A/N: Well here is the next chapter for those of you who are interested! Thank you for the reviews!
I want to state here that everyone in this fic has different opinions of what the 'Mermaid's are and that is why they are called different things by different people.
Other than that enjoy!
Drip.
My eyes were wide open, pinned on the wooden roof above my head.
Drip.
The storm was raging on through the night and at some point Kankuro must have placed a bucket under the leaking crack in the ceiling. The aforementioned man was out cold on the twin cot across the room, his rumbling snores shaking me to the bone.
I hardly ever slept, and yet, I slept more than I ever had growing up. Looking in the mirror each morning it was impossible to hide the heavy dark patches around my eyes from my insomnia days, with my startling red hair I looked like something chewed up and spit out of some circus.
Or at least that's what my classmates used to say.
I spent hours listening to that mindless sound, each drop ringing like a bell inside my head until I somehow managed to fall asleep.
In sleep I dreamt about a soft whistling voice; sinking into its inviting embrace, all the other horrid noises stopped.
"Do you think you could lend me a hand?"
I'm not sure when I woke up, I just know that one moment I was dreaming and the next I was staring at the roof once again, this time illuminated from the sunlight tiptoeing through the curtain-less window.
It appeared at first glance that the storm had gone.
I may not have had the brightest disposition but even I needed fresh air every day, so I dressed myself and took notice that Kankuro was already gone, likely at sea breaking in the new shrimp. Downstairs, Temari whistled jovially and flipped pancakes like she'd been doing it for years; with a slight mouth twitch, I recalled that she had, in fact, been making them for Kankuro and I for as long back as I could remember.
"Gaara, if you plan to go outside at least bring a raincoat, it's supposed to drizzle sometime around noon." I nodded despite how bright the world looked beyond the window above the stove; eyes could easily be fooled after a day of heavy storms. Pulling over a ludicrously yellow plastic raincoat, I stole a single plain pancake off of my sister's serving plate and made quick work of it with my hands, tearing off and eating bite by bite.
Although I had not been wrong in how considerably bright it was outside, there was still a dense layer of grey clouds spread out like a comforter over the docks and as far as I could see out into the ocean. Each gust of wind tasted like sand and sea, reminding me why I never liked this place as a child.
Still it wasn't as if I loved it now.
I had half a mind to avoid the particularly water-swollen planks of the deck, making my way anywhere that would be a good stretch of the legs.
I didn't get far before passing by Jiraiya's old cretin of a boat, the very similar owner waving with an absurdly large hand. "Hey boy! Be watching yourself, nothing draws out sea devils like a vile storm!" I made a point to keep my gaze directly in front of me although nodding to acknowledge him. Behind me I could still hear his laughter as the distance between us grew vaster.
At the time, I just couldn't seem to comprehend how he had become so senile.
I would soon learn something of it in the swallowing grey of the mid-morning. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the most brilliant shade of orange glisten from the water. Stopping mid-step, I turned to see what had caught my attention, only to find it gone.
It had been the brightest thing I'd seen in so long, now all that remained were murky, stale waters. Maybe that's why I found myself leaning against the railing, looking down at the waves.
And then I heard it.
"Hey you! With the red hair!"
And now we come back to the other beginning, the one where the blonde and I actually met and that acidic voice invaded my ears for the first of many times.
Glancing behind me, I searched for the source of the voice only to find I was apparently the only person out on the docks.
"I know you can hear me Red! Come here!"
Turning back, I leaned farther over the rail and felt my breath go shallow.
I blinked once. Twice. The image before me neither changing nor fading.
In the water was a boy with a mop of yellow hair.
"Do you think you could lend me a hand?"
Try as I might, I could not find any form of proof that the moment was a dream, from up here I could see how bright is eyes were; something akin to the blue of the water on the brightest days. Contrasting his short mess of yellow locks was skin tanned by likely years of simply living under a brilliant sun. Treading there in the water below, he looked absurdly unreal with those orbs watching me expectedly like something out of an old story.
I was climbing over the railing without a moment of hesitation, finding footing on a two foot wide plank used to string up small boats.
"My leg is caught in a net or something, these fisherman really need to start properly disposing of their equipment, not just tossing it overboard." There was a bit of resentment in his tone and upon further inspection I found that he was indeed tangled in a net hooked up on the docking plank.
Grabbing at the net's source, I dragged it towards me, the blonde drifting closer with each handful I left behind. When the stranger was close enough, he held out a small hand for assistance, my own reaching out to meet his out of reflex. He took my hand with his. The gesture itself was very warm and that warmth traveled up to his eyes.
Body rising from the waters he brought its salty scent with him; the two of us standing on that ledge and staring blandly at each other while he kicked off the offending rope object.
It took several jolts of the leg, which at some point I had looked down to notice something else aside from the now discarded net.
"Why are you naked?"
And he was, although I made a subconscious point not to stare it became quickly obvious that his tan was an all-over deal.
"I'm sorry," His throat (scratchy like sand) purred sarcastically. "What do you wear when you go for a swim?"
It was an amusing statement; anyone who knew me knew one thing for sure.
"I don't swim."
A pale eyebrow stood slowly, an expression of pure confusion evident on his face. I could imagine how blank mine must have looked at the time despite how confused I was at what had just occurred.
By that I mean finding a naked boy with a never-before-seen eloquence tangled in a discarded fish net.
"And certainly not in the ocean."
He couldn't have seemed more offended had I tried.
Scanning over his bare body carelessly, I thought to pass the boy my raincoat, a gift he accepted with much gratitude in his eyes. Putting it on and buttoning it, no one would be the wiser that the teen wore anything less than at least a pair of swim trunks beneath its confines.
A saying came to mind, something along the lines of beauty and a potato sack, yet the rest escapes me.
"Do you mean to say that you can't swim?" He jumped up to the ledge, dragging himself over and onto the safe footing of the docks. Arms up, I grabbed the rail and hoisted myself over after him, the young man tapping his toes as if testing the solid wood below.
"Your assumption is insulting, I said that I don't swim, I did not say that I couldn't." Even I was surprised at how much he had me talking, but it wasn't everyday you- well, you already know what happened.
"So…" He paused and let me catch up with him, walking in a direction I hadn't cared about at the time, just for the sake of walking. "You can swim?" I nodded once, noticing that the good people of the Konoha docks were finally out and about though paying the two of us no heed.
With me in my faded old jeans and with him in nothing but a banana yellow raincoat that came to his knees.
But they didn't have to know that part.
"If you can swim, you should. Simple as that." I rolled my eyes and found myself staring at his skinny ankles. Consequently, this led to my gaze traveling up his calves and focusing on the rim of that jacket. The whole time I had been wondering if he was really not bothered at all about his public displays of nudity.
"Are you from around here?" I found myself asking, realizing one of the reasons I was so startled by him was that I had never before seen the boy.
That said a lot because although I'd only been living here near a week, these docks had been a greater part of my life. Konoha was small and everyone seemed to have a good knowledge of everyone else but I'm completely sure I'd remember a boy whose eyes gleamed like oceanic marbles.
"Yes and no." It made no sense to me but it put a shit-eating grin right on his face. "I've come from nearby, and before that, I came from nearby there." It appeared that he hardly knew what he was saying, smile fading and brows furrowed as he searched for the appropriate words.
Before long the two of us were in front of the pub, just outside the doors were a large group fishermen who referred to themselves as 'Akatsuki'; they were laughing and gesturing each other in one at a time, the few I actually spoke to turning enough to cast me an invitational wave.
"I better go."
The voice had gone from light-hearted to something more anxious, the blonde eyeing the boisterous group of sailors with caution. "Hmn." I replied, his hands patting along my coat.
"I'll return this to you." He tried, tilting his head yet gaze never straying from the group before us.
"Don't feel compelled to, it's cheap and we come by them easily."
Before I could pull away his little warm hand settled on my arm, skin instantly thawing where his fingertips grazed. "Thank you." And he was gone, heading in the very direction we had just come from.
Part of me wondered where he had been going, another if he even knew where he was going.
I thought back to his fleeting touch, the way his skin had felt against mine.
It was smooth like a pearl.
I stared until his mess of hair disappeared into the dim distance, not realizing how much life had already changed for me in that single encounter.
Inside the pub was the same atmosphere as every other day, it was damp but warm and the faces were all friendly enough no matter how put-off from you they may be in private. Something else that had become reoccurring now was the bellows of Jiraiya and the irritation plastered on Shizune's otherwise sweet face.
"The devil is back, just as I said he would be!"
"I swear to the lord if he breaks another-"
"You're lyin'! There's no such thing as a sea devil!"
"I saw him you hear? His hair was everywhere beneath my boat, polluting the water like black ink and so I hightailed it to the dock, no way was I putting up with that bastard today no sir!"
"Excuse me sir but please try to not rile yourself up again-"
I took a swig of cider and tried to sort through the flurry of outbursts from every direction, deducing somehow that the old man was convinced his mermaid was back to finish him off.
"So," Kakashi piped up, downing his ale with sickening ease, "Why hasn't he dragged your ass away yet?" Everyone laughed, slamming hands to the table and overall making enough of an uprising for Shizune's hair to stand on end.
"Isn't it obvious, I'm on good ol' dry land."
"And what does that matter, can't they just grow legs?" The voice was Iruka's and sounded far less patronizing than the silver-haired man who clung suspiciously close to him. "Aye, it's true the wily beasts can in fact, spout legs, but only if they've had…" He makes a swinging motion with his arm; much like Tsunade had the day before. "The chop."
"You see, if a mermaid's hair has never been cut, it is forbidden for them to walk upon land."
"That sounds like something straight out of fairytale."
"Just try to ignore them Sweet, want anything else?"
I tried to take Shizune's advice but a seed of curiosity had already been planted.
"Almonds."
"Toasted?"
I nodded and she was off.
"Poke fun all you like but the gods certainly thought it was unfair to give sea devils magic and the ability to prey on humans in their own houses." I felt like I was in school again, listening to the mad ramblings of an over-zealous teacher. "Now, take into account that a devil can only feast on you in the ocean… With their long hair and magic they can draw you right into the sea. Without their magic however, they are allowed to climb on shore so they can drag their victims back with their own inviting hands."
The laughter had died down and there was a dangerous seriousness in the air. "Sounds like some sort of horror story." Kakashi's voice had calmed from its accusatory tone into one of mild penitence. Maybe it had something to do with the hand Iruka had settled on his thigh beneath the table, the one I could only see because of my angle from across the room.
Jiraiya's story seemed to go right along with what Tsunade had been telling me in her shop; something right out of the old legends.
Eating my almonds, I finally managed to block Jiraiya's voice out. Partially because I didn't really care about what else he had to say, though I think it was mostly the memory of two stark blue eyes keeping me distracted.
I never got the young man's name.
A sturdy hand clapped my back twice, knocking me from my reverie. I looked up to meet the not-so-blue gaze of Deidara, member of the Akatsuki and long time acquaintance of mine. "You're quiet, but then again, you're always quiet, yeah." His blonde hair was long and flat as it settled on his shoulders, half pulled up into a messy clip. "Mind if I take a seat?"
I nodded, welcoming the distraction from my previous… distraction. "Sasori! Hidan! Come here! Yeah." I wasn't surprised, Deidara was quite the social butterfly and hardly went anywhere without a surrounding group.
The two that followed his call were also in his fisherman society; the one with hair like dried blood and tired grey eyes was Sasori and although he looked young, everyone knew he was one of the older sailors. The other one was Hidan, his pale skin only beat out by his snow white hair, creating quite the demonizing image when one caught sight of his sharp red eyes.
No one knew if they were real or not but I'd never been compelled to ask.
Together the three of us drank, me my cider and them something much stronger.
"That Jiraiya sure is batshit crazy." Deidara chuckled, tapping purple nails on the bar.
"I can't say that I agree with you." The passive objection came from Sasori who was oddly talkative that day. "I've heard them before, I'm sure of it. Out by the coral reefs at night if you strain your ears, it's like they never stop singing." Hidan broke out into laughter, thanking Shizune for her instant refilling of his mug. "
Maybe you're just fucking hearing things."
Deidara rose his glass in a toast to the sewer-mouthed man.
"Maybe not, maybe someone just needs to catch one and string up for all to see."
The two laughed while Sasori and I just stared, silently agreeing that the louder the two got, the more foolish they seemed.
That moment was the living proof that no one should take a boisterous man by nature and feed him anything that may bend his inhibitions. "I don't fuckin' think anyone in their right Goddamn fuckin' mind would want to catch one of those. For fuck's sake, just shoot the bastards."
Wasn't his vocabulary utterly extensive?
"There are hunters you know, for the mermaids." Sasori had piped up, licking amber beads of ale from his lower lip, an action that seemed to floor the blonde a bit.
"As one would assume; Vampire hunters, Werewolf hunters, Witch hunters, why not mermaids yeah?"
Eyeing my empty glass, I realized that somehow I had been dropped right in the middle of one of those ludicrous conversations I had sworn to myself I'd never have.
"They make good money I hear but sometimes they say it's plain personal." Out of the group, Sasori was the one who harbored the most respect from me, so hearing him speak about it with complete nonchalance was probably the first thing that made me into a believer.
Yes, you read correctly. After this story closes, I am a very firm believer in the existence of mermaids.
Back to the bar, Deidara had his hands up in exasperation, shouting how Sasori had to be wrong because there were no mermaid trophies or the like. "They used to catch them, cut off all their hair, right to their ears." A hand went up to touch his own short, cropped locks. "Then they just toss 'em back. No harm no foul."
For a while he told us about how most mermaids stayed away from humans after being scorned so horribly, yet recently they'd grown hungry.
"Boating is dying off nowadays and it's far more difficult to snatch a meal off a cruise liner. They're probably getting desperate and coming to land, that's why the need for hunters reappeared so suddenly."
"Refills boys?" Shizune with her perky attitude had appeared, finally at peace now that the strident brigade from before had left.
"Aye miss, nice day for it."
She filled the three Akatsuki's glasses and offered me more cider. "No room; thanks anyway."
So that makes two people on this dock I wasn't discontent with; Shizune and Sasori.
I thought back to the blonde wrapped in my raincoat. Funny, when had I ever referred to it as my raincoat?
He hadn't been ultimately intolerable either.
But then there was someone whom I could say for a fact I had no preference for. They called him Kakuzu and after seeing the man for years at a distance, for the first time I had the pleasure of meeting him face to face when he showed up behind us as if from nowhere.
"I've had my own toss with one of those creatures."
Deidara shivered and shot the man a grimy look, Sasori tossing the blonde one that read 'behave' as if warning a child. Hidan seemed to be the only one excited at the man's appearance. "Greetings shit-head, isn't that how you got those scars of yours?" The platinum man cooed, taking a long swig of his ale.
"Ay, she was quite the bitch if I ever met one."
I rolled my eyes, I was sure he had.
"Had rich blue hair cut off crudely, big black demon eyes and claws that looked like something off a bad Halloween costume."
I didn't want him to sit but held no authority to tell him otherwise, so he joined us at the bar, Shizune rushing to serve him a drink. His skin was copper and his brown hair greasy from a day's work; I was under the impression that if I touched him, he would be sticky.
And that was neglecting to mention the hundreds of scars littering his arms.
"She had me in the water already, was a beautiful thing before she tried to eat me. Once we were in that water though, I saw her for what she really was and all the clawing and blood everywhere was no child's game. I thought for sure that my time had come."
"Shame it wasn't so yeah?"
A thump, I could only assume it was Sasori's foot striking out at the loudmouth's.
"Her mouth was open, jaw unhinging like nothing I'd ever seen so I did all I could do."
He let the silence thicken a bit before continuing.
"I grabbed it and yanked. One hand in her hair, the other ripping at her teeth, I don't even know how I managed it but I tore that jaw clean off." Staring at the size of the man's arms, I could see how he'd conjured the strength to do such a feat; they were only about as thick as my head.
"But she just wouldn't relent, screaming and bleeding she tried for five whole minutes to drag me down with her. Needless to say eventually she just scampered off to lick her wounds. I have her jaw mounted in my boat, all pretty with her lower lip just as red as the day I met her."
The four of us watched Kakuzu down his entire pint in one extended swig.
"You see the trouble with Mer-Folk, you can cut off their hair and they won't curse leprosy on your family, but they'll still try to eat you. You can rip off their lower jaw and they can't eat you, but they'll still try to drown you. You can fear them but you'll still follow them, you can hate them but they'll always manage to make you love them. Sometimes I wonder if you cut their tail clean off, would they just drag their upper bodies around the ocean floor?"
Something similar to laughter flooded from his dry throat, the idea probably invoking some morbidly comical image in his head. "I'm off then, have a night of fishing ahead so I best be on my way." With that he stood, leaving his lone mug to itself.
"Need a net boy?"
Kakuzu never bothered to answer yet Hidan was up and after him anyway, casting us a silent farewell.
"I call bullshit." Deidara snorted after the two had cleared the door. "If that man does have a jaw mounted on his boat it ain't no mermaid, probably just some poor woman who he swooned away, never to see what was coming. Yeah." Sasori gave a small smile, something that was few and far between.
"I wonder…" The redhead mused. "How will Hidan's jaw look mounted to a wall?"
And then there was laughter, bellows from the blonde, dry snickers from Sasori, and my own twitch of the lips.
When I finally left the pub hours past my initial intention, it was drizzling.
Holding a hand out to the subtle rain, I thought about how Temari would react to me 'losing' my jacket.
It wasn't as if I had any plans whatsoever to tell her about the naked boy in the net.
A/N: Second chapter, hope you are all enjoying!