(siren/mermaid reader x simon “ghost” riley written on a whim and a rush)
There’s a silence that only the sea understands; a quiet lull between the crash of waves and the breath of something other watching from below.
You rise just before the tide turns.
Water beads like silver across your shoulders, trailing rivulets down the curves of your scaled skin. The moonlight paints you in cold beauty- sharp and soft, haunting. Your hair drips with salt and secrets. Your tail, dark as the ocean trench and rimmed with glints of blue, curls beneath the surface like a big, lazy question mark.
The boat creaks as you settle on the edge of it, arms resting on the slick wood, claws tapping like soft bells.
And there he is; the one man you cannot drown. Ghost, you’d heard the other fishermen call him. Simon, the seas whispered to you.
You’ve tried. Not out of malice, not really. You’ve never spared the ones who drift too close- those ruddy-faced tourists with their cheap beer and loud mouths, hearts too full of their own importance to sense the predator beneath the waves even when the locals who’ve seen you sinking down whole ships are the ones to warn them. Their skulls now rest in coral nests far below. A song, a smile, a brush of your fingers on their dreams- that’s all it ever took.
But him?
The first time you sang to Simon, he didn’t blink. He didn’t bleed from the ears or follow you into the rocks like a lamb, did not give into the sweet song of death. He just looked at you- as if he knew your song already.
You wish it had ended there, but no. No. He did much worse, he had even freed you-
You can still remember the trap. Rusted iron strung between two forgotten pylons, slick with barnacles and hunger. It had snapped tight around your waist as you’d swum through a kelp forest, cutting into your flesh with a mechanical groan that still makes your bones ache. You’d thrashed, thrashed until your voice broke against the water, until your blood painted the reeds crimson. And then- he had been there. Still, unafraid, with dark eyes peering at you.
He didn’t speak. Just waded into the cold, metal snips in hand, and cut you loose. You had stared at him, weak and trembling, the tide lapping red around you.
That was years ago. And ever since, you come to him. Not always. Never with warning.
Only when the moon calls.
Tonight, it hangs low and red like an omen. The kind that makes fish leap onto shore and birds fly inland, and a different type of hunger coil like eels in youe stomach. Blood moon, the fishermen call it. She will be hunting, they had said. And most know to stay far away when it rises. When you rise.
But not Simon. Never him.
Simon stands on his boat, the Wretch’s Mercy, steady as stone. He doesn’t flinch when you breach the surface, eyes gleaming like polished bullets. Doesn’t reach for the knife on his hip, even if you think he should. He is too defenseless; it takes the taste out of food.
“Was wonderin’ when you’d show.” He says. His voice is low and dry as cracked rope, wrapped in northern smoke and salt.
He’s wearing the same black mask, the white skull painted across it like a silent threat. But his eyes- those ever-watchful eyes- glint amber in the dark. Not human. Not quite. How have you never noticed it before?
“I don’t perform on demand,” you purr, tail flicking. “There are no fools in the water tonight.”
“No,” he agrees. “Only monsters.”
You bare your teeth in something like amusement, too sharp to be called a smile. “… You’ve never feared me, sailor. Why?”
Simon shrugs, tugging gently at a net as it coils along the deck. “Yer not the scariest thing I’ve come across, love. Not by a long shot.”
You lean forward, hair dripping over your chest, your irises dark as shipwrecks. You swear your teeth ache with the need to bite into him. “Do they know what you are?”
Simon finally looks at you- really looks.
There’s no shock in his face. No hesitation.
“Who, the locals?” he says, low. “They think I’m just a fisherman that won’t bloody die.”
You study him, the way his broad shoulders roll with the boat, how his body moves with the tide instead of against it. Like you.
“You smell like the deep,” you whisper at last. “Like volcanic vents and whale bone. You’re not surface-made.”
Silence stretches between you. It’s the same quiet the ocean gives before it devours something.
He steps forward, towards you. “You’re not wrong.”
You blink. Your claws curl slightly into the wood. “Then why pretend?”
“Because monsters scare off the catch.”
You laugh- low, velvety, the sound of waves lapping at a sailor’s final breath. But your voice softens then. “You could have let me die.”
He’s close now. Close enough to touch. The net dangles loose in his hands. “Didn’t want to,” he says simply. “Didn’t feel right.”
“Why?”
His gaze doesn’t waver. “You’re mine.”
That words stir, primal in your chest. Something that snarls and sings and sinks ships into the bottomless ocean.
“You think you can keep me?”
His hand reaches up- not fast, not rough- just firm. His fingers trail along your damp jaw, calloused thumb stroking the corner of your lip. You don’t pull away, and you don’t bite, even though you should.
But your heart stutters like a dying gull anyways.
“I don’t think,” he murmurs, voice deeper now, trenches miles below. “I know.”
You stare at him, senses drinking him in- his scent, his heat, the thrum of something old and hungry beneath his skin. You lean in, then, lips nearly brushing his, your breath a chill against his mask.
“When the time comes,” you whisper, voice of broken shells and broken vows. “You’ll have to catch me.”
Simon’s smile beneath the mask is something no man should wear. It is something no man would wear- but another deep water monster would.
“Oh, I will. When you follow me down, you won’t want to come back up.”
