Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"I’m not cut out for this." moans Sam as he sits down on the pier where they’d docked for the night His bare feet dangle off the edge as he adjusts his fishing line. There probably weren’t any fish close by, seeing as how they’d just come in about an hour ago, but it was worth a shot.

An hour later and he still doesn’t have a single bite, Sam flops back onto the dock, groaning, his belly rumbling with hunger.

 “I give up,” he sighs, reaching for the fishing pole next to him, getting ready to reel his line in again when he feels something slick and slimy slide across the soles of his feet. He shoots up with a shiver, feeling whatever it is slide across them again. He pulls his feet out of the water and looks down into the murky depths where he spots the outline of a tail, a tail larger than any he’d ever seen before. The fish doubles back and Sam realizes it’s not a fish at all.

Now, Sam knew mermaids existed although they were quite rare, but he never knew what they looked like.

They are terrifying.

The creature stared him down, razor sharp teeth bared in a smile, or a grimace, Sam really couldn’t tell, but as it swam closer and closer toward his face, he scrambled as far away from the edge as he could get before it decided to make him its next meal. A webbed hand slaps the aged wood of the pier and hoists the rest of its body up to rest on it.

Sam scoots back a little further as the mermaid regards him with a rather calm expression.

He really wasn’t cut out for this.

The mermaid slaps the pier to get his attention. Sam gives the creature a closer look, it’s got the tail of a lionfish and he immediately tries to remember if they were poisonous or not. Just in case, he thinks. His stomach rumbles and the creature looks at him again, teeth glinting in the low light of the sunset.

“Hungry?” it asks.

“Huh?” Sam deadpans.

“Hungry. Rumble. Food.” The mermaid rubs its own stomach.

“What? Oh, yeah, I guess I’m pretty hungry.”

“Need food. I get it for you? Won’t catch any with that line.” The creature turns around and looks at the water. Sam stares at its tail, one of its pelvic fins is completely shredded and there’s a couple of deep lacerations around the tail fin. He reaches out and tries to get a closer look at its injuries, “You don’t have to, you’re hurt pretty bad.”

The mermaid shakes its head, “Don’t hurt no more.”

Sam shrugs, still concerned, “If you say so.” The mermaid goes to dive off of the dock and Sam asks, “What’s your name?”

“Bucky.” The creature answers and throws itself back into the waves.

Bucky.

Chapter Text

Bucky comes back with a full basket of fish a little while later. Sam doesn’t want to know where he got the basket, or how he managed to get so many fish so quickly, but he pokes his head above the murky surface of the water with that terrifying grin-grimace of his, and slides the basket onto the pier.

“Food. No hunger,” he says, then swims off.

Sam sits utterly dumbfounded for a while but comes to his senses and scoots over to the basket, lifts up the cover- where the hell does a mermaid get a covered basket -and gasps. There’s enough fish inside to feed the crew for at least a week . Sam scrambles over the edge of the pier, scanning the water for any sign of Bucky, but the mermaid -merman ? is long gone.

“Thank you,” Sam breathes, barely loud enough to be heard over the sound of the waves. 

Sam finds Bucky again in the dregs of morning on the day they’re set to weigh anchor. He’s sitting in a tide pool, picking his teeth with what looks like a human pinky finger--the whole severed finger, not just the bones. Sam shivers, clearing his throat loud enough that he knows the merman can hear. Bucky turns his upper body around with a grin, and yes that is a human pinky --

“Back?” The merman growls, “More food?”

Sam shakes his head, “No, you got me more than enough.”

Bucky tilts his head, “Come back, why?” he asks, looking at the appendage in his hand before tossing it into his mouth and chewing. 

Sam shudders, that could’ve easily been his finger, Just wanted to say thank you before I go.”

“Thank you? Go? You…” the merman struggles to find the word, “leave?”

“In a few hours, yeah,” Sam answers, grimacing when he hears Bucky crush the bones in his mouth.

“...Come back?” Bucky asks, oddly hopeful.

Sam stands there for a moment, dumbfounded. “You want me to come back? Why?”

Bucky shrugs his shoulder, swallowing. “...Like you.”

“What.”

Bucky looks uncomfortable and starts dragging himself toward the rocks surrounding the tide pool with his one arm, eyes still on Sam as he whispers one word, “Pretty.”

Sam is silent, his jaw hanging open. Cannibal mermaid thinks I’m pretty, he thinks, how is this my life? Apparently he’s silent just a few moments too long, because Bucky has climbed over the rocks and is back in the ocean with a barely audible splash by the time he snaps out of it. “Wait!” he hollers, “wait…”