𝗯𝗲𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝗮
Steve finds a girl in his pool. A very wet, very bloody, and very scaly girl. fem, 4k.
mermaid!au. cw for non-sexual nudity and moderate injury. reader is same age as steve / in early twenties. requested here
Steve doesn’t like looking at the pool for obvious reasons, but there’s a… sound, emanating. The back yard is fenced in but empty, so sounds down there tend to echo, and Steve’s bedroom looks down on it all, so he hears the weeping from bed and isn’t sure if he can bring himself to look.
That feeling lasts for longer than he’d ever admit to, but he worries that there’s somebody down there hurting and that he’s letting that happen. He gets out of bed in nothing but sweats and a pair of socks to peer through the slit gap in his curtains. Fog rolls over the pool, concrete wet and dark, rain still spatting lightly against the window as Storm Melly says goodbye. Steve cracks his window wider, scanning the pool like they taught him in lifeguard training. Up and down, side to side.
He can’t see anything out of the ordinary, but he can hear the crying. It’s— it’s so sad, so suddenly humanising that he races out of his room and down the stairs, through the foyer and the kitchen to the back door. He struggles with the lock, nearly takes the thing off its hinges as he gets it open, but catches it before it can slam into the exterior wall.
Shit, the crying. It’s a woman sobbing, all guttural and long and painful, before it cuts out like a gasp, shuttered, shattered, like it’s too painful to go on.
“I’m here!” he says. “Hello? I’m here, where are you? I’ll– I can help you! I can– Hello?”
Steve sets out into the yard. His socks are soaked through in five steps, shoulders kissed by tropical rain, oddly cold, the surface of the pool wavering as the rain gives a startling lash, a last goodbye as it suddenly stops. It dribbles down the gutters and off the roof and the patio umbrella, the soggy rustle of leaves from the nearby woods almost smothering another pained whimper.
“Hello?” he asks again, lowering his voice. “I’m here. Just tell me where you are and I can help.” Steve softens his tone. “I know first aid!”
A sluicing of water. A shape emerging from the surface of the pool.
Steve flinches so hard that the girl recedes. The woman. Your halfway across the pool before he can stop you.
“Oh my god!” he says. “Holy shit, are you okay?” Steve scrambles to the edge of the pool. There, in the water, red blood shimmers and blooms a paler orange. The source of it is dark, like black against your belly. “I’ll get you out!” he says, grabbing the rungs of the ladder and half jumping, half climbing into the water before he can think better of things.
