Note: I'm not a native English speaker. I wrote the fic a few years back for my friend's birthday and my pther friend helped me to translate it to English. I revised it a bit before posting it here, but it's not beta read, so there probably are a few mistakes.
Pre-slash Gruvia, modern AU, mermaid AU, Gray & Lyon & Ultear are step siblings here.
Enjoy! :)
It would be hard to imagine a better weather for fishing. In the city - especially in the noon and shortly after it - the heated concrete, asphalt and walls were radiating with hotness impossible to bear, but here, here a pleasant, cool brisk was flying from the sea and a few trees growing nearby the coast were giving soothing shadow-
Hah, no. Gray would like it to be that way, but the reality was a mean bitch that liked playing with human hopes and dreams.
Fullbuster knew that weather by the sea usually changes very rapidly (like the weather in the mountains), so he wasn't surprised when the flaming sun stopped being the only trouble. So far it was so hot as if someone up in the sky, thinking about the rule saying that "if cookies can bake in ten minutes in one hundred eighty degrees, then in one hundred eight thousand degrees they will get ready in one sec!", had turned up the heating to maximum, in sadistic craze wanting to burn alive all living on Earth. And now it was even worse.
Did he feel irritated by that? Yes, but taken aback? No, not at all.
The air became stuffy and heavy, dark clouds suddenly appeared from nowhere. Soon after that powerful wind started up, yanking branches of the strongest trees with as much fierceness as despairing, bankrupt businessmen were plucking their hair during the big crisis in 1929.
And then first droplets fell down, light rain quickly became a heavy drench and so, fishing ended.
Gray would bear the weather, but thinking about spending time with his step-brother that came here with him made him moan like tormented souls in the ninth circle of hell. Maybe it wouldn't be so awful, but they had had an argument (again) a few hours earlier, and their older sister, tired of their quarreling, threatened them of being really awful if they wouldn't go out and make it up. And Ultear, if she wanted, could be a very dreadful person. So what could they do? They packed up and went to the small city near Hargeon. It wasn't a famous city, so, despite the middle of the season, they easily found a summer house, quite cheap even!
They were in it right now - in a dry, comfy wooden shed.
Gray reached for another can of beer from the small touristic fridge. It was his second or third can today, he didn't care enough to count. He took another sip, observing the world behind the window. Earlier he was sitting on the veranda, just to not be in the same room as his brother, but he was forced to come back to the building once it started to flash and thunder. Lyon was sitting on his bed with earphones in his ears and staring into the laptop's monitor. Not like Fullbuster was bothered about Vastia losing contact with the world. Tomorrow they will probably behave like nothing had happened (and then they will argue about some shit like usual, on the verge of not speaking to each other once again), but now they were keeping their distance as much as the tiny building allowed.
The boy sighed and stopped looking through the window. Bored by the monotonous weather, he pulled out his phone, checked facebook, liked and commented Erza's photo from the fencing contest she participated in, and looked through another few posts. Suddenly he realized it was surprisingly quiet. The thunderstorm had ended.
Without any doubts, he put on his jacket, grabbed the car keys and told Lyon he's going out (not like his brother noticed). He found himself near his BMW, caught his fishing equipment and jumped into the boat they borrowed from a nice old guy not long after getting there and before the rain started.
He didn't sail far away from the coast. He also didn't cast his rod right away, he firstly stretched himself on the boat, exposing his face to the sun peeking out behind the few remaining clouds and listening to waves' hum. He was laying for only a few minutes before the boat - pushed by water's current - hit something. Gray saw it was only a small stone island and pushed the boat next to the obstacle.
His day wouldn't have probably ended in such an unexpected way if he hadn't had noticed blue hair and pale hands on the rocks. Surprised by seeing someone else in the place like that, he sculled to get on the other side quicker.
And then he saw her: the girl was unconscious, it was certain she wasn't just lying in the sun or napping above the water. The main cause was a freshly ended thunderstorm, but the stranger's appearance was also an important clue. The first thing Fullbuster noticed was a reddish-brown stain on the rocks, shining scarlet in the sunlight. The girl's arm was also red, and a dark, almost crimson line staring nearby her elbow and ending before her shoulder.
Gray also noticed his new companion's prettiness - delicate features, pale complexion, long, dark eyelashes, small nose, full lips… And she also had something else, something charm-y, something… supernatural, but Fullbuster wasn't able to say what it was.
He jumped outside the boat and knelt down beside the girl.
"What happened? Hey, do you hear me?" he shook her arms lightly, looking for any signs that she's awake, but the stranger didn't react. The boy came back to the boat (let's mark it was swimming away), cursing in his thoughts about forgetting to tie it to some prominent piece of rock (what he did a few seconds later). Searching through fishing equipment, he grabbed a first aid kit and went back to the girl. Wanting to ensure she wouldn't slip on the slimy rocks, he pulled her closer to himself, focused on her wound. When he was about to reach for bandages, he noticed a fascinating thing.
That girl had a tail. Fishtail, to be specific.
Gray was shocked. He wiped his eyes, not believing what he was seeing, but it wasn't a hallucination. Fullbuster wondered for a short moment if Lyon meanly put something in his beer, but it wouldn't be in Vastia's style.
No. It had to be real.
He reached out to the girl's tail, his hand shaking with emotions, but halfway, he decided against it. Groping unknown girls wasn't in his style. Besides that, Gray wasn't feeling…. authorized? That's the right word. A mermaid (because it's really a mermaid, probably, isn't it?), amazing. And that 'supernatural' feeling also explained itself. Dammit, nobody would believe him! Maybe he should take some photos as an evidence? No! Wait! Patching up the wound is more important!
He shook his head, trying to get rid of distracting thoughts. He opened the kit, took out the bandages and hydrogen peroxide, and got to working. When antiseptic fluid spilled across the split skin, mermaid pulled up with a gasp of fear. And at the sight of the boy, fear changed into panic.
The girl was ready to jump into the water, but Gray caught her around the waist.
"Let go of Juvia!" she screamed, still jerking.
"But first I've got to patch you up, you're wounded!"
"Juvia doesn't care about it, leave Juvia alone! You're not taking Juvia anywhere!" Mermaid tried to punch her 'torturer', but Gray caught her in the way that made it impossible to impose a blow.
"I'm not gonna take you anywhere, I only want to help you!"
The girl stopped trying to escape, visibly puzzled by Fullbuster's words, but she was still alert.
"Y-you don't want to take Juvia?"
"And where would I be supposed to take you?"
"Juvia… Juvia doesn't know, but you take mermaids somewhere!"
"We?" the boy didn't understand, looking into her eyes full of horror and wariness.
"You, people!"
"Never saw any mermaid before. You're first."
"But mermaids do disappear. You're taking them!"
Gray sighed, a little tired of this conversation, but thought about those words - mermaids indeed weren't something you can meet every day (if someone asked him a few hours earlier if he believed in those creatures' existence, he would laugh), so it isn't impossible that someone tries to catch them for money. But if this race was found about, it would be the discovery of the century, it would be loud about it everywhere, so it's not so possible that mermaids are hunted.
"You know, we, people, we don't even believe in mermaids' existence. Okay, maybe the majority of us doesn't."
Mermaid didn't answer right away, probably busy wrapping her mind around the concept of her companion telling her the truth.
"How can you not believe we exist? Maybe unicorns and fairies also do not exist?" This time, the girl seemed to be less scared and more appalled by this idea. Fullbuster was taken aback. He didn't quite know how to answer, so after a few seconds of silence he pulled himself together and changed the topic.
"Show me your hand, I'll bandage it."
Juvia became wary again and carefully looked at her companion.
"Why are you nice to Juvia?"
Impatient growl escaped the boy's mouth.
"Maybe 'cause you need help?" he asked with irritation, but with amusement too.
"Juvia is going to trust you" she answered finally, but with some kind of strange, warning undertone in her voice that was saying 'if you fail me, you're going to regret that".
The boy started bandaging. Mermaid wasn't able to stop looking at his palms, warm and strong, wrapping the material around her arm with lots of carefulness and delicateness.
"Juvia wants to thank you," she whispered when he finished, examining the bandage's structure with her finger. And then she quickly kissed Gray's cheek and jumped into the water, blushing a bright red.
He had mixed up feeling about it - he didn't want her to go so fast, fascinated by her, but he couldn't say that the kiss wasn't a nice surprise.
The boy decided against fishing that day, went back to his boat and then to his house. And he would probably think of this all as a dream, if the next day he hadn't cut himself during peeling some shapely fishes he caught with Lyon. When he checked the first aid kit he noticed the lack of bandage with pleasure and excitement in his heart.
And if later the same day, when a long tail and a blue haired girl shyly waved to him from between the waves, he waved back, it was no one's business but his.
The trip had seemed to be awful, but, like Gray told himself, appearances are deceptive.
He had to thank Ultear, after all.