What the Water Gave Me

Chapter Thirty-Four

Several days passed this way. The rocks were large enough to keep silent Steve beached and Bucky stayed with him day and night, laying up against his rock, provided that Steve didn’t push him away, and watching him run all his markers dry with his coloring. He ought to make some sort of supplies run and find more writing supplies to share between them, but he was afraid that if he turned his back on Steve, he’d come back to find him gone. He didn’t want to lose him again, so he made do with what he had.

It wasn’t like Steve read what he wrote anyway, so it didn’t matter.

He knew he’d have to do something though when Steve’s stomach grumbled for the hundredth time and Steve was beginning to look rather distressed.

“I’ll get you something,” Bucky wrote while Steve glared at him. “What do you want?” Steve shrugged, still adamantly silent. “Do you eat…” Bucky’s pen hovered over his board, but Steve was staring at him, so he went on. “Do you eat fish? Or something else?” Steve just looked away and let out a long breath. “If I go, will you stay put?” Bucky wrote and Steve refused to answer, so Bucky just set his writing materials down next to him on the rock and sunk back into the water.

Finding and catching fish was so easy it wasn’t even sport and Bucky came back in minutes with five dead fish in his hands, uncertain of how Steve would respond. He remembered doing this once before to return to Steve’s sarcastic disdain, but he couldn’t say no now. Or rather, wouldn’t. He refused to communicate at all. And Bucky wondered if he ought to bring back something like what he ate, but Steve wasn’t a siren. That was all Bucky had been able to conclude in their long and silent days together, that whatever Steve was, he wasn’t like Bucky. So he probably ate fish. At least, Bucky hoped.

Steve was still there when Bucky returned and pushed the fish up onto the rock for him expectantly. Steve sifted through what he’d been brought before picking one up and biting into it almost delicately. Bucky was reminded of the vicious way sirens, no, he, hunted and ate. It was gruesome and in comparison to Steve’s human-sized, square-toothed bites, almost darkly comical.

“Is that alright?” Bucky wrote and Steve ignored him, slowly polishing off each fish like he had all the time in the world, peeling back scales and flinging them into the water, like he hadn’t been so fiercely hungry earlier. “I’m going to assume this is fine,” Bucky wrote again and Steve rolled his eyes.

That night, as Bucky was falling asleep with Steve curled up on the rock above him, Steve spoke.

“Your story’s bullshit,” he said out loud and Bucky was so startled he breathed in a mouthful of water and choked. But this time, Steve didn’t help him, only looked at him coldly, and he had to remind himself how to breathe.

He scrambled for his board.

“What?” He scrawled. Steve straightened his back and looked away. The moonlight shone off his scales, turning them a distractingly beautiful light purple and Bucky studied him intently.

“I don’t know you,” Steve said.

“Are you sure?” Bucky wrote.

“I’d remember something like you,” Steve said. “So your stupid story about us being human is just that. Stupid and a story.”

“It’s true,” Bucky wrote mournfully.

“I don’t have anything to say to you,” Steve said. “I don’t even know what you want.” There was a pause and Bucky lowered his board. He didn’t know what to say.

“Are you going to let me go free?” Steve said and Bucky looked away. “Well?” Steve said. Bucky tensed up, unsure how he wanted to answer. Steve let out an angry breath. “I know how it is with you sirens,” he said accusingly. “Is this a new thing for you guys? Catching mermen? Are you gonna kill me when you’re done playing around?”