For @pumpkin-spidey who requested sailor!Wade and mermaid!Peter
…. This is not as light hearted as you might have been hoping for, I prefer my mermaids scary lol This gets a little dark but the happily ever after is there AND I HAD THE MOST FUN WRITING IT OMG
THERE’S MORE SPIDEYPOOL ON MY MASTERLIST
(I wrote this at midnight, forgive any spell check errors, I’ll fix them in the morning lol)
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The man drinking at the back of the waterside bar was a man that no one messed with.
He sat slumped in the same table night after night, the same ragged Captain’s hat pulled low over his eyes, drinking a bottle of the same piss-poor ale, staring at the same spot on the same dirty wall, and never saying a word.
Almost a year now he had been coming to this bar, almost a year since he had snapped his bonds and stolen a long boat from a British prison ship, somehow getting himself to shore. No one knew what he had been imprisoned for, no one knew why the Navy had ever come looking for him, and more than that, no one knew why he was so scarred.
Some sailors said it was because his last ship, The Mercenary, had burned around him and the Captain had refused to jump away from it. Others said the scars were from his time served on the prison ship. The more superstitious sailors decided that they weren’t so much scars as it were brands from a dark spirit, the beings of the deep punishing the Captain for some horrible deed.
“Perhaps he fought a Kraken.” one whispered.
“Tangled with a selkie.” another suggested.
“Mermaids.” One old timer cut in. “He pissed of a mermaid, probably promised love and then left her. Vicious folk, those mermaids. If one curses you, only one can save you, but no mermaid will come close to a cursed man.”
The rumours swirled, the stories grew wilder and wilder, and every night the Captain drank until the bottle was empty and then stumbled his way down the pier to his little shack near the water and no one knew why.
Wade was well aware of the rumours and whispered and general layer of distrust that followed him everywhere he went, and he didn’t give a flying fornication about it.
They could talk all they wanted, as long as they left him alone. They could whisper and imagine as long as they didn’t get into his business. They could send him dirty looks and judge him for his habits as long as they didn’t mess with his ale.
Wade just wanted to drink, and sleep, and listen to the ocean.
It wasn’t as if he would ever sail again anyway.
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Of Mermaids and Men (Spideypool)
Published
themusechronicles 