This fic was started two years ago, and I just the other day finished this first part. This could be a stand-alone, but I've got a multi-chapter fic planned out. Whether or not it'll actually be written remains to be seen, but in the meantime, the world needs more Jariel aus and I am more than happy to supply~
There was a time when Ariel would have rushed to the surface without a second thought, not caring who saw her or what they thought she was doing. She was a princess of Atlantica; if she wanted to lay out on a rock and let her skin soak in the sun instead of water, that was her choice to make. If she wanted to flit about old shipwrecks in search of treasure instead of sitting in boring royal meetings, that was her business. As the youngest princess, her presence was rarely necessary.
Now, however, Ariel couldn't risk someone following her. After the disaster that had been her short tryst on land, her father could care less as long as she came home safe, but even he wouldn't be able to ignore her trips to the surface if he knew what she was going for.
Or more specifically, who she was going for.
Ariel ducked behind some coral, patting her hair to make sure it was still tied down. Her red hair was a beacon in the blue water, and she had made sure to borrow one of Aquata's blue scarves to cover it. Once she had thoroughly checked the open sea for any creatures and found none, she quickly swam on, knowing the path easily.
The tide pool she found herself in had once been a safe haven for the merfolk above the waves; a place to play and listen to music and be together. It had been abandoned for years now, and served Ariel's purposes wonderfully. She made sure to stop and press a kiss to the golden shell embedded in the rock; a memorial to her dear, departed mother. She then jumped the rock wall easily, fluttering about in the shallow water. She made her way over to the rock that sat in the middle of the large tide pool, pulling the scarf from her head and letting her red hair fall in damp waves around her shoulders. Tucking the borrowed scarf into her bag, she withdrew her hand and brought with it a familiar, golden shell on a braided cord. She clasped it around her neck, the cool shell quickly warming up against her skin, and laid down to begin her waiting.
As she reclined, back pressed against the sun-warmed rock, she thought further about what the discovery of her secret rendezvous could mean. Her reputation would never survive the scandal, but her reputation had never been very good in the first place. She was still the kingdom weirdo, though now, as the palace expert on human history and artifacts, she was a professional weirdo. At least she hadn't had to worry about how her interests would scare off any potential suitors, seeing as she had done a good enough job of that herself.
Her taste in men was notably dry, something the palace merfolk still whispered about when they thought she couldn't hear. Whatever she might have had with Eric had never come to fruition after Ursula had been killed, but she secretly was thankful she hadn't had to return to land with the prince. Even if she had had her voice, the conversation would have lulled. Eric was sweet and kind, and she would always hold a soft spot for the first human she had ever interacted with, but now that her infatuation had passed, she knew it had been her desire to be on dry land that had driven her into Ursula's lair, not desire for the prince.
Eric was what she thought she had wanted as a child, but as a woman she understood the difference between loving someone and loving the idea of them.
Ariel sighed, pushing her damp hair out of her face. Her stomach always twisted oddly when she thought of her time on land with Eric; part embarrassment, part shame, and part desperate longing. She still dreamed of the feeling of sand between her toes, the burning of muscles in her legs as she danced through the kingdom's square.
Now her dreams also included the snapping of white sails and the burning of warm wood against her bare feet. She had developed quite the fascination with ships and sailing over the past several years, and there was one particular reason why.
A loud splash made the young princess jump, scrambling away from the sound instinctively. The rough coughs that followed, however, made Ariel relax, her lips pulling up into a bright smile.
"The water's freezing!" Jim grumbled, shaking the water from his hands before pushing his bangs out of his face. Ariel laughed and leaned forward, resting the weight of her torso on her tail.
"No, you're just a whimp," she teased. The sailor frowned at her before his lips tugged up into a smile. He looked ridiculous wading through the water to get to her, but it was worth it to feel his warm hands on her hips. His breath brushed against her lips and her smile grew wider in response.
"You're here," he breathed, his thumbs stroking her soft skin. Her own hands fisted into the material of his shirt, tugging him closer.
"I wouldn't miss this for anything in the whole ocean," she assured him, and his relieved smile pressed against her own in a passionate kiss that sent her heart racing against her breast.
She had first met Jim while spying on a human ship. Once she had gotten over the fear of the surface her tangle with Ursula had driven into her soul, she had taken to climbing onto the sides of passing ships; spying on the crew until the ship reached the edge of her father's kingdom, and then taking the time on her long swim home to organize and catalogue all the new information she had learned. Her secret grotto had turned into a museum of sorts as well as her own study, full of maps and logbooks of her own. She had a fairly good record of the trade routes of several ships, including the Legacy.
One of the only ships with a female captain that Ariel had found, the crew fascinated her, and Ariel had made an effort to ride with them every time they came into port. One of the most interesting crew members had been the first mate, a young man only a few years older than herself with eyes like the stormy sea.
Ariel had been careful to not let her interest turn into infatuation, but that had quickly become moot when he had discovered her one night, too interested in the crew's scientist to notice him coming to the edge of the ship.
That first interaction hadn't gone… well, to put it simply. Ariel had nearly given up on the whole venture until another chance encounter had allowed them to have a proper conversation, and Ariel found herself watching for the Legacy's passing more eagerly than before.
"How long are you in port for?" she asked once they had to pull away for breath, running her fingers through the soft down of his normally closely-shaved hair, which had begun to grow out during his time at sea. Jim leaned into her touch with a soft breath.
"Two months." Ariel smiled brightly at the news. "Amelia and Delbert are going to spend the rest of the summer with their kids before they send them back off to boarding school, and then we'll be back out to sea."
"And you'll be staying with your mother at her inn?" she asked eagerly. Jim smirked, and her heart stuttered in her chest.
"Woah there, you could give a guy the wrong kind of impression with that reaction," he teased. "I might start to think you like me or something."
"Oh, Jim," the mermaid purred, gently tugging the sailor closer. Jim swallowed thickly, his adam's apple bobbing as her lips brushed against his jaw. "Surely you already know how much I like…" She drew the last word out, scraping her nails down the wet material of his shirt towards his stomach. Once he was properly breathless, his eyes dark with want for her, she mirrored his smirk. "Talking to you about human stuff," she finished with a teasing kiss to his nose, giggling as he blinked owlishly. She pulled away, diving into the water and resurfacing just behind him.
The sailor spun around with a frown, glaring at the laughing mermaid before splashing towards her. Ariel shrieked with mirth, swimming away towards the opposite side of the pool. The rock face pressed against her back as she held herself out of the water, still giggling breathlessly as he struggled to get to her. He wasn't nearly as graceful in the water as she, despite spending most of his adult life on the seas, but he got to her eventually. His warm hands pressed against her stomach, pushing her into the rocks; careful not to hurt her, but firm enough to keep her from moving. His own chest quickly pressed against hers once he found his footing, and Ariel inhaled sharply at the close contact.
"You little minx," Jim growled, smirking at the captive mermaid. Ariel simply smiled innocently in response, her hands resting on his broad shoulders. Jim was just as muscular and trim as Eric was, if only a bit shorter. Where it was genetics that made the prince's skin so tan, Jim's tan was more of a faded sunburn from weeks under the hot sun, and his hands were rough from working on his ship for months at a time. Jim was like the wilds of the surface world, wrangling the sea under his control while still allowing her her freedom, wary of courting her scorn.
He treated Ariel with the same respect, holding her wild heart in his scarred palm tight enough that she wouldn't slip through his fingers, but loose enough that he wouldn't bruise her.
Their kiss this time was slow, building in heat as she relaxed against his body. It had been nearly three months since the last time he had come into port, and she had missed him fiercely. She could hear the roaring of the sea start to quiet as all her attention was shifted to the man holding her so tightly, bracing her body against his own.
"I don't know if I'm ready for two whole months of Jim Hawkins," Ariel teased as he abandoned her lips to instead trail kisses down the column of her neck. She gasped in delight, her tail flicking against his calves.
"I'm sure I can get you to warm up to the idea," he teased right back, grinning against her throat. Ariel hummed.
"I'm eager to see you try, sailor."
His lovely mouth continued to pepper kisses all over her sea-soaked skin, the princess slowly melting into a boneless heap in the sailor's arms. Her little gasps and sighs were the only sounds between them, the crashing of the ocean's waves against the rock wall nearly drowning them out.
"I missed you," Jim confessed earnestly against her collarbone, his scarred fingers pressing into the arch of her back as his other hand cradled the back of her neck.
"I missed you too," Ariel sighed in response, pulling him away from her skin so she could meet his eye with a loving smile, her forehead resting against his own.
"I almost went mad on that ship," he said, "I kept thinking I saw you on the horizon, or along the side of the ship."
Ariel's smile widened, and she pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth in a tender kiss. "I'm here now," she reassured him. His answering smile was crooked and lovely, and his entire face lightened like the clouds had parted for a singular moment to allow the sun to shine on him. He was heart-wrenchingly beautiful, she mused breathlessly, and the best part?
He was hers.
She wanted to be his too.
They kissed for what felt like hours, slowly relearning each other until the three months they had spent apart were little more than a bad dream, and fading quicker every moment. Ariel hummed in delight when she again found the spot just under his ear that, if she moved her lips and teeth against it just right, could make Jim's knees shake and buckle.
"Alright, alright," he said with a forced laugh, his voice low and wonderfully husky, "that's enough of that."
"Am I making you uncomfortable, sailor?" Ariel cooed, tracing her fingers down his chest. Jim's hands trapped her own, and she melted again at how firmly, yet gently, he treated her.
"If you keep doing that, we're just going to kiss until the sun goes down."
"I see no problem with this."
"Well, no presents for you, then."
Ariel perked up immediately, smiling widely. "Presents?" she asked, wrapping her arms around Jim's neck so they were once again at eye level with each other. "You brought me presents!?" If she had still had legs and feet, she would have been bouncing on her toes, but she settled for wiggling in Jim's arms happily as the sailor laughed.
"No, you said you just wanted kisses," Jim said with a shake of his head, pressing his grinning mouth against her cheek and down her jaw in a flurry of quick pecks. Ariel's laughter was breathless and giddy as she tried to squirm away from his teasing affections.
"Jiiiim!"
He laughed. "Ariel?"
"Come on, I want to see what you got me!" Ariel attempted to pout at him, but her smile was too wide to hold it for long. Jim grinned, shaking his head at her and giving her a quick kiss to the forehead before sweeping one of his arms under her tail, hefting the mermaid into his arms. Ariel shrieked in surprise, clinging tightly to his neck as the laughing sailor began to wade towards the rocks where he had left his bag.
"Alright, we'll do presents," he said with a chuckle, and Ariel tucked her smiling face against his neck as he lifted her out of the water and onto the rocks (not an easy task, seeing as her tail alone had to weigh at least as much as he did). Once she was comfortably stretched out on the sun-warmed rock, tucked against his side, Jim pulled over a cloth satchel he had tucked behind some rocks to keep dry. He playfully kept it away from Ariel's grasping hands, not relenting until she had him by the shirt and was kissing the scruff on his cheek between her whines of his name.
She watched in fascination as he began to pull wonder after wonder from his satchel, placing the items on the rocks where he would be able to show them to her one by one. A few things she already knew were just for her to look at, like the leather-bound books and the iron tins full of sharply-scented spices, but there was no shortage of things for her to take back to her grotto either.
Jim pulled out another tin, but this one went straight into her hands instead of onto the rocks. "Here," he said, smiling as he passed the baffled mermaid her first gift. "Found these in a couple of the markets we stopped in. You mentioned wanting some new beads, so..."
Ariel gasped in delight, carefully prying open the lid and staring in awe at the variety of glass and metal beads in the tin; gleaming in the midday sun like a school of tropical fish. She even saw a few buttons mixed in, all different sizes and stamped with different designs.
"Jim, these are beautiful," she breathed, carefully combing the tips of her fingers through the tin, revealing new colors and shapes and styles.
Jim's smile only grew, softening his sea-worn features into an almost boyish expression of delight. Ariel's heart melted, and she pressed her nose against the hard line of his jaw. "Thank you," she whispered, not only referring to the beads. Her scruffy sailor was, undoubtedly, the best part of her life. With her sisters beginning to drift away with the currents to different corners of her father's kingdom, and the palpable stress in the palace from the upcoming transition of the crown from Triton to Attina in less than a year's time, the ocean was starting to feel as suffocating as it had when she was sixteen. Her air-starved lungs felt heavier with each breath in Atlantica, and she had begun to debate whether or not it was possible for a mermaid to drown.
Being here, with Jim, was a much-appreciated escape. From the beginning, he had never seen her cluelessness about the human world she so adored as something to be tucked away or laughed at. He was happy to teach her all he knew, and if she asked him a question he didn't know the answer to, they would look for it together. And in return, she shared with him all she could about the world under the sea. There were things she couldn't tell him - secrets her father would never be able to overlook if she offered them to a human - but Jim eagerly soaked in anything she gave him. He, like her, was possessed by an unending curiosity; they both wanted to pick the world apart and put it back together, just to see how it ticked.
Eric had seen the world as an ocean; the regular coming and going of the tides, the steady currents, the ever-changing waves. It was not wholly predictable, and sometimes deadly, but Eric had what he needed to navigate his own ship safely through the waters, and with that, he was content. Jim, however, saw the world as a piece of machinery; a tangle of clockwork pieces and springs and coils just waiting for him to pick it apart. Every day was a new chance to get his hands dirty, fingertips stained with grease as he sought the answers to questions that rivaled the stars in number. His logical way of viewing the world around them fascinated Ariel, and his constant hunt for answers and adventure delighted her.
"Anything for you," Jim promised in response, kissing her temple and pushing back some of the damp curls that stuck to her skin. She sighed softly, mouth curling into a smile, and Jim kissed her quickly on the corner of her lips before turning back to his collection.
Ariel watched Jim's face as he began to sort through the things he had brought, nose scrunched in thought and the tip of his tongue peeking out between pearly teeth, and felt the hurricane in her chest quiet to a soft summer storm. Here. Right here. This was where Ariel knew she belonged. With her sailor beside her and the salty scent of the ocean surrounding her, slowly finding the answers to their endless questions about the world around them, together.
Ariel knew what she had to do. She wanted to sail atop the seas with him, instead of following his ship from down below. She wanted to wake up every morning in his arms and watch the sun rise over the horizon together. She wanted to meet his beloved family that he spoke so highly of; his mother and godfather and captain and his own godchildren that Ariel already loved as dearly as her own sisters.
She was going to become a part of Jim Hawkins' world, but she only had two months to do it. Ursula had left many things in her wake that lingered long after she died, and one of them had been an important lesson. You couldn't get something for nothing, and sometimes what you got wasn't what you had hoped for. Ariel's fantasy of Eric had outshone the reality, and when the sunspots had cleared from her eyes, she had a new way of looking at the future. She didn't know what life with Jim on land would be like until she had lived it, but she fully intended to find out.
And as Jim began to describe and explain each of the trinkets in turn, letting her turn them over in her salt-soaked hands and test them herself, a part of Ariel was planning, scheming, dreaming. Two months was a hell of a lot longer than three days, but it was what she did with those two months that mattered.
The next two months could change- no, would change everything.
When the two reluctantly parted ways as the sun began to slip below the horizon (after sneaking in a few more kisses on the way), promising to meet up in another week so as not to make his mother suspicious, Ariel cut through the water like a knife as she raced for home. If her plan worked, she'd be seeing Jim again long before the week was up, but there was tons of preparation to do. Not to mention, a very awkward conversation with her father to be had.
Ariel clutched the bead tin close to her chest, the rest of Jim's gifts tucked safely in her bag. "Anything for you," she murmured to herself, an echo of Jim's earlier words, and propelled herself faster through the water; leaving nothing but bubbles and a whispered promise behind her.