Chapter Text
Poe Dameron had lived in California for most of his life, but the drive up to Big Sur still gave him butterflies. Especially on days like today, where north-west waves rolled into six-foot swells that broke right and left all along the coast. The Pacific stretched away in an endless expanse of turquoise and silver, until it met the flawless, clear blue of a cloudless sky. There were only two other trucks in the Sand Dollar beach parking lot when Poe arrived just as dawn broke, and the line up was practically empty.
Perfect.
Absolutely perfect.
Totally worth getting up at four in the morning to drive out here for dawn patrol, even if BeeBee, his orange and white corgi, had looked terminally offended at being left behind at Snap and Karé’s place. Hopefully he wouldn’t spend the whole weekend barking at their roomba like last time.
Poe rolled his wetsuit up with one hand and downed the last of his coffee from his thermos with the other, then tossed the cup into the back of his truck, in amongst his spare clothes, cooler and sleeping bag. If the forecast stayed good, he’d crash in the truck and get another full day of surfing in tomorrow before he had to drag himself back to the noise and bustle of LA and the motorcycle school he co-owned with his best and oldest friend, Snap.
If not for Snap and Karé pulling him out of the hole he’d fallen into after the crash, Poe would probably be dead in a ditch somewhere, or still high off his face on the prescription painkillers his doctor would no longer write scripts for.
Eating tarmac at 250 kilometres per hour kinda messed a person up, body and mind.
The injuries he’d sustained had been...well, ‘life-altering’ was an understatement, and they always liked to make their presence known in the damp-cold of Cali Autumn mornings, before the marine layer burned off: his left hip ached, his knee was stiff, his hand shook a little as he dragged his short-board out of the truck bed. But surfing loosened him up better than painkillers and physio ever had.
Besides, the ocean made him feel alive again.
Not broken.
Not the ex-motorcycle racer with the ruined eye and the tremor.
Out here, he was just Poe again.
And he lived for mornings like this.
Finn was supposed to be here with him, but the traitor had ended up staying over at Rey’s again last night and had called Poe at the last moment to say he really couldn’t get away. Which translated as ’I can’t stop sucking face with my new girlfriend long enough to come with you’. Thus, Poe would be surfing alone today. Poe didn’t hold it against Finn and Rey; they were young and in love. That made people stupid. God knew it had made Poe utterly stupid about Zorii, back in the day.
And in all honesty...Poe sort of preferred doing this alone. The four hour drive up the coastal road gave him chance to gather up all the unpleasant thoughts that seemed to rattle around in his head like shrapnel nowadays, and then the surfing helped him clear them out for a while, like he was physically dumping the mess from his brain over the side and into the ocean below.
Now, Poe felt that peace fall over him as he straddled his board, bobbing in the practically empty line-up, watching another perfect set roll in.
“Fuck, yes,” he muttered.
The waves were beautiful, at least six-footers, the lead with a clean shoulder peeling left along the reef.
Poe paddled hard, ignoring the pull in his leg from the metalwork holding bone together. They said he’d never ride again. They said he might never even walk again.
Look at him now; proving everyone wrong once again.
And though his body wasn’t quite what it used to be, it still had those racing instincts hardwired into muscle: commit fully or eat shit spectacularly.
He’d learned that lesson the hard way on the corkscrew at Laguna Seca.
Poe pushed away the memory of gravel burning under his gloves, and popped up smooth and fast, knees bending automatically despite the old pain in his left side. The board bit into the wave face and he carved down into a hard bottom turn, spray exploding behind him.
He loved this.
The wave opened ahead in a shining tunnel and Poe laughed as he ducked inside the tube. Water thundered around him, the world narrowing to green-blue glass, white foam and roaring sound. Adrenaline hit him hard and sweet, just like it used to when he pulled the throttle and the world blurred into streaks of colour, the rush of acceleration and the thunder of two dozen engines all gunning at once. For a few perfect seconds he forgot every surgery, every rehab session, every humiliating moment re-learning how to walk while his body shook uncontrollably with the effort. He forgot Zorii’s disappointment when he was so spaced on painkillers he couldn’t get it up again. He forgot being so wasted he passed out on the sofa and pissed himself. He forgot the awful, soul-crushing feeling of going from being king of the fucking world to less than nothing.
Here, he was still someone.
Still fast.
Still free.
He shot out of the barrel cleanly and whooped into the wind; “THAT’S RIGHT, BABY!”
Nobody heard him except the ocean. There was no one here to show off for. No one to impress but the crabs and the seals.
Good.
Poe had spent way too many years living to impress other people—or to prove something to them—and it was about time he started doing things just because he enjoyed them. Not for money or fame or praise. For himself.
The next hour sped by in wave after perfect wave and Poe felt like maybe—maybe—life was finally getting good again. He was thirty-three now. He was fucking owed a little of the easy life for a while.
So of course, that’s when everything started to go to hell, fast.
The wind shifted first.
Offshore became crossshore and smooth lines of swell turned messy and white-capped. Poe sat on his board, pushing wet curls off his forehead as he frowned toward the horizon.
The sets were getting bigger.
A lot bigger.
“Okay,” he muttered. “Just one more.”
Yeah, apparently he’d never learned when to quit while he was ahead.
The bomb set appeared suddenly out beyond the lineup, walls of blue-grey water rising higher than the rest. A couple of surfers further along the lineup started paddling frantically toward the shoulder.
Poe should have followed them. But because he was Poe Dameron—a stupid, adrenaline-junkie, danger-seeking idiot—his ex-racer brain immediately went: ’Oh, hell yes’.
He turned toward shore and started paddling.
The wave behind him rose, enormous and steep, until it was so far overhead he couldn’t see the sky. It was too steep. Too fast. Too dangerous.
Poe dropped in anyway.
And for one glorious second, he thought he had it. Then, the lip pitched. His board lost traction beneath his feet as the wave detonated on top of him and slammed him downward hard enough to rattle his teeth. His shoulder hit something—reef, maybe—and suddenly he was tumbling, disoriented, leash yanking viciously against his ankle while the ocean ragdolled him like laundry in a machine.
That sensation was at least familiar. At least this hurt less than doing it on tarmac.
But now Poe was so disoriented that he couldn’t tell up from down anymore. Everything was churning water and sand and kelp.
His lungs burned. His old injuries all screamed at once like the world’s most awful, painful choir.
The board, still tethered to his ankle, dragged him upwards and he surfaced, coughing desperately as salt burned his nose, and he barely managed to drag himself onto the board before another wave crashed over him.
“Come on—come on—” he said, as he tried paddling for shore. His left arm trembled violently and pain flared hot through his hip. His calf cramped hard enough to curl his toes. Poe dug his arms into the water harder, but panic was beginning to crawl up his throat now because he wasn’t making progress.
At all.
The beach looked further away every second. He knew about the danger of rip currents out here—every surfer off the Big Sur breakouts did—but he’d always assumed he’d be able to deal with it. He was a strong swimmer. He knew the theory of how to get out of the rip.
Theory and misplaced bravado was of very little use now his body was rebelling at the worst possible moment.
Another wave broke over him, leaving him gasping for air and clinging to his board.
Then, he saw the fin.
His entire body went cold as a dark shape cut through the water thirty feet away.
Big.
Very big.
The shark circled once.
“Of course,” he quipped as his heart slammed against his ribs, “I’ve been surfing the red triangle for years and barely ever seen a shark! Now jaws’s big brother decides to show up?”
Poe tried paddling harder, but exhaustion and cold was catching up, his muscles burning from the wipeout and battling the relentless current. When another wave hit him sideways, he was caught completely off guard. Poe hit the water hard and his board jerked violently in the opposite direction. The leash broke with a snap like a gunshot.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me!” Poe said, spitting out a mouthful of salt water. He watched helplessly as his board vanished into whitewater.
Another wave crashed overhead and when he surfaced, Poe realised was genuinely in trouble.
No board.
No buddy to notice he was in trouble.
The rip dragging him further and further out.
The shark circling closer.
His limbs felt heavy.
His left leg cramped sharply and he had to swallow down a gasp of pain.
Yeah, this was what could very reasonably be termed ’a fuck up of catastrophic proportions’.
It was bad.
It was really fucking bad.
It was ’surfer disappears off Big Sur coastline; board found with suspicious chomp marks’ kinda bad.
Poe tried floating on his back to conserve energy, but another swell rolled over him and panic finally hit properly, ugly and primal.
He didn’t want to die here. Not like this. Not after surviving everything else. Not alone and cold and frightened. Gods, his Dad would never forgive him for this.
It would probably break his Dad even more catastrophically than when Poe’s mum had died. Especially as Kes had already nearly lost Poe once before.
Another glimpse of the fin pulled Poe back to the moment. It was definitely circling closer, the triangle of slick grey sliding through the waves.
Being eaten alive sounded infinitely more painful and terrifying than if he’d just died on the blacktop at Laguna Seca.
Why was he always such a massive fuck up? How the hell did he even get into these situations?
”You behave like you’ve got a death wish,” Snap had once said to him. Poe had laughed it off but...maybe he was right. Maybe Poe had always courted death a little too closely.
Except now—when death looked like the likely outcome—courting it suddenly seemed a lot less fun.
Poe was so busy staring at the circling shark that he nearly missed the other shape moving through the depths. But a flash of green moving beneath him caught his eye; something smaller than the shark but fast and agile.
Poe barely had time to gasp before strong arms wrapped around his waist and he was yanked downward. But instead of teeth and pain and death, there was only speed. The thing carrying him cut through the water like a torpedo, powerful enough that Poe scarcely understood what was happening. His exhausted body could only cling instinctively to slender shoulders and cold, wet skin and hold his breath.
The creature hauled Poe through a narrow gap in the rocks just as another wave crashed against the wild cliffs. Suddenly, they were inside a sea cave, protected from the open ocean. The water here was calm and filled with floating kelp, pooled shallowly between rocks, stalagmites and a bank of golden sand. The cave must empty completely at low tide, leaving only these rock pools.
Poe coughed violently, dragging air into burning, grateful lungs as his saviour unceremoniously dumped Poe onto the sand. Poe forced himself to look up and discover the identity of whatever had just dragged him out of the ocean.
And oh.
Oh wow.
The creature was watching Poe carefully from waist-deep water and Poe had never seen anything like it before. Not outside of a Disney movie, that’s for certain. Because it wasn’t a creature at all. It was a...mermaid. Merman? Mer-guy?
Poe’s eyes flicked down the mer-person’s bare chest. Yep. No clam-shell bra preserving his modesty. Definitely a mer-guy.
And holy shit, he was beautiful; tall and lean yet strong enough to effortlessly carry Poe through the waves. His pale, glistening skin carried a greenish tint in the dim light of the sea-cave. Wet, ginger hair hung halfway down his back in tangled waves. His eyes were celadon green, drops of water caught in the pale lashes that rimmed them. Green webbing spread delicately between long, clawed fingers.
And then there was the tail. Yep. An actual, honest to goodness tail. Below his waist, iridescent scales shimmered in shades of green beneath the waterline, where a powerful tail rested against the sandy floor of the tide pool.
Poe’s brain gave up completely. He thought very seriously that he might have actually drowned. Or hit his head one time too many.
Honestly, this being a weird near-death hallucination would make way more sense than being rescued by a merman.
Poe stared.
The merman stared back.
“Well, shit,” Poe finally managed.
The merman raised an unimpressed eyebrow. His voice, when he spoke, was precise and formal but carried a musical lit. Irish, Poe thought.
“Are you always this loud?” the merman asked.
Poe barked out a startled laugh that sort of proved the mer-dude’s point. “Uh, yeah, generally. My dad always says I don’t have a volume control.”
That earned the faintest flicker of confusion before the merman narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “You are behaving unusually calmly. Your kind usually...scream. Or run.”
“I think my brain hit maximum panic capacity around the time the shark showed up,” Poe said. He pushed soaking curls out of his face and winced as his shoulder protested. “Okay. Questions. I have so many questions. First, you saved my life. And really, thank you, I’m so grateful for that but...why?”
The merman stared at him another long moment before answering carefully. “You were drowning.”
“Yeah, I got that part.”
“The shark would have eaten you.”
“Also got that part.”
“You are welcome.”
Poe grinned despite himself. “You’re a polite mythical creature. Cool.” He paused. “Okay, second question: are you gonna eat me?”
The merman looked mildly scandalised. “I am not a siren,” he said, “I do not eat...people. Usually.” The flash of sharp, needle-like teeth Poe glimpsed as the merman spoke did not reassure him.
“That’s good to know!” Poe said. “Would hate to be eaten right now. Especially after you so kindly saved me from that shark.”
The merman tilted his head and studied Poe with those pale green eyes. “If the shark had eaten you,” he said, “your remains would have contaminated my kelp beds.”
That...was also not particularly reassuring. “You cultivate kelp? Do you eat it?” Poe said. Which was clearly not the most pressing question he should be asking. He should be asking ‘where am I?’ and ‘what are you?’ instead of enquiring about kelp farming.
The merman flicked his tail, deep green scales turning opalescent in the light of the sea cave. “What? No. I eat sea urchins.” He said, as if Poe is an idiot for not knowing that.
“And the sea urchins eat the kelp. Got it,” Poe said. He did not, in fact, have it. He was around ninety percent sure he was having a mental breakdown. Because he was in a sea cave somewhere along the Big Sur coastline, talking about sea urchin cultivation with...a merman.
“Why do you land-walkers do that?” The merman said suddenly.
“You’re gonna have to be more specific here, buddy.”
“The wave-riding,” the merman’s green eyes watched Poe, cautious but openly curious. “On your tiny, flat boats.”
“Oh, surfing?” Poe said as the penny dropped, “It’s called surfing. And we do it for fun!”
This idea did not seem to compute. The merman said “But you are not designed to be in the water. You cannot survive without air.”
“Yeah, the danger is what makes it more fun,” Poe admitted. Though perhaps this time he had bitten off more than he could chew, danger-wise. And nearly had a piece bitten off him.
“That seems very nonsensical,” the merman said, ginger browns drawn low.
“I’m not particularly sensical,” Poe muttered, then, before he could think better of it; “Sorry to be rude but...what are you?”
The merman looked somewhat offended. “I am of the Merrow,” he said. Unfortunately, this meant absolutely nothing to Poe, which must have shown on his face as the merman continued. “We are merfolk, from a distant sea.”
“Awesome,” Poe said “Irish merman. Got it.”
The Merrow looked suspicious once again. “How did you know I am from Ériu?”
“Uh, the accent?” Poe said. “You sound like a Guinness commercial.”
The merman clearly had no idea what that meant. “You speak strangely.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot too,” Poe said. Then; “Do you have a name?”
“Of course,” the Merrow said.
“Er...am I s’posed to guess or are you gonna tell me what it is?”
“Guessing would likely prove impossible, and time consuming,” the Merrow said. “I am Armitage.”
Armitage. Of course, the terrifyingly beautiful sea cryptid had the fanciest name imaginable.
Poe smiled. “I’m Poe.”
“I know.”
Poe froze. “You know?”
“You come here often.”
“Oh.” That should not have sent warmth blooming through Poe’s chest the way it did.
Armitage looked away abruptly, almost awkwardly, his cheeks a little pink. “You are difficult not to notice.”
Poe grinned. “That might be the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in months.”
“It was not intended as a compliment,” he said, “I can hear you halfway across the Pacific.” He paused. “Though today, your...habit of incessantly talking loudly even when your usual companion is absent, likely saved your life.”
“Once again, talked myself out of trouble,” Poe said, with what he hoped was a charming grin.
Armitage eyed him with suspicion but cautiously moved closer through the water. Up close, he was even prettier. Freckles dusted across his nose, shoulders and collarbone. Thin, pale scars crossed his ribs and arms. Delicate gills fluttered at his neck and between his ribs when he breathed.
Poe tried not to stare and failed catastrophically. Armitage stared back, shamelessly studying the shape of Poe’s body in the wetsuit.
“You are injured,” he said suddenly.
“Huh?”
Celadon eyes flicked downward toward Poe’s trembling left hand.
“That limb moves incorrectly.”
“Oh.” Poe flexed his fingers automatically. The tremor worsened with exhaustion. “Neurological damage.”
Armitage frowned like he didn’t understand what that meant.
Poe sighed and shifted carefully against the sand. This was not really his favourite topic. “I had an accident a few years ago.”
“What kind of accident?”
“Motorbike racing crash.”
“You raced on...machines?”
“Still do. Sort of.” Poe rubbed his aching hip. “Less crashing these days though. More teaching kids with training wheels how not to eat asphalt like I did.”
The Merrow ignored that, his gaze lingering on the cloudy, scarred eye Poe usually avoided thinking about.
“You survived severe injuries.”
“Barely.”
Something softened briefly in Armitage’s expression. “I understand surviving, badly.”
Poe blinked. The words carried weight; heavy, leaden. Poe decided pushing would probably not be smart. That was more a second or third date sort of question, rather than a sitting awkwardly in a sea-cave because a mythical being saved me from drowning-slash-shark-attack thing.
Outside the cave, another wave crashed thunderously against the rocks. Poe glanced toward the entrance and swallowed. The weather had worsened, the waves whipped up into a storm surge.
“You can stay here until the ocean calms,” Armitage said abruptly. “If you return now, you will drown.”
“Well, when you put it like that…”
The Merrow moved onto a flat rock nearby with unsettling liquid grace. Poe’s eyes absolutely did not track over the elegant lines of his body or how sinewy muscle moved under ethereal skin.
Nope, not at all.
Okay, maybe a little.
Armitage caught him looking and scowled.
Poe immediately said, “Sorry! Though, in my defense, I thought you were mythical until about twenty minutes ago.” Then, when the silence became too thick, Poe said carefully, “So...are there more of you?”
Armitage’s expression shuttered immediately. “Yes.”
Something about that single word warned Poe not to push there either. Instead he aimed for levity; “Do they all rescue idiot surfers or am I special?”
“Your flailing was distractingly loud.”
“Ouch.”
“But...it seemed unnecessary to allow you to perish,” Armitage added.
“I agree. It would have been totally unnecessary. Over-the-top, even.”
That—finally!—raised the smallest and most fleeting of smiles.
Poe leaned back against the cave wall, exhaustion finally crashing over him properly now that he wasn’t actively trying not to die. His muscles ached viciously.
Armitage noticed immediately. “You should rest.”
“You sound like my physical therapist.”
“Was your ‘therapist’ wise?”
“She charged me two hundred dollars an hour to torture me.”
“That does not answer the question.”
Poe laughed. God, he hadn’t expected this morning to involve nearly dying then flirting with an Irish merman in a hidden cave.
Life was weird.
The cave dimmed as clouds outside thickened. Water dripped steadily from the stone ceiling. The wind carried the faint barking of elephant seals from further along the coast. Poe watched Armitage quietly for a moment.
The Merrow sat with his long tail dangling into the water, bare shoulders visibly carrying tension. He looked wary even at rest, like some part of him expected danger constantly.
Poe knew that feeling.
“You said you understand surviving badly,” Poe said quietly.
Armitage went still.
The silence stretched long enough that Poe thought he wouldn’t answer.
Then: “I am...unlike other male Merrow. And my father was cruel.”
Simple words for what was likely a very complicated topic.
Poe nodded. “Mine wasn’t great for a while, either.” After Poe’s mom died, his dad had been...distant. Cold. Not deliberately cruel, but it hurt just as much as if it had been. Kes had just been lost in his own grief, but he’d abandoned his son—if not physically, in every other way that mattered—when Poe needed him the most. It had taken the motorbike crash to bring them back together.
Armitage glanced at him sharply.
“But he got better,” Poe added. This was true. Even when Poe was at his lowest, after Zorii left and Poe was battling through both physical, addiction and mental recovery, his dad had never given up on him. “People can surprise you, sometimes.”
“My father cannot,” Armitage said. His eyes turned as cold and stormy as the sea.
Poe didn’t push further. Instead, he offered; “Well, for what it’s worth, your escape plan was solid. You put a whole ocean between you and him. And hey, California’s pretty nice.”
“It is too warm.”
“Okay, that’s fair.”
“And the humans here are behave even more ridiculously than usual.”
Poe grinned. “Honestly, that’s a fair assessment of Californians.”
Armitage huffed a sound that might have been amusement. He studied Poe for another long moment. “You are not afraid of me.”
Poe considered that honestly. He probably should be. This creature could drag him underwater effortlessly and hell, those clawed hands and needle-teeth could probably kill Poe in seconds. But Armitage hadn’t hurt Poe. He hadn’t let Poe drown or be eaten alive. Instead, he’d risked himself to save Poe’s life.
That meant something.
“No,” Poe said softly. “I’m not.”
Relief flickered briefly over Armitage’s face before vanishing like a scuttled ship below the waves.
Outside, thunder rolled over the ocean and rain started to fall in an abrupt deluge. Inside the cave, Poe sat beside a mythical creature with sea-green scales and red hair and sad, celadon eyes and thought, with absolute certainty:
Well, this is going to complicate life tremendously.