#im not tagging this bc its super unfinished but take the beginning of a pins and patches mermaid au!!

[junietuesday]

Michael is walking down the beach at sunset, headphones connected to his phone in his pocket, breathing weed smoke into the air on the day that he meets Jake.

Well. “Meets” is a strong word. But the point stands.

The waves crash rhythmically against the soft sand, audible even over the soft music playing through Michael’s headphones. Since his area is shit, there’s too much litter to walk barefoot, but he can tell through his sneakers that the sand would be soft under his feet. The sky is pink along the horizon, the sun a gentle orange as it sinks beneath the ocean’s surface—it’s already seven PM, but obviously, sunsets are always late during the summer.

This beach is comforting, after so many years of coming out here to walk, listen to music, and, later, smoke. On bad days, it can feel horribly lonely out here with only the waves and the sand as his company, but usually, coming here is like receiving a warm hug.

Michael kicks an old soda can along the shore as he walks, the lyrics of “You Happened” from The Prom (thank Christine Canigula for trying to turn him into a theater kid) playing through his headphones, the upbeat tune contrasting with the quiet serenity of the rest of the beach. Nothing much ever really happens here, but in Michael’s opinion, that’s a definite plus.

Until he sees a head poking out of the water, far out from the coastline. Like, “is it safe for someone to be out that far?” far out. Michael’s never seen anyone swim out that distance, anyway.

He makes to call out to the figure. But just as fast, the figure dives down and disappears, a bright green tail that sparkles in the light of the sunset breaking the surface of the water, before it, too, vanishes beneath the waves.

Michael runs to the water, where the waves soak his sneakers and tug at his socks. The ocean is as always. There’s no sign the mysterious figure ever existed.

~

Jake slips back into his bedroom, flopping down onto his bed and closing his eyes against the light of nearby bioluminescent fish that streams in through his windows, reflecting off the sparkling blue crystal of his ceiling. He can still feel the after effects of adrenaline thrumming through his body, lighting him up from head to tailfin.

It feels like only moments later when someone crashes into the room with a thump of the door falling shut behind him.

“Jake!” Rich’s voice is all beams. Jake groans into his comfy, comfy pillow, pulling his comfy, comfy sheets tighter around him. (It’s a sensory thing, okay?) “Jake, I’m—oh, shit, dude, you look like ass. Are you good?”

“Stayed up way too late,” Jake says, looking up. He’s greeted with the familiar sight of Rich’s deep sun-colored scales, fading from orange at the hip to red at the tailfin, and the dyed-red streak in his hair. “I’m so sleep-deprived, save me from this hell.”

“What?” Rich tilts his head. “Why? I mean, all power to you if you wanna pull a random all-nighter, but—”

“Uh.” Jake propels himself upright, the sun beating hard into his eyes. “There was a reason. And you have to promise not to tell anyone if I tell you what I was doing.”

“Oh shit, this is serious,” Rich says, at Jake’s grave expression. He spins around, sending ripples through the water around them. “Lay it on me, dude! I swear on my life I won’t snitch.”

“Okay.” Jake takes a deep breath, sinking down to let his tail hang over the edge of his bed. “I was at the beach. Watching a human.”

Rich’s expression flashes from earnest to shocked. “What? For reals?”

Jake understands why he’s concerned. For all they know, this could be one of those humans that would turn them over to a—what’s the word?—an aquarium in a heartbeat, never to see the ocean or any sort of freedom again. Or the human could even kill Jake and keep his body instead. God knows there have been mermaids that have done the same to a human, after luring them from their ships into diving into the sea.

“Yeah,” Jake says, tail flipping with nerves, ripples pushing at the particles of sand on the floor in front of him. “He’s so handsome and cute and he seems so nice when he’s there with his friends, I think they’re his friends I mean, and like, I can’t see him as the type to murder someone senselessly! And either way, I haven’t let him see me—um, well, until…”

“‘Until’?” Rich repeats, lying on Jake’s couch at this point. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re in love with him?”

“Yeah.”

Rich looks at Jake.

“Are you gonna go back?” Rich says. “Just based on ‘he seems so nice’?”

Jake sets his jaw, and nods.

“Yeah,” he says, hands clenching into fists against his mattress. “Yeah, I am.”

“Got it,” says Rich briskly, without even moving from his relaxed recline on Jake’s couch, as though he was expecting that answer. “I’m coming with.”

“What?” Jake stares at him. “No way. I can’t ask you to risk that just ‘cause I’ve got a crush.”

“It’s not just a crush if you’re willing to risk it,” says Rich, and the resolution in his tone tells Jake that he may as well just accept it, because Rich won’t back down. “I trust you, dude. So we’re both going.”

“Fine,” says Jake, but inside, he’s extremely grateful. “And…thanks.”

“No prob.” Rich flashes a grin. “Hey, at least I get some eye candy out of it, right?”

~

The day after the beach incident, Michael tells Jeremy about it over lunch at an old 50’s-themed diner, literally named “The Diner” according to the neon letters above its entrance. It’s their favorite because of the arcade machine in one corner and the jukebox in the other. While Michael definitely doesn’t want to go back to the actual 50s—what with all the racism and shit going on—the aesthetic this place pulls off is pretty cool. Plus, the food is amazing.

“You’re serious?” Jeremy says, his pastel pink iPod long paused and abandoned on the plastic table in front of him. He hasn’t even taken out his earbuds. “Really?”

“Yeah!” Michael says, slightly defensive. Because sure, seeing a mermaid on a random stroll on the beach does sound like some kind of clickbait and/or hoax, but what reason does Michael have to lie? “I promise, its tail was the clearest thing I’ve ever seen!”

“You wear glasses.”

“You wear glasses—!”

“And like,” Jeremy goes on, ignoring Michael’s protest, “I don’t think you’re lying deliberately, but, y’know. You could’ve been just high.”

“Who says I was even smoking weed?”

Jeremy just looks at him. Michael sighs, disgruntled.

“Okay, fine, I may have smoked a little,” says Michael, “but I’ve never gotten hallucinations from weed before. It was totally a mermaid. It had to be.”

Absently, Michael wonders what the others in this restaurant think of their debate. Michael’s never pretended to be a totally normal human being, but this is a whole new level of slightly batshit crazy. The lady at one of the stools at the bar sips her banana juice from the vending machine, staring at her phone. Does she know the two teenagers sitting in a booth a few feet away from her are having a discussion about one of them apparently having seen a mermaid at the beach yesterday? Does she even care?

“Besides,” Michael continues, grabbing a fry off his plate. “If the fucking Quetzalcoatlus can be real—”

“Michael, are we really gonna go over this again?”

“Yes! I mean, it’s a fucking bird-dinosaur the height of a giraffe—which, by the way, is also a strange as hell creature—that could still fly—”

“Anyway,” says Jeremy, around a swallow of milkshake. He’s definitely used to dealing with Michael’s rambles by now. The Chuck E. Cheese pizza conspiracy (in which they re-plate uneaten pizza slices, accounting for the uneven crusts of pizzas), the history of the mitochondrion (an ancient cell absorbed an ancient bacterium and they ended up in a symbiotic relationship), the random superstition of knitterly grandmas (you have to put a mistake in your work for the soul to escape through)—you name it, Michael’s probably rambled about it. He prides himself on the vast amount of useless knowledge his brain contains. “Mermaid. I can’t.”

“I can,” says Michael. “I’m gonna go see if I see them again tonight. It’s gonna be a whole proper stake-out with like, snacks and shit. I’ll see them again if it kills me.”

“It probably will,” Jeremy says. “You can’t do that every night until you see this mermaid, who knows when they’ll come back. And who says the mermaid is even coming back at all?”

“Shush, Jeremy, have faith,” says Michael. “It’s totally, like, The Little Mermaid. The mermaid’s gonna come back ASAP to stare at my beautiful face and then we’ll meet on the beach and—”

“You really want your mystery mermaid to lose their voice and tail in a deal with a sea witch and then be unable to communicate with you whatsoever and then they’ll die if—”

“It’s the idea, not the details,” Michael says. Jeremy just doesn’t get it. “Okay? Come if you want, I don’t care.”

“Nah, I’m coming,” says Jeremy. “I don’t have anything better to do. But don’t be disappointed if nothing happens, alright?”

“Something’s gonna happen,” Michael insists. “I can feel it.”

~

The night after Jake was spotted by the human, he and Rich swim as quietly as possible through the halls of Jake’s house, light from bioluminescence filtering through the blue-stained glass of the ceiling shining blobby shapes on their skin. Jake’s parents are home for once, and they wouldn’t take too kindly to seeing their son and his best friend sneaking out in the middle of the night.

Jake lets out a breath once they make it out the door, then turns to Rich.

“You can still back out,” he says, but Rich rolls his eyes.

“I told you, you’re stuck with me,” says Rich. “Now show me the map.”

Jake shows him the map. He got lucky to have made a friend like Rich.

~

“Michael,” Jeremy says from the hood of Michael’s car. The crescent moon shines above them, the light reflecting off the ocean’s waves. “Come pokemon battle me, I brought your DS.”

“No,” says Michael, staring out into the water, sitting right by the water on the folding chair he’d brought. “I need to make sure I see the mermaid if—when they come.”

He checks his watch. Ten o’clock. It’s been three hours since the sun set, and so far, there’s no sign of the mermaid from yesterday. Not even a single stray ripple in the water.

Jeremy sighs at Michael’s words. Michael hears the crinkle of a chip bag being opened. He turns.

“Hey, let me have some!” he says, getting up to grab some chips.

But as soon as Jeremy hands him the bag, he’s back to watching the water.

~

“Are you sure we went the right way?” Rich says, consulting the map. They’re close enough to the surface that sunlight is properly reaching them, far higher than their town is located, but there’s no sign of the ocean floor rising steadily anywhere. “I don’t see a beach.”

“It was definitely this way,” Jake argues. He points at a sunken car, bits of gray peeking out from beneath the green algae covering its surface. “I always pass this thing a few minutes before I get to the shore.”

Rich makes a disbelieving noise.

“Alright, dude,” he says. “You better be right, my tail and arms are dead.”

“I’m right,” says Jake, though he can’t blame Rich for his uncertainty. If the situation were the other way around, Jake hates to admit it, but he might have turned around long ago. “I’ve made this trip, like, twice every week. I know the way.”

~sort of but not really fin (eyy!), i’m gonna finish this another time but for now i’ve gotta submit for the bmq

Word Count: 2010 Team: Michael Prompts: all main, 9 bonus Points: 76 (30 game points, 46 for the fic itself) @bmc-gift-exchange