#oh yeah this is for mermay too. kinda got away from me being so funny

[iguessihavemore]

He is listening! To his favorite audiobook!!! Judgemental ass goat...

Parody character Percy being a meta fanboy about the fictionalized version of in-universe main character Fae from td monsters. He has his own mermaid oc he ships with her.

[whoacanada]

‘Lake Spirits’

A Zimbits Fic for Mermay  

Summary: The afterlife is a lot wetter than Jack imagined. A lot wetter, a lot more Canadian, and full of a lot more cute boys. Well, one cute boy in particular. 

(Mermay is almost over so here’s this weird lake spirit thing I wrote off a spirit/haunting prompt. Little morbid, kinda cute. Obviously, they’re both implied to have died in outdoor skating accidents. They’re fine with it.)

He’s resigned himself to an eternity of loneliness. A great, vast, silent world where he’s both cursed and blessed to experience the natural world as the Lord intended. He is both damned and at peace. Heaven and Hell. He is everything and nothing. He is –

“Hey! Hi!”

– being yelled at.

Jack rolls over onto his side and finds a dripping wet young man waving excitedly from across the embankment.

“I am so sorry about your accident, I saw the whole thing but I’m kinda tied to my little pond over here. You doing alright? I know it’s a heck of an adjustment.”

Jack stares, not quite certain if this is a cosmic test or some kind of an illusion.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, where are my manners? I’m Eric. So, funny story really, I was up here for a skating competition and some of the guys thought we should rough it and skate on ‘real ice’. Well, I agreed but didn’t really consider the fact it was March, and next thing you know, here we are! Boys kept it a hell of a secret too, ‘cause no one ever did come looking.” Eric waves a dripping hand and flashes a smile. “But enough about me, tell me about yourself, mister…?”

“…Jack. I’m Jack,” he forces, realizing he hasn’t actually spoken since he, well, since he died. “Wait, you went skating in March? Here?”

“Honey, you don’t have to tell me twice, I’m the one that died.”

Just like that, turns out Jack isn’t going to spend eternity alone.

“I miss having legs,” Eric folds his arms on a log and rests his head on his forearms with a sigh. “If I have to spend my afterlife in the woods, I at least want to explore a little. And baking! Oh, Jack, I used to make the most amazing cookies –“

It’s been months since Jack woke up dead, with scales and fins, tied to a single lake in rural Quebec because he was dumb enough to not check the ice before skating. In the time since he’s learned a lot about himself and the other man that shares his similar fate.

Eric Bittle is a southern boy who loves his mama, Beyoncé, and skating. His hair is a mossy green now but he assures Jack he used to be a blonde. Apparently, he was a hell of a baker as well before his ‘accident’. He’s cute, he’s funny, and, for some reason, he can’t leave his own body of water.

Now, Jack’s lake isn’t massive but it’s a good size with plenty of streams and inlets to map. He knows it’ll get old soon, but for now, he’s content to lazily lap the shore, investigating what guardian spirit stewardship has to offer.

He was content before he managed to hoist himself up with a low hanging tree branch only to find Eric’s ‘lake’ is no larger than a drainage pond, minuscule in comparison to his own; barely larger than the man-made pond his father had dug out for their winter home.

“Tabarnak, Eric, you must be going stir crazy.”

“Oh, no, it’s really nice, in the winter people come out because it’s the perfect size for skating. Lots of kids and families. I have to make sure they’re safe, you know? That’s why I’m here.”

Jack looks around at the trees, lush and green following a warm spring. “What do you do in the summer?”

“I watch the animals, mostly. Play with the turtles. Make sure the goslings don’t wander off. Stuff like that.”

“Do a lot of people die here?” Jack asks, floating on his back and staring at the clouds, trying not to move while a turtle crawls over his shoulder. 

“I think it’s just us,” Eric calls from the other pond. “I mean, I’ve never seen anyone else. I think we’re here to stop that from happening. Again, I’m sorry about that.”

Jack laughs and waves off the apology, not for the first time.

“Hey, bud,” Jack greets, lifting his head out of the water as the turtle keeps crawling. “You’re on my chest.”

The turtle startles and hides in its shell, balanced on Jack’s sternum. For a brief moment, Jack considers the physics of trying to launch something the size of a turtle off the end of his tail. Not an actual turtle. Maybe a rock.

Crisse, he misses hockey. Maybe he and Eric can come up with some sort of game.

“Can you come over here?” Jack asks, watching the turtle poke it’s head out cautiously.

“I’ve never tried,” Eric admits. “I wasn’t sure what the rules were but I don’t think we can leave the water.”

“Huh. It’s, what, five meters? Between you and me?”

“Meters? That’s like 16 feet? Yeah, I’d say so.”

The plan that forms in Jack’s mind has nothing to do with the fact Eric is attractive, or as dead as Jack is, or how clearly the universe intended for them to be stuck together in some capacity; rather it has to do with Jack’s selfless drive to make Eric’s afterlife more comfortable.

Completely selfless. 

“I’m going to dig out a trench before winter,” Jack announces.

“What was that?” Eric calls back. “I was under -- look, I think I found a crawfish!”

“I’m gonna do it,” Jack whispers to himself, nudging the turtle a little only to be rewarded with a hiss.

Jack spends the next three days clawing at the embankment that separates his lake from Eric’s pond. Five meters isn’t much and time isn’t an issue anymore. 

He figures if a higher power wanted to keep them separated, Jack would have been stopped already, so he keeps going.

The sticks and rocks he uses aren’t quite enough; in one of his more morbid acts, he swims down to what’s left of his corpse and shimmies lose a skate to use the blade like an axe.

“Hey, Jack? What are you doing?”

Jack pauses and looks up to see Eric waving.

“You’re not that far away, I think we can connect the ponds,” Jack explains, digging at a tough root. “Maybe you can come over here. Have more space. Or something.”

“You’d want that? Really?”

Jack’s dead. He shouldn’t still be this fucking awkward. When he looks up from his task, Eric is pushed up on his arms, against the bank, watching him with wide eyes.

“Yeah, I mean, we’re here for a reason, and it looks like it’ll be just the two of us for a long time, so, maybe we should be closer. Or something.”

Eric’s blue-tinged skin flushes pink and he flips back under the surface, tail splashing up water before disappearing completely.

Jack curses when he doesn’t immediately reappear. Then, with a splash—

“— I can help!” Eric announces brightly, holding a skate aloft. Jack balks slightly at the algae-covered bone still dangling from the shoe but Eric just laughs in embarrassment when he notices.

“Oops, sorry, hon. Got a little carried away, I guess.”

Something sails over Jack’s head, large, algae covered, it floats for a brief moment before sinking. It’s followed by a stick, then another, little plink, plink sounds as bits of something whistle across the divide into Jack’s lake.

“Hey, bud, what are you doing?”

Eric pops up from the water, hair dripping, and holds up something that looks suspiciously like a human skull.

“I’m moving my bones,” he explains cheerfully before reeling back and throwing the skull over Jack’s head. “I don’t know the rules, maybe I’m tied to where I died, so if I put some of me in both ponds, I can move around more.”

It’s incredibly morbid but it makes sense. Jack takes a break and swims down to what’s left of his body and small crayfish trying to drag away a pale knucklebone. It should upset him more, being dead, seeing his own body, negotiating with a tiny crustacean for a piece of his own skeleton, but c’est la vie. 

Or, c’est la mort, in this case.

He returns to the surface and waves at Eric before throwing the bone into Eric’s pond.

“Now we can be together,” Jack offers when Eric’s face splits into a smile. 

“Well aren’t you a charmer?”

Jack can’t hide the heat in his cheeks and he ducks back into the water to keep digging.

Summer brings people, people bring snorkels and boats and fishing poles. Eventually, one of those poles pulls up one of Jack’s skates. 

The one with bones still inside.

“They’re going to dredge the lake,” Eric laments, sticking close to the edge of his pond as they watch the men in the boat. “They’re going to find your body and pull out all your bits — what if they give you a proper burial? You could disappear!”

Jack thinks he’s supposed to want that. To be found. To have a proper funeral. Maybe he did at the beginning but now he just wants this. He wants to connect the ponds. He wants to see winter. He really wants Eric.

“I’m not going to disappear,” Jack counters, though the thought causes a laugh to rise in his throat. “It could be you they find.” 

“You don’t know! There could be rules!”

Jack wiggles his finger at Eric.

“You’ve got a piece of me over there, remember?”

“I made that up!” Eric panics. “I don’t know anything about any of this! I’m guessing!”

“Bud, it’s going to be okay,” Jack tries to soothe. “Look they don’t even know it’s me. I mean, what’s the worst that happens? The dredge the lake and build a partial skeleton from you and me? Nothing to worry about.”

“No, it’s just a human foot in a hockey skate,” Eric sasses dryly. “Nothing suspicious about that at all. They don’t seem that worried, all that screaming over nothing.”

Eric huffs and disappears back under the water. When it becomes clear Jack isn’t going to see him again for a while, Jack dives as well, dodging hooks and nets to get a hand under his ribcage and drag what’s left of his body somewhere else. Maybe he’ll bury it under the rocks by the collapsed Sugar Maple. 

Anything to put Eric at ease.

They finish digging out the embankment in mid-fall.

A trickle turns to a stream and really it’s quite anti-climactic. The bodies of water connect and Eric tentatively hauls himself over the divide and into the much cooler waters of Jack’s lake. Eric splashes around and doesn’t look like he’s dying, or defying the natural order, so Jack asks, “Are you good? Don’t feel sick or anything?”

In response, Eric howls in delight.

“Look at this! You have so much space!”

He slips under briefly and Jack almost follows before Eric is back, slamming up against his side, hugging Jack tightly.

“Thank you, Jack! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“You’re welcome, bud. I’m sorry it took so long. I knew you were lying about being okay with how small your pond is.”

Jack can’t help but lean into the touch, the only physical contact he’s had since before he died, and he reaches down to clutch Eric tighter.

“Oh, I was lying through my teeth, Lord, I could just kiss you --”

Jack leans down then and presses his lips to Eric’s cool cheek, earning a delighted gasp and a hand on his chest.

“Jack?” Eric looks up nervously. “You could do that with my lips, too, if you wanted?” 

Jack does want, and he is happy to oblige.

When winter comes and the water freezes over, Jack and Eric race along the underside of the ice, chasing skaters and pucks, patching thin spots in the ice, and breaking open areas that shouldn’t be covered.

“He keeps picking up his feet,” Jack comments, resting on the silt bed and watching a man teach his child to skate. “He’ll keep falling.”

“Oh, hush, they’re trying their best,” Eric chides, curling against Jack’s side, tucking his tail under Jack’s. “Besides, if anything happens, that’s why we’re here, remember? To help.”

Jack blows a few bubbles and watches them float up only to get trapped under the ice sheet.

“Yeah,” Jack sighs, clutching Eric tight. “We’re here to help.”