Fairy Tail Origins One-Shots!

Saltwater At Midnight (Chapter 3)

Ships : Mavid, Landon

:)

Enjoy

—————

After that night, David and Lucas's meetings
became a routine.

Every night, without fail, David would sneak down to the beach and clamber across the jetty in the moonlight, while dodging the questions by Mario about not getting enough sleep all the same. Lucas would always be waiting for him on the rocks, tail swishing in the water and a light in his eyes, always ready to answer whatever questions David had to throw at him.

David made sure to keep bringing Lucas random things from the human world. After the crisps and chocolate, David tried to bring Lucas a soda, which he ended up spitting out in shock because of the carbonation. He also showed Lucas his phone, although he was careful to emphasize that Lucas could not let it get wet. When he explained the concept of Twitter to the merman, he had scrunched up his nose and commented on how that seemed like a terrible idea, and David couldn't find it in himself to disagree with him.

To David's surprise, after the first night, Lucas began bringing David gifts as well. But unlike David's gifts—which were ordinary and cheap— Lucas brought David literal treasure. Old jewelry that had been found deep within shipwrecks, often inlaid with real gemstones like rubies and emeralds. Strangely-shaped seashells from the lower depths of the ocean that David would spend hours running his fingers over. An actual pearl from inside an oyster.

For Lucas, these gifts were practically worthless. Mer didn't use the same currency as humans, and to them jewels like these were nothing more than pretty decorations. But for David, these kinds of gifts could get him a lot of money. A lot of money. He just had to find the right place to sell them.

Very late into the night, when David would be in his bed after hours spent with Lucas, his eyes would catch on the glimmering jewels buried in his drawers. They would glitter in the moonlight as if stars were trapped inside the stones themselves, and yet David couldn't bring himself to really care about the jewels at all.

The gift from Lucas that meant the most— the one that warmed David from the inside out just by looking at it— was the rock with his name written on it in the mer language. He would often fall asleep with the rock in his hand, running his thumb over the indents in the stone, trying to decipher the system behind the exact pattern of swirls and dots. The only two things he had that mattered more was his necklace from Mario, and his bracelet from his mother.

As the visits continued, David could tell Lucas got more relaxed around him. He wouldn't glance at the sky to check the time as often, he wouldn't constantly keep his tail swishing in the water and would sometimes curl it up underneath him to look at David while he spoke, and he became less guarded with his words.

Lucas started to tell David stories of his life in the ocean. He explained how they had a beautiful city under the ocean, built into an enormous underwater cave system that was impossible for humans to access. The entire city was lit up with bioluminescent plankton that floated through the water, and Lucas described it as looking like if the stars in the night sky were multiplied by a thousand.

Despite telling David things like this though, he still kept tight-lipped about his pod. He would correct himself if he almost said another one of his pod member's names, and change the wording of his stories to only be about him when David could tell they were meant to have other people in them.