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Never in his life did Nico think that he would find himself living in Texas in the summer.
But somehow, he made a series of ill timed, ill-advised decisions that got him here.
First, he dropped out of college. Then, he made the mistake of telling his step-mother that he was thinking about writing a book. In an attempt to either get rid of him or get in his good graces, Nico isn’t sure which, she’d very enthusiastically insisted on him moving into one of her family’s homes on Lake Travis for the summer so he could “get started on the next great American novel.”
What Nico was expecting was a little fishing shack, maybe something Kerouac-On-The-Road flavored. What he gets is 13 acres, 7 bedrooms, and a whole lot of isolation, as soon as the Uber he’d taken from the airport speeds away down the monstrosity of a driveway.
“Well,” he mutters to himself, dropping his bag on the foyer floor with a clatter and staring through the giant windows at the back of the house at the muddy blue-brown of the lake. “You’re stuck here now, Di Angelo.”
It’s not even midnight on his first night when he hears it for the first time.
It’s faint, hard to hear over the gentle lapping of the waves against the rocky beach. Nico thinks he might be imagining things. He’d drifted off, three glasses of wine deep, slumped against the couch with his laptop dead on his stomach.
He strains his ears, concentrating, and catches the sound of a voice in the wind.
It sounds haunting, and hypnotic. Crackling like gravel underfoot and smoldering like a dying campfire. The melody pulls and pulls and pulls at something in his stomach, in his chest, until he absolutely has to slide his laptop gently off his body and pad out onto the back porch.
Nico stands there, immobile, dumbstruck, gazing at the gentle ripples of the lake, as the last strains of it fade from his ears. The crashing of the water breaks the spell, and he shakes the fog from his head, blinking hard.
“Huh,” he murmurs, glancing at the dancing of the moon over the water, as he turns to go back inside.
Nico starts writing by the lake, after that. For the next few days, he takes his laptop and whatever protein bars he can scrounge up, he parks himself at the edge of the dock, and curls up under the oppressively hot southern sun.
It would absolutely kill him to admit it to his stepmother that her family property is helping him like this. But in the heat of the day he’s started taking his shirt off, and he’s getting a tan, and probably more vitamin D than he’s ever gotten in his life, and it’s probably helping with his mental health or whatever.
By the end of the fourth day of this, he is absolutely on a roll. He’s so into writing the scene about his heroine absolutely decimating the king of the werewolves that he doesn’t notice the sun has dipped below the horizon. That is, until, the summer breeze causes gooseflesh to start to prick up along his neck.
“Ah shit,” Nico murmurs to himself, setting his laptop down on the dock and pulling his shirt on. He peers into the rapidly darkening sky, at the twinkling stars starting to appear. He rises from where he’s seated, and then-
The melody, mesmerizing and glowing, curls through the air. And it is loud. And it is close.
Nico darts his head from side to side, trying to see where it’s coming from. There’s no one around, that he can spot. A quick glance over his shoulder tells him that there is no one behind him either. So, doing the only logical thing he can do in his addled mind, he drops to his knees and peers under the dock.
Nico sees a flash of bright blue and sharp white, and then he’s pulled down into the water.
He screams, as he goes, fighting this, this thing, whatever it is, that has its arms - or some other appendages - wrapped around him. He flails, kicking, fists flying.
Sharp pain explodes through his right shoulder, a tearing, ripping sensation. Nico screams louder. Water enters his lungs.
And then the thing just lets go.
Now, Nico was raised partially in Venice. He knows how to swim, and what to do if he falls in a canal. He tears his way back to the surface, and hauls himself up the dock ladder, collapsing on the worn wood coughing and sputtering. His lungs are on fire as he fills them with air again.
There’s a faint, soft thump from behind him. He glances over his shoulder and there, at the end of the dock, is a man, resting his head on his crossed arms.
Or it looks like a man. Mostly. Nico turns around and scrambles backwards on his hands, taking him in with wide eyes. The man’s gold hair is dripping, curling around his face. His blue eyes are bright, almost unnaturally so, like a natural gas flame. He’s wearing a necklace of small, black and brown striped shells.
It’s the scales, though, that make Nico’s heart pound against his chest. Dark green, almost blue, smattered around his neck and arms. Nico swallows hard.
The man-thing grins. His teeth are sharp. Pointed, like a shark.
“Did you try to fucking eat me?” Nico squeaks out.
“Naw,” the man-thing answers. “You’re too skinny. Ain’t worth the trouble.”
Nico lets out a little yelp, and scrambles a half-foot further up the dock. The man-thing’s grin gets a little wider.
“Weren’t expecting me to answer you, huh?” He asks.
“Not really!” Nico says hysterically. “So if you weren’t trying to eat me, why did I get half drowned and a chunk taken out of my shoulder?”
“Oh you’re bein’ dramatic, it wasn’t a chunk,” The man-thing rolls his eyes. “It’s because the other mers in the lake would eat you.”
Nico blinks at him, eyes wide, until the man-thing sighs. Then, with very practiced skill, he pushes himself up out of the lake to sit on the edge of the dock. From where he’s propped, Nico can still see that his tail is splitting the surface of the lake, being dragged by the lazy current.
“You’re a fish,” Nico squeaks.
That gets Nico a flat look in response. “My name is Will,” the man-thing responds. “Do you want to come sit while I tell you about how you’re not going to be eaten now, or…?”
Nico scoots back down the dock to sit next to Will, his legs dangling next to Will’s tail. In the light of the bright moon, the belly of it is a yellow-whitish color, with darker stripes and blue-green down the sides.
“What kind of a merman is named Will?” Nico mutters. “I thought you’d be named Triton or something.”
“And what is your name, oh high and mighty one?” Will snarks back. “Azriel? Castiel?”
“Nico,” he mutters. “But my last name is Di Angelo.”
“I will push you back into the water and let you be eaten.” Will mutters.
“Yeah, about that,” Nico veers, changing the subject. “What is going on?”
“Right,” Will says. “There are merpeople living in the lake, as you might have noticed. And usually, people living on the lake alone, who make the mistake of staying out late, get eaten. But…”
Nico cocks an eyebrow. Will rakes his bright eyes over Nico’s slender frame before continuing.
“I like you. You’re interestin’ to watch. So I claimed you.” he reaches out, and runs a wet finger over the bite mark in Nico’s shoulder. “So no one else should try to eat you.”
“You’ve been watching me?” Nico gapes.
“You take off your shirt and roll around in the sun all day,” Will says with a smirk. “It’s hard not to.”
Heat rises in Nico’s cheeks fast, and he stands up. “I’m wet and I’m cold. I’m going in the house.”
“See you tomorrow,” Will laughs, and he slides off the dock, back into the lake with a splash.
“Whatever,” Nico grumbles.
It takes a couple days, but eventually, Nico’s intrigue outweighs his self-preservation, as it so often does. So he decides to venture into town, and get supplies.
It’s past three, the sun blazing in the sky by the time that Nico finds his way to the dock. He settles in. It doesn’t take more than fifteen minutes of him clacking away against his keyboard before the water at the end of the dock splashes, and Will’s face appears over the edge of the wood.
“I thought I might’ve scared you off,” he greets. “Didn’t think you were comin’ back, once it got past the first day.”
“Had to go to the grocery store this morning.” Nico shrugs, digging into his little bag of food, before rolling something down the dock. “Got you this.”
“You brought me a peach!” Will exclaims, excited.
“Figured you don’t grow a lot of fresh fruit in the lake.”
“No!” He shreds into it, the juice of it running thick down his chin. “Thank you!”
“So like,” Nico starts, pulling his knees to his chin as he watches Will mangle the peach. “What do you eat?”
“Fish and the like, usually.” Will answers with a swallow. “Stuff like this, if I can get my hands on it,” he continues, gesturing to the fruit.
“People?” Nico murmurs out.
Will smiles, sharp teeth bared, blue eyes glinting like topaz in the late afternoon sun. “Shouldn’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.”
“Noted,” Nico responds, shifting his weight backwards just a bit.
There are a few more weeks of this, Nico writing at the end of the dock and sporadically surprising Will with fresh fruits, veggies, and on one memorable occasion, a small lemon cake. One Morning, Nico’s Father decides to call.
“Hello?” Nico mutters into the receiver, groggy with sleep.
“Good morning, Niccolò,” his Father laughs. “Isn’t it already 10:30 in Texas?”
“F’ck off,” Nico mumbles. “I was up late.”
“Working, I hope.” His Father says. “How goes the writing?”
“It’s fine,” Nico sighs. “There’s a nice place on one of the docks that I like to sit. Helps me concentrate.”
His Father is silent for a very, very long moment. So long that Nico is worried that the call dropped.
“You there?”
“Be careful close to the lake, Nico,” His Father says grimly. “Especially on the dock.”
Nico’s throat tightens. “Why?”
“Your stepmother’s first husband drowned in the lake.” His Father answers. “They never found him, not really. Just some shredded clothes. She told me once she thinks there may be something in there that pulled him in.”
“If she thought it was so dangerous, why did she want me to come here?” Nico huffs.
“I don’t think she thought you’d leave the house,” his Father answers. “Which you have to admit, is fair.”
“Mean,” Nico mutters. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Be careful.”
“Did you eat my stepmother’s first husband?” Nico asks Will that evening, sitting on the edge of the dock. Will’s eyes are closed, and his shoulders shrug, causing the water to ripple from the form of his lazy back float.
“Dunno. Would have’ta see a picture of him or somethin.”
Nico had come prepared for this possibility. He’d found a picture in the house of Gregory-something, and tucked it in his pocket. He pulls it out now and brandishes it at Will. “Here.”
Will cracks an eye open lazily, before twisting himself up in the water to see. He squints at it momentarily. “Naw,” He asserts. “I think my Mama did, though.”
“What?” Nico gasps out.
“What?” Will teases. “You surprised by the fact I have a Mama, or the fact she ate the good ole’ boy here?” he says, flicking the photograph.
“Uh,” Nico stammers. “Yes?”
“I did come from somewhere,” Will says with a grin. “And I did have to be raised and reared, just like you.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-two.”
“You’re my age?” Nico scoffs.
“What, did you think I was some kind of magic immortal water bein’?” Will giggles, flicking his hand to splash drops on Nico’s face. “I live in a lake in central Texas, dude. This ain’t exactly Atlantis.”
“Your Mother ate Gregory?” Nico deflects.
“Oh sure,” Will responds. “I was about six or so at the time? She sung him right off the dock.”
“You saw it?”
“Course,” Will smiles, sharp. “I am her baby, after all. She gave me a kidney.”
“So you did eat him!” Nico accuses.
“No,” Will responds. “I didn’t get him, so technically, in mer culture, I didn’t eat him fully.”
Nico narrows his eyes. “You’re being pedantic on purpose, aren’t you.”
“Yes,” Will snickers. “Besides. The human being lured has to be attracted to the mer during the luring. I don’t think I could’ve gotten him if I tried. Not like I could get you.”
Nico sputters indignantly. “You could not.”
“I absolutely could. You’ve been bringin’ me fruit for weeks. I could get you to fall to a watery grave in seconds.”
“I absolutely do not believe you,” Nico snaps. “Prove it.”
Will’s eyes flash at the challenge, bright and excited, and he drops himself off the dock, into the water with a splash.
“Will?” Nico calls, uncertain.
Then, like weeks ago, the melody comes. It’s the same ariose, haunting sound, gravelly, and smoldering. Nico’s eyes dart around the surface of the lake, until he sees Will’s head breech the surface, six feet from the dock. His eyes bore into Nico’s, hot.
The melody twists itself around Nico’s spine, settling low in his stomach. Will grins, coy.
It’s not that far a swim, Nico thinks. You’re a strong swimmer, It’d be fine.
Will flicks a wet strand of hair off his forehead.
Nico walks off the dock.
The melody gets so much louder under the water. Is that right? Nico thought that sounds were supposed to be muffled underwater. He turns to swim to the surface, but he catches sight of bright, bioluminescent blue eyes, and the melody crescendos.
Will is there, holding him still, under his arms, under the water. His lungs start to ache, but Will has a halo of gold hair that floats around his face gently in the blue-brown of the water, so it’s okay. The melody is relaxing. He can just breathe in now, and his lungs will be fine. He blinks slowly. He positions himself, ready to draw in a breath of the lake water and-
The melody stops, and Will flicks his tail, the two of them crashing through the surface of the lake. Will has the smarmiest look across his face as Nico clings to his shoulders, gasping for air.
“You bastard,” Nico hisses, once he catches his breath. “You absolute nightmare hellcreature. I was going to drown myself!”
Will laughs, bright. “No, I wasn’t gonna let you. ‘Cides, I knew what I was doing.”
“Take me back to shore, fishboy,” Nico grumbles.
“Do you admit that you’re attracted to me, now?” Will goads.
Nico huffs under his breath, trying to come up with some sort of revenge. Will is still holding him under his arms, and, in a flash of either genius or stupidity, he sandwiches Will’s cheeks in between his hands, and kisses him. Deeply. He’s able to run his tongue over the individual points of Will’s teeth. At the very tips of his fingers, just behind Will’s ears, he feels what might be gills under his fingertips.
When he pulls away, Will is wholly, magnificently, blood-orange red. “Shore,” Nico demands again with a smirk.
“Sure,” Will responds, breathless.
Against his better judgment, next time he’s at the store, Nico buys a pool float.
It’s an expensive, ridiculous looking thing, thick like an inflatable bed, with arms and a full back. But it won’t sink into the water like the flimsier ones. So he can take his tablet (he’s not risking his laptop, no way) out on it and float on the lake without risking getting it wet.
He inflates it and hauls it down to the dock that afternoon. As soon as he steps foot on the sun-warm wood, Will’s head pops up through the surface.
“What’s that?” He asks.
“Inflatable,” Nico grunts, lowering the thing into the water. “Hold it still for me.”
With Will steadying it, Nico slings himself onto the float. It wobbles a bit, in that way inflatables always do, but then he steadies himself and is able to lean back and delicately balance his tablet on his knees. He clicks it open, pulls up his manuscript, and begins tapping away at the screen.
The gentle current of the lake doesn’t pull him far from the dock, fifteen feet at most. He watches Will out of the corner of his eye, as he switches between a lazy back float, and circling the inflatable at times, like a shark.
It’s in one of those circles that Nico notices the sheer length of him. Will’s head bobs just below the surface near the top right of the float, but his tail fin is curled, drifting in the water, off to the left of it.
“Hey, Will?” Nico says.
Will flicks himself under the water, curling back around until his head pops out at the foot of the float, and he can rest his arms on the vinyl. The little shells around his neck clack together as he moves. “Yeah?”
“How,” Nico flaps a hand at him. “Long are you?”
Will grins. “Fourteen inches.”
Heat rises in Nico’s face as he reaches to the side to splash water at him. “Not that, you fucking- your body , imbecile. Height.”
“Eleven and a half feet or so, I think?” Will answers, quirking his head to the side. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason.” Nico hums. “I just noticed how long your tail was when you were circling the float, but your upper half is so normal looking. I was curious.”
Nico goes back to his tablet for a split second, before it hits him. “Wait,” he sputters. “Fourteen?”
“I am eleven feet long,” Will responds sagely. “Also, there are two of them.”
“For real?” Nico squeaks.
“Naw, just the first bit.” Will grins. “I’m not actually a shark.”
“I hate you.”
“I have empirical evidence that proves otherwise.”
Nico gasps awake in his bed one night, early into August. The blinking clock tells him it's just a scrape after two in the morning. But his dreams had been filled with the sounds of metal on asphalt and the crunch of bone and his eight-year-old self, screaming in desperation for his Mother to wake up, so he knows that he’s not going back to sleep tonight.
He sighs, scrubbing his hand down his face. He throws the thin sheet off of him, and, just for a moment, catches sight of the moon on the lake.
Might as well, He thinks to himself.
The wood of the dock is still warm from the day under his bare feet. He hadn’t bothered with getting dressed, still in his boxers and a sleep shirt. It does surprise him a bit, though, when he sits on the edge of the dock, and he hears water splash up.
“What are you doing up?” Nico murmurs. “It’s the middle of the night.”
A strong hand wraps around Nico’s ankle. He breathes out a sleepy laugh. “What’re you playing at?”
He glances down. Glaring back up at him is a face, with hazel eyes and cool brown hair. The hand around his ankle, he realizes in a split second, does not belong to Will.
Nico is dragged off the dock with a scream.
It’s not like the first time, when Will was just trying to mark him, or the second, when he was being teasingly lured. Those times the water had felt safe, even when his animal brain thought he was in danger.
This time, through the fog of fisticuffs with this other merperson, Nico realizes that it's more like an alligator rolling its prey. He’s being disoriented in a brutal, top speed fashion.
He inhales water. He can’t help it. His vision is rapidly decaying at the edges, as more water falls into his body.
Then it stops, abrupt. He wonders if he’s dead.
Nico gasps, coughing and sputtering, rolling over on to his side to spew lake water from his mouth. The hands that had been on his chest, pressing into his heart over and over, move to rub a slow, comforting circle on his back.
“I’m sorry,” Will murmurs into his neck, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Nico rasps. “I’m okay.” He turns to face Will. “You’re bleeding.”
There are rivulets of diluted blood running from Will’s forehead, into his eyes, down his cheeks. A half-moon bite is sunk into his forearm. His necklace is missing. “Had to fight him off. Not as bad as it looks.”
“I thought you said marking me would stop that from happening,” Nico mutters tiredly, planting his face into Will’s clavicle.
“Oh what, your world doesn’t have criminals? There’s a reason he was doing it in the dead of night. What’re you doing out here?” Will responds, pressing a little kiss to the top of Nico’s head.
“Nightmare. Couldn’t sleep.”
“Bet you want to go back to sleep now.”
“Not really,” Nico murmurs.
“You’re goin’ to anyway.” Will responds. “Here,” He reaches over on the dock, pulling the gaudy pool float to them. “Lay down.”
Nico does, and Will, with all of his eight-and-a-half feet of tail, wiggles up next to him. It leaves them far up the dock, his tail-fin is just skimming the surface of the lake.
“Graceful,” Nico snorts.
“Do you want me to stay with you or not?”
“Be nice to me,” Nico sighs out, snuggling down between the armrest and Will’s chest. “I almost drowned. Again.”
Nico wakes up to small drops hitting him in the face. He flinches, grumbling, and buries his face deeper into Will’s shoulder.
“Stop that,” he whines. “I’m tired.”
“It’s almost noon, darlin’,” Will laughs, flicking his tail again. “Figured you want to keep working on that manuscript of yours.”
“I’m taking the day off.” Nico huffs. “...I need to go to the goddamn grocery store again, though.”
Will perks up. “Peaches?”
“Yes, I will get you peaches, dorkus.”
Bored in the checkout line, watching the total tick up, Nico spots one of the displays. It’s got shell necklaces. They’re ridiculous things. Remnants from the 90s. There are hundreds of them, all with different common names, beaded between the shells. He sighs and leans over to it, twisting the creaking display to the Ws, and adds the necklace to his pile.
Nico collapses at the end of the dock, green produce bag in one hand, necklace in the other. He leans to look under it. “Peaches, fishboy!”
“You think you would’ve learned your lesson about sitting there,” Will quips when his head breaks the surface. He makes grabby hands at the bag.
“I never learn anything,” Nico responds primly, passing him a fruit. “That’s why I dropped out of college to write a book.”
“How long does that take, anyway?” Will asks, between mouthfuls of shredded peach.
“Book writing?” Nico says. Will nods. “Dunno. Couple years?”
“Is that how long you’re gonna stay?” Will murmurs.
“Probably. Why? Do you want me around?” Nico grins.
Will shrugs. “I need a plug for my peaches.”
“Sure you do,” Nico scoffs. “I got you something else, too. Here.” He hands the necklace to Will.
Will’s eyes go big, and a little misty, and he takes it into his hands with reverence. “Nico,” he whispers. “I can’t take this.”
“What?” Nico grouches, taken aback. “Why not? I got it to replace the one you lost. It’s even got your name on it and everything.”
“Those were zebra mussel shells,” Will murmurs. “They’re invasive in the lake. They’re practically worthless. These are seashells.” He runs one of his fingers over it lightly.
Nico laughs. “I got it at the grocery store checkout line, fishboy. Here, just-” He takes the necklace back and undoes the rope clasp, wrestling over Will’s head before pulling it tight again. “There. Now I’ve claimed you too.”
Will surges up out of the lake, grabbing Nico’s face and kissing him, hard. The two of them fall backwards into the water. Nico breathes, for a long moment, by sucking air out of Will’s mouth, their lips interlocked tightly. When he runs out of breath, Will pushes them to the surface.
“Stop pulling me into the fucking lake!” Nico sputters, the venom dissipated by the grin overtaking his face.
“Sorry,” Will responds, without sounding very sorry at all.
“This is going to be something I have to get used to, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Will affirms, kissing him again. “Yes it is.”