Catch of the Day - Part Five of Five
Jul. 12th, 2011 09:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sonora_conejaPairing: Hannibal/Face
Rating: R
Warnings: merman AU - but no merman sex here, I swear
Summary: Part Five 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*
If he’s going to keep his boy, Hannibal is going to have to make the most difficult decision of his life...
“How he doin’?” BA asked, a death grip on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead at the night-shrouded back roads leading to the outer edge of Mount Desert Island. He seemed...shaken. “He okay?”
“I think so. Murdock said something about drugs. It seems like he’s working out of it, though,” Hannibal replied, weary, limbs stiffly confined in the drying wetsuit. He hadn’t bothered to remove it. Hadn’t dared. Not until they were done here. He didn’t want to lose his nerve on the last leg of this.
Couldn’t be selfish.
It wasn’t an option.
They weren’t going back to Seal Harbor. Too dangerous. Pike already had half the cops on the island out looking for Face, according to the harbor master, who’d had the presence of mind to bring along his shortwave. An APB out on that Templeton Peck alias. Probably had a search warrant for his house, his boat. Hannibal refused to let his merman be arrested, be thrown in jail or back in some better-secured tank to be poked and prodded and studied.
Which meant there was only one choice.
And he hated himself for not being able to come up with a better.
BA shook his head, and blew a stop sign. “That scream...”
“I think he’s doing better. The water seems to be helping.”
They had Face in the shallow, inflatable pool of clean water from the Atlantic. It was splashing everywhere, his upper body an awkward fit in the section Hannibal had cut out. His tail was limp and heavy against the van floor, the fisherman laying over him, where he’d had to throw himself to keep the kid from thrashing about once they’d gotten him in. There was a puncture wound in his arm, small, round, like he’d given blood.
Probably has, Hannibal thought bitterly, and dunked a washcloth, smoothing it over those gorgeous scales, dark in the dark of the van. He twined his hand into the kid’s, holding tight to limp fingers. “Come on, Face,” he whispered, leaning low over him, playing with a lock of hair, floating serenely in the mad-made puddle sustaining the merman form. “Come back to me, sweetheart. Can’t live without you.”
Lashes twitched, and then brilliant blue eyes fluttered open. A smile broke across the kid’s face, and he pushed up, out of the water, on one arm.
Hannibal moved up, half sitting, half crouching. He smiled back. “There’s my boy. There you are.”
Those eyes clouded. “I...the shark gave me something, I was there again, when mama died. This was...that...”
The pain in those few words burned into the fisherman, and he cradled the kid’s head, kissing him tenderly. “Whatever happened to her, whatever happened to you, Face, I swear, I’m not going to die on you. This won’t be like that. I don’t want you to be alone any more.”
“I won’t be,” the merman whispered back, nosing lightly, kissing Hannibal’s temple. “I thought I was dreaming, but when I saw you in the tank tonight, I knew. I know now. I know we can be together. I know you can become what’s always been in here...”
A trembling hand touched the wetsuit, right over his heart, those subtle webs stretching just a little.
“Face...”
“You and me, Hannibal, us, we...we can go home together...we can...”
Hannibal felt something burning against his skin, under where the merman was touching him. Like something was shifting loose inside of him, coming out, spreading, shaking him to his core. Terrifying and beautiful, unlike anything, anything ever before, something that would cost him...
He peeled that hand slowly away, not understanding any of what was churning inside of him, and kissing the kid again as he laid him back down in the water. “Get some sleep, Face,” he murmured. “We’ve got a bit of a drive ahead of us, and you need it.”
“I love you, boss,” the merman whispered, holding himself just about the surface.
“Love you too, kid,” he replied, meaning it, that feeling from before flaring up in him again. “I love you too.”
Please stay with me...
Those beautiful eyes slid shut.
And silently, noiselessly, head hung so BA couldn’t see, whether from stress or grief or relief or sorrow or happiness, Hannibal felt the tears start to roll down his cheeks.
+++++
BA had a picked a good spot for this, Hannibal mused as he threw open the back doors of the van. One of those small coves on the ocean side of the island, sheltered, quiet. A beaten dirt trail down from the dark trees, from the road, down to a low, short dock, all easy access and privacy and safety. It was a good spot, he thought, throat tightening. And the moon was coming up, big and full. He wouldn’t even need to take a flashlight.
Face pushed up out of his pool, eyes bright, staring. “Is this it, Hannibal?”
The fisherman bit the inside of his cheek. How was he going to explain this? How could he possibly? “This...this is it, kid. Here we are.”
“BA,” the merman started,
The big black man just grunted, and threw around in his chair, offering Face his hand. “Be good, little brother.”
Even in his native state, Face reddened visibly. “I’ve never had a brother.”
“You always have Murdock’n’me,” BA said softly, and patted him on the shoulder. “Now stop gettin’ my van all wet and get your fishy self down to the water.”
“Thank you, BA,” Hannibal told him, sliding out the back and lifting Face with the same ease he’d felt, that very first time. “We may be a while.”
The merman slid his arms around the fisherman’s neck, and started laughing.
Still barefoot, every step down to the water seemed heavy, each worse than the last, like he was walking through molasses, like he was walking towards his own death. The loss of something he didn’t want to lose, didn’t know how to lose. Face being gone once was bad enough, like part of his soul had been sliced away, and Hannibal wondered, as he took the boat ramp down into the cold water, if that was what the merman had meant about being mated. If that was the price for what they had done, the reward for all they could be...
If there was only a way.
The second his fins touched the ocean, Face seemed to come alive, leaping out of Hannibal’s grasp and into the shallow waters of the little cove, coming up a few yards away, moonlight pale around him. The fisherman was reminded, cruelly, sharply, about that dream he’d had, the one where they lay asleep in the soundless depths, cradled in each other’s arms, moonlight...
“You good out there, kid?” he called, trying not to think about it. If only...but there was no use wishing for things that couldn’t be true. That couldn’t be.
Face waved an arm. “Come here, boss! I want to show you something!”
Hannibal smiled to himself, felt the tears coming again, and kicked out, covering the distance in moments, feeling Face dive and surface around him again. The merman’s dark hair was aglow in the night, and his skin had gone the same color as the light around him, and Hannibal couldn’t remember a time the kid had looked more beautiful.
More unreal.
Face touched Hannibal’s cheek, like he had so many times before, the skin of his palms soft against the stubble. He was smiling like the fisherman had never seen him smile before. It only added to the ethereal quality of the young man, something beyond imagination, something beyond human...
“What?” Hannibal whispered, feeling the kid’s tail against his own legs as he tread water, moving slowly, up between, stroking lightly. “What is it you want to show me?”
“You’re here,” the merman said, laughing, hugging him close, launching them both into a slow spin, taking them a little further out into the cold water. “We’re really here.”
“Yeah, kid. Here...”
“Can we go home now?” He laid his face down on the older man’s shoulder. “Please, Hannibal, let’s go home.”
Hannibal couldn’t. He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t tell the kid...but the way he was looking at him, the way he was smiling...
“I can’t take you home right now,” the fisherman admitted, feeling broken inside. “The sheriff’s office is looking for you. They’d just take you away again. I don’t know if I could get you back...”
Face cocked his head, and rubbed a hand across his mouth, like he was thinking, very, very hard. And then burst out in peals of laughter, spinning out a little ways and then slipping under the water, back over to Hannibal.
“That human town? I don’t care about that. I don’t care what the humans think they can and can’t do with us. We don’t need them, Hannibal.” The merman was right beside him, and grabbed him around the shoulders, kissing him fiercely. “We don’t need to worry about them, ever again.”
That place that the kid had touched, right over his heart, was beginning to throb. Burn. A bad burn, eating its way in. That sensation very nearly overwhelmed him, and it was hard to pull an answer together. “What are you talking about?”
“Tonight,” the kid persisted. “Tonight, when I saw you in the tank. You were what you’re supposed to be. For a second or two, I saw it. Didn’t you feel it? You had to have felt it...” A hand tugged at the zipper of his wetsuit, sliding it down, sliding under, starting to explore. “I felt it. All you are. My mate, coming for me...it's what I want you to see...”
That burn was starting to spread into his blood, through his thoughts, and Hannibal couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything to stop it as Face stripped the wetsuit off his arms, torso, as that perfect head vanished under the surface, nipping and sucking right at that spot. Making him groan, making him writhe, something happening, something...
Face’s hand dipped across his hipbone, sweeping down, the touch like acid, like liquid fire, searing down through flesh, through bone...
He screamed.
And jerked Face’s head clear of the water, yanking him up.
“What the fuck are you doing, kid?”
The merman blinked a few times, and then swept some of the wet, clinging locks off his forehead. He looked thoroughly confused. “Does it hurt?”
“Yes! Jesus, yes, kid, whatever the fuck you’re doing, it hurts!”
“I...I don’t think I’m doing anything. I think it’s coming on its own.”
The fisherman thrashed, frustrated beyond belief. “Feel what? What are you talking about, Face? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I thought...you said...Hannibal, if we’re going to be together...”
“We can’t, Face. We can’t. I already said that. I can’t take you home! Please! I brought you here tonight, but we still have to figure this thing ou...”
The merman was at his side again, long body stretched out along the top of the glassy waters. “You said you knew. That morning after we made love.”
“Knew what?” he asked, not realizing he was pleading until after it escaped him. “What did you think I knew, kid?”
Face tried to smile, rolling over on his belly and stroking down Hannibal’s neck. Like he was looking for something. And what he said next damn near exploded the fisherman’s mind.
“Your mother. You do know she was a mermaid, right? Which makes you the same. You’re like me, Hannibal, you’re mer...”
The ocean. His dreams. His mother, his mother, he desire to go home, leaving, her note, his father, drinking himself to death, not letting Hannibal go with her, keeping him...
Keeping him on dry land. Keeping him from turning into...
No.
“Oh, god,” Hannibal murmured to himself, cold shock rushing through his veins, putting out all the fire that had been threatening to consume him before. “Oh, holy god...”
No.
No.
That wasn’t possible, it couldn’t be, it didn’t make sense. There was no way, no way something like that could be real. Things like that didn’t happen. Things like that couldn’t happen. No way, no way for it to be...
His mother wasn’t a mermaid. Selfish and cruel in the end, both of his parents, her especially, broken, obsessed with leaving them, abandoning her child, her responsibilities, her life...
He wasn’t...
He wasn’t a merman.
There was no way.
Was Face this desperate, that he would convince himself of something like this? And Hannibal felt his heart breaking for his boy, for doing something like this to him, for forcing him to concoct such an insane fantasy...
Face laughed, though, and kissed him gently. “You’ll see. Let me get the rest of this wetsuit off, and you’ll see, you’ll see how magnificent you are when you shed this human shell you’ve been forced to wear...”
“Face...”
The merman tried to push Hannibal’s hand out of his hair, and was all Hannibal could do to keep him above water. “Come on, boss, please let me. I want to see you, want to feel you, like you were meant to be, want you to have yourself, want you to make love to me again...”
“Face, I can’t.”
“I’ll show you how. I’ll show you everything. Like I promised,” Face said, confused now. “Isn’t that what you want?”
He was cold. Cold in the cold water, cold like he hadn’t noticed before, cold like he’d never felt before.
“Face, it’s not...it’s not...”
That beautfiul face crumbled. “I’m not...not what you want?” he asked, crestfallen. “You don’t want this?”
“No, kid, I told you, I want you, I love you,” Hannibal said urgently, feeling an all new kind of heat welling up. Panic. Fear. Fear that he’d said the wrong thing again, that he was doing the wrong thing, that Face would... “I love you.”
Face touched him again, his heart, his hip, but there was nothing there. Nothing.
He felt it, and pulled up from the water, meeting the merman’s wide, desperate eyes.
It was gone.
“Where’d it go?” the kid asked as if kicked, frantic, and those hands started moving, that tail, the water beginning to boil. “Where’d it go? Why are you doing this? Hannibal, what are you doing? It’s what you are! What you should have by rights! Bring it back! Please, please, come back!”
Guilt tore through him, wondering if maybe he hadn’t...
But no. It was gone. The heat from before was gone. Whatever it was. Utterly. Gone.
He had to say something. The only thing he could think to say.
So he reached out, stilled his panicked lover with a touch, pulled that face up to meet his own. And there was still trust there, still so much faith. More of both, he realized with a start, than he had in himself, most days. But he had to say it. Had to... “Face, kid, listen. I’m not, I can’t be, but it doesn’t mean anything, doesn’t change the way I feel about...”
The merman stopped. Pulled back.
And something shifted. Irrevocably shifted.
“You lied to me,” Face said, slapping Hannibal away, the dead calm in his voice chillin the older man to the bone. “You lied.”
“No, no, kid, I never lied...”
Those blue eyes closed, and the merman turned from him, moving away “I should have known better than to trust a human,” he said quietly, like he was talking to himself. “They’re all the same.”
“Face, don’t!” Hannibal groaned, heart shattering, kicking out, trying to swim over to him, hampered by the trailing arms of his undone suit. “We can, we can figure this out...”
“No,” the merman said, effortless floating out of reach, voice nothing more than a whisper of wind across the top of the water. “No, we can’t. We can’t.”
“Kid!” he cried out, hoarse with emotion, eyes stinging, knowing he was begging, not knowing what else to do, not knowing what he could do, the faintest spike of that heat beginning to stir in him again. “Kid, please, I want to be with you...”
But it was too late. Face dove, slipped beneath the surface. One last flip of his fins, one last little glimpse, and the merman was gone.
As if he’d never existed at all.
+++++
Hannibal felt like he was flying.
But it wasn’t that. No. Not flying. Soaring over some landscape of impossible beauty, yes. But not through the air. He could feel it. Feel everything. Deepwater chasms beneath and the way light played through the shallows and how the waves seemed, rolling overhead against the distant sun, dashing after dolphins in the open blue of distant waters...
Then the light seemed to fade, hidden in thick mats of kelp, losing himself in inky blackness, falling, lungs burning, air being stolen away by a cold older than time itself, sinking deeper and deeper, further and further...
Movement around him. A hand slipping into his. A voice in the back of his mind, that beautiful voice...
...like you were meant to be...
He jerked awake.
It took him a moment to remember where he was. But cloud-dulled sunlight was leaking through the wide bay windows and he could smell ocean salt in his sheets, hear low talking, one of Murdock’s damn whalesong CDs, and there it was.
Home.
The labs.
The ocean.
Face...
And Hannibal scrubbed a hand over his face, attempting to will those tears away, unwilling to let the moisture spill now. No, no. It was over, it was gone, that one shining chance for something right carried out beyond his grasp, out into the depths...
He groaned.
A hand touched his shoulder, and he looked, blinking through blurry vision, at the sight of the doctor. In a pair of Disney Princess-print scrubs. His eyes were bright, but he looked exhausted.
“Good to see you up, Hannibal,” Murdock said quietly, smiling that lopsided smile.
“How you feelin’, man?” BA asked gruffly, coming over, one big hand balancing two mugs chocolate milk, and a huge glass of something that looked like apple juice. “I thought you was gone, when I pulled you out of the water.”
Hannibal shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs away. He didn’t remember any of that. His stomach was cramping. He had an IV in his arm, a big saline drip on a peg above his bed. “Pulled me...”
“You were in a mild state of hypothermia. Been asleep for almost forty hours now,” Murdock said matter-of-factly, reaching over Hannibal for his chocolate milk. “BA got you home, wrapped up and warmed up. He was a good nurse. I couldn’a’done any better.”
“Shut up, fool,” the big black man grunted, and Hannibal almost chuckled at the hint of embarrassment there.
“My hero,” Murdck teased back.
And that little bit of banter, so blunt, so them, went straight through Hannibal, stinging his eyes again. He sat up to cover it, pushing himself up against the pillows and the headboard, feeling his heating blanket slide down his bare chest. He sipped at the apple juice. The good stuff, the cloudy stuff, but his stomach churned anyway. The fisherman grimaced.
“Be careful with that,” Murdock warned. “Ain’t eaten for a while.”
He nodded, sipped again, and grimaced, setting it aside. “Tell me. What happened while I was asleep?”
BA smiled a little this time, and flopped down in a chair he’d obviously pulled up along side the bed. “Crazy here been busy.”
It was Murdock’s turn to blush. But between them, Hannibal got the story.
BA had come down to the shore, worried, and found Hannibal there, half-senseless and too exhausted to walk. He’d taken him home and stripped the wetsuit off and tucked him in with a heating pad. The harbor master had waited there with him, all night, until Murdock arrived, around dawn, and took over the watch.
Murdock, in the meantime, had gotten Dr. Tyndall sinfully drunk that night, while they were taking Face back to the ocean. Gotten the geneticist to black out and left him in some student’s dorm room. Gotten an ambulance out for Buress, where he’d washed out to, barely alive. Gone back to the lab and stripped out every sample, every photo, every database and every physical trace of Face ever being there. The police had had to write up the entire incident as a party out of control.
Dr. Tyndall had woken up, no memory of any of it, and gone home, vowing to revoke all of Buress’s grant money. He’d already sent Murdock an email about it, and the former neurosurgeon seemed, to Hannibal, ecstatic over it.
“His career’s over,” Murdock grinned, concluding. “He’ll never work in academia again.”
“Murdock’s very proud of this,” BA commented, finishing half his milk in one go.
“Hey, treatin’ Face the way he was? That man ain’t fit to experiment on bacteria. There’s no cause for...”
Hannibal nodded, finishing the last of the juice. It was good, but it was wrong, definitely wrong somehow. He coughed, and set the glas back down. “He’s a bastard. We’re all in agreement on that.”
“Well, he ain’t gonna hurt another sea creature again,” Murdock said proudly, and BA kissed him on the top of the head, pulling him in.
Hannibal sighed, and had to look away. “Thanks, boys. Both of you. I couldn’t have saved Face without you.”
The two of them looked at each other, and BA cleared his throat. “What, ah, what did you two decide to...”
Hannibal shook his head. “Kid decided to go home.”
“Hannibal? He just decided to leave without y...”
“I’m fine, he’s fine. It’s okay,” he lied, and tried to smile. Failed, and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “It’s better this way. It’s the way he wanted it.”
Murdock bumped into BA’s side, and laid his his cheek on the big guy’s shoulder. “Hey, BA? If you wanna keep workin’ on your van, I can Hannibal here his post-hypothermia check-up.”
BA pushed him away playfully and stood, stretching, yawning. “That remind me, you owe me for the van, Hannibal. It smell awful in there right now.”
“I’ll make you that coconut curry tapenade you love tonight,” Murdock promised, smiling blandly. “Please, hon? Let me check him out?”
“Right, right,” the big guy nodded.
Murdock went to go get his doctor’s bag.
Hannibal sighed again, playing with the IV line still in his arm, wondering. Wondering where Face might be, at the same moment, how he was doing, if he was still hurt from his ordeal, if he was okay, if he was alone...how alone he must be, how betrayed he must feel...
And that damn whale music was still on.
“Hold pressure here,” Murdock said, putting Hannibal’s hand over a cotton ball, over the needle. “Gonna take you out.”
Hannibal nodded, sitting up a bit, and barely winced as the line slid free, pressing down to stop the bleeding as the doctor wrapped it up with some kind of sticky yellow wrap. Murdock’s eyes were soft as he worked, and when he was satisfied, he reached over for his stethescope.
“Let’s get you checked out, okay?” he asked gently, and Hannibal, still feeling exhausted, let himself flop back as the doc went about it. Watched silently as the doc took his blood pressure and checked his ears and all that, silent until that routine was done and Murdock pushed back in his chair and crossed his arms.
“You seem fine, Hannibal. Don’t see a hint of a problem from the hypothermia,” and the doctor played with his stethoscope hanging around his neck, eyes falling a little, not a trace of his usual levity, not a single foreign accent used. “But I’m gonna need to check your feet and stuff. You okay? Warm enough?”
Hannibal smiled. Not like Murdock had never seen a naked man before, he thought with genuine humor. “Yeah.”
“Top notch, old chap,” the doctor said, switching to his Brit, still smiling, and got up, flicked the blankets away with practiced ease, his hands, a little cold, starting to roam. “Very important, to ensure that the patient has suffered no...”
His hands stopped.
That spot, that spot where Face had...
“What is it?” he asked, trying to look, blocked by a shaggy, dark head.
Then sea-green eyes turned on him, grinning, the Texan drawl back. “Face give you merman herpes or somethin’?”
“Merman herpes?”
“Yeah,” and Murdock reached for his bag again. “Take a look.”
The fisherman was up in an instant, staring at it, running his hand down it, feeling his breath catch in his throat. “Fuck...”
“That is where one gets herpes,” the doctor joked.
There it was. The place where Face had touched him last night. What had burned so badly. In the shape of a hand print.
His skin had gone gray. Not a sick, deathly gray. A bright gray, a bright blue-gray. Not the dull, matte sheen of skin. No, it was flaking, cracking, catching the light, deeper and thicker towards the center, and it felt, it felt...
“Looks like fish scales,” Murdock said, tweezers in hand, scraping a few of the larger flakes into a little vial. He tucked that into his bag and leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Got something you want to tell me, Hannibal?”
...you’ll see how magnificent you are when you shed this human shell you’ve been forced to wear...want you to have yourself...
He shook his head tightly, feeling overwhelmed again. Feeling the slightest twinge, deep down, the faintest inking of a horrible thought. That he had been the one trying to deceive himself last night, that Face had been right, that he could have...that he’d lost his boy over... “No.”
“You sure?”
“It’s just...just a rash,” Hannibal said, laying his hand back over it, not wanting to look at it, not wanting it to be there. It wasn’t... “It’s probably from the wetsuit. I haven’t worn one in years...”
“John,” the doctor said, and took up the fisherman’s rough, rough hand in his own. “John, I had a client once, when I was still working at the hospital down in Atlanta. Vampire. Nice guy. Came in to have a bullet removed from his frontal cortex...”
Hannibal raised an eyebrow. “Vampire, Murdock?”
“Yeah. I did it pro bono, really interestin’ bein’ able to operate on someone while they were still awake and he let me have a blood sample for the CIA bubbas, but anyway, we talked through the whole procedure. And I asked him what it had been like for him to cross over, if it was real hard. You know what he said?”
The fisherman shook his head, and Murdock squeezed his hand tight, once.
“He said, and I’ll never forget this, he said you gotta believe in the change, or no amount o’ sire blood’s gonna make a difference.” The doctor sat back in his chair and, letting Hannibal’s hand go, went for his chocolate milk. “That the toughest part about that was acceptin’ the fact that it was possible. That you could by all rights die, but you ain’t gonna. That you gotta push through the panic to reach that new life.”
“Murdock...”
The doctor smiled, and stood, taking the saline bag down and closing up his case. “You’re good to go, Hannibal. Don’t overdo it in the next few days, okay? And don’t worry about that scaly patch down there. I’m sure it’ll work itself out.”
Hannibal touched it again. It felt like Face had felt. The last thing, the only thing, he had of his boy, and he sighed. “You’re saying it’s possible? To...to change?” He closed his eyes, thinking of those dreams, of Face, of the way it felt... “Murdock? I don’t think he’d... he wouldn’t want me...”
“Sure he would. Merfolk mate for life, remember? There ain’t another out there for him, Hannibal, not that you’ve claimed him. He won’t be taken by anyone else. He won’t look.”
Hannibal groaned, thinking about that. His boy, his beautiful boy, wanting to be loved, aching for it... “and now I’ve damned him to be alone? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m saying that you gotta have faith, Hannibal. Faith that you two could be together. Once you got that, anything’s possible.”
The fisherman dropped his face into his hands.
And he barely heard them as they drove away.
+++++
He fought it. He fought it for days. Tried to analyze it, figure it out, logic through it. Every angle, every permutation, every possibility.
It didn’t make any sense.
And it knawed at him in return.
That rash, the scaly rash, spread. And spread. Taking over half his leg by the second day after Murdock pointed it out. It was beyond sore, a constant burn that nothing seemed able to relieve, one that he just couldn’t ignore. Tormented him, day and night. Worse at night, because at night the dreams came.
The ocean dreams.
Darker now, dark and low, the waters always black and muddy, the seafloor barren, nothing but rock and the crawling sounds of shellfish creeping through, lobsters, starfish, creatures he had no name for, looking to devour the weak things falling to the bottom. Cold water, always cold, always colder...
He went to the deli one morning, unable to take the silence around his house any longer, that absence of Face, the lack of his boy, his merman, his mate, a hole deep down in him he was beginning to understand there was no hope of ever filling.
The walk was hard, his hip aching, but he didn’t feel like driving. A cool morning, a good morning, and he slipped into the empty place, ordering a breakfast sandwich and Amy giving him a sympathetic look, tried to say something, but hadn’t heard her. Just collapsed into a booth and waited for it.
Somebody slipped in across from him, touched his hand.
“You’ve grown,” a female voice said, sweet, lovely. “You’ve grown so big, become such a man. It’s wonderful to see.”
Older, grayer, wrinkles around eyes and mouth, still beautiful, still so beautiful...
“M-mom?” he asked, not believing it, not believing...
“I’m so sorry, my son,” the old woman said, stroking his hand, the webs between her fingers thin, translucent, faded like paper. “It’s my fault, your unhappiness.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “His unhappiness.”
The bell on the door rang gently, and Hannibal turned, hand on the back of the seat, watching the family that had just come in. A man and a woman, both of them laughing, a little boy in the woman’s arms. Sandy blonde, eyes like the sky, a little plush sperm whale clutched in his little hands.
“Where are you folks headed?” Amy asked, leaning over the counter to tickle the little boy, who giggled and hid behind his mother’s leg.
“Out north,” the father said, chuckling at his son’s antics. “It’s calving season, and he’s finally big enough to come along this year, aren’t you, little man?”
“Yes, Da,” the boy said shyly.
“There are so few of them left,” the mother added. “So few of the whales remaining. Anything we can do to help a few more of them make it through those first few months...”
“All your life, you’ve been fighting this world,” the old merwoman said. “I’d hoped, one day, you might find your own way home. And every step's led you there. To him...”
Hannibal couldn’t turn back around, couldn’t look at her, couldn’t tear his eyes away from that little boy. Pressed against his mother, chewing on the dorsal fin of his little plush toy, staring right back at the fisherman. Eyes clouded with sadness, like he knew, like he already knew what was coming, terrified...
“Hannibal? Hannibal? Did you need anything else?”
He blinked back the tears that were coming of their own accord, and shook himself. Amy was waiting, his egg and cheese bagel in hand, head cocked in concern.
“Hannibal?”
The woman across from him was gone, and he jerked around, looking towards the register, but they were gone as well, the happy couple, the little boy. But...
He got up, walked over, ignoring Amy, ignoring the stares from the few other patrons, movements jerky, half falling on the counter.
Picking up the small, stuffed whale that had been left there.
It was the same colors as those scales on his leg.
He stared at it for a moment, time stopping, his heart still, everything still, pulling together, pulling tight, coming in...
Then.
He laid it down.
And bolted.
The docks were close, his own boat right there, and Hannibal couldn’t even remember how he covered that short distance. Just that he was on board, lines already cast off, warming up the engine, when BA stomped over.
“Hannibal, what the hell you doin’? Season ended last week...”
“I know, BA,” he said, and threw the props into reverse. “I’m not going out to fish!”
“Hannibal!” the harbor master roared. “Hannibal, Hannibal, you can’t! The weather gonna be real bad today and you don't got your...”
But the fisherman was pulling away, and waved back. “Say goodbye to Murdock for me!” he yelled.
And anything else that his friend might have said was drowned out as Hannibal took his small fishing boat out past the breakwater, out into the sound.
Out to where he had to go.
His hands were shaking on the wheel. The run, probably the run, had gotten his hip going again, and he tried to rub at it through his jeans. He didn’t have any of his gear for this, not a rain slicker or waders or anything, and as the fog started to roll in, he got damp. Then wet. And his leg starting screaming again. White hot.
Visibility dimmed and his eyes kept unfocusing, pain shooting through him as the flat prow cut through the low, chopping waves. Soon, it was nothing but gray around him, thick as pea soup, and he was navigating purely by instinct, by memory, by compass, where the hazards were, which was the passage out to the open ocean.
He didn’t know where he was supposed to be going, only that he was supposed to be going. Going towards whatever had been started, all those weeks ago. What Face’s arrival had given him. What everybody in his life had been trying to tell him.
I’d hoped, one day, you might find your own way home. And every step's led you there. To him...
...you’ll see when you shed this human shell you’ve been forced to wear...
...I’d do anything for you, sweetheart. I love you...
...we could go home together...
...you lied to me...
Hannibal barely paid attention to the ocean, the whole long, gray journey unfolding in the back of his mind, no less real than those dreams he’d been having of late. The little town of Seal Harbor was long gone, taken away by the fog, vanished into the past. He’d never go back there again. Whatever happened today, he knew that.
There was no return from this.
...you could by all rights die, but you ain’t gonna...
Dead. Or not. But not human. Not that life. Not any more. Not ever again.
It had never been his to live. Was never supposed to be. He knew that now. He did...
And his hands pulled down on the throttles, engines dying.
Silence.
Hannibal didn’t even realize where he stopped the boat until he checked the GPS. The coordinates. Unfamiliar waters. Further out that he normally went. A gamble. A gamble he’d taken, so long ago, in another life, trying to find something better, someplace good...
Where he’d found Face.
...please...let me go...
...II’m going to take care of you, kid...
His hip was hurting so bad at this point that he almost fell as he got out of the pilot’s chair, only barely making it over to the side of the craft. The water was black. He leaned against the low wall, feeling the chill in the air, knowing exactly how long he’d survive in waters, these temperatures, and his hands froze on the zipper of his light, sodden jacket. Balked. Wouldn’t do as he was telling them. Every instinct in his body crying out against this.
...you lied to me...
...his unhappiness...
He gritted his teeth and got his hands moving again, working faster despite the wind that was whipping up now, starting to howl around the edges of the boat. His skin was freezing in seconds, its heat instantly stripped away, and he was having a hard time breathing as he kicked off his boots and socks, water sloshing against the soles, some kind of tingling starting up, fire, shooting through him, like frostbite, worse...
His legs gave out as he stripped his pants away, fell hard and cried out, naked, knocking against the bottom of the boat, and those human instincts were battering at everything now, telling him to get dressed, to go back to port, to get warm, live, live...
But the battle was lost now. It was a matter of time. Exposure would kill him at this point anyway. No protection, no way to get warm...and Hannibal started laughing. It would just make this easier.
It was still a battle, though, hauling himself back up to the edge, his legs not working at all any more, and he had one last twinge of doubt, staring down at that black, black water.
But...
“I love you, kid,” he murmured, and smiled.
And tumbled over.
The water, freezing, knocked the air from his lung as he hit the surface. He started to sink almost immediately, the ocean rushing in to his eyes and nose, down his throat, encircling and squeezing, trying to claim him, trying to kill him...
That panic rose up again, the one he’d felt the other night when Face was holding him, but this time, there was no heat. Just the cold. Nothing but the cold. Not even light, the sun hiding so far above, and he felt his lungs starting to fill, everything fading, the pressure growing, and his mind started misfiring, not working, not letting him access anything else, anything besides the fear, the knowledge that he was a human, that he was going to die here...
...please, Hannibal, let’s go home...all you are...
And then that fire was back, that searing agony tearing through his very soul, and he thought he might have screamed, if he’d had any air to summon sound with. The water around him seemed to be bubbling, heating up with him, growing lighter, everything expanding, blowing apart, twisting, deforming, merging back in on itself. Bone melting and skin splitting and everything, every cell, ever single one tearing apart...
It seemed to go on forever, shredding him apart, and Hannibal didn’t even realize he’d hit the bottom until he felt rock under him, the burn fading, the panic subsiding, nothing but a delicious coolness filling him, surrounding him, air coursing through his blood again, nothing cold, nothing cold...
He laid there. No telling how long.
Then.
Movement around him.
Hannibal blinked, and looked up.
It wasn’t so dark.
It wasn’t so dark he couldn’t make out the landscape, the edge of jagged walls of a deep canyon, falling into nothingness. Not so dark he couldn’t see that shape above him, reaching for him, curling closer to him. Not so dark that those brilliant blue eyes escaped his notice, nor the excitement there, the sheer, unadulterated joy...
Or the hand reaching for him. Touching his neck, touching his waist, sliding down across the expanse of smooth, smooth...
A hand slipped into his. A voice grew in the back of his mind, that beautiful voice, some kind of awe there...
Like you were always meant to be.
And a smile to match.
Come on, kid, he thought, and wrapped himself around the lithe form next to his, kissing his mate for everything he was worth. Let’s get you home.
Rating: R
Warnings: merman AU - but no merman sex here, I swear
Summary: Part Five 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*
If he’s going to keep his boy, Hannibal is going to have to make the most difficult decision of his life...
“How he doin’?” BA asked, a death grip on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead at the night-shrouded back roads leading to the outer edge of Mount Desert Island. He seemed...shaken. “He okay?”
“I think so. Murdock said something about drugs. It seems like he’s working out of it, though,” Hannibal replied, weary, limbs stiffly confined in the drying wetsuit. He hadn’t bothered to remove it. Hadn’t dared. Not until they were done here. He didn’t want to lose his nerve on the last leg of this.
Couldn’t be selfish.
It wasn’t an option.
They weren’t going back to Seal Harbor. Too dangerous. Pike already had half the cops on the island out looking for Face, according to the harbor master, who’d had the presence of mind to bring along his shortwave. An APB out on that Templeton Peck alias. Probably had a search warrant for his house, his boat. Hannibal refused to let his merman be arrested, be thrown in jail or back in some better-secured tank to be poked and prodded and studied.
Which meant there was only one choice.
And he hated himself for not being able to come up with a better.
BA shook his head, and blew a stop sign. “That scream...”
“I think he’s doing better. The water seems to be helping.”
They had Face in the shallow, inflatable pool of clean water from the Atlantic. It was splashing everywhere, his upper body an awkward fit in the section Hannibal had cut out. His tail was limp and heavy against the van floor, the fisherman laying over him, where he’d had to throw himself to keep the kid from thrashing about once they’d gotten him in. There was a puncture wound in his arm, small, round, like he’d given blood.
Probably has, Hannibal thought bitterly, and dunked a washcloth, smoothing it over those gorgeous scales, dark in the dark of the van. He twined his hand into the kid’s, holding tight to limp fingers. “Come on, Face,” he whispered, leaning low over him, playing with a lock of hair, floating serenely in the mad-made puddle sustaining the merman form. “Come back to me, sweetheart. Can’t live without you.”
Lashes twitched, and then brilliant blue eyes fluttered open. A smile broke across the kid’s face, and he pushed up, out of the water, on one arm.
Hannibal moved up, half sitting, half crouching. He smiled back. “There’s my boy. There you are.”
Those eyes clouded. “I...the shark gave me something, I was there again, when mama died. This was...that...”
The pain in those few words burned into the fisherman, and he cradled the kid’s head, kissing him tenderly. “Whatever happened to her, whatever happened to you, Face, I swear, I’m not going to die on you. This won’t be like that. I don’t want you to be alone any more.”
“I won’t be,” the merman whispered back, nosing lightly, kissing Hannibal’s temple. “I thought I was dreaming, but when I saw you in the tank tonight, I knew. I know now. I know we can be together. I know you can become what’s always been in here...”
A trembling hand touched the wetsuit, right over his heart, those subtle webs stretching just a little.
“Face...”
“You and me, Hannibal, us, we...we can go home together...we can...”
Hannibal felt something burning against his skin, under where the merman was touching him. Like something was shifting loose inside of him, coming out, spreading, shaking him to his core. Terrifying and beautiful, unlike anything, anything ever before, something that would cost him...
He peeled that hand slowly away, not understanding any of what was churning inside of him, and kissing the kid again as he laid him back down in the water. “Get some sleep, Face,” he murmured. “We’ve got a bit of a drive ahead of us, and you need it.”
“I love you, boss,” the merman whispered, holding himself just about the surface.
“Love you too, kid,” he replied, meaning it, that feeling from before flaring up in him again. “I love you too.”
Please stay with me...
Those beautiful eyes slid shut.
And silently, noiselessly, head hung so BA couldn’t see, whether from stress or grief or relief or sorrow or happiness, Hannibal felt the tears start to roll down his cheeks.
+++++
BA had a picked a good spot for this, Hannibal mused as he threw open the back doors of the van. One of those small coves on the ocean side of the island, sheltered, quiet. A beaten dirt trail down from the dark trees, from the road, down to a low, short dock, all easy access and privacy and safety. It was a good spot, he thought, throat tightening. And the moon was coming up, big and full. He wouldn’t even need to take a flashlight.
Face pushed up out of his pool, eyes bright, staring. “Is this it, Hannibal?”
The fisherman bit the inside of his cheek. How was he going to explain this? How could he possibly? “This...this is it, kid. Here we are.”
“BA,” the merman started,
The big black man just grunted, and threw around in his chair, offering Face his hand. “Be good, little brother.”
Even in his native state, Face reddened visibly. “I’ve never had a brother.”
“You always have Murdock’n’me,” BA said softly, and patted him on the shoulder. “Now stop gettin’ my van all wet and get your fishy self down to the water.”
“Thank you, BA,” Hannibal told him, sliding out the back and lifting Face with the same ease he’d felt, that very first time. “We may be a while.”
The merman slid his arms around the fisherman’s neck, and started laughing.
Still barefoot, every step down to the water seemed heavy, each worse than the last, like he was walking through molasses, like he was walking towards his own death. The loss of something he didn’t want to lose, didn’t know how to lose. Face being gone once was bad enough, like part of his soul had been sliced away, and Hannibal wondered, as he took the boat ramp down into the cold water, if that was what the merman had meant about being mated. If that was the price for what they had done, the reward for all they could be...
If there was only a way.
The second his fins touched the ocean, Face seemed to come alive, leaping out of Hannibal’s grasp and into the shallow waters of the little cove, coming up a few yards away, moonlight pale around him. The fisherman was reminded, cruelly, sharply, about that dream he’d had, the one where they lay asleep in the soundless depths, cradled in each other’s arms, moonlight...
“You good out there, kid?” he called, trying not to think about it. If only...but there was no use wishing for things that couldn’t be true. That couldn’t be.
Face waved an arm. “Come here, boss! I want to show you something!”
Hannibal smiled to himself, felt the tears coming again, and kicked out, covering the distance in moments, feeling Face dive and surface around him again. The merman’s dark hair was aglow in the night, and his skin had gone the same color as the light around him, and Hannibal couldn’t remember a time the kid had looked more beautiful.
More unreal.
Face touched Hannibal’s cheek, like he had so many times before, the skin of his palms soft against the stubble. He was smiling like the fisherman had never seen him smile before. It only added to the ethereal quality of the young man, something beyond imagination, something beyond human...
“What?” Hannibal whispered, feeling the kid’s tail against his own legs as he tread water, moving slowly, up between, stroking lightly. “What is it you want to show me?”
“You’re here,” the merman said, laughing, hugging him close, launching them both into a slow spin, taking them a little further out into the cold water. “We’re really here.”
“Yeah, kid. Here...”
“Can we go home now?” He laid his face down on the older man’s shoulder. “Please, Hannibal, let’s go home.”
Hannibal couldn’t. He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t tell the kid...but the way he was looking at him, the way he was smiling...
“I can’t take you home right now,” the fisherman admitted, feeling broken inside. “The sheriff’s office is looking for you. They’d just take you away again. I don’t know if I could get you back...”
Face cocked his head, and rubbed a hand across his mouth, like he was thinking, very, very hard. And then burst out in peals of laughter, spinning out a little ways and then slipping under the water, back over to Hannibal.
“That human town? I don’t care about that. I don’t care what the humans think they can and can’t do with us. We don’t need them, Hannibal.” The merman was right beside him, and grabbed him around the shoulders, kissing him fiercely. “We don’t need to worry about them, ever again.”
That place that the kid had touched, right over his heart, was beginning to throb. Burn. A bad burn, eating its way in. That sensation very nearly overwhelmed him, and it was hard to pull an answer together. “What are you talking about?”
“Tonight,” the kid persisted. “Tonight, when I saw you in the tank. You were what you’re supposed to be. For a second or two, I saw it. Didn’t you feel it? You had to have felt it...” A hand tugged at the zipper of his wetsuit, sliding it down, sliding under, starting to explore. “I felt it. All you are. My mate, coming for me...it's what I want you to see...”
That burn was starting to spread into his blood, through his thoughts, and Hannibal couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything to stop it as Face stripped the wetsuit off his arms, torso, as that perfect head vanished under the surface, nipping and sucking right at that spot. Making him groan, making him writhe, something happening, something...
Face’s hand dipped across his hipbone, sweeping down, the touch like acid, like liquid fire, searing down through flesh, through bone...
He screamed.
And jerked Face’s head clear of the water, yanking him up.
“What the fuck are you doing, kid?”
The merman blinked a few times, and then swept some of the wet, clinging locks off his forehead. He looked thoroughly confused. “Does it hurt?”
“Yes! Jesus, yes, kid, whatever the fuck you’re doing, it hurts!”
“I...I don’t think I’m doing anything. I think it’s coming on its own.”
The fisherman thrashed, frustrated beyond belief. “Feel what? What are you talking about, Face? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I thought...you said...Hannibal, if we’re going to be together...”
“We can’t, Face. We can’t. I already said that. I can’t take you home! Please! I brought you here tonight, but we still have to figure this thing ou...”
The merman was at his side again, long body stretched out along the top of the glassy waters. “You said you knew. That morning after we made love.”
“Knew what?” he asked, not realizing he was pleading until after it escaped him. “What did you think I knew, kid?”
Face tried to smile, rolling over on his belly and stroking down Hannibal’s neck. Like he was looking for something. And what he said next damn near exploded the fisherman’s mind.
“Your mother. You do know she was a mermaid, right? Which makes you the same. You’re like me, Hannibal, you’re mer...”
The ocean. His dreams. His mother, his mother, he desire to go home, leaving, her note, his father, drinking himself to death, not letting Hannibal go with her, keeping him...
Keeping him on dry land. Keeping him from turning into...
No.
“Oh, god,” Hannibal murmured to himself, cold shock rushing through his veins, putting out all the fire that had been threatening to consume him before. “Oh, holy god...”
No.
No.
That wasn’t possible, it couldn’t be, it didn’t make sense. There was no way, no way something like that could be real. Things like that didn’t happen. Things like that couldn’t happen. No way, no way for it to be...
His mother wasn’t a mermaid. Selfish and cruel in the end, both of his parents, her especially, broken, obsessed with leaving them, abandoning her child, her responsibilities, her life...
He wasn’t...
He wasn’t a merman.
There was no way.
Was Face this desperate, that he would convince himself of something like this? And Hannibal felt his heart breaking for his boy, for doing something like this to him, for forcing him to concoct such an insane fantasy...
Face laughed, though, and kissed him gently. “You’ll see. Let me get the rest of this wetsuit off, and you’ll see, you’ll see how magnificent you are when you shed this human shell you’ve been forced to wear...”
“Face...”
The merman tried to push Hannibal’s hand out of his hair, and was all Hannibal could do to keep him above water. “Come on, boss, please let me. I want to see you, want to feel you, like you were meant to be, want you to have yourself, want you to make love to me again...”
“Face, I can’t.”
“I’ll show you how. I’ll show you everything. Like I promised,” Face said, confused now. “Isn’t that what you want?”
He was cold. Cold in the cold water, cold like he hadn’t noticed before, cold like he’d never felt before.
“Face, it’s not...it’s not...”
That beautfiul face crumbled. “I’m not...not what you want?” he asked, crestfallen. “You don’t want this?”
“No, kid, I told you, I want you, I love you,” Hannibal said urgently, feeling an all new kind of heat welling up. Panic. Fear. Fear that he’d said the wrong thing again, that he was doing the wrong thing, that Face would... “I love you.”
Face touched him again, his heart, his hip, but there was nothing there. Nothing.
He felt it, and pulled up from the water, meeting the merman’s wide, desperate eyes.
It was gone.
“Where’d it go?” the kid asked as if kicked, frantic, and those hands started moving, that tail, the water beginning to boil. “Where’d it go? Why are you doing this? Hannibal, what are you doing? It’s what you are! What you should have by rights! Bring it back! Please, please, come back!”
Guilt tore through him, wondering if maybe he hadn’t...
But no. It was gone. The heat from before was gone. Whatever it was. Utterly. Gone.
He had to say something. The only thing he could think to say.
So he reached out, stilled his panicked lover with a touch, pulled that face up to meet his own. And there was still trust there, still so much faith. More of both, he realized with a start, than he had in himself, most days. But he had to say it. Had to... “Face, kid, listen. I’m not, I can’t be, but it doesn’t mean anything, doesn’t change the way I feel about...”
The merman stopped. Pulled back.
And something shifted. Irrevocably shifted.
“You lied to me,” Face said, slapping Hannibal away, the dead calm in his voice chillin the older man to the bone. “You lied.”
“No, no, kid, I never lied...”
Those blue eyes closed, and the merman turned from him, moving away “I should have known better than to trust a human,” he said quietly, like he was talking to himself. “They’re all the same.”
“Face, don’t!” Hannibal groaned, heart shattering, kicking out, trying to swim over to him, hampered by the trailing arms of his undone suit. “We can, we can figure this out...”
“No,” the merman said, effortless floating out of reach, voice nothing more than a whisper of wind across the top of the water. “No, we can’t. We can’t.”
“Kid!” he cried out, hoarse with emotion, eyes stinging, knowing he was begging, not knowing what else to do, not knowing what he could do, the faintest spike of that heat beginning to stir in him again. “Kid, please, I want to be with you...”
But it was too late. Face dove, slipped beneath the surface. One last flip of his fins, one last little glimpse, and the merman was gone.
As if he’d never existed at all.
+++++
Hannibal felt like he was flying.
But it wasn’t that. No. Not flying. Soaring over some landscape of impossible beauty, yes. But not through the air. He could feel it. Feel everything. Deepwater chasms beneath and the way light played through the shallows and how the waves seemed, rolling overhead against the distant sun, dashing after dolphins in the open blue of distant waters...
Then the light seemed to fade, hidden in thick mats of kelp, losing himself in inky blackness, falling, lungs burning, air being stolen away by a cold older than time itself, sinking deeper and deeper, further and further...
Movement around him. A hand slipping into his. A voice in the back of his mind, that beautiful voice...
...like you were meant to be...
He jerked awake.
It took him a moment to remember where he was. But cloud-dulled sunlight was leaking through the wide bay windows and he could smell ocean salt in his sheets, hear low talking, one of Murdock’s damn whalesong CDs, and there it was.
Home.
The labs.
The ocean.
Face...
And Hannibal scrubbed a hand over his face, attempting to will those tears away, unwilling to let the moisture spill now. No, no. It was over, it was gone, that one shining chance for something right carried out beyond his grasp, out into the depths...
He groaned.
A hand touched his shoulder, and he looked, blinking through blurry vision, at the sight of the doctor. In a pair of Disney Princess-print scrubs. His eyes were bright, but he looked exhausted.
“Good to see you up, Hannibal,” Murdock said quietly, smiling that lopsided smile.
“How you feelin’, man?” BA asked gruffly, coming over, one big hand balancing two mugs chocolate milk, and a huge glass of something that looked like apple juice. “I thought you was gone, when I pulled you out of the water.”
Hannibal shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs away. He didn’t remember any of that. His stomach was cramping. He had an IV in his arm, a big saline drip on a peg above his bed. “Pulled me...”
“You were in a mild state of hypothermia. Been asleep for almost forty hours now,” Murdock said matter-of-factly, reaching over Hannibal for his chocolate milk. “BA got you home, wrapped up and warmed up. He was a good nurse. I couldn’a’done any better.”
“Shut up, fool,” the big black man grunted, and Hannibal almost chuckled at the hint of embarrassment there.
“My hero,” Murdck teased back.
And that little bit of banter, so blunt, so them, went straight through Hannibal, stinging his eyes again. He sat up to cover it, pushing himself up against the pillows and the headboard, feeling his heating blanket slide down his bare chest. He sipped at the apple juice. The good stuff, the cloudy stuff, but his stomach churned anyway. The fisherman grimaced.
“Be careful with that,” Murdock warned. “Ain’t eaten for a while.”
He nodded, sipped again, and grimaced, setting it aside. “Tell me. What happened while I was asleep?”
BA smiled a little this time, and flopped down in a chair he’d obviously pulled up along side the bed. “Crazy here been busy.”
It was Murdock’s turn to blush. But between them, Hannibal got the story.
BA had come down to the shore, worried, and found Hannibal there, half-senseless and too exhausted to walk. He’d taken him home and stripped the wetsuit off and tucked him in with a heating pad. The harbor master had waited there with him, all night, until Murdock arrived, around dawn, and took over the watch.
Murdock, in the meantime, had gotten Dr. Tyndall sinfully drunk that night, while they were taking Face back to the ocean. Gotten the geneticist to black out and left him in some student’s dorm room. Gotten an ambulance out for Buress, where he’d washed out to, barely alive. Gone back to the lab and stripped out every sample, every photo, every database and every physical trace of Face ever being there. The police had had to write up the entire incident as a party out of control.
Dr. Tyndall had woken up, no memory of any of it, and gone home, vowing to revoke all of Buress’s grant money. He’d already sent Murdock an email about it, and the former neurosurgeon seemed, to Hannibal, ecstatic over it.
“His career’s over,” Murdock grinned, concluding. “He’ll never work in academia again.”
“Murdock’s very proud of this,” BA commented, finishing half his milk in one go.
“Hey, treatin’ Face the way he was? That man ain’t fit to experiment on bacteria. There’s no cause for...”
Hannibal nodded, finishing the last of the juice. It was good, but it was wrong, definitely wrong somehow. He coughed, and set the glas back down. “He’s a bastard. We’re all in agreement on that.”
“Well, he ain’t gonna hurt another sea creature again,” Murdock said proudly, and BA kissed him on the top of the head, pulling him in.
Hannibal sighed, and had to look away. “Thanks, boys. Both of you. I couldn’t have saved Face without you.”
The two of them looked at each other, and BA cleared his throat. “What, ah, what did you two decide to...”
Hannibal shook his head. “Kid decided to go home.”
“Hannibal? He just decided to leave without y...”
“I’m fine, he’s fine. It’s okay,” he lied, and tried to smile. Failed, and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “It’s better this way. It’s the way he wanted it.”
Murdock bumped into BA’s side, and laid his his cheek on the big guy’s shoulder. “Hey, BA? If you wanna keep workin’ on your van, I can Hannibal here his post-hypothermia check-up.”
BA pushed him away playfully and stood, stretching, yawning. “That remind me, you owe me for the van, Hannibal. It smell awful in there right now.”
“I’ll make you that coconut curry tapenade you love tonight,” Murdock promised, smiling blandly. “Please, hon? Let me check him out?”
“Right, right,” the big guy nodded.
Murdock went to go get his doctor’s bag.
Hannibal sighed again, playing with the IV line still in his arm, wondering. Wondering where Face might be, at the same moment, how he was doing, if he was still hurt from his ordeal, if he was okay, if he was alone...how alone he must be, how betrayed he must feel...
And that damn whale music was still on.
“Hold pressure here,” Murdock said, putting Hannibal’s hand over a cotton ball, over the needle. “Gonna take you out.”
Hannibal nodded, sitting up a bit, and barely winced as the line slid free, pressing down to stop the bleeding as the doctor wrapped it up with some kind of sticky yellow wrap. Murdock’s eyes were soft as he worked, and when he was satisfied, he reached over for his stethescope.
“Let’s get you checked out, okay?” he asked gently, and Hannibal, still feeling exhausted, let himself flop back as the doc went about it. Watched silently as the doc took his blood pressure and checked his ears and all that, silent until that routine was done and Murdock pushed back in his chair and crossed his arms.
“You seem fine, Hannibal. Don’t see a hint of a problem from the hypothermia,” and the doctor played with his stethoscope hanging around his neck, eyes falling a little, not a trace of his usual levity, not a single foreign accent used. “But I’m gonna need to check your feet and stuff. You okay? Warm enough?”
Hannibal smiled. Not like Murdock had never seen a naked man before, he thought with genuine humor. “Yeah.”
“Top notch, old chap,” the doctor said, switching to his Brit, still smiling, and got up, flicked the blankets away with practiced ease, his hands, a little cold, starting to roam. “Very important, to ensure that the patient has suffered no...”
His hands stopped.
That spot, that spot where Face had...
“What is it?” he asked, trying to look, blocked by a shaggy, dark head.
Then sea-green eyes turned on him, grinning, the Texan drawl back. “Face give you merman herpes or somethin’?”
“Merman herpes?”
“Yeah,” and Murdock reached for his bag again. “Take a look.”
The fisherman was up in an instant, staring at it, running his hand down it, feeling his breath catch in his throat. “Fuck...”
“That is where one gets herpes,” the doctor joked.
There it was. The place where Face had touched him last night. What had burned so badly. In the shape of a hand print.
His skin had gone gray. Not a sick, deathly gray. A bright gray, a bright blue-gray. Not the dull, matte sheen of skin. No, it was flaking, cracking, catching the light, deeper and thicker towards the center, and it felt, it felt...
“Looks like fish scales,” Murdock said, tweezers in hand, scraping a few of the larger flakes into a little vial. He tucked that into his bag and leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Got something you want to tell me, Hannibal?”
...you’ll see how magnificent you are when you shed this human shell you’ve been forced to wear...want you to have yourself...
He shook his head tightly, feeling overwhelmed again. Feeling the slightest twinge, deep down, the faintest inking of a horrible thought. That he had been the one trying to deceive himself last night, that Face had been right, that he could have...that he’d lost his boy over... “No.”
“You sure?”
“It’s just...just a rash,” Hannibal said, laying his hand back over it, not wanting to look at it, not wanting it to be there. It wasn’t... “It’s probably from the wetsuit. I haven’t worn one in years...”
“John,” the doctor said, and took up the fisherman’s rough, rough hand in his own. “John, I had a client once, when I was still working at the hospital down in Atlanta. Vampire. Nice guy. Came in to have a bullet removed from his frontal cortex...”
Hannibal raised an eyebrow. “Vampire, Murdock?”
“Yeah. I did it pro bono, really interestin’ bein’ able to operate on someone while they were still awake and he let me have a blood sample for the CIA bubbas, but anyway, we talked through the whole procedure. And I asked him what it had been like for him to cross over, if it was real hard. You know what he said?”
The fisherman shook his head, and Murdock squeezed his hand tight, once.
“He said, and I’ll never forget this, he said you gotta believe in the change, or no amount o’ sire blood’s gonna make a difference.” The doctor sat back in his chair and, letting Hannibal’s hand go, went for his chocolate milk. “That the toughest part about that was acceptin’ the fact that it was possible. That you could by all rights die, but you ain’t gonna. That you gotta push through the panic to reach that new life.”
“Murdock...”
The doctor smiled, and stood, taking the saline bag down and closing up his case. “You’re good to go, Hannibal. Don’t overdo it in the next few days, okay? And don’t worry about that scaly patch down there. I’m sure it’ll work itself out.”
Hannibal touched it again. It felt like Face had felt. The last thing, the only thing, he had of his boy, and he sighed. “You’re saying it’s possible? To...to change?” He closed his eyes, thinking of those dreams, of Face, of the way it felt... “Murdock? I don’t think he’d... he wouldn’t want me...”
“Sure he would. Merfolk mate for life, remember? There ain’t another out there for him, Hannibal, not that you’ve claimed him. He won’t be taken by anyone else. He won’t look.”
Hannibal groaned, thinking about that. His boy, his beautiful boy, wanting to be loved, aching for it... “and now I’ve damned him to be alone? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m saying that you gotta have faith, Hannibal. Faith that you two could be together. Once you got that, anything’s possible.”
The fisherman dropped his face into his hands.
And he barely heard them as they drove away.
+++++
He fought it. He fought it for days. Tried to analyze it, figure it out, logic through it. Every angle, every permutation, every possibility.
It didn’t make any sense.
And it knawed at him in return.
That rash, the scaly rash, spread. And spread. Taking over half his leg by the second day after Murdock pointed it out. It was beyond sore, a constant burn that nothing seemed able to relieve, one that he just couldn’t ignore. Tormented him, day and night. Worse at night, because at night the dreams came.
The ocean dreams.
Darker now, dark and low, the waters always black and muddy, the seafloor barren, nothing but rock and the crawling sounds of shellfish creeping through, lobsters, starfish, creatures he had no name for, looking to devour the weak things falling to the bottom. Cold water, always cold, always colder...
He went to the deli one morning, unable to take the silence around his house any longer, that absence of Face, the lack of his boy, his merman, his mate, a hole deep down in him he was beginning to understand there was no hope of ever filling.
The walk was hard, his hip aching, but he didn’t feel like driving. A cool morning, a good morning, and he slipped into the empty place, ordering a breakfast sandwich and Amy giving him a sympathetic look, tried to say something, but hadn’t heard her. Just collapsed into a booth and waited for it.
Somebody slipped in across from him, touched his hand.
“You’ve grown,” a female voice said, sweet, lovely. “You’ve grown so big, become such a man. It’s wonderful to see.”
Older, grayer, wrinkles around eyes and mouth, still beautiful, still so beautiful...
“M-mom?” he asked, not believing it, not believing...
“I’m so sorry, my son,” the old woman said, stroking his hand, the webs between her fingers thin, translucent, faded like paper. “It’s my fault, your unhappiness.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “His unhappiness.”
The bell on the door rang gently, and Hannibal turned, hand on the back of the seat, watching the family that had just come in. A man and a woman, both of them laughing, a little boy in the woman’s arms. Sandy blonde, eyes like the sky, a little plush sperm whale clutched in his little hands.
“Where are you folks headed?” Amy asked, leaning over the counter to tickle the little boy, who giggled and hid behind his mother’s leg.
“Out north,” the father said, chuckling at his son’s antics. “It’s calving season, and he’s finally big enough to come along this year, aren’t you, little man?”
“Yes, Da,” the boy said shyly.
“There are so few of them left,” the mother added. “So few of the whales remaining. Anything we can do to help a few more of them make it through those first few months...”
“All your life, you’ve been fighting this world,” the old merwoman said. “I’d hoped, one day, you might find your own way home. And every step's led you there. To him...”
Hannibal couldn’t turn back around, couldn’t look at her, couldn’t tear his eyes away from that little boy. Pressed against his mother, chewing on the dorsal fin of his little plush toy, staring right back at the fisherman. Eyes clouded with sadness, like he knew, like he already knew what was coming, terrified...
“Hannibal? Hannibal? Did you need anything else?”
He blinked back the tears that were coming of their own accord, and shook himself. Amy was waiting, his egg and cheese bagel in hand, head cocked in concern.
“Hannibal?”
The woman across from him was gone, and he jerked around, looking towards the register, but they were gone as well, the happy couple, the little boy. But...
He got up, walked over, ignoring Amy, ignoring the stares from the few other patrons, movements jerky, half falling on the counter.
Picking up the small, stuffed whale that had been left there.
It was the same colors as those scales on his leg.
He stared at it for a moment, time stopping, his heart still, everything still, pulling together, pulling tight, coming in...
Then.
He laid it down.
And bolted.
The docks were close, his own boat right there, and Hannibal couldn’t even remember how he covered that short distance. Just that he was on board, lines already cast off, warming up the engine, when BA stomped over.
“Hannibal, what the hell you doin’? Season ended last week...”
“I know, BA,” he said, and threw the props into reverse. “I’m not going out to fish!”
“Hannibal!” the harbor master roared. “Hannibal, Hannibal, you can’t! The weather gonna be real bad today and you don't got your...”
But the fisherman was pulling away, and waved back. “Say goodbye to Murdock for me!” he yelled.
And anything else that his friend might have said was drowned out as Hannibal took his small fishing boat out past the breakwater, out into the sound.
Out to where he had to go.
His hands were shaking on the wheel. The run, probably the run, had gotten his hip going again, and he tried to rub at it through his jeans. He didn’t have any of his gear for this, not a rain slicker or waders or anything, and as the fog started to roll in, he got damp. Then wet. And his leg starting screaming again. White hot.
Visibility dimmed and his eyes kept unfocusing, pain shooting through him as the flat prow cut through the low, chopping waves. Soon, it was nothing but gray around him, thick as pea soup, and he was navigating purely by instinct, by memory, by compass, where the hazards were, which was the passage out to the open ocean.
He didn’t know where he was supposed to be going, only that he was supposed to be going. Going towards whatever had been started, all those weeks ago. What Face’s arrival had given him. What everybody in his life had been trying to tell him.
I’d hoped, one day, you might find your own way home. And every step's led you there. To him...
...you’ll see when you shed this human shell you’ve been forced to wear...
...I’d do anything for you, sweetheart. I love you...
...we could go home together...
...you lied to me...
Hannibal barely paid attention to the ocean, the whole long, gray journey unfolding in the back of his mind, no less real than those dreams he’d been having of late. The little town of Seal Harbor was long gone, taken away by the fog, vanished into the past. He’d never go back there again. Whatever happened today, he knew that.
There was no return from this.
...you could by all rights die, but you ain’t gonna...
Dead. Or not. But not human. Not that life. Not any more. Not ever again.
It had never been his to live. Was never supposed to be. He knew that now. He did...
And his hands pulled down on the throttles, engines dying.
Silence.
Hannibal didn’t even realize where he stopped the boat until he checked the GPS. The coordinates. Unfamiliar waters. Further out that he normally went. A gamble. A gamble he’d taken, so long ago, in another life, trying to find something better, someplace good...
Where he’d found Face.
...please...let me go...
...II’m going to take care of you, kid...
His hip was hurting so bad at this point that he almost fell as he got out of the pilot’s chair, only barely making it over to the side of the craft. The water was black. He leaned against the low wall, feeling the chill in the air, knowing exactly how long he’d survive in waters, these temperatures, and his hands froze on the zipper of his light, sodden jacket. Balked. Wouldn’t do as he was telling them. Every instinct in his body crying out against this.
...you lied to me...
...his unhappiness...
He gritted his teeth and got his hands moving again, working faster despite the wind that was whipping up now, starting to howl around the edges of the boat. His skin was freezing in seconds, its heat instantly stripped away, and he was having a hard time breathing as he kicked off his boots and socks, water sloshing against the soles, some kind of tingling starting up, fire, shooting through him, like frostbite, worse...
His legs gave out as he stripped his pants away, fell hard and cried out, naked, knocking against the bottom of the boat, and those human instincts were battering at everything now, telling him to get dressed, to go back to port, to get warm, live, live...
But the battle was lost now. It was a matter of time. Exposure would kill him at this point anyway. No protection, no way to get warm...and Hannibal started laughing. It would just make this easier.
It was still a battle, though, hauling himself back up to the edge, his legs not working at all any more, and he had one last twinge of doubt, staring down at that black, black water.
But...
“I love you, kid,” he murmured, and smiled.
And tumbled over.
The water, freezing, knocked the air from his lung as he hit the surface. He started to sink almost immediately, the ocean rushing in to his eyes and nose, down his throat, encircling and squeezing, trying to claim him, trying to kill him...
That panic rose up again, the one he’d felt the other night when Face was holding him, but this time, there was no heat. Just the cold. Nothing but the cold. Not even light, the sun hiding so far above, and he felt his lungs starting to fill, everything fading, the pressure growing, and his mind started misfiring, not working, not letting him access anything else, anything besides the fear, the knowledge that he was a human, that he was going to die here...
...please, Hannibal, let’s go home...all you are...
And then that fire was back, that searing agony tearing through his very soul, and he thought he might have screamed, if he’d had any air to summon sound with. The water around him seemed to be bubbling, heating up with him, growing lighter, everything expanding, blowing apart, twisting, deforming, merging back in on itself. Bone melting and skin splitting and everything, every cell, ever single one tearing apart...
It seemed to go on forever, shredding him apart, and Hannibal didn’t even realize he’d hit the bottom until he felt rock under him, the burn fading, the panic subsiding, nothing but a delicious coolness filling him, surrounding him, air coursing through his blood again, nothing cold, nothing cold...
He laid there. No telling how long.
Then.
Movement around him.
Hannibal blinked, and looked up.
It wasn’t so dark.
It wasn’t so dark he couldn’t make out the landscape, the edge of jagged walls of a deep canyon, falling into nothingness. Not so dark he couldn’t see that shape above him, reaching for him, curling closer to him. Not so dark that those brilliant blue eyes escaped his notice, nor the excitement there, the sheer, unadulterated joy...
Or the hand reaching for him. Touching his neck, touching his waist, sliding down across the expanse of smooth, smooth...
A hand slipped into his. A voice grew in the back of his mind, that beautiful voice, some kind of awe there...
Like you were always meant to be.
And a smile to match.
Come on, kid, he thought, and wrapped himself around the lithe form next to his, kissing his mate for everything he was worth. Let’s get you home.
