Archive of Our Own ^beta

Maria never planned for this to be her job. When she was a young child, she’d thought maybe she’d go through school and become something her father would be proud of. And then she wanted to do good. She wanted to be something she could be proud of, someone that protected people. She’d known that from the moment she learnt what the anger of someone with far more power than herself felt like, blooming hot and mottled under her skin. The one person who was supposed to protect her, doing just the opposite.

She hadn’t exactly thought about it, when she first made the choice to leave. It was enough at the time to focus on simply getting away, and she’d take anywhere that would take her in return. A small seaside town, about as far away as she could get at such a young age without leaving the country. Her father would hate it, and that only made it perfect.

She’d been eighteen, two months fresh, and the summer was hotter than she could remember it ever being. The market was busy, but she’d learned how to blend into a crowd long ago and the trays of ice by the fish stalls were cool enough to fight off the weight of the heat. It wasn’t like she had anywhere else to go, really. The smell was bearable. 

She’d taken a fistful of it, crunching between her fingers but blissfully cold. She can still remember the bite of it, before her palms had calloused over like they are now. 

“That ice is for the fish,” a man had said sternly, and she’d nearly jumped out of her skin for the way he sounded like her father. In tone alone, she knows now, and rarely even that.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t–”

She’d gaped at him, much like the fish in front of her, and he’d chuckled. A subdued sound but something genuine and warm, and suddenly he was nothing like her father. Tall and sturdy, and probably missing an eye under that patch, but nothing at all like what she’d left all those miles away. 

“You’re not from ‘round here, hm?” 

“No, sir. I’m trying to be, though.”

“That right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, you’d better get to work then, soldier.” 

She’d come to know the man as Fury, and he’d given her a job and a roof over her head, if not much in the way of conversation. Fifteen years, almost to the day now, and she’s still out here on the water every day with him. In a way, she supposes, her younger self would be proud. She supports the village with the yield she helps bring in everyday, and whilst Fury gave her the headstart she needed, he’d never handed anything to her on a silver platter. She’s made a proper life for herself. She does good. 

She likes it, she thinks, and then thinks that like is far too small of a word. The men are loud and combative at times, and they’d all taken their own time to adjust to having her around, but she’s practically running the ship now, a natural at it by some desperate act of fate. Ship might be a bit generous for the trawler they use, but it keeps them afloat and she’s proud to keep it in the order it’s in. She keeps her looking nice, and she keeps the crew working smoothly.

Today is an especially fine day, and she leans over the guardrail to stare out over the open water. This far out, she can almost imagine that this is all there is, no shores in sight for a long while yet. There’s still another twenty minutes or so until they’ll pull the nets up, and she takes the moment to watch the waves cut behind them, the salt sharp across her face in the wind and the sun low slung on the horizon. Sometimes, if she’s lucky, she can catch a glimpse of something under the surface, following behind them. 

Once she’s decided they’ve been down there long enough, she makes her way sternward to help the crew with the nets. The waters have been quiet this summer, the late heat of the year bringing with it lower numbers than they’ve seen in a while. Lower numbers of some things it seems. Even this far out, there are at least two dozen or more seagulls floating around. 

She keeps an eye on them as they haul the net up, a few fish lost here and there. It’s unavoidable, really, and she can’t even truly bring herself to mind these days. They probably need it more than they do. She’s surprised they haven’t seen an uprise in other pests too, dolphins one of their occasional friends. There’s one other disturbance, almost hidden from the boat, and she’s sure she catches something silvery under the surface. 

She nudges Coulson next to her. “There it is again.” She nods out to the ripples it leaves, too big to be another fish. “I swear it’s there every other day.” 

He shrugs, peering out over the water. “It’s probably a sturgeon or something.”

“It’s late in the season for sturgeon.”

He shrugs again, a clap to her shoulder as he moves to help the others sort through the haul. “The seasons have been late this year.”

It’s a struggle to drag her eyes from the gentle waves, oddly calm for the weather, but her feet move almost on instinct, and she sinks her mind into the tasks of the day instead of cold, dragging depths. She thinks she could lose herself in them sometimes, like an anchor in her heart, something in her reaching out for the cool press of the surface. Down, down, down. 

“Y’ever think about mermaids?” one of the crew asks, dragging her back into the world of people.

“”I don’t think they’d be all that fun,” another one replies. “I prefer my women more than half human.”

They laugh, loud and raucous as always, and Maria shakes her head as subtly as possible. Still, she can’t fight the begrudging smile off of her face as she throws a runt overboard.

She’s taken over Fury’s duty for the day, reclined in the same old uncomfortable seat behind the register in their little shop. It’s much warmer by the coast, and she considers whether a sweater was really the right choice this far into the year. She takes a handful of ice from one corner of the display, melting itself a little pool in her palm almost instantly, and she watches her fingertips pinken slightly, the bite of it settling in until she can remember her first day here so clearly it almost hurts. She puts the ice back, wiping her palm on her pants. 

The day is fairly quiet, few people stopping by to chat despite the sun. If it was any other time, she might not have noticed the woman with such bright hair, simply blurring out into the background like she must have done so many times for Maria not to notice her before. The town is still small, and they still don’t get many newcomers. 

She watches her eyes catch on the display in front of her, her interest thinly veiled as her pace refuses to falter. 

“Haven’t seen you around here before,” she calls across the street with a casual tilt of her chin.

The venom in her look is almost palpable before she turns to face her properly, her expression situated into something vaguely presentable. How curious. 

“Not many people do,” she says curtly, and now she can’t pretend that she isn’t looking at the display. There’s a cod at the front that had weighed in at about nine pounds. It could probably feed a family for a couple days around here. 

Maria gives her best customer service grin. “Not one for socialising then.”

The woman doesn’t raise her eyes from the fish. “You could say that.” 

She strikes Maria in some peculiar way that she can’t quite seem to shake. “You can have that one for thirteen. It’ll feed your whole family twice over if you know what to do with it.” And maybe she’s fishing in more ways than one. 

Natasha had gotten pretty good at avoiding the attention of strangers over the years – and that’s all anyone is to her, right? That’s how it should be with these people. She’s not sure why this woman seems to be different from the others, why she’s trying to see her. It unnerves her more than she’d like to admit. 

She still refuses to meet her eyes. “I don’t trade with sailors.” It’s not like she’s got any money, anyway. 

The strange woman only smiles further and Natasha really thinks she doesn’t understand people. She reclines further in her chair. Somehow, Natasha doesn’t feel any less threatened. 

“Suit yourself.” She shrugs. 

Natasha eyes her somewhat suspiciously, one last glance to the fish in front of her. She catches the smirk alight on the fishmonger’s face and she flares at the sight of it. What humanity, to sneer at those you take from. Though, she supposes this woman has no way of knowing what she is.

She slips away without another word – little crowd to disappear into but melting away nonetheless. 

“Have a good evening,” she hears behind her. She can imagine the look on her face. 

The sun set a few hours ago now, and Maria has managed to get somewhat of a cat nap in before she’s layering up again. The days might be hot, but the nights are still cold out on open water. She makes her coffee sweeter than usual, tucking her thermos away in her bag. 

Normally, she’d take a couple men with her. She knows she should take someone with her, for safety’s sake, no matter where on the water, but it’s been a tough week and they deserve a rest. They start earlier in the summer, rising with the sun, and she knows she wishes she could sleep through the night herself. Alas, there is bait to be caught, and the shrimp are always more lively at night. 

The ship is only small, and she knows it as an extension of herself. She’ll be fine. It isn’t the first time. Of course, the first time had gotten her a bollocking from Fury in the most fatherly display she’s seen of him over the years. Most of the time they’re more of a married couple, according to the rest of the crew and the way they bicker. Now that she’s got a house of her own, he’s got no way of knowing until it’s too late, and she intends to make full use of the fact. 

It’s peaceful at night, the faint lights of the shore fading further and further like distant supernovas, blending seamlessly with the stars at the horizon. She can almost pretend that she’s the only thing in existence this far out, without the ruckus of the crew and the glint of the sun. It’s just her and her boat, and whatever she can make of herself. Even the moon is small tonight, tucking itself away politely in its shadow. 

The shrimp lures are small enough to set reasonably easily herself. She still takes a long moment to catch her breath back over the railing, her cheeks warm despite the bite in the air. Something moves a little ways away, shifting and silver, and she leans a little further over. She’s sure it knows her – must recognise the hum of the motor. She just wants to know what it is, and it’s closer to the hull now. Maybe if she leans just a little further…

And this is exactly why Fury tells her off for this. She hauls herself back upright. It doesn’t matter what it is in the water, as long as it isn’t breaking the nets. She’ll leave them down for another hour or so. The wheelhouse seems a safer space to wait tonight, and she brushes away superstitions of sirens and mermaids, tall tales the rest of the crew spin to waste their own time. 

An hour drifts past in the blink of an eye when there’s nothing to mark the time, her thoughts swept away from her on the vast horizon. She’s still cradling the long empty cap to her thermos when the timer goes off on her phone, deafening in the silence. A sea bird flies off somewhere, the shadow of it barely illuminated by the gentle glow of the ship. 

There’s an odd sort of sound as she makes her way back to the deck. Something halfway between a snort and a grunt, almost human in the dark. She won’t deny the way her pulse ticks up in her chest, some childish part of her almost expecting to hear singing start up. There’s nothing out here but her. But that means there’s no one to sail her back, either. 

She can’t see anything over the side when she looks, the night far too thick to let anything through, and the ocean may as well be ink for the visibility it provides, the ropes consumed before they even reach the surface. It won’t do to worry about something she can’t even see, and she can’t go home if she doesn’t pull the nets up, so she gets to work anyway, overactive imagination tucked to the side. There’s any number of things that make weird noises on this boat. The darkness has a way of changing things. 

The nets are heavier than they should be when she hauls them. She wonders briefly if they’ve caught on something on the bed but the boat is still drifting and something cold settles itself in her stomach, curling behind her ribs. She thinks maybe she should have brought someone along after all. Maybe her hands would tremble less if she had Coulson to make fun of her for it. She’s never been scared of the ocean. It’s been a home to her since the first day she’d discovered it. She wonders how fast things like that can change. 

She cranks the nets in a bit further, the sound of the water deafening against the vastness of the ocean, but the noise is still there. It morphs itself near into a yelp with another tug of the ropes, and it’s something she feels in her chest, her heart pounding for all different reasons. 

She sees it then, the silver shine of something at the surface. Whatever it is that’s been following her caught fast in the ropes, finally too close for comfort. She doesn’t want to reel it in, doesn’t really know if she’s strong enough to, let alone that risk of hurting it. It isn’t in the traps, just sort of tangled around the edge of them, and she doesn’t know how far up she can pull it before gravity takes its toll. 

“Fuck,” she mutters to herself, and the odd, wet breathing seems to double again. “It’s okay,” she says over the edge, exasperated and soothing at once. “I’m gonna try and get you free.”

She doesn’t really know why she’s talking to it. It’s not like it’ll hear her. She hauls it up a little further, tries her best to ignore another strange, honking yelp from the creature. The jig is locked, and she triple checks it before she lets go to find some sort of light. A heavy duty head torch is all she has with her and she straps it around the nearest pole instead, trying to get a look over the edge. 

She can see now, light up in the stark, artificial light, that it’s a seal, and a large one at that. Its coat is almost molten in the harsh light, somehow ethereal as it stares back up at her with wide, frightened eyes. Its nose twitches with each breath and she considers that she might not be the most friendly sight either. 

“Okay,” she says again, taking a steeling breath of her own. “You’re not going to bite me, right? I can’t help you if you bite me.”

It snorts again, and somehow Maria thinks it’s a challenge. Still, she’s come this far. At this height, she has to lean over the edge almost dangerously far, her feet hooked at the edge of the deck. She’s certain Fury would have dragged her in by the scruff if he was here, but he isn’t and she’s not going to let this seal get any more hurt by her hand. 

It’s soft when she touches it, and surprisingly dry for being so close to the water. She thinks she should probably consider herself incredibly lucky to be able to experience it, but when the seal only thrashes harder, it’s a little difficult to think about much more than not being dragged down with it. 

“Just– Would you calm down?” Sure, scold the seal. That’ll do wonders. 

She huffs at it, and she’s sure it huffs back, spraying her with salt. She squints at it for a moment before reaching out again, a little more sure of herself as the gunwale digs into her hips. The line seems to be caught around its tail, tangled almost impressively, and it only seems to tighten when it pulls away from her. 

“Stay still,” she says, trying for something soothing. She’s still talking to a seal, of course, but that seems to help with other animals, right?

The rig creaks and Maria tries not to let her flinch show in her hands. The winds are picking up and every minute is another voice telling her this was a mistake, that you should always have someone out on the water with you. 

She can’t even see what she’s doing, trying to untie this knot by feel alone. It’s something she does every day of her life. Tie a knot, untie a knot. She could do it in her sleep.

There isn’t normally five hundred pounds of angry seal between her and the knot. 

She tugs at what should be a free loop, but it tightens another section further around its tail and its teeth are in her arm before she can even think to draw back, seawater stinging bright like acid. She grits her teeth until they hurt too, a cry barely strangled into a half hearted grunt. The last thing she wants is to scare it further and lose an arm for it. 

The seal lets go barely a moment later – though still a moment later than she appreciates – its eyes massive and glimmering in the light. She could almost mistake it for guilt, and she lets herself bury her face in her shoulder for a moment with a shuddering breath. She can feel the way her own blood drips from her knuckles, hot against the crisp air. 

“You promised,” she jokes, if only so she can’t convince herself to just leave the nets and consider the loss. The seal snorts again and she laughs to herself. Maybe she really is sleep deprived for the way she feels like it’s talking to her. 

“Maybe this’ll teach you to stop stealing our fish, hm? Though, I guess you aren’t really stealing them, are you?” She sighs. She doesn’t really blame it for any of this – even the stitches she’ll need in her arm. “Just wait until we pull the nets back in, at least.” 

It only gets harder the longer she’s taking, her hands numb with cold and dumb with pain. She keeps talking as she works, some odd sense that compels her to keep going even as the creature just stares back up at her. Its eyes glitter in the artificial torch light, the whole universe in the darkness of them. 

“If anything’s been eating my shrimp back there, I’m not going to be happy.” She doesn’t really want to think about the sort of things she might be attracting with a trap of stagnant shrimp drifting about for half an hour. If it makes her hands work a little faster, it’s not like the seal can tell. 

It takes her another fifteen minutes to get it untangled, the weight of it sagging against the rest of the rig so suddenly she nearly loses her footing over the gunwale. It’s gone before she can barely blink. There one moment and naught but a ripple in the water the next. She sighs, the air sharp in her lungs. 

The traps are hauled up the rest of the way, only really bothering with the bare minimum as her arm continues to thrum. They’re live anyway, they’ll keep fine until the morning. For now, she sets herself properly on the right path home before stopping to finally inspect her arm in the safety of the wheelhouse. There’s little droplets of blood around the deck and she feels a moment of solidarity for whoever inevitably has to clean it whilst she’s grounded by Fury. 

It’s well past midnight by the time she gets home, her arm throbbing where she tries to stop the bleeding. She’d been hoping that she’d be able to patch herself up, or even bandage it up and leave it for Coulson to try in the morning, but it’s punctured far too deep to leave. Even still, she takes the time to change into clothes she doesn’t mind getting more blood on now that she realises it won’t stop on its own, and she texts Fury a brief note to let him know she won’t make it to the dock in the morning before setting off to the nearest hospital two towns over. 

Natasha isn’t surprised to see the woman on land today. She’s avoided the main street exclusively because she’d assumed that she’d be on shop duty, resting up, but she only seems to be able to miscalculate when it comes to this woman. 

Right now, she’s sat on the rocks by the shore, staring out at the horizon like it’s a burden to be on solid ground. Natasha thinks she knows the feeling. She can scarcely remember the reason her heart seems so intent on coming back to the shore so often when the sea holds her soul with every fibre of her being. She watches her for a long moment, keeping her distance. 

She tells herself it’s out of caution. Hiding her true nature is all she was ever taught. Never let them find your coat. They are selfish. They take what isn’t theirs. 

She knows, deep down, that something in her stares for the simple way the sun plays over her hair, lighting it up in a brown so dark she’d have sworn it was black before. She’s beautiful, and she hates herself for thinking it. 

“Still not a fisherman’s friend?” the woman says suddenly, voice raised over the permanent breeze out here. She doesn’t turn her face from the tide, expression still serious. 

Natasha doesn’t reply, still weighing up her intentions. This one is hard to read – different from the others. She’s not fond of the change. 

She watches her shift slightly in the silence, taking it as an answer in and of itself. “Not even off duty?”

She holds up her arm then, mottled in spreading bruises and stitches. Natasha almost wants to flinch, wants to feel bad for it when she can still feel the way her own ankle aches and pinches. It’ll probably scar too. If it wasn’t for her she’d have drowned out there. If it wasn’t for her she wouldn’t have gotten caught in the first place. 

Fine. She’ll bite. Metaphorically this time. 

She takes a tentative step closer. “What happened?” 

“Seal,” she says simply, and her eyes wrench themselves away from the horizon for the first time, roving over Natasha like she can see straight through her to her very soul. 

Her feet stay firmly planted in the sand, everything in her body telling her that this is a mistake. She takes her own turn to stare at the horizon, a perfect mask of indifference. “Don’t get too many seals around these parts.” 

Her head tilts, her lips quirking just so, and Natasha thinks this suits her more than the saccharine smile from the shop. “No. We don’t.” She leans back on the rock, her arms behind her as she squints back into the sun. “I hope it’s alright. I couldn’t really get a good look in the dark but it managed to get itself in a pretty impressive tangle.” 

Natasha risks a glance back to her, glad for the way her boots cover her ankles. “I’m sure it’s fine.” Then, she lets some genuine curiosity bleed into her voice, “What were you doing out by yourself at night in the first place? Isn’t the sea supposed to be rugged and dangerous?”

The woman’s eyebrows twitch, just barely. A brief flash of her own curiosity that is gone before Natasha could even be sure it was there. It settles like lead in her stomach. 

The powers that be must be feeling kind, and she drops it without a word as to how she could know. “She’s not so bad once you get to know her. I didn’t want to wake the rest of the crew.” She shrugs. “It was only meant to be a bait trip, and now Fury has, quite literally, grounded me for at least the week.”

She laughs, some odd mix of genuine amusement and bitterness, and Natasha finds it oddly charming. This strange woman with her coarse view of the world, a legitimate love for it buried underneath.

Against her better judgement, against every thundering beat in her chest, Natasha sits herself down at the edge of the little outcrop. “Do you miss it?”

She laughs again, a soft sound this time, almost just a breath through her nose. Natasha wonders how many different laughs she has, if she makes each one for each new scenario. 

“Wouldn’t you?” she says, as if it’s obvious, and she doesn’t realise how right she is. 

“I’ve never thought about it,” she lies. She’s thought about it every day since childhood. She thinks about it each time she carefully tucks her coat into the cracks of a cliff. 

The woman doesn’t speak again, doesn’t press her for a better answer, and they sit in silence for a long moment, listening to the wind whistling through the pampas. Natasha is struck suddenly by the serenity of it all. That, for the first time in her life, she’s in the presence of a human without wanting to disappear back into the ocean the moment their back is turned. 

The thought is sobering, her breath short in her chest again. This is exactly what they’d warned her about. The most dangerous ones are the charismatic ones. The ones that earn your trust, call you pretty and lure you in. The ones that know what you are.

She grants herself one last look at her, and the shadows of her eyelashes on her cheeks, plain as day in the late morning sun, will haunt her whether she likes it or not. The shine of her eyes as she stares out to sea will be her undoing in one way or another. She doesn’t know her name, but she’ll remember her face, the timbre of her voice, whether she is forced to live with the view or to long for it from the waves. 

By the time the woman looks back, her attention brought in on the tide, Natasha is gone. No marks left to show she was ever there in the first place. 

Phil visits Maria later in the day, smelling of fish in a way Maria would never have thought she’d miss. He doesn’t bother to hide the way he stares at her arm, but he has the courtesy to leave it unspoken. 

“How was it?” She asks, handing him a cup of tea at the dining table. She stays standing, leaning back against the counter in the small space. 

“Never the same without you.” He sips his tea thankfully, ignoring the way it scalds his tongue slightly. “Busy today, though. First time this year the water has seemed really alive.”  

She tries not to glare at him, dripping sarcasm. “Thanks. That really makes me feel better.”

He only laughs, blowing over the surface before taking another testing sip. “Maybe you’d have seen it if you’d taken me with you.”

“It wasn’t a sturgeon, y’know.” She skirts around his point. She still would’ve been the one to save it if the whole crew had been there.

He looks at her like she might be going a little mad. “I gathered that.”

“Not this. The thing in the water. It was a seal. It’s been following us for weeks now.”

“Do seals do that?”

She sips her own tea. “I don’t know. We don’t get many around here. Especially not that size.”

He hums, long and thoughtful. “I guess we’re lucky then.”

She can’t help the amusement that shows on her face, her arm still tender and sharp. “Sure. Lucky.”

“Yeah, well.” He gestures vaguely. “There’s always a price to pay. For example, my price is cookies.”

She smiles, shaking her head even as she places her mug down to retrieve them from the cupboard. “Did you come here because we’re friends, or did you just want to bully me for snacks?”

Natasha stays off of the land for the next few days. She watches the trawler make its journey every morning, wondering whether the strange woman is watching it too somewhere. She tries not to think about her, tries to remember the warnings that have shaped her whole life thus far. Does she dream of the sea the same way Natasha dreams of the land? Is she as torn at the coast as herself? Caught between a heart in one and a soul in the other? 

She can’t fully explain the way the land calls to her, what it is about it that has her fur hidden in the loving care of a crag. Whether she can put a name to it or not, it lures her out of the comfort of the water before the weekend can roll around again. 

The town is busy, the day warm and fine. She melts into the crowd with long practised ease, and her feet have carried her to the storefront before she can even think about where she was headed. Even from across the street, she can tell that she isn’t there today. There’s a man in the chair, distorted through the glass counter, and he raises the hair on the back of her neck. 

She swallows the disappointment in her throat, shamed by the bitter taste of it. She doesn’t know this woman, doesn’t even know her name. She knows she’s a fisherman. That should be enough. But the knowledge doesn’t make it any easier to tear her eyes away from the store. 

It takes her a long time to return to the water, the sun already low hung, the sea turned a deep, molten colour whilst she’s wandered around the little town. It’s inviting, the tide tugging at her like it always does. It’s high now, the barest strip of sand before the greenery creeps in. She takes a step towards it, pleasantly cool around her ankles, and then another, and another, hidden by the curve of the land. 

It feels different without her coat, the water around her an entirely separate world. Some days, she’ll spend hours floating around, indulging in the difference of it all. She thinks she understands the children that splash around in the summer more than she does most people, the simple joy of it somehow overwhelming. She dives under the surface, disappearing into the glittering depths. 

Maria has spent a lot of time on these cliffs, found a lot of places that other people don’t go. There’s some beaches you can only get to if you know how to climb the jagged edges, if you know where to swim. 

She’s spent the better part of today hidden in one such beach, the smallest one she knows of, that can only comfortably hold a few people at once. It’s surrounded by the most interesting rockpools, but today has been spent mostly dozing and thinking, indulging in a rare holiday whether she’d chosen it or not. 

It’s too late now to go back the way she’d come, too enthralled with the setting sun to pay any attention to the tide. She can climb around the other side most of the way, but with the tide so high there’s no avoiding getting wet unless she sleeps here all night. It’s only a short swim, but her arm is going to sting like hell and the stars are so pretty this time of year. The choice still probably shouldn’t be as difficult as it is. 

In the end, she’s glad her clothes are light as she clambers over one of the larger rocks. Something catches her eyes at the bottom of the cliff, tucked away between two larger stones. She shouldn’t get so close to the bottom, she knows, but it’s been dry recently and no one else comes around here. Besides, it wouldn’t be the first time she’s ignored precautions this week. She’s curious, so what if it kills the cat?

At first, she wonders just how many animals she’s going to have to save this week, and then she wonders if maybe she should leave it after all, save her other arm at the hands of another scared creature. But it doesn’t move, doesn’t whimper, or snort like the seal had. She can’t even tell if it’s breathing from here, and she can’t just walk away now. 

The closer she gets, the less shape it takes, looking less and less alive until she’s stood right over it. 

Fur. Soft and dry. Folded like a coat and placed deliberately in this crack. She crouches down over it and runs her hand through the velveteen texture. 

Natasha’s heart races in her chest in the rippling tide. No one comes around here. No one knows about this place. Humans stay on land. They don’t find hidden coves. 

She should have known. She shouldn’t have even spoken to her on that first day. She’d been warned. They’re smart. They find things out. They find, and they take. 

She’s seen the consequences of it herself – the few of her kind that have escaped their fates only to die later for the damage caused to their coats, the irreparable and selfish ways the humans mark them for their own. 

She doesn’t dare breathe, frozen solid in the water and weighted like lead. It’s all she can do to watch, stuck fast as the woman bends down over it, reaching out for her coat – for her life. 

She knows. She knows, she knows. She knew.

The rest of the crew had rather a penchant for superstitions and fairy tales, passing the time with one folk song or another, telling stories from their grandparent’s grandparent’s grandparents. One can only ignore them for so long before they take root in their own brain too. 

She’d known it, on some level, as soon as she’d seen it. Some more rational part of her wants to ignore that this has ever happened, to get home and have a cup of tea and remind herself that folk tales aren’t real. But she’s holding it in her hands and she can feel the reality of it, soft like nothing she’s ever felt under her palms. Nothing else? 

She knows, deep down somewhere, that this is that same seal in the dark, the same one that has followed their ship every day for months in search of easy food whilst the waters are scarce, the same thick softness. She traces lines between a couple of the dappled spots almost distractedly, and she wonders if that’s what forces them onto land. It feels so deeply vulnerable then, being left alone out here like this. She feels like somehow, she should hide it somewhere better, like it’s her responsibility to protect this precious thing from her own kind. But no one ever comes around here. No one has found this until she has, and suddenly, holding it in her hands like this feels like such a gross invasion of privacy that she almost stumbles backwards.

Natasha ducks back under the water, her breath held tight until it burns in her chest, aching and dragging and begging to be released. This human body isn’t made for the water, isn’t made for her.  

The surface hangs above her head like a guillotine, the moment she returns to the air the very same moment that her life is over, and she despises the quiet part of her heart that says maybe a life with this woman wouldn’t be so bad – the same human part of her that urges her upward. Her freedom is the only thing she has in this life, the only thing she’s managed to scrape together for herself. Her lungs can only hold for so long, and she has to face her fate at some point, but she won’t go down quietly. 

Only, when the saltwater is wiped from her eyes, sharp and cloying, her coat is still there, tucked neatly between the rocks as if it’d never been touched in the first place. She reaches out, like she might be able to grab it from so far away before her arm is snatched back to her chest, back to the safety of the water. It must be a trick. It has to be. Camp out until she returns. Steal the cloak and the selkie in the same breath. 

But the woman isn’t there. There isn’t anyone lurking around the corner, waiting to snatch away half of what she is. The woman had seen her cloak, seen what she is, and she had left her alone.

When she finally drags herself out of the water again, it’s folded carefully in half, exactly as Natasha had left it. The one quiet part of her grows louder, whispers that maybe it’s not all sailors. She slips away into the ocean, thoughts drowned out under the waves, and it feels different all again, whole and home, even as she leaves her heart on the shore. 

Maria is sitting on the dock already when Fury shows up in the morning. She’s dressed ready for the weather, her breath visible in the air before the sun has risen fully. It just touches the horizon behind her, and she’s sure Fury is scowling at her for more than just the way that it gets in his eye. 

“Is your calendar broken, Hill?” he says once he’s close enough. He doesn’t pause to hear her answer, getting on with his morning routine. 

“I think I’m going insane, Nick.”

He watches her stand up out of the corner of his eye, his hands still moving. “That’s probably a sign you should spend more time on land.” 

She tries not to smile, crossing her arms as she follows him. “It's only one day. The stitches will be fine.”

“The stitches,” he eyes her again, turning his head to take her out of his blind side, “are meant to be rested until they’re taken out.”

“Which isn’t for another week.”

“You should be lucky I’m letting you back on at all, Hill. You were irresponsible. I’m hoping that the stitches have taught you a lesson.”

Not really, she thinks. She’d do it again in a heartbeat. “Of course, sir. I’ll take it easy today. You can stick me on guts and you won’t hear a single complaint.” 

He gives her a weary look, entirely long suffering. She knows his answer before he can even say it by the small sigh he lets escape. “Only guts. If I see you helping with the nets then you’re grounded for another week.”

“Only guts sir,” she grins with a mock salute. 

She’s true to her word for the day, even though it itches at her skin to watch the others doing their job. She busies herself with watching the rolling of the waves, and she can’t deny that she’s looking for it this time, waiting for that silvery flash beneath the surface.

She hadn’t slept that night, couldn’t stop thinking about who it might’ve been, if she had seen them around, if they’re someone she knows. She did her research, read about grey seals until she could hold a conversation with a genuine marine biologist and guessed that this particular one was probably female. The folklore side hadn’t given her much to go off of, mostly tales that made her skin crawl and rules of seven years and seven tears. Maybe that part was true, and that had been why she’d never seen it before. 

She stares out at the open water, rougher than it has been lately, and she tells herself that she isn’t sad that she isn’t around today. She tells herself it’s a good sign, that she’s got enough to eat without endangering herself further. She knows it’s a good sign, that she won’t get injured in the ropes again, but it doesn’t stop it from settling heavy in her chest. 

When the nets come in, she drowns out her thoughts with the repetitive task of gutting the fish, joining in with the usual banter. If she’s generous with what she throws overboard, no one comments on it. 

Maria doesn’t know what draws her to the shore again in the evening, her arms aching after the week off. The ocean is soothing at night, something nihilistic about the depth and roll of it when the sun isn’t there to illuminate the floor. She lays back on her coat, her eyes closed, and she tells herself that she won’t fall asleep, that she just needs to calm her mind for a moment. 

“You’ve been on the boat,” someone says above her, and she bolts upright in the dark. 

She has no idea how long it’s been, lost in her own little world, and she glances around to find the strange woman with the fiery hair standing a few feet away, amusement and hesitancy thinly veiled on her face. It’s a strange mix. 

The moon is full tonight, a cool glow to everything it touches, and Maria is taken aback by the sight of her, something tight in her chest. It holds onto her words until she drags them from her chest like caught lines. “What?” 

“You smell like fish.” She doesn’t move closer, but the entertainment on her face is a little clearer. 

“Oh.” Maria’s eyebrows crease slightly. “Sorry.” 

“Don’t apologise.”

She leans back on her palms. “Most people don’t appreciate the smell.” And then, because she can’t help herself when the moon looks so pretty on her, “Especially people who don’t like sailors.” 

“You haven’t been much of a sailor lately.” 

She sighs, lighthearted and teasing to cover the weight underneath it all. “Don’t remind me. I managed to bribe him into letting me out a day early.” 

“Clearly.” She wrinkles her nose mockingly, just to mess with her. 

Maria stifles a laugh, not wanting to give in, and she closes her eyes against the sight, tipping her face up to the stars. “I don’t need another Phil around to bully me. At least he also smells like fish most of the time.” 

“Then it’s a good job my name isn’t Phil – and, really, I don’t care.” She won’t admit that something about it is comforting, in a homely way. Is it comparable to baked goods for humans? She’s not keen to ask. 

The sailor opens her eyes at that, not bothering to turn her head to look at her out of the corner of her eye. “What is your name then?” 

She’s had countless over the years, both given and assumed. Each person unlucky enough to ask is crafted a new one. “Natasha,” she says, confident enough that she’d believe even herself. 

She doesn’t think about the fact that it’s the closest she’s ever strayed to her original name. She’d shed that one as fast as she’d shed her cloak the first time she’d seen the shore. 

“Natasha,” the woman repeats, turning it over in her mouth. “It suits you,” and Natasha thinks she agrees somehow. 

“Do I get the pleasure of learning yours?” she asks, soaked in sarcasm, if only to hide the genuine curiosity behind the question. 

The strange woman’s smirk is far too handsome for someone Natasha should be wary of. “I thought you didn’t trade with sailors?” 

“I don’t give them things for nothing either.” 

She smiles a little wider, something infuriatingly sweet about it. Natasha gets the sense that she doesn’t do it often and she wishes she didn’t feel lucky for it. 

“Maria,” she states eventually, a hand held out in offering. “Congrats on your first trade.” 

“Don’t get used to it,” Natasha warns, but her handshake is firm, palm surprisingly rough in Maria’s own. 

“What are you doing out here so late anyway?” 

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“Clearly, I was having a nice nap.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow, quietly incredulous. “Don’t you have a bed?”

“No, I just live on the beach. High tide is a bit of a pain sometimes, but it’s manageable.” Natasha continues to stare at her, a slight crease between her eyebrows, and Maria finds it far more endearing than she should. “Of course I do. This wasn’t intentional, but that doesn’t answer my question.” 

There’s a gentle curiosity on Maria’s face, still looking up at her from the ground, and Natasha fights the strange urge to sit down next to her. “I was going for a walk, and then making sure you weren’t dead.” 

“Not yet, at least.” 

Her attention is drawn to the sea again, and Natasha can’t say she blames her. It’s beautiful tonight, and she hates the part of her that wishes Maria would stay here a little longer so she has an excuse not to slip away. She studies her face in the cool light instead and the ocean is reflected in her eyes, a depth to them that only draws her deeper. 

“What time is it?” Maria asks, and Natasha tries not to flush at being so lost in her own world. 

She doesn’t own a watch, and it makes her feel silly for some reason. “I’m not sure.” 

Maria digs around in her coat for her phone, the screen bright in the dark when she retrieves it. “Shit. I’m going to be dead on my feet tomorrow.” 

Somehow, she’d hoped that it would be miraculously early, that she could reasonably hold onto this moment a little longer. Something about this woman makes her curious in a way she hasn’t felt in a long time, a way she’d given up on when she was far too young. She tries not to scowl as she tucks her phone back into her pocket.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have been napping on the beach then,” Natasha jibes, a smile barely hidden on her face. 

“I’ll remember that in the future.” She stands, brushing the sand from her hands. “Maybe I’ll see you around, if you feel like trading again.” 

“Maybe,” she says, carefully neutral. 

Natasha is sure she imagines the flash of disappointment on Maria’s face before her back is to her, a hand thrown over her shoulder in a halfhearted wave as she walks away. She sinks to the floor, just next to the flattened sand where Maria had been, her knees tucked under her chin, and she sits there for a long while, listening to the sea the same way humans do. 

This woman has really gotten into her head, stuck fast like a limpet. She doesn’t seem to know what she is after all. Maybe she simply hasn’t guessed yet, hasn’t picked the right target for her accusations. But she’d left her coat alone, and she must have known what it was. Maybe it isn’t all sailors. Maybe there’s an exception. 

She spends the next week hiding in the safety of the water, letting the waves rise over her head like a child with a blanket. She isn’t avoiding it. She isn’t. She’s not a coward. 

Though, her own inability to confront her own emotions doesn’t stop her from following a certain boat out to the same point every day. They leave a lot earlier now that the days are longer, dawn rising before even the busy-bodied people in this town have managed to drag themselves out of bed. She follows the wakes of a trawler, allowing herself a small enjoyment in the movement of it. 

The nets are cast and she keeps her distance more than ever, counting down the distance until they are hauled back in and she can edge her way closer again. It’s risky, she knows, but she’s felt Maria’s eyes on her from the minute she’d started her hounding. She’s certain she mustn’t be more than a shadow, but Maria’s gaze is sharp and knowing, like the ocean is clear to her alone.

There’s a curious edge to her, as she throws a fish miraculously close, and somehow that minute crease to her eyebrows soothes Natasha’s fears. She doesn’t know, she realises, a certainty to it that makes her bolder than before. She rises just barely above the surface, just enough to catch the way Maria’s features seem to warm in the rising sun before she’s ducking under the waves again and disappearing all together. 

Maria doesn’t know what she is. She left her cloak alone without knowing whose it was. Her jokes and smiles aren’t some sort of cruel lure. Told you so, that quiet part of her says, and she can feel some dangerous sort of hope wrap its tentacles around her heart. 

She’s never really had a friend before. Somehow, the shore only seems more appealing. 

Maria’s attention is split as she sits behind the counter. This view is starting to get far too familiar, but Fury won’t let her do her usual duties until her arm is fully healed, and so she’s rearranged the day’s catches three times already and started a mental tally of each different seagull that skitters past for a chance at one. With the afternoon being such a menial one, it doesn’t do much at all to stop her mind from wandering off with it, and even that can’t seem to choose a direction.

Some part of her is still curious about the seal she saved, a little over two weeks ago now. She runs her fingers over the scars left by it, still tight and tender even with the stitches removed, and she wishes she could meet them, just once. She’s come to a sort of agreement with herself now, that it’s not so absurd to believe in it when you have seen it with your own eyes, when the proof is carved into your skin, larger than it should ever have been and twice as real. 

She’d seen the size of it, felt the weight of it in the net. She’d held its coat in her hands and felt the softness of it against her palms. It’s hard to call it a fairy tale when it has stared back at you. 

Somehow, the thought draws her attention back to the other object of her curiosities – though her thoughts always seem to wander their way back to her anyway. Natasha, who can somehow hold her own in Maria’s headspace against the idea that certain tall tales might not be so tall afterwards. Natasha, who has a habit of simply staring, until Maria feels like she’s being taken apart in front of her. Natasha, who doesn’t trade with sailors, but does trade with Maria.  

If she were a more wistful person, she’d sigh and put her head in her hand as she stares out into the afternoon. She isn’t, though, and she doesn’t get anywhere near it. She does, however, allow herself somewhat of a smile as she thinks about the weird hours the woman seems to keep. She’s made rather a habit of visiting that beach after work now, and she tries not to admit even to herself that she’s been a little disappointed not to see her around recently. Maybe she’ll be lucky enough to catch her tonight. 

She’s drawn out of her thoughts by a customer, inquiring about a herring, and it takes all of her effort to remember to smile for them instead of wishing they were Natasha. 

The shutters shudder as they close, and Maria blames the hideous noise for not hearing the footsteps as they approach. 

“Done for the day?” Natasha says, close behind her, and Maria forces her start down into a blink. 

She feels a little like she’s been caught, somehow. Like Natasha has only appeared because her thoughts and longing had been broadcast to her like some sort of radio. One thought too many about hoping to find her at the beach and she had simply apparated behind her. 

“Yeah.” She shrugs, leagues more casual than she feels. “Too late to buy, I’m afraid.” 

She’s sure Natasha almost smiles at that. “I’m not here to buy.”

“Oh?” She leans back against the shutters, and the thought that maybe Natasha has come here for her lights her up inside like summer sun. With the way that Natasha’s hair glows, golden hour just about drawing to an end, Maria thinks she might not be too far off. “What brings you to a fisherman’s stall then?” 

Maria looks far too handsome there, illuminated too in the dying light, and Natasha threatens her heart to slow before she’s able to hear it somehow. “I thought I might find a fisherman,” she jokes instead.

Maria barely holds back the way her eyes try to widen, a smile tugging at her lips instead. She’s never seen Natasha joke before. It sparkles in her eyes and teases out slight dimples in her cheeks until Maria thinks she might actually blush for once in her life. 

She ignores the heat in her cheeks, hoping it isn’t so obvious to Natasha. “Well, you’re in luck.”

Natasha watches her push herself from the shutter, and they’re suddenly a lot closer than it had seemed before. Maria’s eyes are blue again in the warm tones of the evening and Natasha finds her words a little washed out to sea. 

“Let’s walk,” she says, more of a command than the cool and collected proposition she’d originally planned. Maria raises a single eyebrow at her, that stupid smirk still on her face, and she tries again. “If you’d like to, of course.” 

“Well, I’ve not got anything better to do.” She falls into step next to her. “Fury still has me grounded at night.” 

Something about it stings somehow, and Natasha bites back that unbidden bitterness in her throat even as her heart flutters with the way Maria's elbow brushes hers. She takes half a step away then, leaving Natasha inexplicably cold, and she feels like a child for the way she wants to pout about it. 

“Why do you listen to him?” she asks, trying to keep the sourness out of her voice. She doesn’t like the sound of him, from what she’s heard. “Why don’t you just leave?”

Maria shoots her a peculiar look, melting away before she can really decipher it. She still doesn’t like the look of it on her face, and she regrets asking the question before she’s even answered. 

Maria doesn’t really fancy getting into the details of her past, no matter how curiously beautiful this woman is. “I owe him a lot,” she settles on. “And I don’t think I could ever really leave this place.” 

She smiles like Natasha should know what she means, like this town is an inside joke between them, and strangely, Natasha thinks she gets it. She’s usually careful not to linger in any space long enough for people to start recognising her, but she’s spent more time around these coasts in particular than she has any other. Now, as Maria seems lost in her own thoughts about the place, Natasha realises that this town is rather beautiful, and she can’t bring herself to move on just yet. She tries not to think about why, even if she knows exactly what she’s staying for. She can lie to herself a little longer. 

There’s a stream that runs roughly through the town, widening almost into a river in some parts, and they find themselves wandering along it in surprisingly comfortable silence. The nights out here are dark, the few scattered streetlamps left behind on the main street and the sunlight dying quickly behind them. It casts golden ripples dancing about on the water and they both know the other is admiring it too. 

Maria’s hand brushes Natasha’s and she buries it in her pocket for the shivers it sends up her arm. She wants to reach out for her, feels like they should be holding hands as they walk for all the calmness that this moment surrounds her with. She hasn’t felt like this with anyone that she can remember; the idea that people felt like it at all outside of movies abandoned with her childhood as soon as she’d stepped out of her father’s house. It makes her feel rather a fool, right now, as she stares intently at the patterns in the water. 

It’s broken, then, by something floating down alongside them a little ways ahead. She squints after it, trying to make out the shape in the fading light only to find it becoming a discarded packet of some sort, metallic on the inside. 

She tuts half heartedly. “You’d think the people here were different.” They’re not as bad as some, she bargains. She picks up whatever trash she does find on the beach when she’s there, and it isn’t often much, most of it washed in rather than left behind. 

Natasha, however, is skidding down the bank before Maria can notice that she’s even gone in the first place. The stream isn’t so deep here, but she still follows her by instinct, reaching out like she might hold her back.

“Natasha–” She watches her stride into the water, fully clothed. “What are you doing?” 

“People are disgusting,” she mutters, half to herself. She doesn’t bother to answer Maria, thinking her actions clear enough. 

She’s up to her thighs now, her jeans dark where they wick the water further, and Maria watches uselessly from the bank as she wades over to grab the litter. She holds a hand out for her as she reaches the shore again, and she’s a little surprised to find that Natasha actually takes it, letting her haul her up the short, steep distance. 

“Better now?” she asks, her amusement only half hidden. 

Natasha scowls, and Maria tries not to think about the urge to smooth out the creases in her face. The packet is scrunched roughly in her hand before it’s stuffed in her pocket, but her annoyance doesn’t seem to lessen. She feels the peculiar compulsion to kiss her, but now definitely isn’t the time. 

Natasha had forgotten how awful wet clothing is, so used to being dry as soon as she leaves the water. Her jeans cling to her skin and her boots feel like cinder blocks on her feet. She stares down at them for a moment, sort of dumbstruck.

“Take them off,” Maria supplies at last. “They won’t dry now that the sun’s gone.”

Natasha looks back up at her curiously, the light entirely gone now, and she weighs up her options. She’d been warned countless times about the desires of man. She’s seen for herself the ways they look at her and the propositions that they make. She doesn’t get the idea that Maria is really asking for that here, however. She doesn’t get the sense that she’s ever looked at her like that, now that she thinks about it. She also really doesn’t want to keep walking in these boots. She bends down to untie them, the laces soggy between her fingers. “We should probably head back anyway. I didn’t mean to keep you so long.”

“I don’t mind,” Maria says, and Natasha can hear the smile in her voice. She's glad she can’t see her face as she wills the heat from her cheeks. 

Maria watches her undo her shoes, her laces tied in a strange way that only makes her chest feel tighter with affection. When she tugs them from her feet they pour water over the ground and Natash grimaces again. 

“Where do you live? I’ll walk you home,” Maria offers as Natasha tugs at the other boot. She hopes it isn’t such a transparent attempt at drawing out their time together. 

Natasha kneels to roll up her pant legs as far as they’ll go. “Oh, that’s okay,” she says, making up some sort of excuse as to why she’ll be fine, but Maria isn’t listening to a single word she’s saying.

Even in the pitch dark, the angry red of it is visible, almost familiar. The shiny edges of a scar freshly healed. Maria knows what net scars look like. She’s seen her fair share on fishermen and animals alike by this point in her life – and Natasha doesn’t deal with fishermen. She has no valid excuse to even be around a boat in any capacity. Unless– Oh.

And the realisation is a soft one. She finds the curiosity that could never settle itself in her mind is quiet for once, the whole thing just sort of – making sense. It’s the reason she’d stared at those fish the first day; the reason she’s always been wearing these same clothes each time; the reason she seems so out of place whilst fitting in so perfectly. It’s the reason she doesn’t deal with fishermen and doesn’t like trash in the water. Somehow, it only makes Maria love her more. It makes her feel justified in her thoughts about her ethereal nature.

“Just to the town then?” she says easily when Natasha finally looks at her, shooting her a smile as she offers her a hand up from the ground.

Natasha takes it again, her hand warm against the chill of the night, and Maria finds she doesn’t want to let go when she returns her soft smile. She tucks her hands back into her pockets before she can get any ideas. Natasha has barely decided that they’re friends, it won’t hurt to take her time with it. 

“To the town then,” Natasha agrees, and if they walk slower than they had before, well, no one is around to see. 

And if Maria notices now the salt scent of Natasha’s hair on the breeze, the little pieces of her coming together bit by bit, no one is around to see that either. 

It becomes a little habit of theirs after that, and Natasha grows much less tentative of showing up for Maria as the day draws to a close. They wander down to the beach, more often than not, just to stare at the sea and feel the sand under their boots. Maria thinks it’s something of a compromise, both of them torn between the land and the sea. Fury doesn’t ask why Maria suddenly takes an interest in manning their store. 

Today, the streets are busy and the displays are empty just shy of two o’clock. Natasha doesn’t usually come around for a while yet, and Maria finds that she can’t bear the thought of waiting around in the bustling atmosphere much longer. 

She makes her way home, intending to try and wash off the smells of the day as if it ever truly works, and she’s reminded of Natasha’s comment on the subject. It makes her smile a little, and though she’s never cared whether she smells like her job or not, for once she thinks it might be nice. Dinner is made early, preempting the way their walks tend to drag out until Maria is practically asleep on her feet. She doesn’t realise quite how quickly the time has passed until she’s placing her mug on the counter to retrieve her food from the oven and the sun is already in her eyes, slung low outside the window. 

“Shit,” she scolds as she places it on the stove. Maybe Natasha will appreciate a picnic.

She places the lid over the top to keep it hot as quickly as she can, taking her drink with her on a last minute whim. 

Natasha is waiting outside the store when she gets there, leaning against the shutters like she knew she’d be waiting for her, but Maria catches the steady tick of her leg, a nervous twitch she gets when people stare for too long. 

“Hey,” she says, a little breathless with the idea that she’d wait for her – the fact that she’s upset over the thought that she might not show up. 

“About time,” she grumbles, something shy about the way her eyes dont meet hers, hiding her relief despite the way her shoulders sag. They catch on the mug in her hand instead, the ceramic comically out of place outside, and her face manages to light a little. She raises an eyebrow at her in question. 

“We closed early,” Maria explains. “I made dinner,” she tries, holding up her bag as if Natasha could see inside. Somehow, it works, and Natasha’s expression turns unbearably soft. 

Maria looks like such a dork, standing there with a mug in her hand, and Natasha can imagine her grabbing it as she curses at the door, hurrying to make sure she isn’t left alone. The thought warms her heart and she can’t find it anywhere in her to be mad about the time. 

She eyes a bag a little playfully, trying not to show just how hungry she truly is. “What did you make?” 

“Fish,” Maria replies easily, a smile tugging at her lips.

Natasha’s eyes only narrow further, barely containing her own. “What kind?”

“Haddock tray bake.”

She hums, pretending to consider even as her stomach growls. “I guess I can forgive you.” 

Maria grins at her, almost like she thought she’d refuse, and it melts her heart just a little. Maybe it’s not all fishermen, that little voice reminds her, as if the rational part of her has had any say over the past month at all. 

Maria suddenly remembers her mug in her hand, probably stone cold by this point. She raises it to her lips to test it anyway, finding it somewhat tepid and grimacing into the rim. The sight makes Natasha laugh, bright and sweet, and she thinks she hasn’t heard anything so lovely in her life. This woman that seems so closed off from everyone, for reasons she can’t even begin to fathom, and she’s laughing at her. She thinks she’d do anything to get to hear it again, to get to see her smile like this. 

She downs the rest of her tea despite its temperature. “Shall we?” She nods over her shoulder. 

Natasha pushes herself from the shutter in a silent answer, falling into step alongside her as they make their way to a picnic appropriate destination. 

They end up in a field not too far from the town and settle down next to a small brook. They find themselves further from the sea these days, something inexplicable about the other that seems to lessen the pull of it, to soothe the itch under their skin at being so far. And yet they never stray far from water in itself. There is always a stream, or a pond, or some other source to calm their souls, a comfort to return to in the quiet moments between them. 

The sun is setting properly by the time they start their impromptu picnic and Maria still can’t shake the way it tangles itself into Natasha’s entire being. It’s a marvel how something born of the sea can set itself alight, and she catches herself staring for the countless time as the sun lowers itself behind her. 

Natasha smiles, glowing around the edges and the inside too. Maria gets the impression she’s seen more smiles from her in the silent moments they’ve spent together than the woman has shown in her whole life. 

Natasha has never liked attention before. Lingering stares bring curiosity and questions and everything Natasha has spent her entire life washing off of herself to keep herself safe. But Maria stares and it’s like a school of gobies in her stomach. When she catches her staring her eyes are soft and gentle like a summer tide and she finds she doesn’t want them to leave, chasing the waves back and back until she’s washed out into the comfort of the sea and she feels like a pup for the cliche of it all. 

Tonight, she pretends she doesn’t see the way Maria stares, focussing on her food instead, on trying to use a fork in a normal, human way. She doesn’t often eat in this body, the other simply easier when she doesn’t have a household to cook in. Now she finds herself mourning every meal she’s ever eaten without human taste buds and Maria’s cooking. 

“This is amazing,” she half moans, and it snaps Maria out of her staring as effectively as anything else. 

Her face lights up with amusement instead, and Natasha would have the thought to be embarrassed about her enthusiasm, to second guess it in the context, if it weren’t for the hesitancy that she finds there too. 

“It’s really not much,” Maria says, her face beautifully humble as she pokes at her own half forgotten side. 

There’s something strangely intimate about sharing their food from the same dish, not even bothering to decant it from its original baking tray, something that reminds Natasha of her own childhood and sharing meals in ways that humans never seem to. She’s grateful for it in ways she doesn’t think Maria will ever know.

She takes another forkful, only bothering to tuck her half chewed bite into her cheek before speaking. “I’m serious. This is the best haddock I’ve ever had.” 

In all fairness, it’s the only haddock she’s ever had as a human, but it’s ten times better than it is raw as a seal and that’s got to count for something. 

“It’s better when it’s fresh. I usually pair it with other things too.”

Natasha gets the feeling that there is more to the sentence, but by the time that she looks back to her, Maria is staring at her meal, finally taking another bite. She’s beautiful in the fading light and Natasha takes her turn to stare a little. She would bet her coat on the idea that Maria isn’t usually so bashful and it makes her wonder what is so special about herself, why Maria has chosen her to smile and joke and glance at. 

Natasha eats most of the tray bake herself, and Maria is more than happy to watch her eat it. She thinks she’d happily cook her dinner every day for the rest of their lives if it meant that she got to see Natasha this happy in turn, if it meant she never has to worry about her coming so dangerously close to their boat again. She pushes silent pieces further across the dish when Natasha isn’t looking, offering her more without the words to express her affection. If Natasha notices, she doesn’t mention it. 

By the time the food is finished, the night is cold and dark around them, the sound of the brook only broken by cricket song and the rustling of tall grass. It’s pleasant – peaceful –  and neither of them are eager to leave this space and return to their own isolations. 

But Maria’s teeth start to chatter, a betrayal of her own body, and Natasha looks at her with that soft gaze. “Aren’t you on bait duty again?” 

Maria almost grins, suppressed. “Fury wasn’t happy about it, but he thinks I can’t get myself killed if he’s with me.” 

“You sound like you want to prove him wrong.” She nearly squints, trying not to let the idea race in her chest. 

Maria’s grin widens and she lifts her arm a little in front of her, her scars glinting in the pale moonlight. “I’d do it again in a heartbeat even if the whole crew was there.” 

“I’m sure it’s thankful, wherever it is,” Natasha replies, and Maria tries not to think about how she knows. She tries not to think about how it feels so much like she’s betraying her trust with each moment that she doesn’t tell her. She tries not to think about the fact that she can’t bring herself to, because Natasha would surely never forgive her, Natasha would surely disappear straight into the glittering ocean, never to be seen again outside of that shimmering silver shadow. 

“I was aiming more at the fact that it’s late,” Natasha continues, oblivious to Maria’s inner turmoil. Oblivious, too, to the way that Maria’s whole schedule seems to have revolved around her. She does more sleeping in the afternoon than she does at night these days, unable to bring herself to cut their time short.

“Oh,” Maria says, blinking herself back into the present. Natasha’s face is amused where she watches her, and her own face feels warm despite the bite in the air. “I don’t mind. I’d rather spend the evening with you.” 

It feels like a leap, like something immensely too vulnerable, and Natasha’s eyes widen minutely as she stares back. Maria’s heart rises in her throat, filling her lungs like the tide, but Natasha softens, something bashful, something unbelieving. “We should probably get going. You’ll be falling asleep into your shrimp.” 

With that, Maria laughs, her blood pressure settling back into something sensible. She doesn’t offer to walk Natasha home anymore, and she doesn’t ask why she doesn’t have to be anywhere in the morning herself. Instead, she tucks the hand closest to Natasha into her pocket as they walk, wishing that she had the confidence to simply reach out. She doesn’t know how Natasha feels about that sort of thing, and the very last thing she wants to do is scare her away now that she’s known the warmth of her, like the sun through the water. 

They walk back in near silence, shoulders brushing in the plain dark of the surrounding farmland. Natasha’s hand is warm around Maria’s arm as she tugs her to the side, and Maria only half stumbles around the rabbithole in her path. She doesn’t ask how Natasha could see it. She only smiles in thanks and mourns the silent loss when Natasha’s hand slides away, feeling inexplicably colder for it.

They make it back to her house before she can even clock that Natasha is walking her home. It’s become somewhat of a tradition over the last few times, and each time Maria can’t bring herself to say she isn’t glad of the extra piece of company. She won’t lie about feeling it keenly each time she has to leave her for the silence of her own home, for the cooless of her bed alone. 

Something has her feeling bold tonight, something about the way Natasha smiles and the way she’d waited at the shop. Something about the creases in her face when she’d thought Maria wouldn’t show up after all. It could all be friendly. It could be that Natasha doesn’t know any other humans, but maybe Maria is a little overtired, maybe she feels safe under the blanket of darkness, pulling it high over her head like a child. 

She pauses on her doorstep, her keys still in her pocket as she turns to face Natasha. “Do you want a drink?” 

A smile works its way across Natasha’s face, but she makes no move to leave quite yet. “You’re meant to be sleeping.” 

“Right.” She tries not to let the joy slip entirely from her face, and she knows there is probably something horribly betraying about her mere expression whenever Natasha is around. Something Phil would call ‘sappy and dopey’ that no one else in the world has ever seen outside of the woman in front of her. “Well, I won’t keep you any longer. I’m sure you have your own sleep to be getting.” 

Her hand is halfway to her pocket when Natasha takes a step towards her, her face still achingly amused, and Maria pauses as if her movement might be an offence in some way, staring back at her with wide eyes. 

“Sorry if this is forward,” Natasha says, “but I’ve been thinking about this all night.” 

And then her hands are bunching in the neck of Maria’s sweater to pull her down to her own height, and Maria is stooping forward with the movement until Natasha’s lips meet her own. She’s warm against her, and Maria tries not to melt entirely as her own hands come to hold her jaw, gently like she might just dissolve into seafoam, something she’s entirely imagined in the night. 

But Natasha remains solid under her hands, her lips faintly salty like the rest of her, her skin warm like nothing that has ever come from the ocean. Maria thinks she’d gladly drown herself in this feeling. She thinks she’d drown herself for this woman any day of the week. Maybe she already has. 

Natasha doesn’t know where she finds the bravery – or, she thinks she should probably call it stupidity. Maybe it’s always been in her genes, just something that her people do. They’re forward, they come to the land for their own, much more forward reasons and Natasha has always been the weird one amidst them. She’s been warned from the start that she’s to be careful, and she’s always thought the best way to avoid the sort of horrible consequences she’s seen has been to avoid humans altogether. But she finds herself drawn to them nonetheless. She finds herself drawn to this one against everything she tells herself, and, at the end of the day, the way her heart races isn’t for the way she’s endangering everything she thought she cared for at all. 

The wool of Maria’s sweater is soft between her fingers, and Maria’s hands are rough against her jaw, so heartbreakingly gentle about it. She lets her go if only for the sake of Maria’s back, and instantly laments the ghost of her touch. She watches her, and Maria only blinks back, almost slack in the face. 

“Sorry, I–”

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay?” 

Natasha takes her own turn to blink, and her self preservation kicks in at last. This is far too much of a leap. She doesn’t know this woman. She shouldn’t be going around kissing sailors, no matter how pretty their eyes are, or how much their laughter fills her stomach with gobies. She takes a step back from the porch, trying not to trip over her own feet in her haste. 

This is what she’s been expecting from the beginning isn’t it? She’s been waiting for the day that Maria shows that she’s truly human, that she decides she’s sick of Natasha leaving all of the time. She’s been waiting for her to decide that she’s staying.

But that isn’t what she’s doing, is it? She isn’t telling her, she’s asking. She’s waiting for her answer like she cares about it. And why does Natasha want to say yes? Why does she want to walk into the shark’s mouth? 

“No. You really should be sleeping.” She gives her the most convincing smile she can muster. “I’ll see you around.” 

She can’t avoid the way Maria’s face seems to fall, despite the smile that still clings to it. “Yeah.” She holds up a hand in something only halfway to a wave. “See you around.” 

And with that, Natasha turns tail and tells herself that she isn’t running away from this. It’s for her own safety. She’s getting lax. She can’t afford this. 

The ocean feels cold for the first time in her life. 

The morning after, when she drags herself out of bed for her first bait duty since the incident, and she looks over the edge out of habit more than anything else. Her torch glints off of familiar eyes, round and intelligent in their glittering blackness. She smiles, and she wonders if Natasha knows how deeply she loves her already. If she knows that she loves this seal as much as she loves the woman. 

The eyes close scarcely a moment later as if caught and the creature disappears back into the safety of the waves, and Maria continues with consoling Fury that she won’t simply jump overboard in an effort to be closer to the water. 

Natasha isn’t at the shop that evening, and Maria tells herself she isn’t sad about it. Natasha isn’t hers alone, she doesn’t owe her time. But she isn’t there the next day, or the next, despite the way she shimmers beneath the surface every morning and every night. She doesn’t pretend that it doesn’t hurt anymore. She doesn’t know what she did wrong.

On the week exactly since Natasha had left Maria on her doorstep, a week exactly since Natasha has been too cowardly to approach her again, she finds herself on the beach in the afternoon, watching children play by the rocks. She doesn’t notice the footsteps approaching. She doesn’t turn to look at who it is until it’s too late, caught too deep in her own useless what-if’s, and she curses herself for the oversight. 

“Hey stranger,” Maria says next to her. “I was starting to think you’d skipped town.” 

Natasha can’t bring herself to face her, her tongue suddenly thick in her mouth. She watches the children splash each other, cringing back from the cold water. “Not yet,” she says, as calmly as she can manage. 

Maria sits down without asking, keeping a respectable distance between them that only serves to wrench further at Natasha’s heart. “Are you planning on it?”

She muses bitterly that that is precisely the issue she’s fighting, and she can’t really come up with a nice way to say that she’s been avoiding her because she’s terrified by her own feelings. She’s been avoiding herself because she doesn’t trust herself to do what she’s always done. She doesn’t want to run, for once in her life. 

And isn’t this what she’s always been told? Haven’t they always said, be careful. Because one day you will like one of them, and you will find yourself being careless, and they will have you before you know. But hasn’t it always been a sort of bittersweetness? Hasn’t it always been a sign that the humans have wanted them? Natasha doesn’t think she’s ever been wanted before, even by her own. 

The waters have felt so cold, the nights so long now that winter has drawn in, as inevitable as the tide, and Natasha has felt the pull of Maria’s warmth far too keenly. She scares herself stiff with how deeply she wants to reach out for her now. 

“I never stay anywhere for long,” she answers eventually. 

Maria pretends the statement doesn’t drag like a fish hook through her stomach. “Where are you going next?” How long do I have with you?

Natasha shrugs. “I don’t know.” 

The children shriek across the beach, running out of the water towards their parents, and the pair watch them in silence, the beat drawn out between them, tangled like seaweed and just as brittle in the sun. 

Natasha’s hair is as bright as ever, and Maria wonders where all of the colour goes when she isn’t this version of herself. She thinks it’s not something she should think too much about, something far too personal to wonder beside her. “Do you swim?” she asks on a whim, her attention on the water again.

Natasha raises a single eyebrow at her, frowning slightly, and she wonders if this is a gross overstep. She can’t quite get the words out of her mouth before Natasha finally answers. “Why?”

Maria shrugs. “Why not? The kids look like they’re having fun.”

Somehow, Natasha’s eyebrow only creeps higher. “You’re not dressed for swimming.” 

Maria only grins at that, and Natasha tries not to flush at the implication. “Well, I’m going to swim. You’re an independent woman, I’m sure.” 

And with that, she stands from her spot beside Natasha and her shirt is over her head the next moment. Natasha’s gaze snaps back to the horizon before she can give herself away entirely and she’s sure she can feel the way Maria smirks at her. She continues to find the sky infinitely interesting until Maria is missing from her side, replaced by a pile of her clothes as she appears again in her vision. She’s still in her underwear much to Natasha’s heart’s thanks, but she throws a grin over her shoulder as she makes her way over to the waning tide.

Natasha’s clothes are folded in much the same way as her cloak and her heart crashes like waves against her ribs as she leaves them safely beside Maria’s own. Maria’s face is far too smug, far too soft, as she waits for Natasha in the shallows. The water laps at her thighs and Natasha finds herself trying desperately not to stare. Maria holds a hand out to her and it hesitates in the space before Natasha can take it, before she can pull herself closer to Maria like the waves might separate them. It drags at her in ways she can’t quite process, and she tries not to think about it as Maria lets go again. 

They wade out further together until they can swim properly, and Natasha finds herself having such a pleasant time. She’s never swum with company in this body, and she almost wishes she could loop around Maria as her other half, cutting through the water with so much more ease. She settles for the part of her that Maria knows for now, never quite that bold. 

Something about it all does lower her defences, makes her softer around the edges, less guarded. She takes Maria wordlessly to spots she knows she shouldn’t show anyone. She takes her far too close to her favourite hiding spots, far too close to where her cloak currently is, but she can’t bring herself to care much when Maria follows so easily, when she continues to smile and joke and splash her when she isn’t looking. 

She’s really never seen Maria look so childish before. She suits it terribly, something lifted in the tired corners of her face, like the weight of herself has been left hind on the shore. Natasha thinks she understands the feeling, and it gives her an idea. 

“How long can you hold your breath?” she asks, drifting closer. 

“I don’t know,” Maria replies, grinning like she so often doesn’t. 

Natasha can’t help the way she grins back. “We’ll find out,” and she disappears under the waves. 

Maria ducks under without question, the salt stinging at her eyes, Natasha’s hair a fuzzy red halo around her head. Natasha beckons her closer to the rocks, holding onto them to keep herself grounded, and Maria tries to follow her eyeline to whatever is so interesting. She seems to be looking for something, and Maria has to come up for air twice in the time it takes her to find it. 

It is very small when Natasha finally reaches out and Maria catches the colour of it. Everything is slightly blurry under the water, but she can just about make out the shape of the little sea slug as it climbs onto Natasha’s hand. It has colourful spikes all the way along it and they look soft when Natasha brushes them gently with a finger, the creature's antenna wiggling towards her. 

She holds it out to Maria, the space between them smaller by the moment as the currents push them together, and Maria looks so enamoured when Natasha looks up. She gestures for her to put out her own hands and places it gently in her palm, taking in the overemotion on her face. She looks like she might cry, her hands gentle as she holds it, and Natasha’s heart only aches further. 

Eventually, even Natasha has to come up for air, and Maria still looks like she can’t believe her luck as they grin at each other, treading water and dripping. Her hair is plastered to her face, her eyes glittering with childlike glee, and Natasha wonders how she ever thought this woman could be something so cruel. She wonders how many things she could show her that she’s never experienced, if there’s something in her own domain that she can repay for each experience Maria gives her on land. 

They make their way back to the shore in their own time, the sun setting behind them once again. It’s safer at night, when no one else is around to notice them, where no one can question who this mystery woman is. Maria can’t bring herself to complain about the shift in her schedule. She thinks she should be classed as nocturnal at this point. A school of fish swim past, brushing their legs in ticklish swathes, and if they spend another half hour watching the way they glitter beneath the surface neither of them are complaining about it. 

Maria doesn’t think she’s ever had quite so much fun in her life. She feels like a child again, and Natasha is so incredibly patient with her, watching her in turn as she follows all of these little secret creatures around. She never gets to see so much of the life when she’s on the boat, and she’s never thought to look for them on her own. She thinks now that she’s been missing out severely. She thinks that she’d very much like to kiss Natasha again for the pleasure of it all. 

Instead, the words force themselves out of her mouth before she can think better of them. “Would you like to come over? I can make dinner again.” 

Natasha turns to her, something clouded in her expression and Maria tries not to flinch for the way she’s ruined such a wonderful atmosphere. She lets her gaze drop to the waves at their ankles, neither of them quite ready to leave the comfort of the water. 

She wonders if her devotion is what scares her away, her urge to have her close, but she can’t help it. She can’t pretend to ignore the way Natasha pulls at the tides inside of her, like she doesn’t feel like she’s drowning every time she’s next to her. They don’t need to put a name to it. She would never ask Natasha to anchor herself to something so far from her home, but she hopes that whatever short time Natasha does spend on the shore can be spent with her. She knows what it’s like to be trapped, to want to run. But she also knows what it’s like to find some sort of solace after so long, and she won’t tell herself that Natasha hasn’t become part of her own.

It doesn’t have to be forever. It just has to be her choice.

She knows her eyes must betray far more than she’d like. “It doesn’t have to be like before. I just want to cook for you.” 

Natasha tries so hard not to cry at the thought that Maria would apologise for something that Natasha chose to do. She tries not to cry at the mere thought that Maria has been so considerate of her from the start, and continues to be when Natasha has only tried to shut her out. She’s been awfully selfish, watching her from the water without letting Maria see her in return. 

She’s good, the voice in her head says, and she can’t bring herself to tell it otherwise when Maria looks so earnest in her offer, something almost fragile about her expression. 

“If it’s anything like that fish bake, I’d have to be insane to say no.”

The grin that lights up Maria’s face is dangerous in its own right, urging away every warning she’s ever had drilled into her, kicking away the limpets of doubt that she’s never been able to carve off herself. “Great,” Maria says simply, wading out of the tide before Natasha can change her mind. 

She holds out a hand again, seemingly on instinct, and it only hesitates slightly in the time before Natasha can take it herself. It hits her, upon happening again, that Maria thinks that she is the problem, that she thinks Natasha no longer wants to touch her despite the afternoon, and the week before stings like salt in a wound, wraps itself tight around her stomach like sailor’s ropes. It’s a practice in self control when she forces herself to let go that moment later, dragged halfway up the shore. She’s playing with rip currents here, but she’s never been able to say no to a risk. 

Natasha has never seen the inside of Maria’s home before, and she thinks of her coat, tucked safely in the crag, as she steps over the threshold. It’s warm inside, and the entryway is painted a lovely shade of blue. 

“You can leave your shoes by the door if you like,” Maria says as she unlaces her own work boots. 

Natasha follows suit with no real sense of what is expected in human houses, and she watches Maria line the toes of her shoes up against the skirting board before doing the same with her own. The rest of her house is decorated sparsely as they walk towards the kitchen, various things from the ocean dotted around. If it was anyone else she’d find it distasteful, but Natasha can’t bring herself to see it as stealing when it suits the space so nicely. It feels almost homely for it. 

Maria’s dining table only has two chairs, the rest of the spots empty. The end is piled high with paperwork and other items. 

“Sorry,” Maria says when she notices Natasha looking. “I should’ve tidied. Work has a way of getting everywhere.”

Natasha’s brows furrow. “This is all for the boat?”

“We are a company. Fury isn’t so fond of it these days. I started handling our finances years ago, and he just kept letting me take more.” 

A sound escapes Natasha that may or may not be something like a laugh, something maybe a touch too concerned. “Do you ever take a break?” 

“What’s the phrase?” Maria wonders aloud as she makes her way over to the kitchen area of the open plan space. “No rest for the wicked.” 

“You’re definitely not wicked.” 

Maria glances at her for that, something almost amused in her expression. “You should tell that to my crew. They need to hear it from someone who isn’t Phil for once.” 

Natasha thinks she’d rather be glued into her cloak than talk to any of the other sailors. “...Do you like them?”

“Like is a strong word,” Maria jokes with a breath through her nose. “They’re not bad, most of the time. You get used to them, and they’re company.” She bites back a comment about how she much prefers Natasha’s company and opens her fridge, her voice muffled into it. “What do you fancy?” 

Natasha takes her time to respond, and Maria tries not to feel like an idiot for asking a selkie what human food she wants. 

“I’ve got some fish in here from yesterday that needs using,” she corrects. “You like pollock?” 

“Fish is fish.” Natasha says, a grin crawling its way onto her face. 

Maria places a hand over her chest, her face betraying her.“My fisherman heart.” 

Natasha grins further, and Maria feels the tension from the week unwind from her shoulders like a rod left to spin. “I’m not taking it back.” 

“Pollock it is then,” she says through a grin of her own. “Do you like sauteed potatoes?” She wonders if Natasha has ever had potatoes in general before their last meal. She wonders how many people she’s known over the years.

“Sure,” she says, and Maria thinks that probably means no.  

Natasha watches Maria from a respectable distance whilst she cooks, and Maria bites back every question that rises to her tongue about her experiences. She wants to know everything about her. She wants to show her everything that she’s never seen. She wonders if Natasha will ever show her new things again, this afternoon sitting warm in her chest.

They don’t talk much as Maria cooks, music playing softly over a speaker on the other side of the room. Natasha watches her nod along to it every now and then, humming a tune that she doesn’t know as she stirs the potatoes around the pan. 

“Taste this,” she says, oddly quiet despite their being alone in the house. She holds out a wooden spatula with a single cube of potato on the end, a hand cupped underneath. “It might be hot.” 

Natasha leans forward to take it without thinking, careful not to touch the spatula with her teeth. The potato is too hot and she tries not to flinch around it, feeling a little bit stupid for not knowing what to do. The texture is odd, and the flavour is much more intense than she’s used to, but it’s bearable, almost nice. She guesses that the little green bits are herbs, and she’s not sure she likes them so much.

“You don’t have to have them,” Maria says, despite Natasha’s continued composure. “I can eat the rest tomorrow.” 

“No. They’re fine,” Natasha lies. 

Maria shoots her an odd look, something almost amused, and Natasha doesn’t miss the way she’s given less potatoes when their food is plated up. She watches Maria give her the bigger piece of pollock too, underseasoned and oversalted compared to her own, and it melts her heart just as much as it soothes the anxiety in her stomach. At what point does she start being weird? At what point does Maria start asking questions?

That small part of her wonders if Maria would ever start. 

Of course, Maria’s cooking is just as good the second time as it was the first. She thinks she could get used to the human food, the seasoning growing on her with each dish. The first was milder, and she thinks she likes whatever it was that made it creamy. The spices are nice in this dish too and the salt is what she’s used to, and when she eats the potatoes with the fish the herbs balance themselves into something palatable. She wishes she could eat like this more often, and it scares her a little, just like everything else. 

She doesn’t miss the way Maria watches her eat again, something fond in her expression, and she’s sure she finishes her food far too quickly under her gaze. Maria takes her time with her own plate, and Natasha is all too happy to simply watch her back. She wishes she had the courage to go against everything she’s been taught. She wonders if this is what they meant. If everyone feels like the risk is worth it at some point or another. 

She wonders how truly awful it would be to never be able to return to the waves. At least someone would want her here. At least she would have company. And Maria has been so considerate so far. Isn’t love worth your freedom?

She tries not to think about every old colony member that had found their way back only to die anyway, their coats far too damaged to ever work properly again. She tries not to think about how every one of them had cursed the land. 

In the end, it holds her in Maria’s doorway again, their positions reversed now. She’s always been waiting for Maria to trap her, for those ropes to work their way back around her ankle until she’s unable to do anything about it. She waits for Maria to ask her to stay again, she waits for her to make up some sort of excuse as to why she can’t possibly leave. But the words never make their way from Maria’s lips, and Natasha wonders if she’s tangled the ropes herself, her hands working without her permission. 

She lingers longer, eyes flickering over Maria’s expression. There is something soft about her as she watches Natasha back, something in her expression that only ever makes it harder for Natasha to leave like she knows she should. She wants to kiss her again, and she knows that Maria won’t initiate it. 

She turns on her heel, crossing the threshold with no small amount of self constraint. “I’ll see you around?” she says, allowing herself one last glance. 

Maria’s face is almost sad, and Natasha regrets the last time she’d said those words only to disappear. “Sure,” she says with a wave of her hand. “See you around.” 

Maria watches her fade into the dark from her doorstep and tries not to acknowledge the way everything weighs back down on her. She’s happy these days, she has been for years, but she can’t deny the tiredness that follows her. She’s simply accepted it as her own disposition, a penchant for exhaustion after growing up so fast, but Natasha is such a lovely distraction from it all that she could almost forget the burden of being herself. She makes her feel like a child again. She makes her feel like maybe everything has turned out alright after all, rough start in life be damned. Phil would be proud of her. 

The sky is near dark by the time Natasha makes her way back to the shore, that odd light on the horizon just before night really settles in. It’s still early despite the darkness, the winter air biting at her skin without her fur. She misses the warmth of Maria’s house, and she knows she should be yearning for the warmth of her cloak instead. It doesn’t hurry her feet any as she makes her way across the rocks. 

She pauses around a corner, pressing herself close to the cliff as voices drift over the water. There are people swimming in the dark, little shapes out in the waves, drifting closer towards the cliffs. She listens closer, her pulse loud in her ears over their washed out words. 

It sounds like men, like the young, stupid men that she’s spent her life learning how to avoid after one too many experiences. The sort that sneer and smirk in public, and the sort that she’s perfected slipping away from before they can look too closely. They’re not supposed to be around here. They’re supposed to stick to the populated areas. 

She watches them swim closer to where her coat is hidden, dread rising in her throat, finding herself frozen to the spot. She’s spent all this time thinking about Maria and her motivations that she’d never stopped to consider the very real possibility of someone else finding her. She watches them reach the rocks, scrambling over them in bodies that aren’t made for it. She can’t help thinking of the way Maria had seemed at home on them, like she’d been climbing them all her life. 

They laugh and yell as they make their way further away from Natasha, their voices fading into the night, and she practically tears across the distance when she’s sure they’re far enough away. She falls to her knees, the barnacles sharp against her skin and her cloak soft in her hands as she pulls it from the crag. 

She barely has the wherewithal to glance around herself, to make sure she’s truly alone, before she’s melting back into the embrace of the water, the ocean safe above her head. 

It takes her all of one day to make up her mind. She spends the majority of it practically shaking out of her fur for the way her mind races, swimming with what-if’s and worst case scenarios. Anyone could discover her. She’s been spending far too much time in one place. She’s been getting lax about being seen. 

She knows she should move on. She knows that the smart choice would be to simply leave and continue the life she’s always lived. She knows too that the sensible part of her has been lost to the tide for weeks now. 

Why leave it up to chance? Why spend the whole of her life waiting for someone to come along and steal her freedom from her? Surely, Maria is the kind option. Surely, if this is always going to happen at some point, then she should place her bets on someone that has only ever been good to her. 

She pushes away the heartbreak for her cloak, the images of others burnt or torn or oiled, irreparable in countless explicitly human ways. Surely none of them had chosen this? None of them had walked openly into their captors arms. They’d put up a fight, and that must have been their undoing, she bargains.

She thinks she could make peace with it. She thinks she could learn to like the spices Maria uses and the feeling of cool air on her skin. She thinks she’d like to feel wanted for once, even at the expense of her home. It’s an expression of love, isn’t it? If you truly love something, why would you ever let it go?

Surely, this is the best she’ll ever get in life.

The sun has set again by the time she works up the courage to leave the waves again, and this time she folds her coat neatly over one arm, only to clutch it tightly to her chest like a child. She makes her way through the village, avoiding the looks of the few people still around, and she finds herself at Maria’s doorstep before she can think about whether she’s actually home or not. 

She knocks, hesitant but confident in the sound of it, and she listens out for the shuffle of movement behind it. She doesn’t dare breathe in the drawn out minutes before the lock shifts and the door swings open. 

Maria blinks at her as if she wasn’t expecting her, and Natasha thinks that would make sense. The thought crosses her mind that she may have entirely lost the plot this time, but she isn’t given a chance to backtrack now. 

She watches Maria’s eyes drop to the cloak in her arms before a smile works its way onto her face, and her heart only ticks up further before it goes hurtling through her stomach, and she wonders again why she ever thought this would be a good idea, why she thought she should ever give up half of herself for someone else. But Maria’s smile is so warm, and her house smells so nice, and Natasha is only staring back at her. 

“Hi,” she says, a little meek. “Can I come in?” 

Maria’s smile spreads further as she steps to the side. “Of course.” She closes the door behind Natasha, though she doesn’t lock it again. “You can hang your coat up to the left if you want.” 

Natasha takes in the coat rack along the wall, piled surprisingly thick for someone who lives alone. She supposes that Maria must own coats for every weather, working on a boat. 

She watches Maria walk back into the kitchen, not waiting for Natasha, and she takes the opportunity to bury it as deep under everything else as she can manage. She doesn’t know what she was thinking. This was a terrible mistake. 

But then, in the next room, Maria looks so cosy as she leans back against her kitchen counter. She has a mug in her hands, still steaming, and she’s wearing another sweater from her collection that highlights her shoulders in such a lovely way. Natasha finds herself staring from the doorway and Maria’s eyes crinkle over the rim of her cup, mid sip. 

“I won’t bite,” she says, holding her cup close for warmth. 

No, Natasha thinks, with what little amusement she can find. I did though. “Sorry,” she says as she takes a seat at one of the dining table chairs. “I didn’t mean to intrude.” 

Maria shakes her head. “Not at all. I’m always happy to see you.” She takes another sip. “What gives me the pleasure?” 

Natasha mulls over her answer for longer than is probably acceptable, but there doesn’t seem to be a good way to say I thought maybe you’d claim me. “I had nowhere else to go,” she settles on instead, which is still far more of the truth than she should be telling. 

Maria’s face softens instantly, something akin to concern that tugs at Natasha’s heart. “Are you okay?” 

“Better now,” she says truthfully. 

She doesn’t know how Maria manages to soothe her so effectively. She doesn’t know how Maria hasn’t noticed something off about her yet. She’d appeared on her doorstep with her cloak in her arms, and Maria had simply asked her to hang it up. She tries desperately to smother the part of her that is disappointed by it. 

It’s only made slightly harder when Maria looks so pleased to hear that she’s better. “Do you want a drink?” 

“What are you drinking?” 

“Mint tea, but I have others – and coffee if you like that.” She turns slightly towards her cupboards where the tea presumably resides. 

“I’ve never had mint tea before,” she admits. She’s never had any sort of tea before, but Maria doesn’t need to know that. The few people she’s had the displeasure of knowing – if one can really call it that – have never been quite so hospitable. She’d never really given them chance to be, gone long before the sun had risen.

“You might like it,” Maria says, and she’s already reaching up to retrieve a tea bag along with a new mug. 

The kettle boils quickly, still hot from Maria’s own drink, and Maria leaves the bag in the cup when she hands it to Natasha. She stares into the yellow liquid, the smell comfortingly familiar, comfortingly Maria. She blows gently over the surface like she’s seen Maria do once or twice, but it still burns her tongue, and she doesn’t manage to hide the flinch in her features, much like the last time. She still thinks that food should be a reasonable temperature. 

“Come here,” Maria beckons, holding a hand out. 

“No, it’s okay.” Natasha holds the mug a little tighter. “I like it.” Though, she hasn’t really tasted it yet. Her tongue tingles. 

“No,” Maria laughs. “I’ll put some cold in it to cool it down.” She takes the cup tentatively from Natasha’s hesitant hands, still smiling, and Natasha watches as she tops it up with water from the fridge before handing it back. “There. Try again.” 

This time, Natasha blows over the top a little longer, her sip smaller. The liquid is pleasantly warm now, and it really does taste nice. It reminds her vividly of Maria, and she thinks again that it wouldn’t be so bad if she got to experience this every day. 

Maria finds her way to the other chair, and there is music playing softly over the speaker again. She doesn’t ask about why Natasha came running as they sit in the dulled atmosphere. She doesn’t ask what ‘nowhere else to go’ means, and Natasha feels a little more safe in her presence. She thinks she’s felt safe for longer than she likes to admit. 

“Do you always have music on?” Natasha asks, nodding to the small speaker, set right next to the piles of work that still clutter the table. They’ve changed slightly since the night before but they seem ever present.

“Most of the time,” Maria admits. “The crew like to sing a lot on the boat, and living alone can be very quiet sometimes. It’s nice to have some background noise.” 

Natasha hums into her mug. “I like it.” 

There is a sort of murmur to the ocean that being on land never quite replicates, and she’d never realised quite how much the silence had gotten to her before. The sounds of the shore are lovely, but they’re not quite so full as the water, and the gentle music is almost halfway there. 

Maria watches her drink her tea, as calm as the night before, and tries silently to process everything that has happened in the last five minutes. She’s certain that Natasha has just shown up on her doorstep with her cloak in hand, and she’s certain that that cloak is now hung up on her coat rack. Frankly, the idea that Natasha trusts her so much with it makes her breath a little short in her chest, feeling a lot like she’s drowning very suddenly. She tries not to think about what must have pushed her here with such urgency to have her all but trembling on her doorstep.

She shivers slightly then, despite the thick wool of her sweater and the heating in her house. She’d only come into the kitchen to make a drink, sidetracked from her cosy position on the sofa. “I was just about to start a movie in the other room,” she starts, almost hesitant. She’s not sure where the line is drawn these days, but she knows she’d like to spend as much time with Natasha as she’s afforded – and she also knows she’d like to be under a blanket right now. “Do you want to join me?” 

“What movie?” Natasha asks around another sip.

“Sharknado.”

Natasha’s eyebrow twitches, her reservation hidden politely, if poorly. “Sharknado?”

Maria grins. “It’s awful.” 

“Sharks wouldn’t survive in a tornado.” 

“I know.” 

Natasha pouts in acceptance, almost smiling herself, and Maria leads her into the other room. Her lounge is tidier at least, she thinks, but it hits her then, a touch late, that she only owns one sofa. She settles herself tight against one of the arms, dragging one of the various blankets over herself and leaving as much space for Natasha on the other end as possible. 

She tries not to watch Natasha outright as she folds herself up on the other side, the space between them oh so small and painfully wide at the same time. She pulls her blanket a little further over herself, fighting off the bite of the winter. 

In the end, Natasha enjoys the movie despite its stupid nature, and Maria feels prouder than she probably should for the feat of it. She tries valiantly to ignore the way Natasha inches closer, seemingly without noticing. Her attention remains resolutely on the screen when Natasha’s hands bunch in her blanket, and she ignores it still when Natasha ends up dragging it over herself too, holding it tight to her chest. She wonders where the line is between them now, but she doesn’t want to hurt herself with the answer. She’ll simply take what she is offered. 

She doesn’t point out that there’s more than enough strewn about for Natasha to have her own, indulging in the warmth of having her close, even through the guilt it rises in her chest, sticking about her lungs like seafoam. She wonders if Natasha gets cold without her fur, but her body is vividly warm beside her. 

“Are you scared?” Maria asks, trying not to grin as she feels Natasha tug on the blanket again. 

“I’m worried for the sharks,” Natasha admits, much more serious about the movie than Maria had anticipated. “They don’t know they’re not meant to eat people.” 

She can’t help turning to Natasha then, a smile on her face that she’s sure is far too soft for this, and Natasha is so much closer than she ever has been before. She can see the little freckles that dust her cheeks, the colour of her eyelashes, and the flecks in her eyes. She thinks she could get swept out by all of the details of this woman, washed away before she ever had any hope of holding her ground. 

It’s only when Natasha looks back that she realises she’s been staring, pinned suddenly by her attention. “You’re not watching,” she says. 

“I’ve seen this movie a thousand times.” 

“That has to be an exaggeration.” 

Maria shrugs lightly, grinning a little further, and she’s sure Natasha’s eyes flicker to her mouth. “Natasha,” she starts, so nearly broken, and she doesn’t really know where she’s going with it.

But Natasha doesn’t let her finish before she’s closing the gap between them, twisting in her seat until their thighs are pressed together and her hands are at Maria’s jaw, and then she’s kissing her just like before and it’s all Maria can do to hold her in place by the hips and kiss her back as she settles into her lap.

There’s something heartbreaking about the way Natasha kisses. She kisses like this is the last time she’ll ever be able to do it. She kisses like it kills something inside of her to be here, and Maria grips at her harder for it, pulls her closer to her as if maybe it will help. She lets Natasha’s hands slide around the base of her skull and tangle into her hair, and she hopes that everything she feels is reflected in how she kisses her back. 

“You don’t have to,” she whispers against her lips, trying not to ache for the way Natasha almost trembles under her hands. 

Her hands bunch in the fabric of her sweater, pulling it tight around Maria’s waist. “I want to,” she says back, barely fitted into the space between another desperate press of her lips. “Tell me you want me.”

“Of course I do,” Maria whispers against her. 

She wants so desperately to be here. She wants so desperately to call Maria home. Each kiss calls at the ocean inside of her, threatening to spill over into something tangible and wash her back out to it. Maria’s hands are rough and warm like the summer waves, and it tears her in two as she thinks of her cloak buried in the coat rack.

She can afford herself a little longer. She can take what she’s given and hold onto this whilst she has it. Maybe one day she’ll find her sensibilities and leave. Maybe one day Maria will remember that she is human and Natasha will have her mind made up for her. Either way she will be leaving a part of herself behind. 

So she holds Maria tighter for it now, curls her fingers behind her jaw and kisses the lingering mint from her mouth. She breathes in the salt scent of her, something of the ocean in this sailor too, and she tries not to cry too openly in the hospitality of her home. 

Maria’s thumb is gentle across her cheek to wipe away her tears, moving to hold her face heartbreakingly gently. “Are you okay?” she asks, her eyes flickering between Natasha’s for some sort of clue. Her pupils are wide despite her concern, and Natasha only wants to cry more for it. 

She knows she doesn’t just mean this moment. She probably means the evening as a whole. She most likely means the entire time they’ve known each other. “I’m fine,” she says, her voice horribly thick with it. “It’s not you,” she lies. 

“Do you want to stay?” Maria asks softly, almost hesitant. Always a question. Never a demand. 

“Please,” Natasha breathes against her lips, pulling her back in. 

And she makes her mind up in that gentle moment that Maria’s hand cradles her head, when she holds her like she might simply dissolve, something achingly careful about it. She holds her like she’s enamoured by her presence, like she’s expecting her to run at any moment. She holds her like she’s giving her an out, and Natasha is terrified by the way it hurts. 

She holds Maria like maybe she can make up for it, like maybe if she sinks her claws in deep enough, Maria will get the message. She holds her like Maria might try to keep her in return. 

Maria has never shared her bed before. It’s an odd experience to wake up to a weight on the other side of the small mattress, Natasha’s body pressed warm to her side. She seems so small when she’s human, and Maria feels the odd urge to wrap her arms around her like it might keep her safe. She’s not sure what had her so shaken up last night, and it feels odd to think she could protect an apex predator with her own hands, but she likes to think that maybe emotional dangers could be the one thing she could help with. 

She lets herself take her in again as she sleeps, the night still dark outside. She has to be up soon for bait duty and she loathes the idea for the first time in her life. She wonders what Natasha will do when she leaves, whether she’ll follow her into the waves in her own way. She wishes she didn’t have to leave her, but she supposes that she can’t put off work forever. She muses mildly that they seem to have it backwards, with how often Maria thinks she’d do anything Natasha asked. She thinks she’d gladly leave the land behind if Natasha only took her hand and led her to the tide. 

“What?” Natasha grumbles then, curling further in on herself. 

“Nothing,” Maria replies, her smile audible in her voice. She props her head in her hand to continue watching. 

Natasha opens her eyes almost reluctantly. Sleeping as a human is always strange. She’s not used to letting herself shut off so completely. “You’re looking at me,” she says as she turns to face her. 

Maria only grins. “You’re very nice to look at,” she says. 

Maria’s skin is warm and quite smooth under the covers and Natasha lets herself draw a hand over her torso. “Do you have to leave?” She thinks she’d like to stay here with her all day, feeling out the lines of her all over again. 

“The sea doesn’t play by human rules,” Maria says, almost fantastically, and she settles a little further into the mattress despite the comment. “Do you have somewhere to be?” 

Natasha raises an eyebrow. “At four o’clock in the morning?”

“You never know,” Maria teases, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “You might have some secret life I don’t know about.” 

Natasha thinks she doesn’t know how right she is. She wonders if she’ll ever have the courage to tell her outright. She wonders how she doesn’t know already. “I don’t have anywhere to be.” 

“You’re welcome to stay for a while,” she offers, her gaze lingering over Natasha’s form in some awfully loving way. “There’s tea in the cupboard and food in the fridge.” 

Natasha’s heart returns swiftly to its sore state of the night before – before Maria had led her up the stairs, glancing over her shoulder and grinning. Before Maria had welcomed her into the cosy warmth of her bed, with her plush pillows and thick duvet. Before Natasha fell asleep in her arms, almost able to pretend that this is how it could be. “Are you sure?” 

She still can’t tell if the ache is a pleasant one. It’s something she keeps poking at like an old bruise, like the way her ankle twinges in the turning weather now. She hates this sort of brackish limbo, where Maria asks her to stay with the doors held wide open, where Maria provides her with choices that Natasha doesn’t want to make. 

“One hundred percent. You’re always welcome to come and go,” she reiterates, with so much conviction in her eyes, such tenderness, and it breaks Natasha’s heart that much further. 

She doesn’t bother to reply, doesn’t try and force up a thank you that she doesn’t know if she means. Instead, she pulls Maria back in by the face and climbs back into her lap. They haven’t spoken about this. They most likely never will. You never need to when your life deals in absolutes. Natasha is either Maria’s to have and to hold, by her own hand, or she’s gone with the tide before she can reach for her. 

She wishes that could be true, but Maria’s hands never take without asking, and Natasha’s heart won’t seem to let her close the door behind her. 

By the time Maria does leave for work, wrapped up in winter gear and armed with a torch for the walk, Natasha is still naked in her house. She doesn’t really want to put her clothes back on now that she’s felt the soft fabric of Maria’s wardrobe and the blankets on her couch. Hers are the only clothes she’s ever had, the only ones she’s ever known as a reference, and now she finds herself staring at the neatly folded t-shirt at the end of Maria’s bed, aged soft and large. It looks comfier than her old clothes, worn almost ragged, salt woven into the very fabric of them. She wonders if Maria would enjoy the sight of her own clothes on her and the shirt is over her head before she can think any further, even with Maria halfway to the boat by now. 

She makes her way downstairs in it to figure out the kettle and the tea, and the scent of it soothes the way Maria’s absence seems to erode at her these days. She wonders just when she managed to worm her way so far into her heart only to decide that the answer is far too early on for comfort, not to mention far too early in the morning to be thinking about. She stands in front of the sink instead and sips her tea with the little bit of cold water, watching robins skip around in the shadows of the garden outside. 

She stays until the sun rises, and the idea of being in Maria’s house without her starts to feel more like an invasion despite the way that little voice nags at her. This is how it’s supposed to be, it says. Are you sure she hasn’t locked you in?  

And somehow, she’s still surprised when she tries the front door to find it open. Maria had locked it when she was home alone, but she’d left it unlocked the moment Natasha had arrived, and she’d left it unlocked when it was just Natasha alone. She wonders if she realises that this means it will be left unlocked all day, but the village is small and she guesses that it can’t be that much of a risk.

She slips back out of the house in her own clothes, Maria’s shirt placed back over the end of her bed, and she thinks she might be able to catch the return journey of Maria’s boat if she rushes. 

They fall easily back into their routine of evening walks. Each day Natasha waits by the shop, and each day Maria closes up as swiftly as possible, or halfway runs from her own home to meet her. And then on those days, Natasha starts to meet her at her door. Each time her cloak is in her hands, and each time Maria fails to mention it. She smiles and she ushers her in, and she never once questions as to why Natasha would leave her coat behind on their walks. Natasha bites her tongue each and every night. 

She hangs it like a normal coat, one day, on the closest peg to the door, and Maria doesn’t touch it. She lays it over the end of the bannister the next, never bothering to hang it at all, and Maria doesn’t move it. She places it over the back of one of the dining room chairs as they drink their tea, and it remains there until the next morning when Natasha wraps it warm around herself again. 

Each time, Natasha wonders how dense Maria must be, and each time her patience runs a little thinner, some great river dried to a stream. 

“Why do you do that?” she asks, months later, her cloak still untouched, slung over the stair bannister again. 

“Do what?” Maria responds, leaning back against the door as it snicks shut. 

“You lock your door when you’re alone, but not when I’m here.” She’s not sure if she wants to know the answer. Maria only ever continues to give her an out. She wishes she could still hate the part of her that wishes she wouldn’t. 

“Oh.” Natasha watches her drag a hand over the nape of her neck. “Old habit, I guess. I never had much privacy as a kid, y’know?”

Oh. Natasha’s expression softens instantly. “Sorry. I should’ve guessed.” 

Maria leads them further into the house, as hospitable as ever. “It’s okay. I haven’t told you much about him.” 

“You can – if you’d like,” Natasha admits. She strokes her coat as she walks past and wonders when she became someone who traded with sailors. She wants to learn more about her. She wants to know everything that she is willing to share. Part of her hopes that if Maria shares enough, she’ll decide that Natasha has to stay, if Natasha helps enough, then Maria will never be able to bear the thought of losing her. 

She tries not to think too hard about how far the other way she’s fallen. She tries not to think about every night spent staring at the stars in the lightless water, wondering why she can’t just seem to swim away, wondering how far Maria’s hooks have sunk into her skin. 

Maria smiles, something almost sad about it – and Natasha has come to learn that Maria is often sad, that it has a way of hounding her like a remora, despite the years since her troubles and the way she talks about her job. Natasha thinks she cares too much about things that she shouldn’t have to think about, and Maria always laughs softly, agreeing with her before that crease inevitably finds its way back between her eyebrows. She learns, too, that Maria frowns less when she is around, and it still feels a little bit like she’s drowning when she thinks about it. 

“One day,” Maria says, as if she still expects Natasha to leave. So why don’t you do something about it, Natasha thinks, bitter if she admits it. “Are you going to hang that up?” Maria asks to drag her back into the moment, still in the hallway. 

“Sure,” she says as casually as she can manage, and it’s a very calculated movement when she holds her coat out to her. 

She wonders if she’s imagining the way Maria hesitates, the way her eyes flicker between her face and her hands. She takes it from her before she can make her mind up on the matter, and her coat is hung delicately on the hook nearest the door, right beside the one Maria wears to work these days. 

“Thanks,” Natasha says with a smile, and she doesn’t mention it as Maria ushers her further into the house properly this time. 

They don’t go on their usual walk this time, curling up on the sofa with another equally cheesy movie and several rounds of tea. Maria holds Natasha close and tries not to feel like a traitor in her own house. She wonders if Natasha knows she knows. She must, if she’s handing her her cloak by her own volition. It seems rude to mention it after all this time. Maybe it’s just something she’s expected to have known from the beginning. Maybe it’s something that she’s meant to ignore, something that Natasha thinks is much less known than it is. 

Either way, her arm is loose around her waist, and her doors remain unlocked. She presses a kiss to Natasha’s hair and she hums happily, leaning further into her side. She wonders how long she has with her and decides that would be just as rude of a question to ask, that asking Natasha to put a name to it, to turn it into commitment would be a violence in itself. They’ve never spoken about what they are officially, but Maria knows that she is Natasha’s through and through. She thinks again that they’ve gotten it backwards, that Natasha has stolen her own heart and dragged it out to sea. She’s sure of it now, over the months they’ve spent together. 

However long they have left, however long she has until she inevitably drowns in it all, Natasha’s cloak will be safe in her home. 

Natasha becomes insistent after that night, in the way she gives Maria her cloak. She presses it into her hands when she enters, and she asks her to retrieve it when she leaves. She leaves it strewn around, leaves it out of her own sight and always in Maria’s, and Maria can only be thankful that she seems so comfortable to leave something so vitally important around her house. It wears at her sometimes, that Natasha is so careless with her own life, as if Maria can protect her from it all, as if she trusts Maria that much. She tries not to think about it too much, lest the tide in her chest rise and never stop, spilling over until she simply can’t keep it all a secret anymore. 

It is late in the evening and Maria’s bed is still small, and they still fit themselves into it as if there is nowhere comfier. The air is finally warm enough that Maria’s teeth don’t chatter without the duvet and they lay on top of it together, a blanket tangled haphazardly around their legs. Natasha’s cloak glints silver in the lamplight, folded over the edge of the dresser. 

Natasha’s brows draw together, staring at something by the foot of the bed, and Maria lets herself draw lazy circles into the soft, downy skin of her stomach. She props her head on an elbow to look at her. “What is it?” she asks softly. 

Natasha’s brows twitch further, her foot twisting back and forth. Her skin has scarred as readily as Maria’s, the raised surface almost reflective in the light. She sighs, turning to Maria and only growing further troubled by the minute. 

“You know what I am,” she says, almost a whisper, something broken under the steel of it.

Really, it’s the last thing Maria had expected her to say. Somehow, she knows exactly what she means. “The boys love to talk. There’s all manner of fairy tales that they tell.” 

Natasha’s hands fist in the blanket, tugging at Maria’s calf like the ropes all those months ago. “You know that they’re more than that.” 

She continues her patterns into Natasha’s skin, something mesmerising from the start about the soft hair that covers her. “I don’t think they believe it at all. I think they’re just passing the time with stories of women.” 

“I’m not talking about stories,”  she says, almost a growl, and Maria can tell this has been weighing on her for a long time. She wonders if she’s been thinking it from the start, if each day has been a test. 

“I spend every day of my life on the ocean,” she says, and she knows that she’s being obtuse, but it sounds so awful to admit that she’s known from the start so plainly. “You’re as much a part of it as it is you. You’re as inseparable as my own skin is.” 

“You knew.” Her hands fist further in the sheets, her teeth almost bared in hurt. “You know.”  

“How was I supposed to miss it?” 

She reaches over to take Natasha’s hand in her own, her fist relaxing into her palm, and it’s Natasha who entwines their fingers, who holds onto Maria until it aches. She watches Natasha’s face flicker, something so painfully conflicted around the act she tries to maintain. Her eyes are hard and green where she holds Maria’s gaze, broken bottles softened by the waves. 

“What’s stopping you then?”

“What do you mean?” 

“What’s stopping you?” she repeats, a note desperate. “If you knew, then why do you hang my coat like it’s anything else? Why do you keep letting me leave?” She takes a breath, rattling and wet, and when Maria wipes the tear from her cheek with a thumb, she only leans her jaw further into her embrace. “I’m meant to be scared. I’m meant to avoid you, and I’m practically handing you my life on a platter.” 

“Natasha…” 

“What is wrong with me? Why won’t you just take it? You have access to all sorts of oils and machinery. You could have my coat irreparable in minutes.”

“Nothing is stopping me,” she soothes softly, stroking at the back of their joined hands. She turns to face her fully. “Why would I ever take something so important to you?” 

Natasha’s brows furrow again, hard enough to make Maria’s own face ache. “That’s how it goes. The sailor and the seal. The sailors fall in love, and it doesn’t matter what we want. They love us, and the sea takes us from them, so they take the sea from us. It’s how it goes. And I’ve spent my whole life avoiding anyone – even my own – and you still won’t keep me.” 

Her tears are warm against Maria’s hand, salty like the very ocean she’s already given up in her head, like that very same ocean is reaching out to say please don’t.  

“That doesn’t sound like love,” Maria says, gentle like Natasha might dissolve in front of her, tales of women into seafoam. 

Natasha just doesn’t understand. She’s spent all of this time wondering what she’s doing wrong, what about her is so broken that Maria can’t stand the thought of having her forever. “What?” 

“That sounds awful,” Maria says, her face achingly gentle. “I don’t want to own you, Natasha.” 

Isn’t that the same thing? that voice in her head says, and she doesn’t know what to make of it anymore. She closes her eyes against the sight of Maria. “What do you want then?” 

“I want you to be happy. I couldn’t stand the week that I was grounded; I could never give up the ocean, and it would be a damn hard job to get me to leave my place here either. I know what it’s like to be kept, for someone not to care about your wants, and I can’t imagine having half of my life taken from me just because someone couldn’t handle my happiness.” She squeezes gently at their joined hands. “I don’t want to own you, Natasha, I want you to choose to stay with me. What’s so wrong with the way we’ve been doing things?” 

“But–” Her brain trips over itself, flippers over seaweed. She glances over Maria’s face again, searching for cracks, for some sort of evidence that this is all just a cruel joke. “What if I leave?” 

“I’d rather you be happy.”

She feels like crying, frankly. “What if someone else finds it? What if they destroy it?”

“It’s been more than safe here for the past months, hasn’t it?”

Natasha nods, almost meek. “I don’t get it,” she admits, her eyes slipping closed again. She thinks her world has been slipping for a year now, the poles flipped and her navigation tattered. 

Maria pulls her close to her chest, and it feels a little more like comfort. She holds her now like she knows Natasha won’t bolt. She holds her like she doesn’t ever want to let go. “I think you’ve gotten it backwards. I think you’ve held me in your own hands from the very start.” She sighs, and Natasha’s hands clutch at her, holding her just as close. “I will always belong to the ocean, in every capacity I have – and you are the water. There is something inexplicable about you, and if I had a coat to give then it was sunk long ago. I’m not going anywhere. My door will always be open. You don’t have to give up half of yourself for me.” 

Natasha doesn’t mean to cry, but she doesn’t know what else to do. She’s never known anything else – giving up half of herself has always been a fact of life. Maria smells like the sea when she presses her face to her chest, and she wonders if she’d ever really have lost the ocean if she had destroyed her cloak. 

“Please,” she says to her skin, and she doesn’t even know what she’s begging for. 

Maria strokes her hair, scratching soothingly at her scalp. “Besides,” she starts, laughing despite the way her own voice wobbles, “who would keep me company on the boat if you couldn’t follow us?” 

Natasha barely manages to suppress a moan. She’s been weighing up the evidence for months, but she’d never let herself think about that specific habit. “I didn’t know you knew.” 

“I did.” 

“I know that now.” 

Maria’s voice turns serious again, fingers playing patterns over her back. “I couldn’t take that from you, Natasha. No matter how much I love you. I’d sooner let you tear my arm off.”

“Thank you,” she whispers back, ignoring the way Maria’s scars still twinge at her heart. She should’ve known, really. She’s been so painfully considerate from the start.

“You are welcome to stay as much as you like,” she reiterates. “I want you here as much as you’ll allow me. I want you here for as long as you want to keep coming back, but my door will never be locked against you.”

Natasha nods into her chest, her words lost to tears again, and Maria holds her like she’s the only thing stopping her from falling apart entirely. She holds her like she wants her there forever, and Natasha can’t say that she won’t give her just that.  

Eventually, Natasha’s cloak gets its own peg on the rack, and her own side of the dresser is cleared for clothes. Maria kisses her goodbye on the shore every morning, and Natasha slips into the waves as easily as ever. Some days she helps Maria with the stock in the store in the afternoon, and other days she spends the sunlight wandering without fear, mapping out the wildlands around the town, though she never finds a passion for conversation or strangers. She comes to like Maria’s spices but not her herbs, and she never learns to like her tea as hot as Maria does. 

Sometimes, Maria only realises that the front door was never locked overnight when they leave the next morning. She still catches glimpses of silver in the waves, a respectable distance away these days, and Phil stops asking why she seems so happy each time. Eventually, he stops asking what miracle has happened every time she smiles, too, the question growing wonderfully tedious. He thinks she’s been happier overall since he’s met her partner, and she thinks that life has simply gotten easier.