Exomas - Day Four. Male shark-merman x reader (v. light nsfw/kiss) (Patreon)

Day Four is here! Hope you're enjoying these stories! Thanks to those of you who've left comments and likes on them - it really does make a world of difference to me. 

Anyway, here's 4.6k or so words of merman best friend. 

Content: shifter merman, absent mother, past maternal rejection, chronic pain symptoms brought on by not shifting for years on end, walking aids, mutual pining (!), fluff, nsfw, gender neutral readerWordcount: 4607

The very start of September wasn’t too late in the year for a garden party you supposed, and as you swung by your best friend’s house to pick him up, you wound down the window and inhaled the last heady breaths of summer. It felt like an ending of more than just the season somehow, though you couldn’t quite put your finger on the exact reason. Yes, your last year of university was bearing down on you with all the crushing weight of expectation and anxiety that naturally came along with that, but as you picked Miles up from his father’s house, seeing him standing awkwardly on the top step, the feeling intensified with a sharpness that almost stole your breath away. 

You’d been in love with Miles for almost as long as you’d known him, but he’d always seemed a bit distant somehow. You’d never known him express any kind of interest in anyone else - male or female - and so you’d always assumed he wouldn’t be interested in you either. With his pale, freckled skin and silvery, mousy hair that was almost grey in colour, his blue eyes that looked too big for his face sometimes, and his lips that always seemed to carry a thoughtful little pout when he wasn’t either chewing on them or cracking one of his rare but blinding smiles, he had an otherworldly look to him that you had always found utterly captivating. He was smart too, with a quiet, shy, and playful sense of humour. 

He’d been a science nerd in school, but he’d also played with you on the football team for a time, before his joints got bad and he’d had to stop. A month later, he’d started using a cane to help him walk. The only sport he hadn’t seemed to be any good at was swimming, which was a shame you’d thought, since swimming was supposed to be a good low-impact exercise. It wasn’t your place to push, but you had asked him about it once. 

“Allergic to the chlorine,” he’d told you. “So I… never learned to swim.”

“There are salt water pools and stuff though,” you said, but he was having none of it, eyes wide with fright at the mere thought of it. “Or not. Whatever…” you’d added lightly, trying to deflect. You’d never brought it up again, and he’d apparently never been swimming. 

As you killed the engine on that warm end-of-summer afternoon and hopped out onto the pavement, you yelled a greeting up at Miles. “Hey!” 

He smiled back at you, though his face looked shadowed and tense. When you saw the two crutches he leaned on instead of his cane, you knew it wasn’t a great day and tried not to let your happiness deflate. Couldn’t he just have one day without hurting?

You saw a figure move in the open doorway behind him, and waved a greeting at Miles’ father. He nodded at you and then leaned down to whisper something in Miles’ ear. He nodded and turned back to face him briefly, laying a reassuring hand on his father’s bare forearm, the crutch dangling momentarily by the cuff. Father and son looked nothing alike, except for their big blue eyes. Where Miles was skinny and coltish still, despite having celebrated his twentieth birthday not all that long ago, John was huge, broad-shouldered and powerful. His figure was befitting of a policeman, you supposed. You weren’t about to argue with him, that was for sure, even though you knew he was quick to laugh and slow to anger. Unless it concerned his son, in which case he was more than liable to turn into a raging, protective hulk, much to Miles’ chagrin. Not that that had happened in years. 

You supposed it was only natural for him to be protective of his son, given that it was just the two of them now. His mother had left when Miles had been seven, apparently with no explanation. Miles had been so devastated that he hadn’t spoken to anyone for nearly six months, but he’d surprised you by reaching out for your arm one day as you’d sat on the back step of his house and had spoken your name very softly. He’d clung to you, you’d held him, and that had been how his father had found you an hour later. Miles had started to recover after that, but you’d never forget the way he’d spoken your name. 

Miles made his way up to you and offered you a toothy grin. He hugged you briefly, slapping his hand on your back and catching your calf with the tip of his crutch, before pulling back. 

“Good to go?” you asked. 

He nodded before going round to the passenger side, settling into his seat and resting his crutches against the door. “Yup. I can’t believe you’re dragging me to this…”

As you clambered back into your battered old 4x4 you tossed him a grin and slammed the door behind you. “It’s tradition!” you chuckled. 

“Not for me… I’ve never been to any of Clara’s legendary house parties before…”

“I’m really glad you’re coming this year,” you admitted. 

He snorted a laugh and rested his head against the rest behind him. “You’re just saying that because your ex is probably going to be there this time and you need moral support.”

“You wound me.”

“I speak only the truth,” he grinned back at you. 

“I hate you.”

“I hate you more,” Miles laughed at your age-old bickering. God, it was always so easy to be around him. 

You’d gone to the same school, and then the same university - mostly by chance, though you were doing different courses - and you both came home to stay with your parents for the vacations. While Clara had held her ‘end of summer’ parties all the while you’d been in school (and apparently still held them for her local friends), Miles had never been explicitly invited. Too nerdy, to shy, too awkward, he’d decided it was better if he didn’t show up, though Clara would hardly have minded. You had been a few times, which was why you knew they were pretty chilled out affairs, and why you’d encouraged him to come along. You reassured him again as you drove, but as you neared the house, out of the corner of your eye, you caught him shuffling slightly and wincing. 

“You good?” you asked hesitantly, not wanting to make a big deal out of it, but still wanting to check on your friend. You’d been there with him on days where he could hardly move from the couch, his joints aflame, his muscles stiff and excruciating. Sometimes, but only on days like that, his father would scowl and insist on carrying him upstairs to take a bath to help ease out the pain. Miles never once complained, but you could see how uncomfortable he was with showing when things got difficult. 

Winded and a little pale, he nodded. 

“Shut me up if I’m pushing my luck,” you said as you turned onto Clara’s street, “But you promise me you’ll tell me if you want to leave?”

He managed a weak half-smile and nodded. “Thanks.”

Clara’s house - technically her parents’ - was one of the huge new ones on the development at the edge of town. Each one had a huge garden at the back, and most had a lawn at the front too. There were cars parked all along the road, but you pulled into a space not too far from her house. You slid out and closed the door behind you, waiting for Miles to come round from the passenger side and join you. Music sounded from the back garden, along with the clatter of plates and glasses and the chatter of people having a good time. 

The front door was open, and you stepped in first, followed by Miles, and were almost immediately set upon by people you’d not seen since last year’s bash. Katie flung herself at you, clearly drunk already, and you peeled her gently off you with a mumbled platitude and handed her over to her girlfriend who shook her head exasperatedly at you and grinned. Clara joined you a few minutes later and hugged you both warmly. 

“Miles!” she smiled, “I haven’t seen you since school! What are you up to now?”

“Final year of uni,” he shrugged. 

“Doing what?”

“Chemical engineering…”

“Awesome,” she smiled, starting to lead you through the house, towards the kitchen and the back door. “You always were the smartest in our year. Come through and grab a drink. I hope you brought your swimming stuff…” she added to both of you as she tugged you out into the back garden. “My dad just had the new salt water pool added. It’s so good, especially on a day like - Miles? Are you ok?”

Miles had ground to a halt, his crutch-tips rammed into the paving slab beneath him like a chock under an aeroplane wheel. His blue eyes stared wide and horrified at the beautiful swimming pool not five yards away from the end of the patio where people were drinking and enjoying the barbecue. Beyond, people splashed and shrieked in the water, tossing a blow-up ball around and yanking each other off inflatable lilos.

“I’ve got it,” you said curtly to Clara, turning back to Miles and standing in his direct view of the pool. 

You’d had a panic attack or two in your time at school and in your first year of university, and he’d helped you through them, but you’d never seen Miles suffer from one. His face had drained of blood and he was shaking violently all over. “I need to leave,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Now.”

“Ok.”

“Help me,” he added and you nearly froze. He very rarely asked for help. 

“Ok,” you said again, turning him gently with a touch to his shoulder. 

The step up into the house again almost proved too much for him, his arms shaking and his back spasming so hard that his legs clenched. “Shit,” he cursed, taking a steadying breath. It didn't seem to help much, but he got up and into the house. Mercifully people just moved out of the way as the two of you steamed through the gathering without much regard for the safety of their drinks or their dignity. Getting Miles out of there was the priority. 

“Home,” he wheezed as he almost fell out of the front door. “Take me home. My dad… I need… my dad…”

“Ok,” you repeated, almost like a prayer now. You’d never seen him like this, and he’d never sounded so… frightened. 

People stared as you left, but you ignored them, unlocking the car and opening his door for him while he dragged his feet along the pavement in uncertain swings on his crutches. 

His breathing was ragged too, you noted as you clambered in after him. Once you’d started the engine, he tipped his head back, clamping both hands to his neck when he had freed his arms of his crutches while you drove like a maniac back to his father’s. 

“It’s going to be ok,” you said, though you weren’t even sure he could hear you now. He couldn’t draw in quite enough breath. You contemplated driving him to the hospital, but you figured you were closer to his father’s.

In five minutes, you were bolting up the garden path and bashing on the door. His father appeared a moment or two later, took one look at your terrified, slightly sweaty face, and raced up the path to your car. He nearly ripped the door off and just picked Miles up carrying him past you without a word. 

He took him straight upstairs, and you weren't sure if you should follow or not. Lingering downstairs, pacing, you heard water running, and then his father darted downstairs again. “Is he -?” you asked but he didn’t seem to hear you. John went straight to a cupboard in the utility room, dragged out a big, plastic bag of what claimed to be ‘sea salt’ on the label, and then disappeared again without a word. 

Then it all went quiet. 

Frightened, heart hammering in your ears, you finally went upstairs. 

The bathroom door was open ajar and you peeked around it. What you saw made you question your sanity for a moment. 

Lying in the large, white bath tub, his head underwater, his arms and upper body too, was someone you recognised even through the churning, slightly cloudy water, as Miles. What you didn't recognise was the enormous shark’s tale that draped out of the other end of the bath. The underside of his tail, visible because Miles was on his back, was a light greyish-white, while the upper side of it was a greyish-brown with dark brown spots like a dogfish, just barely visible. 

“Miles?” you breathed and his father lurched in surprise, as if he’d forgotten all about you.

He sighed heavily and asked you to come inside. Suddenly he looked very tired. 

“What… What’s going on?” you asked, stunned. “What’s happened to him?”

“Nothing,” his father murmured. “I mean…”

“Nothing? He’s got a shark’s tail!” you blurted. “I’m fairly sure that’s not nothing…”

“He’s… Oh heck, where do I begin?” he said. 

At that moment, Miles surfaced from the water and you saw three thick slits on his neck working. Gills. He had gills. He blinked slowly at you and then turned away, his pale, freckled cheeks flushing. “So… uh…” he said awkwardly. “Surprise?”

“You’re a merman?” you asked without thinking. 

“Yeah?” he said, turning back towards you with an unreadably complex expression on his beautiful face. 

“How could you not tell me?” you said as you stepped a bit further into the bathroom. 

“Careful,” his father warned as you nearly slipped on the wet tiles, though the warning clearly wasn’t for that. He made no move to back away from the tub, as if you might represent a threat somehow. 

“I mean,” you went on, staring openly at the sandy-grey tail. “That’s so cool!” 

Miles blinked. “What?”

“You can turn into a shark!”

“Not quite…” Miles said with a weak smile. “Wait… You’re… You’re not angry?”

“Angry? No,” you said, a little more gently, still very aware of just how much you were staring. “Shocked, yes. Surprised, definitely. Can I touch it?”  you asked, fingertips hovering near his tail. 

Miles nodded and gasped softly as your fingers touched the rough skin. 

When you looked back at him, his eyes seemed to have darkened to an almost sapphire blue. “What happened?” you asked hoarsely, letting go of him and crossing your arms across your torso, just for something to do with them. “One minute you were fine, and then…” your eyes landed on the bag of sea salt abandoned by the edge of the tub, crystalline grains spilled the floor around it. “Salt…” 

“Yeah. The smell of the salt in the pool almost forced the change in me. It’s been years since I shifted last.”

“Too long,” his father interjected roughly. It was clearly a very sensitive subject between the two of them. 

“How… How long is too long?” you asked, eyes darting from Miles to his father. “Wait, are you… you know… a merman too?” you asked and his father nodded. “Awesome,” you hissed under your breath. “I bet you’re, what, a tiger shark or something?”

His eyes narrowed dangerously, but Miles flicked him with water. “He’d like to think he is. And he’s also leaving now.”

His father stood slowly and left with obvious reluctance. 

“You’re really not freaked out?” Miles asked, looking shyly up at you through his lashes. Water beaded like diamonds along them and your stomach swooped unexpectedly. 

You shook your head. “Maybe it’ll catch up with me in a bit,” you said, laughing softly. “Is… Is this why you’ve had trouble, you know…?” you waved ineloquently towards your legs, feeling really stupid. 

Miles nodded. “Yeah. The longer a shifter goes without actually shifting, the more their human body starts to suffer.”

“Why didn't you? I mean, I know we don’t live close to the coast or anything, but…”

He looked away and his tail flopped. God, it was so beautiful. He looked right - healthy - for the first time in years, though he was still tired, and you realised that the ashen pallor was gone from his cheeks, even if he was weak from the shock of forcibly shifting like that. He worried his lower lip with teeth that looked a little sharper than you remembered and finally said, “My mum left us because I turned out to be a shifter too…”

Horror swooped in your stomach, giving you an ugly gut punch, “What?” 

He shrugged. “There was a good chance that dad wouldn’t pass on his shifter genes to me, but when I popped my tail for the first time, not long after I turned seven, she knew.”

“I take it she wasn’t a shifter?” you asked, trying the word out on your tongue for the first time. 

His wavy hair glimmered softly, dripping into his eyes as he shook his head. “She knew about dad before she married him, but she said she didn’t want some freak of a child.”

“Miles, that’s… that’s awful…” you said, reaching for his hand as it sat on the edge of the tub. 

He jerked as you touched him, but laughed it off and gripped your hand in return. “I’m so glad you know now,” he said, with tears in his eyes. 

“We should go to the beach some time,” you suggested. “We could even go from uni - it’s not that far. We can pick a bit of coast that’s secluded…” 

His eyes had sailed wide again and he stared up at you. 

“What?”

“You mean that?”

“Of course! I want to see how you move!” you laughed, touching his tail again and eliciting a deep, guttural moan. “That too much?” you asked hesitatingly. 

With a long, heartfelt sigh, Miles looked at you, his head rolling lazily on the rim of the bathtub. He swallowed thickly, his throat bobbing visibly. “No,” he whispered, and suddenly everything changed. 

You leaned forwards and slid your fingers under his chin. At the gesture, his lips parted and he began to breathe rapidly, pupils blown wide, cheeks flushing. “Can I kiss you?”

“Please… I’ve wanted that for so long,” he said and grabbed your face in his hands, pulling you down to kiss you. 

Breathless, he drew back and stared at you, laughter dancing in his eyes. Mesmerised, you breathed, “Just when I thought you couldn’t get any more beautiful, you have to go and be a fucking merman too?”

A slow, creeping blush swept up his face from his freckled collarbones until the tips of his ears had flushed pink too and he started to laugh. “I can’t believe I never told you sooner…”

It was only a few days until you were able to go to the beach with him. The coast was about an hour’s drive from the house, and on the way, he told you everything he’d never felt able to discuss before. His mother had been ok with his father being a shifter so long as he didn’t actually shift in front of her, which bothered you a lot, but he seemed to have come to peace with it and moved on, so you tried not to linger on it. His father had decided not to come along this time, and when you finally asked why Miles had gone so long without shifting, he sighed. 

He was sitting in the car in his human form, a single walking cane resting against his thigh, and he ran his palms down his slim quads a couple of times before answering. “It’s stupid…” he began, but then shook his head. “I mean… I think… I think it’s what she said when she left. She thought I was disgusting… like some kind of animal… I thought that if I could stay human then… then maybe she’d come back. That maybe it wouldn’t be my fault that she left…”

The depth of his emotion struck you deeply. You were almost at the turn-off for the beach road, but after checking that no one was behind you, you pulled your 4x4 over to the curb and cut the engine. “Miles, you’re… I know you don’t need me to tell you this, but the fact that she left was all on her. It was her inability to accept what you are, and it wasn’t your fault.”

He smiled softly, sadly, and said, “Objectively, I know that, but… I can’t help what I feel.” Again, he rubbed his legs, shuddered, and added, “I can smell the salt water. Can we hurry up?”

“Sure.”

Before you started the car again though, he reached across and took your hand in his, lacing your fingers together. “Thank you.”

The two of you walked down the sand together, and as you neared the water, Miles began to tremble with the anticipation of shifting in the sea… finally. You realised with a jolt that it would probably be the first time he’d ever been in the sea, and in that form. That he’d chosen to share the experience with you, and not a fellow shifter like his father, struck you more deeply than you could articulate. 

“Hold my hand?” he asked. The expression on his face was complicated - part reluctance and part longing - and you let him take his time once you reached the tideline. He undressed by the rocks of the edge of the secluded cove, and when he was in just his boxer briefs, he walked alone into the water. You watched him go, following perhaps a metre or so behind. You’d seen him changing at school before, but somehow now he seemed truly naked, with his freckled back exposed, his shoulders set, and his gangly limbs bare as he waded into the waves. 

Miles knelt down in the chilly water until it sloshed around his shoulders, and then took off his boxers. He looked back at you once, and then grinned. You didn’t have time to react before he’d flung them at you and they caught you full in the face with a solid, wet slap. His wild bark of laughter from behind the sodden fabric was totally worth the indignity of having his boxers wrapped around your face. 

You tossed them aside onto the towels that you’d spread on the sand, and a second later, he rolled onto his front in the shallows and shivered. His legs fused rapidly, and that sandy-grey colouring spread over them as his tail formed. Gasping, he shimmied further into the water and stuck his head under. A moment after that, he surfaced, silvery brown hair plastered to his head, smiling broadly. “Come on!” he yelled at you. “Come and join me!”

The water was freezing against your ankles and you couldn’t quite bring yourself to go all the way in. In the end, you sat on the rocks and watched him darting about, barrel-rolling in the water, diving deep and not coming up for minutes at a time before finally swimming back over to you and grabbing your ankles with his cold hands. They were the familiar hands of your best friend, and as he thumbed a circle around your ankle joint, you smiled down at him. 

“What?” he asked. 

“I’ve never seen you this happy,” you said. 

“You know,” he grinned. “This is kind of all your fault?”

“My fault?”

“Mmm hmm,” he chuckled, shifting his grip to your calves and half hauling himself out of the water a little way. He hugged your legs as he dangled there so casually, and the openness of the gesture left you breathless. “If you hadn’t dragged me to Clara’s house party, I never would have felt the call to shift so strongly. I thought I could resist, but with the sheer volume of salt water in her pool… it was too much. So… it’s all your fault.”

“I’m… glad?” you faltered and to your immense relief he laughed again. “So does this mean you’ll be shifting more regularly?”

He shrugged. “Being in chlorinated or treated water is kind of revolting - it’d be like… I don’t know… swimming in oil for you or something…? But now that you know… maybe we can come to the beach more often?”

You reached forwards and pried his fingers off your legs where they gripped you like the arms of a starfish. You held his hands in yours, holding him up in the water and drawing him up a little higher, and nodded. “I’d love that.” 

He reared up with a powerful swipe of his tail and kissed you. He clung to your shoulders, holding himself out of the water to the waist, and kissed you so deeply that you saw stars. Eventually you had to pull back, breathless, and Miles grinned cheekily at you. It was a look that had always, always meant impending trouble. “Gills are useful for something else too,” he chuckled, and then he yanked you off the rock and into the cold water. 

You were not proud of the squawk you made, nor of the way you floundered and then clung to him, but he kissed you under the water, blowing fresh air into your mouth until you surfaced naturally, bobbing in the current like two bits of flotsam tangled together. “I’ve always dreamed about doing that with you,” he smiled. 

Your legs closed around his hips, careful to avoid his adorable pectoral fins, and as the chilly air hit you in the face and you shivered more violently, you raked his hair back from his face. “I hate you so much for that,” you laughed. “I’m so getting you a Little Mermaid cake for your birthday this year.”

The true, open delight in his face at that made you want to kiss him again. He hugged you close and whispered again, “I’m so glad you know. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to share this with you. It… It only got worse as we got older…”

“You might regret telling me when your room is full of Little Mermaid merch,” you snickered and kissed his cheek playfully. “But seriously though, I’m… I’m honoured that you trusted me with it. Even if I kind of forced the issue…”

He dunked you once and then hauled you up and shoved you back towards the beach. “Go and warm up,” he said fondly. “I’ll join you in a bit, but I want to swim for a while longer. Is that ok?”

“Of course. Take as long as you want.”

When he finally staggered out of the waves on two legs, completely naked, you tried not to stare at him. Unabashedly, he came to lie beside you on the towel in the warm, end of summer sunshine, and he starfished his limbs a bit to help them dry off, bringing the backs of your hands together. Rolling his head to one side, he looked at you and smiled softly. Finally, he pressed a little kiss to your bare shoulder and turned his face back to stare at the blue sky above. 

___

Hope you enjoyed this one! Don't forget to check out the Patreon Masterlist, in case you missed anything from before. All the xmas/Exomas stories will be going up in a separate list on the masterlist, so you should be able to find them easily enough if you want to go back later. Merry Christmas! x