#mermadej

They travelled there a few days earlier, mainly because they wanted to shoot at another location too. Unfortunately, something went wrong which meant they couldn’t go ghost hunting anymore. Which was a bummer, because they had to find a spare location now, which meant that the next season was going to come out later that they planned, or worst case would have fewer episodes, but that most likely won’t be the case. Since they could not really search for a new hunted place just now, they cleared things out and decided to use this newly earned free time to look around the city. It felt like a short vacation, or having an extra day off, except they still had to do some work. Nevertheless, they had fun, and putting the lost location aside, it was a nice trip.

  On the evening before they would start filming, Ryan and Shane decided to take a first look on what’s about to come. “Just warning those ghosts so they won’t mess with us”, Ryan joked when they stood on the piers, looking at the supposedly hunted ship. Of course, Shane being himself, had to take this a bit further. He kneed down at one end (“Who knows, maybe it’s the water that’s haunted by funny sea demons”), stuck his hand in the water and waved it wildly around while making weird requests or insulting whatever was supposed to be there. Nothing happened, as usual, until Shane was about to put his hand back. With no warning whatsoever, he fell over and was gone. “Shane!”, Ryan gasped while kneeing at the exact same spot his friend has been a second ago, searching for him, without success. The moment Ryan turned around to get help, it was like a force pulled him back, dragging him right into the water, leaving him no chance to react. And this wasn’t even the most shocking thing, as Ryan found out when he turned around and saw Shane.

He stared at Ryan with a startled expression, and it took Ryan everything to not start screaming.

Shane was… What?! What the fuck?! No, no, no, no, no. This couldn’t be true. That wasn’t happening. That… no! Whatever this was, it freaked him out.

Shane? A… Merman? Hell fucking no.

Since he ran out of air, and this mysterious force seemed to let go of him again, Ryan quickly swam to the surface and took a deep breath. He didn’t have much time to breathe in more, because this time it was Shane who pulled him underwater, hold him tight, his hand pressed on his mouth while his thumb and index finger held his nose, and he swam away. Ryan tried to fight, but couldn’t really do anything, and his mind was racing. This… was real. This was real. This was real and happening. This was- if he could, he would have chuckled out of disbelief, because there was no way to describe what was going on inside of him.

Eventually, Ryan could feel that he was running out of air and started wiggling to make Shane aware of this. At least Shane seemed to understand him, because he escorted him to the surface and then let go of him.

While he was catching his breath, Ryan looked around and saw… not much. The open water, yes, and the shore and that was it. Before he could get pulled underwater one more time, Ryan swam towards the bank and sat on the stony ground once he was completely out of the water. Then he stared at the point where he assumed Shane to be and waited until he got out of the water. It didn’t take long until Shane appeared at the shore and pulled himself out of the water. Ryan would have helped him, but he was so paralyzed by Shane’s appearance that he couldn’t move, even if he wanted. He followed all of Shane’s moves, until he leaned at a conveniently placed rock and tried to regain energy. Since Shane sat right in front of Ryan, with his side facing him, he had a perfect look at him, although the slowly setting sun made it a bit more difficult to make out all the details. But it was enough to see the fins, the gills, the scales and the tail. Evidently, Shane was a mermaid. Man. Merman. Mer…-

Now Ryan started laughing while shaking his head, which got Shane’s attention, who just looked at him with an abashed expression.

“You’re… you’re a merman!”

Ryan could read in his face that Shane wanted to say something, but the words didn’t want to come out.

“I-I-I can’t believe… you’re… this… What the fuck, Shane?! How can you keep such a big secret? Did you ever plan on telling me that apparently fucking Merpeople exist? And that you’re one of them? You can’t just…”, Ryan took a brief pause, trying to think about what to say, but there was too much going on inside his head to find a clear thought. “What the hell?”

“Hey, Ryan, calm down, ok-“

“How do you expect me to calm down when you’re-“

“A merman, yes, that’s right. Which is also the reason I didn’t tell anyone. You don’t just run around telling people this. And if it wasn’t for… whatever pulled me down, you would have never found out.”

Ryan didn’t respond to this, but instead inspected Shane’s body again. “You’re… this is real.”

Shane nodded. Then, after Ryan wouldn’t stop looking over him: “You can stop staring now, I won’t turn human again until I’m completely dry.”

“How... How does that work?”

Shane shrugged. “I dunno. It's not like there is actually someone who can explain this.”

“But... Why? I've seen you swim before, and you didn’t turn into a Merman back then! Did this just happen… a-a few months ago or what?”

“No, no, it's.. Complicated, I guess. Like I said. I don't know how this works. I just know that I turn into... this, when I'm in freshwater. The higher the concentration or whatever you want to call it, the faster I transform. It has been like this since I could remember.”

“And... how exactly does it work?”

“What do you mean?”

“When you're in freshwater, do you feel that you're about to change? Or does it suddenly happen? And what exactly happens?”

Shane did not really want to talk about all of this, mainly because he couldn’t answer most questions, but it was a good thing to do while waiting until he turned back normal again.

“I.. Kinda? It feels weird. My whole body just... aches, and I can feel everything growing. The weirdest thing is the fin, though.” To underline this, he lifted his fin a bit. “It's like it starts growing at my hip and travels down my legs. Like some sort of second skin lies on top of my legs.”

“That sounds disgusting.”

“Oh, it is.”

They laughed, which was a welcome shift of the mood.

“Can I...?” Ryan started asking, and instead of finishing the sentence, he lifted his hand and moved it towards Shane.

“Sure. Be careful on my fins though, they're really sensitive.”

“Didn’t plan on touching those anyway.”

At first, Ryan poked at the fin to get a first feeling. Then he laid his whole hand down and after a second, started stroking downwards. “Dude, you're really part fish...”

“I would have told you if I could. But I really don’t want anyone to find out about this.”

While Shane was talking, Ryan stood up and sat down in front of him again, to closely inspect the fluke at the end of his fin. “It’s okay, after all this is a big thing. I guess I wouldn’t have told you either.”

Then he looked at Shane with one eyebrow raised. “Wait, how come you don’t believe in ghosts when you’re a freaking Merman?”

He chuckled. “Because I can obviously proof that I’m real while you can’t proof shit.”

Ryan clearly wanted to look angry, but he also couldn’t stop smiling, so instead of making a witty remark, he gently pinched the bottom of Shane’s fin, who winced in return but laughed afterwards. They sat there for a while, talking about this and that, when suddenly Shane interrupted their fun. “Uh oh, there it goes.”

Before Ryan could ask what Shane meant by that, he could see him contorting his face with pain as his body started changing a few moments later. It happened all at once, the fins started growing back, it looked like his gills just… closed, his scales disappeared into his skin and the fin grew back too. It did look painful, but only lasted a few seconds, and after he detransformed (if you could call it that) Shane looked comfortable again. “Wow, always feels good to have legs again.”

“I think that explains why your legs are so long, after all they need to turn into a whole fin!”

They both laughed more about the joke that it deserved, but part of it was just relief. Relief that this was weird but wouldn’t change their relationship gravely.

“Alright, let’s walk back home, I’m sure the others are already waiting. And no word to no one!”

“You know me, I wouldn’t tell a soul!”

Shane winked at him. “Not sure if I can trust you with that.”