Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of this work of fiction, and am making no profit, monetary or otherwise, through the writing of this.
A/N: I have been pining over not being able to write, and when I sit down to write...this is what happens. Silly, ridiculous fluff involving mermen and dreams, and a giddy, knee-buckling Danny.
Inspired by reruns on Me TV.
Based loosely on, "The Love Boat," episode, "Fish out of Water," first aired on, March 10th, 1984, in which a character played by, Ed Begley, Jr.,. met and fell in love with a mermaid. He'd been dreaming, but when he woke, and left his room, he found the girl of his dreams had grown legs.
Please forgive any errors (this was written in an hour and a half, or so) and the name that I gave merman Steve. It was in keeping with the almost matching name that the mermaid in, "The Love Boat" had in that episode. Something like Coral and Cora.
Danny was supposed to find true love on this cruise on the Love Boat. At least that's what his ex-wife, Rachel, best friends, Kono and Chin, and little girl, Grace, had told him.
He hated to disappoint them, especially after coming out to everyone in one drunken, slightly over-dramatic moment in which he thought that he'd be lucky to be lynched, but, well, he'd been holed up in his room, battling a fever almost the whole time. To top it off, he'd had fever dreams. Or rather one long fever dream involving a rather gorgeous merman who went by the name of Stephanous.
He'd even fallen in love with the dream merman, or had fallen into what felt a lot like love, but was probably lust (the merman had killer bluish-green eyes, abs that could give Adonis' a run for their money, and biceps that looked to be hard as rocks).
In the end, he'd done the right thing and tossed the merman back into the ocean, where he belonged, in spited of Stephanous' declarations of love for him.
Danny had woken up with a start, alone in the bed in his stateroom with a dried out washcloth on his forehead, the tail end of his dream (no pun intended) running through his head, only to discover that he'd slept almost the entire trip. It was funny, but he missed the merman, even if Stephanous was only a figment of his bizarre, fevered imagination.
Everything had felt so real. Danny'd been disappointed (heartbroken, really) to discover that it had all been a dream. He felt tricked, and did not know how he was going to face his family and friends when he returned to Oahu, with nothing to show for it. He was definitely not going to tell them that he had fallen in love with a fever dream inspired merman. He'd just have to pretend that Stephanous was a real person, and explain why he didn't have any pictures of the make believe man.
With that aim in mind, Danny left the stateroom, intending to take blurry pictures of random men, or men from a distance. He only had two days left on the cruise after all. Love Boat or not, that was not enough time for him to meet someone and fall in love, or even lust. No doubt everyone had already found someone to love while Danny was out cold, dreaming of a star crossed love with a non-existent merman.
Danny was looking down at his phone, scrolling through an obscene number of text messages that had been left for him when he'd been lost in dreamworld, he never saw the man that was headed in his direction until it was too late.
"Oomph," a slightly familiar masculine voice declared as Danny bounced off a very broad, muscular chest, and fell backward onto his ass.
A large, calloused hand encroached Danny's line of vision, and he blinked up at it, grasped it cautiously, and allowed himself to be hauled to his feet. He was unaccountably dizzy, and refused to think that it had anything to do with lingering sickness. He was done being out for the count. Done spending his cruise below decks with a fever.
There was something familiar about the hand. He'd felt the callouses before, felt the thumb that was wrapped around Danny's wrist tracing a scar on Danny's chin just before lips had engulfed his in a fiery kiss that had tasted of salt and fish.
Mermen, apparently, brushed their teeth with seaweed. At least dream mermen did. Danny had no idea what real mermen...maybe he was still suffering from the fever after all...brushed their teeth with, or even if they brushed their teeth at all. He'd have to ask Grace, or Kono, who practically lived in the sea, when he returned home.
Danny stared at the hand which still encased his. There was a familiar scar in the shape of a 'J' that traveled from the base of the thumb to the man's wrist, and Danny's breath hitched.
He blinked down at the hand, and tried to extract his own from the firm grip, but the hallway, was he in a hallway? was spinning, and there were spots dancing in front of his eyes, and he couldn't breathe, because when he looked down, past their joined hands, he saw long legs, not a green tail.
"Hey, buddy, you alright?" the man, bearing the husky voice of Danny's dream merman, asked, and Danny's head snapped up, and his knees buckled.
"How...you have legs, and...it's, it's you," Danny said. "You have legs." He smiled up at the man who was now holding him upright.
The man's forehead was crinkled in concern, and his blue-green eyes reminded Danny of troubled waters, like those that he'd released his dream merman (before he'd gotten legs) into before he woke up a few hours ago. Danny's mouth was dry, his palms were sweaty, and yet his heart soared, because this was Stephanous, with legs, and maybe he hadn't been dreaming after all.
The man gave Danny a crooked smile, and helped Danny stand on his own two feet, and then smoothed down the front of his shirt and shorts. His legs were tan, the thighs muscular, and compact, and Danny sighed, and reached out to touch.
"Yes, I have legs, most people do." The words were delivered with a chuckle, and the man shivered under Danny's touch, goosebumps dotting his flesh where Danny's fingertips touched it.
"Stephanous," Danny breathed out the name, and bit his lip, because it was too good to be true.
He pinched himself, and hissed in a breath, because it had hurt. He may have been dreaming half the trip away, but he wasn't dreaming now. Stephanous was real, standing in front of him with legs that could launch a thousand ships like the one they stood on.
"My name's Steve," the man said, a bemused smile on his face. "I don't recall meeting you before now, where have you been?" Though he hadn't said, 'all this time,' it was implicit in the tone that he'd used, and, the way that he was regarding Danny now, as though he wanted to devour him, made Danny's heart skip several beats.
The man was the very embodiment of Danny's dream merman if Danny's heart and mind were telling him the truth. They looked exactly alike, minus the tail.
Danny licked his lips, eyes never leaving Steve's, heart pounding, the world falling away.
"Danny," he said. "My name's Danny. And, if I can be so bold, I think..."
Danny shook his head, and taking his heart in his hands, he said, "No, I know I am in love with you."
Steve swallowed, and captured Danny's hand in his. He searched Danny's eyes for something, and Danny's heart felt like it was going to abandon him entirely, and then Steve gave him another smile, and brushed his lips across Danny's knuckles, letting them linger there until Danny pulled his lips toward his, and they kissed.
Danny felt the air stir around them, lift his hair, and then settle. There was a spark, and then he melted against Steve, against his dream merman, given legs and life, and Danny's heart to hold forever, should he want it.
He may or may not have murmured those words aloud, because Steve chuckled, the rumble of the sound reverberating through Danny's body, warming him in ways that nothing, not even his debilitating fever, ever had.
One day, after they were married, maybe even when they were both old and grey, watching grandchildren frolic in the ocean's waves, Danny would tell Steve about how he'd first met him, and fallen in love with him, in his dreams. For now though, he was wholly content to fall in love all over again, and to wait for Steve to catch up with him.