buy it,” BA declared, running a hand back along his mohawk. “I don’t buy it at all, man. Kid loved you. He wouldn’t just leave on ya...” but then his cell phone rang, loud in his pocket, and he dodged into the far end of the living room with an apologetic nod, one hand on his other end, talking in a low voice. Probably something wrong down at the docks.

Murdock, however, got up, straightened his apron, and went back to whatever the hell sauce he was building on the stove. Stirring very, very slowly. “Did he say anything? B’fore he left?”

Hannibal shook his head. “Said he wanted everything with me, something about going to see you, and he...”

“Wanted everything with you?” And Murdock’s eyes were on him, strangely intense. “Like what?”

“Murdock...”

“I don’t think he’d just leave you, Hannibal,” the doctor said, starting to shell his shrimp. Calmly. Easily. “Merfolk tend to mate for life, accordin' to the little information the Cryptozoological Society's got. Course, it's old and inconclusive, but it seems to be pretty...”

You could...if you wanted...I could be your mate...

Suddenly the blood was pounding in Hannibal’s ears. “For life?”

“Yeah, they’re nomads, and there aren’t very many of them, so when they find a...” and Murdock turned around. “Why?”

“We...”

The doctor made a little ohh with his mouth, one half-shelled shrimp in hand.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Hannibal wanted to kick himself. How had he been so fucking stupid? How could he have promised what he’d promised? Something he had no way of making good on? Was that why Face had left him? Was he angry? Was he upset, he’d picked some human who couldn’t...

And then, Murdock. Like he was reading the fisherman’s mind. “He wouldn’ta left that.”

I want everything with you, Hannibal...

“He was going to ask you,” Hannibal said, making an intuitive leap, realizing it was true the second the words left his mouth. “He was going to ask you about the change.”

Murdock tossed the shells into a boiling pot of water and fished a small paring knife out of his box. “Not sure what I could tell him about that. Nobody understands it. Cryptozoological beings aren’t exactly easy to come by to study in the first place. Most of the merfolk research comes from analysis of a single encounter in Fiji, back in 1956, and...”

“And what?” he asked, suddenly interested. Maybe, maybe, if Face could become completely human...

“Real old one, old lady, witch by her people’s standards. Said she’d learned that a mermaid’s changing into a human and back again ain’t magic, ain’t science, ain’t anything more than an act of...”

He stopped. BA was back.

"Face ain't no damn merman," he grunted, and shook his head. "Hannibal, hope you don't think crazy here's..."

"You love it," Murdock said in the sweetest voice imaginable, and Hannibal had to look away as Murdock distracted his lover from the subject at hand with a kiss.

And went back to fixing dinner.

The question of where the hell is Face? still hanging heavy in the air.

Hannibal thought he knew what the answer was. That Face had gone home.

Home. Where he couldn't follow.

But later that night, after the very spicy, very good San Francisco fisherman’s stew the doctor whipped up, after watching his two friends try not to touch each other through the entire meal, after they went home, both of them promising to help find Face, if that’s what Hannibal wanted, after a few late-night beers and at least two cigars in his favorite chair, he ran out of things to keep himself awake, away from that bed, the one that still smelled of the kid. Salty-sweet, like the spray off warm summer waves.

It wasn’t strong, but it was there, leaking into his mind for the past few nights, like seawater into a poorly sealed hull, filling the fisherman’s dreams with yet even more stuff probably ripped from nature documentaries by a merman-addled brain.

Hannibal collapsed into it that night, smelling his boy, expecting more of the same, hoping desperately those dreams wouldn’t come.

What did come, however, was completely different.

Something clear, something vivid, something too, too real. A dark space, cold water, all around him, pressing in on him, confined and tight and bare, the feeling of plastic slipping beneath his hand, the faintest taste of copper in the water...

He thrashed, turning, and found a darker shape huddled again the round of the side and the floor, near him, near enough to touch, near enough to pull into his arms.

That smooth skin was marred. Incisions, stitched shut, raised and rough, peppering through where skin met scales, some tighter, some new, and as he ran unwilling fingers over them, blood rising at the thought of somebody hurting his boy, Hannibal felt a hand on his cheek.

So, so familiar.

You see, Face’s voice reached him, horribly pained, weak, so weak, yet still happy, tail swishing lightly, little currents fluttering around them both. You see, Hannibal. I knew it...you...we can be together...

And that hand left his cheek and started roaming down, down his chest and belly and waist, pausing, moving across the taught flesh of his thighs, and it wasn’t until the touch got to where his knees should have been that Hannibal realized...

He woke with a start. Violently gasping for air. Thrashing, like he was drowning, stomach turning over, and he barely made it to the bathroom before his body totally rebelled against the cioppino and all Murdock’s hard work was wasted.

After the last spasm passed, Hannibal forced himself up, looked himself in the eye in the mirror. That dream, that place, the feel of the plastic...

A thought hit him.

Why Face might not have ever made it to Murdock’s.

He ran out and grabbed his phone. Dialed as fast as he could, waited breathlessly through three rings before the fourth, the fourth...

“Hello?” came the grumpy, half-awake reply, and Hannibal noticed it was still dark outside. But fuck that.

“BA, listen.” He gripped the handset tight. “Who on the island has an above-ground pool?”

+++++

Hannibal pulled his truck up at the bottom of the hill, quiet, window down in the cool April air, tapping his hand on the outside of the door.

Staring up at the lights marking the main buildings of the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory. The sky had gone dark hours ago. But he’d still stopped here.

He needed to see it.

It had taken three days and fifty bucks in candy for bribes to the neighborhood children, for Hannibal to get - and check - the address of every above-ground swimming pool on the island. Nothing in any of them but kids and dogs and dead bugs.

No Face. No Face anywhere.

He was starting to despair. Three days. A full week now. Limited options for what could have happened to the kid. Three days of fearing for him, worrying, dreaming those dreams, longer and longer every night, his boy, alone, in pain. Worse every night, it seemed. Like last night, Hannibal putting down a couple shots of whiskey and collapsing on the sofa into a fitful sleep after a long, fruitless day.

He’d dreamed again, dreamed of his merman, curled up at the bottom of wherever the hell he was, those fins tucked so close his face was obscured from view. Raised round puncture wounds on the back of his neck, like from a syringe needle, injections, white spots in his tail where scales, those beautiful emerald scales had flaked off...

Sweetheart, he’d tried to say, sweetheart, I’m going to find you. Tried to touch. Tried to reach out and hold him, but...

It all fell apart. Like everything was falling apart.

Nothing today. And now they were here. And he couldn’t see a damn thing, couldn’t tell if there was a pool, if Face was up there, if he could get closer to take a closer look...

But this place wasn’t on the list. Buress bunked up here, in the senior faculty dorms or something like that, so Hannibal couldn’t even go check his house to see if there was a pool there, the hateful thing from his dream.

And he couldn’t get any closer than this. Not up the hill, not through that guard shack, not around the fence, not around any of it.

Fuck...

The fisherman let himself fall back into the seat, head forward, pinching his nose, wishing he could figure a way out of this. He felt helpless, useless, his boy out there suffering...

He shut the door and let his head hit the steering wheel. Defeated.

No closer to his boy...

He still stared back at the Lab, until the lights along its walls faded from his rear view mirror.

Alone.

He didn’t want to be alone tonight. Not with those dreams. Not at all...

So, somehow, he found himself driving back into town, instead of straight home.

To the pub.

The place was loud and rowdy and lively as he sat at the bar and swiftly, silently, made it through four whiskey sours. The chaos in here, the little reminders of that night, with Face, was exactly what the fisherman didn’t want to deal with. Exactly what he couldn’t bear to be without right now, some kind of input from the human race. The usual mix of people, locals and vacationing Canadians and some of the folks from the marine research lab.

Including some of those college kids doing a semester up there. A group of them. Flirting with Amy, all of them crowded against him, ordering drinks. Complaining loudly about how Buress wasn’t letting them use the new above-ground he’d put in on the lab grounds, on the fringes of the complex.

Hannibal’s ears perked, and he ran a finger around the rim of his fifth drink, cigar in hand.

“And the worst fucking part, doc? He fenced the damn thing off!” the glassy-eyed intern protested, arm waving wildly. “Can’t even get to it.”

“Really?” Amy was asking, chewing on her straw. “That must be awful.”

“Yeah, tell me about it! Some special project Professor Buress is working on. Some new species he found. We aren’t supposed to know, but that’s the rumor. They’ve got Dr. Mark Tyndall coming out this week...”

And that...the missing scales...samples...

Hannibal grabbed his jacket, left a twenty on the bar to cover his tab, and was gone.

“You sure ‘bout this, Hannibal?”

“Yes,” he said, without hesitation, leaning against the wall of his friends’ small living room, hands steady on what was left of his cigar. BA was in a bathrobe, Murdock in a set of Superman footie pyjamas. Both yawning. Hannibal hadn’t realized it was that late. He didn’t care. If he was right about this, and that sick feeling in his gut told him he probably was, he was going to need their help. As much of it as he could possibly manage. “It’s the only thing that makes any sense.”

"Makes no damn sense at all."

"Hush, BA. We talked about Face and the whole fishy thing, remember? And you said..."

"You delusional, Murdock! And Hannibal here’s prolly just drunk...”

“The kid at the bar mentioned a visitor!” Hannibal barked, and Murdock’s eyes went wide. “A doctor, a Mark Tyndall. Ring any bells?”

The doctor bit his lip and nodded slowly. “He’s...he’s a geneticist. Loosely connected with the CIA.”

“CIA?” BA sputtered. “Damn, fool, I know it’s late but...”

“Cryptozoological Institute of America,” the doctor said softly. “He’s one of the leading minds in the field right now on genetic taxonomies...”

“You know him, Murdock?”

That got him a nod. “Bastard, like Buress, but he’s real good at what he does. Sequences DNA like a motherfucker...”

“And Face’s?” he asked. “What would he do with that? What would they do with Face?”

Murdock didn’t say anything at all. Like he was scared to. And Hannibal’s heart started pounding in his ears.

The big black man sighed, arms crossed, shaking his head. “I don’t know what you two fools are thinkin’, but...”

“Shush, BA,” Murdock replied, and reached out to squeeze Hannibal’s leg. “Buress didn’t come up on your pool search, did he?”

He shook his head. “Face is there, Murdock. I know it. I...I can feel it.”

BA grunted. “Hannibal, don’t be buying into that bull about Face bein’ some...”

“Merman?” the fisherman asked sharply, desperately, thinking about those wounds, the marks, the bruising, the little missing spots of scales he’d seen on Face’s tail the night before last...that damage. That damage could only be done by one thing. “There has to be a pool here, boys. Somewhere they’re holding him. It has to be Buress. It has to be...and if they’ve got somebody coming out to take a look at him...”

And an idea exploded into his brain. Fully formed. Simple. Elegant. Perfect...

Even BA grunting couldn’t destroy it.

“Hannibal, what you gonna do? Whatever goin’ on here, and I’m not sayin’ I believe this mermaid bullshit, you can’t go up there. If it is Buress, the fool’ll get that damn Sheriff Pike to throw you in jail or some shit like that for trespassing, breakin’ and enterin’...”

“Or you get yourself shot,” Murdock added, chewing on a nail. They both looked at him, and he shrugged. “It could happen. They do got security up there. And Pike’s a little nuts.”

“Bottom line, man, you don’t know what you be gettin’ in to up there,” BA finished, glossing over everything his partner just said with an affectionate eye roll. “You can’t just...”

He clenched a fist against the top of the table. “You boys still willing to help me with this?

BA looked at Murdock, and then back over to Hannibal. “Anything you need, man,” he said softly.

“Good,” the fisherman said, fingering hs cigar. “Because we’re going to need your van. An oxyacetylene torch.. And a kiddy pool.”

The big black man bristled. “You ain’t putting a kiddy pool anywhere near my girl...”

“And an oxyacetylene torch,” he added, grinning a little. “The rest of the stuff we ought to be able to find, lying around. Doctor?”

“Yessir?” the slightly unhinged doctor said with a grin.

“You still got contact info for this Tyndall guy?”

He smiled a little wider. “Whatcha got in mind, Hannibal?”

Hang on, kid, just a little while longer, he thought, hoping against hope that Face could somehow hear him, knowing he’d get a chance to comfort the merman tonight, and turned the decorative bowl in the center of the coffee table upside down.

“Okay,” he said, kneeling down, tapping the top of the upturned ceramic, laying his lighter down there. “We’re going to say that this is the Lab...”

+++++

Face remembered that first tank, the humans who came and spoke not a word to his mother as they took what they wanted. Remembered the way he’d cowered from them in the dark corner, his baby-fat tail clunky in the confined space, giving him away when he’d only wished to hide. He remembered it. Remembered his fear, her grief. Her words, echoing through him in the quiet hours ,when they left her chained to the wall, when they left her alone.

You’ll live, my child. I save you from them. They won’t harm my beautiful little boy. The humans won’t have you...

How ashamed she would be of him now.

How her son had so dishonored her sacrifice.

For a human man, no less.

Enduring the shark’s tortures. Every day, something new. Knives or needles or things that burned. Blood taken, scales taken, hair and nails and skin. Everything of him sampled, everything Hannibal had touched with such reverence stripped down.

But today had been the hardest yet.

They’d come and gotten him before dawn. The shark. Some dark-haired boy in a long white coat. Come and gotten him and hauled him inside one of the nearby buildings, into a room that was all white. Strapped him down to a table and locked something around his neck, something that went right over his gills, the water cool and wonderful and tasty. Hooked a dozen of their little machines up.

His eyes had burned in the bright lights of the room, used to seeing in water, in being in water. The world around him was a smear, every blink more painful than the last. His skin had screamed, drier and drier with every moment. The straps dug in. Scales sluffed off. Dry land, and he still had his tail.

All day.

Buress, the shark, had come in a few times. Asked him questions, adjusting those beeping machines, took a few notes, walked out again.

They’d left him there until long after sunset.

And then tossed him back into the tank, where he’d sunk to the bottom, too tired to swim, too tired to eat any of the bitter chum they threw in after him.

Not too tired to wonder, though. Why he hadn’t changed. Why he’d stayed himself, and not assumed the human form. Maybe the shark had finally gotten to that, the part Face had asked for, how it worked, how he might be able to take Hannibal home.

But he knew that was hopeless. Tbat all of it had been hopeless from the start. The shark had no intention of helping him. No intention of letting him go. He knew that now. The shark, Buress, that cursed human, was after whatever those notes were he scrawled down in his notebook.

After blood and hair and scales.

It wouldn’t end, the merman suspected, until the shark had taken him apart, meat and sinew and stomach, right down to the bone. That would have to be done while he was alive, he thought gloomily, the way sharks seemed to eat their prey.

Weak, Face, trusting another, he told himself, rubbing his hands together. Trusting a human...

He could still feel the horrible dryness, that feeling of air on his skin. He didn’t know how humans lived like they did, in all of that, day in and day out. Tied to the skin of the planet, restricted. Bound by their own foolish sentiments, their need for that... society, for things outweighing all else. A fascinating, beautiful, horrible world, his Hannibal the only pure thing in it...

Face closed his eyes, reminding himself. He wasn’t human. He'd only been visiting. He didn’t have to live in dirt, in houses, on the hard surface of the world. He owned a knife, maybe, and nothing more. He didn’t have to depend on others for his survival.

Yet here he was, trapped like a lobster in one of Hannibal’s pots. Helpless. Only barely holding back the panic. Needing to be pulled from the net like some hooked fish, and just as helpless.

Like he was a little five-winter, all over again.

That terrified little boy who’d watched his mother deal with her own violation with so much more dignity.

The merwoman who’d known her mate wasn’t coming for her. Who hadn’t had false hope of such a thing. Who hadn’t dreamed of something she’d never have, just to comfort herself.

Not like her son did.

Face hated himself for it all, as he lay there at the bottom of the unnatural human pool, tail fins swaying in the light, light current, rubbing his wrists, where the straps had cut at him. He wasn’t going to panic.

Wasn’t going to disgrace Mama further.

Wasn’t going to expect that Hannibal would look for him, find him, go home with him. The human had probably figured that Face had gone back to the ocean, that Face had abandoned him, that Face had betrayed that sacred trust, and wouldn't want him any more, would leave him here to die alone...

Let me see, sweetheart, let me help, that familiar, rumbling voice echoed in his mind, and Face could have sworn he felt a hand slide around his wrist, big sea-smooth fingers soothing raw skin. Arms envelop him. A tail slide around his own, fins tangling. The dream returning. Oh, Face...what’s he doing to you, kid? Tell me how he's hurting you

Hannibal, I...

Those arms tightened and that tail slid up further. I’m coming, Face. Two days. Two days, I swear it...

Hannibal would come for him.

His mate would come.

And it was with that fine thread of faith, cradled against that strong body, that perfect merman body, the one that only existed in his mind, Face slipped away into the comforting nothingness of sleep.

+++++

Hannibal checked his watch.

2130.

Two days of furious, restless work behind him. A frantic two hours in front of him.

And if he didn’t pull this off, if he didn’t get this done, Face would pay the price for his failure.

It was time to go.

He couldn’t wait any longer.

He cracked the door of BA’s van.

Music rushed in, right along with the cool night air, loud and brash from undersized, overtaxed speakers, mingling with the noise of dozens of chattering employees and faculty and students and their guests and Murdock, laughing and joking and drinking and cracking open big, fresh lobster from big piles in the middle of the metal picnic tables.

He waited a few moments, making sure there was nobody around the big black-and-red vehicle. Making sure he wouldn’t be seen. Fingered the sheathed knife in his pocket.

Playing the plan out in his mind, one more time.

Have Murdock to convince the students up here to hold a real good Maine lobster boil in honor of their guest, Dr. Mark Tyndall, from Columbia University. The first night the geneticist flew in. Get himself invited along, to see his old college buddy.

Check.

Have BA promise to supply the rather large rush order of fresh shellfish at a student discount.

Check.

Have BA get the permit that let him, and his oversized van, come on campus, unsearched, unbothered, in order to deliver the little bastards.

Check.

Convince BA to use his van instead of one of those open-bed fleet trucks he had. Promise to put down plastic. Put down plastic, four sheets deep.

Check.

Kiddy pool, seawater, cutting torch, five-inch blade, wetsuit, watch, internet satellite photo of the facility, likely locations annotated in red, extra cigar, .

Check.

It had worked so far. Simple, clean, everything accounted for.

The rest of it would work, too.

It had to.

So Hannibal slipped out. Into the shadows at the edge of the dorm parking lot. Headed towards the main cluster of boxy buildings that made up the research laboratory. Eyes keen, looking for that fence, looking for that pool.

Hoping like hell he didn’t screw it all up.

The layout of the place was fairly basic, easy to navigate, and as Hannibal quickly, quietly trod the route he’d laid out for himself he was reminded of those first few days in Baghdad, right after the bombs stopped dropping and they sent in the ground forces. His unit, on patrol, corporal stripes on his shoulders, M-16 heavy against his chest, kicking in doors, looking for one of those bastards from the Baath Party the brass wanted brought in for questioning...

A long time ago, he told himself, hefting his backpack, passing up towards the second section, around the corner of a long, L-shaped building marked Regenerative Biology. That had been so long ago, the military. He’d liked it, thought about staying in past his enlistment, thought about officer school, but his father’s death had left him nothing but a staggering amount of debt. Old man managing to burn him, one more time, before passing on. Fishing was by far better money than what a ground-pounder made, and what he was wasn’t welcome in the military anyway, and...

You missed the sea, John, he told himself. Don’t lie to yourself. You’ve given up every other opportunity in your life for the sea, college, the Army, better work down in Portland...

He shook it off. Bad time for self-reflection. Horrible time. Had to stay focused.

Had to find Face.

And then, there it was.

Feet sticking in the damp, heavy grass, just beyond the edge of the next landscaping light, just before the start of raw earth and shredded sod and clean, heavy, screen chainlink, Hannibal stopped. A fresh fence, there maybe a few weeks, three-sided against the edge of the building, right on the end.

Seven feet of bright steel. Inside, through the plastic slats woven into the links, he could make out the dark mass of what had to be...

What had to be that pool.

He circled it slowly, carefully, sticking to the dark as much as he could. No gate in the fence, the entrance probably leading directly into the building itself, then.

Coming back to where he’d started, the fisherman estimated the clearest line down the side of the sloped campus. The hill was rather steeper towards the edge of the building, running clean and unobstructed down nothing but grass, all the way to the fence line. Maybe too close to the building, but it would have to work.

Hannibal fished a pair of gloves, goggles, and the small cutting torch out of his bag. Small, very small, something BA had had laying around his garage. He considered. It would make short work of the chainlink’s thin, wrapping wires, but the heat would instantly melted the plastic slats. There was no way to hide that in the darkness, something he hadn’t anticipated, and he needed a fairly large section of the damn fence out of the way.

So he decided to take it off at the post and just curl it back instead of cutting away from the bottom. That could be riskier, especially if somebody were to come, but Murdock was supposed to be distracting that Dr. Tyndall, glued to his hip, in fact. Preferrably get the man plastered. Based on how much Buress seemed to hate the town doctor, Hannibal had been willing to bet that the biologist would be loath to leave them alone together.

Which meant he wouldn’t be around here, inspecting his prisoner.

Leaving Hannibal plenty of a buffer to get the kid out.

The torch hissed, that blue light unmistakable, and the fisherman worked as fast as he could. It still took a minute or so, enough time for him to doubt again, those doubts that kept creeping back to him. Were those dreams were nothing more than guilt, if Face was really here at all, if he’d want to see Hannibal at all, if he’d really been trying to lead...

Those dreams, though? Those dreams he had no explanation for.

Like the dreams he’d been having about the ocean, ever since the kid had turned up. None of it seemed false. Seemed more that real, sometimes. Like the dream he’d had after he’d overheard the kids in the bar, when Murdock and BA had agreed to help. Where he’d found Face curled up in his corner, wrists chapped raw, when the young merman had let himself be held, when Hannibal had promised he was coming...

Face hadn’t been trying to leave. Face had wanted them to be together, really together, to be able to stay together.

The fisherman trusted that. He did.

But Face had made it very clear he had no desire to live as a human, hadn’t he?

And that exchange in the kitchen...

I can show you how it works with us...

Us, sweetheart? Merfolk?

Yeah, boss. Us...

There was something there. Something important. Something he knew he’d missed, and it almost had it, could almost touch it, almost know what...

Your mother...was she beautiful by human standards, too...

Then the torch severed the last of the chain link wires and Hannibal barely had time to react before the sheet of fencing tried to curl back towards, coiling up, almost catching him across the face. Knocking the tenuous thread of thought clean away as he got off his knees and stood, staring. The fence rolled up behind him

An eight-foot above-ground pool. New, barely dirty, thick pipe supports still shiny white, plastic bag-like sides stretched a clean, clean blue. There was a little platform, like an outside deck, built up along the side, wide with narrow steps.

It was the thing Hannibal had been seeing in his dreams.

He dropped his bag, replaced the torch and goggles and grabbed a little GPS unit BA had lent him. All he had to do, to mark his position and the estimated position of where he thought they might wash down to, was hit a button. Hit another to send a signal to Murdock’s unit, call the doctor off wherever he was, get him and BA in the van and headed around to that road that followed most the perimeter.

Wait ten minutes for them to move, another ten for them to cut the perimeter fence.

Cut the pool.

Wash down the hill, get the kid through the hole, into the van, back into water, get the hell out before anybody noticed anything was wrong. And what was Buress going to do when he found out in the morning? Report a missing merman?

This was a risk, a big risk, but Hannibal didn’t know another way to do it. There wasn’t a way to get the kid dry or carry him wet, down that kind of distance, not before he suffocated. And there was no knowing how deep those injuries ran, how much it could hurt him to force him to change back into a human after a week in this place, with Buress...

He was up at the side of the pool before he even realized he’d moved, knife in hand,

Had to wait. Had to wait. Twenty minutes

But with the tip of the blade just pressing against the rubbery wall, something went cold in Hannibal’s gut.

The countdown had started.

And Face wasn’t in there.

The plan was royally fucked.

That realization shot through him, numbing him completely, and for a few seconds, Hannibal couldn't move at all. But inaction wasn't an option, not right now. Not at all.

So he ad-libbed.

Pulled out his cell phone, hand trembling a little, and just managed to type out the only thing he could think of.

Get him outside

Pressed send, hoped like hell Murdock had his phone on him tonight, and hunkered down to wait.

+++++

So this is what you’ve found, Vance? Extraordinary...

Face didn’t want to listen to those voices.

He didn’t want to feel that needle, buried in his arm, the one that sparked pain all through him if he moved. He wasn’t sure how it had been there. How long he’d been here. Where the day had gone, the second day, his second day, the day his mate had promised to come, the day his mate hadn’t come. Lost in dreams, then. Before. Now. Unable to hold on to anything real. Nothing real anything to hold onto.

He didn’t open his eyes.

There was no reason to.

He didn’t want to be here. But he wasn’t able to leave. Trapped. So, so trapped...

Be brave, my little merman. I need you to be very, very brave. Can you do that for mama?

Mama? No, Mama was dead, and Face jerked, and felt himself smash against glass.

Seems sort of jumpy, doesn’t he?

The thing was being treated like a person by the townsfolk, thinks he’s got some sort of say in the matter here.

It’s not like he can’t talk, Mark. He’s actually quite articulate. Great singing voice, lovely tenor...

Yeah, HM, I’ve heard that about merfolk...

Meh. We’ve got him on Ativan, this shouldn’t be happening. Let me check the dosage.

A tight, tight fit. The tank the whalers had him in, his mother on the floor, deep bruises, old, new, like a collar around her neck, where the man was holding her down. Whispering in her ear. Like so many times before. But her eyes had something in them he’d never seen in them before. Some kind of heat.

And she braced herself up on an elbow.

It’s true, Mark. He sings like a...

Problem, HM?

No, no. Jus’ my cell, probably BA, I can call him back...

Great. Now, you know we can’t prove this unless...

I’ve got every kind of sample you could want, Mark.

We’re going to need to hold on to him. For further study. When can I move him to Columbia?

Soon as you get those grants pushed through. You don’t get him for nothing.

Course not, Buress. You’ll be well compensated. This is the find of the century...

Mama smiled at him under the heavy weight of the human on top of her.

And slammed her head back.

Face felt himself jerk again.

He doesn’t look all that well, Vance. Maybe you should move him back to the holding tank?

The scene had shifted. He was still stuck in a tank, in a nasty, tiny little tank, sealed with metal at the top, barely enough to move, barely big enough to fit, and outside, instead of his mother and that whaler, there were three men. Three of them. The shark, the doctor and somebody new.

Somebody...

He jerked back as far as he could, hating himself for the panic he could feel, spiking through his veins.

The shark laughed.

The doctor, Murdock, Hannibal’s friend, the only other male-mated one in Hannibal’s odd little town, was fiddling with one of those things humans packed around everywhere, fingers moving across the surface. Not looking over at the tank. He didn’t even seem to care. Why didn’t he care? He seemed so nice before...

It’s my fuckin’ lab, Murdock. We move him when I say...

I’d love to see this thing swim, Vance.

Sounds like your lucky day, Face. Let’s get you out of here...

The man over mama was thrown back now, hand to his nose, red blood streaming out from between his fingers. She was shaking, but she was standing, unsteady on those human legs she had, slowly backing up until her bare, matted hair touched the side of the tank. She laid one hand on the glass.

I’m so sorry you have to see this, my son.

His gills shut in fear.

The human started to rush her. She took that hand away, clenched it into a fist against her naked, human leg.

Face could hear himself screaming.

Then the shark came over and pressed something, shooting cold liquid through the needle, into his veins, too full, too fast, hurting...

Taking him down into the black.

+++++

Minutes ticked by on his watch, slower and slower, time itself seeming to spool down, stretching out to an agonizing eternity.

At ten minutes, Hannibal had rolled the fence back in place.

At fifteen minutes, he’d seen headlights down the hill, the glow of BA starting to cut the fence down there. Prepped.

At twenty-one minutes, remembering the plan, remembering that cutting the pool from the outside could very well be extremely dangerous, he stripped down and pulled the light wetsuit on.

At twenty-five minutes, he’d gotten himself up the platform and back around, back up into the far side of the pool, right along the lip where the pool cover met the edge, the sucking plastic threatening to push him under, trying to rob him of air. He clung to the side, and pushed up against it, hard as he could, legs moving slowly. It felt almost good, like it wasn’t cold at all, and Hannibal had to remind himself to breathe.

At thirty minutes, he’d started to wonder. Worry if Murdock hadn’t gotten the message. If...

Thirty-five minutes, forty-two, forty-nine. Ten, twelve, thirteen, sixteen seconds past that and...

The doors to the interior of the building creaked open, and Hannibal flattened himself to the back of the tank, just far enough along the curve, as close to the top of the cover to be out of the line of sight. Had to wait for the right moment, he told himself. Had to wait, had to wait...

The sound of a gurney, wheels squeaking, and Murdock’s unmistakable laugh, some new guy, probably that geneticist, talking about something to do with the evolutionary paths of the hominids, and how such a creature was possible, and a yelp, and a loud splash.

And there Face was. Eye shut, limbs loose, falling to the bottom, senseless.

His boy. Back in the water where he belonged. But not out of trouble yet. Would he still be...

A light switched on, flooding the small pool, and Hannibal held his breath. Before too long, they’d notice his shape against the wall, up on the far edge, the way the fence had been cut, they’d see, they’d...

Get ‘em back inside, Murdock, get ‘em out of here, he prayed silently.

“He’s just sort of lying there at the bottom,” that new guy, Dr. Tyndall, said up above. “He’s not very lively, is he?”

“Buress has him hopped up on so many drugs right now, I’m not really all that surprised,” and that was Murdock. “Little guy’s system’s probably overloaded.”

“Interesting that mer physiology would be responsive to human pharmacoepia, considering the extreme differences in the environmental factors. I cannot wait to get a look at this thing’s DNA...”

Hannibal knew he had moments before they spotted him. Security would be called, arrests would be made, the goddamn sheriff’s office, under Pike, would twist it however Buress wanted it twisted...

“I’m sure it’ll be fascinating,” Murdock was saying. “Why don’t, uhh, why don’t we go rejoin the party? The kids are real excited you’re here, Mark and there’s beer...”

“Another beer would be good. I spent six fucking hours stuck in JFK this afternoon.”

“Horrible. Beer is needed. It’ll be just like college. Vance? You comin’?”

The fisherman smiled to himself, and reminded himself to thank the crazy doctor later. He had no idea what kind of lengths Murdock had had to go to, over the last few days, to help him manipulate this situation just so, and he was coming through, once again.

“Fine. Let me pull the pool cover back on...

Hannibal drew the knife back out of its sheath, where he’d strapped it to his leg, took a good grip on it, hoping like hell he was going to hit this angle just right to get down the hill at the right.

Buress’ hand dipped under the water, body obviously stretched out, reaching for the edge of the cover that had been folded back to throw Face in.

And the second his palm broke the surface tension, Face jerked, turned, and shot up like a bullet, half his body clearing the surface and slamming back down, wrapped around Buress.

And Hannibal couldn’t wait any longer.

+++++

Face woke when he hit the water, but there was no strength there in his limbs. Everything ebbed by the shark. So let himself fall, sink without check, wondering bitterly how he'd been so foolish to thing anyone would come for him now...

But something was good here. Not just the larger space, something more, more, like his mate was close.

But he didn’t dare open his eyes.

He could still hear them talking.

Then there was movement. Ripples, on the surface, and there it was. The hand of man who’d thrown him in here, taken him away from his mate, the one who was trying to kill him...

He remembered mama, the way she’d fought that man. Free of the restraints, the chains and the locks, she fought him. The way she’d want him to...

It all ripped through him.

What mama had apologized for.

That man...hurting without need...had to die...

He dragged the shark under, that dry-land body struggling against his own, so fitted for this world, fighting to get back to its air, losing too much of it in the process. The merman wanted to laugh, watching frantic air bubble rising, pooling on the underside of the slick, heavy cover. A few moments, a few moments was all i would take, nothing more, force his air away, flood his lungs, kill him, rid the world of such a terrible creature as this...

Face!

The cry echoed through him, a command he couldn’t ignore, and there was Hannibal, his human, his lover, his mate, right beside him, a knife in hand, and for a crazy second, the younger man thought he was seeing with his own eyes what he’d only seen in his dreams. That dark mass, smooth, joined, split, long, so long, a tail. Exactly what his mate should have been all along, the man his human father had prevented him from becoming, and Face reached out for that. Wanted to touch, wanted to know.

But it was gone. Too fast. He was just wearing a wetsuit, the things humans wore in the ocean.

Buress had gone still, bubbles still leaking from his half-open mouth. Hannibal, a human yet himself, maneuvered a hand to the man’s neck, making some face the younger man couldn’t really understand.

The knife came up.

His mother fought, desperate, furious, but the human was bigger, heavier, more used to land, to the movements, and the human was hitting her, again and again, slamming her back into the tank, going for a punch.

The glass shattered.

The knife came down.

And the pool wall exploded outward, sweeping them all away with it, down a long, long way.

He tumbled out, water cascading over him, the air rough against him, gills unable to grab on to anything, needing to breath, needing air, needing mama...

I’m here, my child, my brave little merman, I’m here...

He felt... grass...underneath him, cold air, cold everything, and he vomited then, body curling with every gut-wrenching spasm. He struggled to lift himself, still feeling Hannibal close, needing Hannibal, needed him...

Face, kid, arms up, arms up around me, dammit...

Arms wrapped around him and lifted him up.

She cut her hand, the human’s neck, on a piece of the broken glass, careful, fast, clean, and his last sight of the man who’d beaten her a still form, sprawled in the ruins of the small room. She’d run with him, then, fled through long hallways, seeking clean air, open air, the side, the ocean, shouting behind them, shouting all around...

Quiet. Darkness. Emptiness. The body of the shark, sprawled out behind them, fighting awake, starting to move, a rumbling up above, where they’d just fallen from, lights and noises...

Come on, fool! Get ‘im out here!

The edge. The exit. The rim of a low metal wall, the blue ocean beyond, home, going home...

A tight squeeze, a dive, more dirt, Hannibal’s arms around him again, moving faster then before...

Something soft, slick, like the blankets of his mate’s bed, where he’d been taken as a human, where Hannibal had made him the promise...

...mama's words, her words...

I love you, my brave boy. I love you so much...

Then water.

Water.

Just around his head, upper body.

All around him. Cool, open, deep, dark ocean water.

And mama hit the water beside him, the human form flashing away, the sleek lines of her proper shape re-establishing, and the pale green of her scales glinting in the filtered sunlight as she propelled them both through the water at breakneck speed, then slower and slower, always away from the boat, away, at last, and he’d laughed, hugging her tightly, never wanting to let her go.

Hannibal... whathefuck? He got a tail, man...

He’s a merman, BA. Now drive. Murdock’s got it from here.

Man, this...

Fucking drive!

The wake fell away, as silence resumed, as the sun moved lower, and suddenly she was gone. She stopped eventually, shuddering, the injuries too much, too great, the last of what worked ripped apart in her, and she’d kissed him one more time. One last time.

I’m taking you home. We’re going to get you home...

And then she was gone. Not even a body. The spark extinguished, her form dissolving, nothing but a thick foam that washed up and around him, caressing him one more time, and then nothing.

Gone.

Like she’d never existed at all.

He heard himself screaming.

Alone in the black waters, night coming, nobody there, nobody with him at all...

Then, a thin stream of light in the darkness, like the last ray of the dying sun.

I’m here, kid, I have you. I’m here. You're not alone, sweetheart. I’m with you...

Using that as a guide, the merman began to fight his way to the surface.

Where his mate was waiting for him.