Summary: "Free day" from the tumblr prompt. Basically write whatever you want, so I used that as an excuse to write a second chapter.
Pitch isn't sure how long he is in the cave. He wasn't wearing a watch when he was on North's boat, so it's impossible for him to tell if it's been days or weeks. When he's tired, he sleeps, and when he's awake, he drinks from the fresh water spring that is in the next cave, or he eats the food, seaweed and fish, that Toothiana brings him. She also brings him a kind of green jelly, which has a strange, almost overly sweet taste to it. He tries to combine it with the seaweed and fish, and that only seems to please the mermaid. She likes to watch him eat, and she will usually speak to him while he does so.
She tells him stories, of things she has seen and of the sea itself. Of the deepest of the dark, where her kind prefers to live, but how they sometimes come out from the deepest waters in search of things.
"What things?" He asked her once, and she just smiled.
'Things like you.' There was a sultry tone to her voice, clearly telling him what she meant by that.
Pitch learns the hard way that there are other Merfolk. And like some species of fish, or some birds even, they won't hesitate to try and steal from each other.
The first one looks like nothing but a slip of a boy. He has a shock of white hair, and the most incredible blue eyes that seem to penetrate into Pitch's soul, as he tries to speak to Pitch in a series of clicks and whistles, almost like a dolphin. When Pitch just looks at him confused, the boy gets a peeved look and disappears for a time.
When he returns, he carries a handful of jelly, but this one is blue. He motions for Pitch to eat it, grinning toothily all the while as Pitch hesitantly raises the jelly to his lips... Right before Toothiana's hand shoots out of the water and slaps the jelly out of his hand.
She appears shortly, her mouth open with teeth bared in a loud HISS as her crest fans out, making her look enormous and terrifying. The other mer lets out a startled shriek and dives quickly, but Pitch can see them right under water, as Toothiana chases the boy off.
'Do not take jelly from other merfolk.' She warns when she returns. Her crest and her larger fins are still spread out, showing her anger. 'They will try to steal you from me.'
"Why couldn't I understand him?" Pitch asks, hoping that changing the subject will put Toothiana in a better mood (because she is quite terrifying in her anger).
She snorts, lifting her head haughtily. 'I came first. I tasted your blood, and you have eaten of my jelly.' She says, and Pitch remembers how she had told him that tasting his blood has made her able to communicate with him. 'Aside from that, Jack is a Dolphin.' She adds, as if that explains everything. 'Too much mammal, not enough Deep Water. His kind are too careless. Prefers to toy too much with humans. Sometimes for fun, they will pretend to rescue one or two humans, before drowning them.'
Her sentiment is quite clear on that one: Jack's type likes to play with their food. For some reason it's a more annoying mental image, rather than a scary one.
Still, Toothiana does not like that Jack was cheeky enough to come up to Pitch like this. So instead, she pulls Pitch with her into the water, and while kissing him deeply to give him breath, she takes him to a new cave. The air feels a bit more heavy for some reason, but it's still breathable. And more days follow, with Toothiana feeding Pitch fish, seaweed and her strange jelly, and she keeps telling him stories of her home in the Deep Dark.
Sometimes she takes Pitch with her out to swim, and Pitch finds that he is starting to hold his own breath longer, and the saltwater doesn't sting his eyes as much as it used to.
And this is how time passes for a long time. At one point, he is the one to initiate a kiss, but not for air and not for food. Toothiana returns it gladly, making happy little noises that only makes Pitch want to kiss her more, among other things.
The second mer who tries to steal Pitch is more sneaky about it. He comes when Pitch is asleep, with tentacles like an octopus that are covered in their own, golden jelly. While Pitch is asleep, the octopus-mer caresses him, and as he sleeps, Pitch is certain he has strange, golden dreams with many secret promises that sound almost too wonderful to be true...
It is a dream that is shattered when Toothiana arrives and with a furious screech attacks the other viciously. Pitch is woken by being dragged into the water when the octo-mer tries to escape with his prize, but the other mermaid is faster. With a vicious snarling, she bites into one of the tentacles holding Pitch, hard enough to bite it clean off. The other tentacles jerk away and the golden octo-mer disappears in a jet of golden ink that makes Toothiana hiss, before she grabs Pitch and swims off with him.
She doesn't take him back to the surface. Instead, she pulls him close for a kiss when he needs to breathe, and at the same time she manages to spend the time rubbing the jelly from the other merman off of Pitch's face. In her eagerness, she ends up scratching him just a bit, and Pitch can only flinch as the saltwater burns his wounds, while the lack of air burns his lungs, despite the kisses that gives him air to breathe.
Finally, they arrive in a new cave, where Toothiana pulls Pitch up on dry land. Once they're both safely seated, she begins to look him over, crooning in dismay when she sees the scratches she inflicted herself.
'I am sorry, my dearest...' she cooes, 'but Sanderson was too close to stealing you from me.'
"What... What kind of mer was he?" Pitch manages to ask, though he flinches as Toothiana brings out her own jelly, and begins to smear some of it over his scratches.
'Octopus. They live deep deep down. They are wise in some ways, but also foolish.' She huffs. 'They sleep and dream, only coming when something interests them. He simply wanted you, because you are mine. Sanderson was always greedy like that.' She scowls in fury, and Pitch figures there is a history behind it. That this is not the first time something like this has been stolen from her.
The jelly makes his wounds tingle, in a strange, but pleasant way. It also makes him tired, and the long, rough swim has made him exhausted. So eventually, he decides to go back to sleep.
He doesn't object when Toothiana lies down with him, curling herself around him.
There are webs between his fingers and toes. There are dark scales on his skin. His nails are turning black, and becoming hard and retractable like claws.
His teeth have become sharper as well. Toothiana doesn't mind, and neither does Pitch, because it makes it easier for him to tear into the fish she brings him.
He has long since discarded his clothes. They started to feel smothering, and kept catching on rocks or other things when he's out swimming anyway.
The next time he goes to sleep, the skin on his back is feeling uncomfortably tight, and he wants nothing more than to ask Toothiana to scratch it for him where he can't reach.
That leads to thoughts of how he wants to scratch her, but not to hurt her. He just wants to mark her, to make her his as much as he is hers.
He wakes and he feels uncomfortably dry. He reacts by rolling over and down into the water and diving deep, deep down.
He doesn't realize how much he has changed, until he realizes how he is breathing as easily underwater, as much as he does on land.
His legs have joined, becoming one tail, long and black with shiny scales that almost seems to shimmer like oil, with purple and red hues. He has a ring of gold around his waist and his own hair has turned into a black crest that resembles a crown.
He has crest-like fins like on a dragon fish, and his skin has become a pale grey. A part of him thinks that he should be startled at all this, perhaps even terrified of his own new appearance. But to the rest of him, it has become as natural as breathing water now has.
Somewhere above, he hears Toothiana. She has seen that he is missing, and she keens, in his mind as well as in the language of the mers, in a singing, almost bird-like voice.
He calls out to her, a deep, keening note that vibrates through the water. It doesn't take long for her to respond, and when she finds him, she swims into his embrace.
'Beautiful! So beautiful!' She croons, her voice sounding wobbly, as if she is crying. It is impossible to tell underwater, but that doesn't matter. He can easily sense through her voice, and through her body language, just how happy she is.
Together, they swim out of the caves. They meet Jack and Sandy, who are easily ignored. They are no longer a threat, and Pitch is large and strong and venomous enough to take on them both if he has to.
Jack swims away, leaving a string of curses behind him. Sanderson crawls into a hole between the rocks, his golden color dimmed in a way that tells Pitch that the octopus-mer is sulking.
Toothiana doesn't care, and neither does Pitch. Finally out in the open, they are too busy enjoying themselves by swimming in joyful circles around one another.
When they tire of this game, they set off towards the wide open ocean. Along the way, they swim together as close as possible, entwining their fingers and tails as much as possible.
And this time, no one needs kisses for air.
A/N: Again, had so much fun writing this drabble. I won't lie, sometimes I want to see Jack or Sandy fail at getting Pitch couple-wise, for one reason or another 3 Sorry to the Blackice and Quicksand shippers. And for the curious, I posted a drawing of Mer!Tooth and Mer!Pitch here on my tumblr: ksclaw .tumblr post/64488829300/playing-around-with-the-descripti on-i-gave-tooth