Chapter Text
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Present day
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Stede loses some chunks of chest hair as the ECG pads are peeled off his skin.
He honestly barely even notices. Ed the paramedic is so close, his long silver hair brushing against Stede’s arm and his delicate fingers patting the red skin of Stede’s chest.
“Sorry ‘bout that, mate.”
Ed is apologising for something, looking with a frown at the bare exposed circles of skin, but Stede shrugs it off.
“Not a problem.”
What does he need chest hair for anyway. It’ll grow back. Ed is looking at him again, and Stede gets lost in the depths of his beautiful brown eyes.
“Do you need help getting home? Need to call anyone?”
That’s Fang’s voice. Stede blinks, trying to remember where he is and what he’s doing. Right, yes, ambulance. That nasty business with getting lost and feeling like his heart was trying to pound its way out of his chest.
“Er, no,” he manages, “my car is just over there. I can drive home.”
“You sure?” Ed sounds concerned. “You’ve had a nasty shock, might be a good idea to get a lift.”
“Oh no,” Stede uses his breezy voice, “everything was fine, wasn’t it? All the tests? I’ll be absolutely fine.”
They let him go, in the end, despite Ed’s protestations. The small, angry one - Iggy, was it? - says they need to get to another call, and that settles it. Stede makes his way back to his car on slightly shaky legs, flopping into the driver’s seat and leaning his head on the steering wheel. God, how mortifying. All that fuss over nothing. And, of course, his paramedic had to be kind, and gentle, and gorgeous, and said he thought lichen was ‘cool’. Like he was plucked from one of Stede’s romantic daydreams. Stede groans into the pleather of the wheel as he thinks about how he must have looked, all sweaty and gasping in the undergrowth. Hardly daydream material.
Still, at least Ed said he was a fan. That gives Stede something to work with.
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Two weeks later
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Ed wakes up with his t-shirt stuck to his body, wet and clinging, his bedsheets tangled up around his bare legs.
He’s been dreaming again, one of those choking dreams, where his dad is back and menacing and looming, and Ed is small in the corner, but not small enough and Dad is yelling now, and Ed’s trying to get his words out but he’s choking, spluttering, and Dad laughs and Ed gets that horrible, cold, no escape feeling sinking into his bones before he wakes, drenched in sweat and jaw clenched so hard his teeth ache.
Fuck .
You’d think at his age he would have stopped having bad dreams about a dickhead he cut out of his life over 30 years ago. Could be dead for all Ed knows, and he wouldn’t give a shit if he was.
Ed sighs.
He picks up his phone from the bedside table and glances at the time.
4am.
He desperately needs to squeeze in a few more hours of sleep before his next shift but his body is in full flight-or-fight mode now, his brain replaying long-buried memories just to fuck with him.
Ed’s old therapist would have told him he needs to sit with the uncomfortable feelings and observe the reactions of his body and all that other mindfulness crap but Ed doesn’t fucking want to, ok? He quit therapy for a reason, and it wasn’t because he magically got better. He needed to find his own way, his own way of coping and living in his own head. But at times like this, in the early hours of the morning, alone in his bed in a soggy T-shirt and shaking, Ed wonders if he’d done the right thing.
Ed strips out of his wet shirt, tossing it into the laundry basket across the room. He could grab another, but he can’t be arsed, so he plucks the blanket off the end of the bed and wraps it around his shoulders. The purple fabric drapes luxuriously over his body, and Ed wiggles in satisfaction. His room is pretty sparse, in terms of decoration, but he couldn’t resist this particular indulgence, this soft fluffy blanket that reminds him of being hugged.
The room is dark, faintly illuminated by moonlight seeping through the curtains, casting shadows on the bed sheets. Ed shuffles backwards until he’s propped up against the headboard, keeping the blanket clutched tight around him. He grabs his phone again, scrolling idly. All his notifications are for stupid stuff - an update for that game he should really delete, promotional emails from companies he doesn’t care about - but there’s one that catches his eye. It’s a notification on his video app, and Ed’s heart thumps in his chest as he taps on it.
He’s trying not to get his hopes up. After all, there’s been no reply to his first comment on the mycelium video, and his second comment under Stede’s most recent upload has been sitting there for a couple of weeks now, lonely and slightly tragic. Ed cringes when he thinks about it.
[Image ID: An image of a comment on a video sharing website from user 'kraken666' that reads 'Loved this one (this is Ed the paramedic btw)'/.End ID]
But now there is a response. A reply from Stede, right underneath his comment.
[Image ID: An image of a comment on a video sharing website from user 'captain_bonnet' that reads ‘Check out my new video! https://blogs.me/videos/TzCOc9RxHX'/.End ID]
Ed pauses, finger hovering over the link. Is rickrolling still a thing? Maybe this is some kind of elaborate prank, like someone has sniffed out his desperation and loneliness and is catfishing him using Stede’s username. Ed allows himself a moment to spiral through worst case scenarios, before deciding the risk is worth it. He follows the link, skin of his fingertip meeting cold glass.
The screen is filled with blue waves. Ed squints at it, trying to make out details, but the water is dark, as if they are submerged underwater. There’s some light glinting in the distance though, like the surface is over there, just out of reach. Ed watches the movement of the water, finding it oddly soothing. It’s like being at home, in Aotearoa, floating in the ocean and not worrying about anything - not his Dad, not his job, not Mum crying - just pure nothing all the way down to the seabed.
There’s suddenly a shift. The water changes, the light glows brighter. Stede’s face materialises, some details of his apartment behind him, cast in a blue filter. Ed spots the sasquatches lined up on a shelf in the distance. Now they have friends , Ed thinks.
“Hello, crew.”
Stede’s warm, lovely smile lights up the screen, and Ed finds himself smiling back fondly. It’s only then that he notices Stede is…glittery? There’s a golden sheen to his skin that definitely isn’t there normally, and he has more gold around his eyes, big bits of it like gold leaf. Oh, and he’s not wearing a shirt. Yup. No shirt. The gold continues down his neck, onto his collarbones and across his wide, biteable shoulders. Ed stares at the glitter stuck in his chest hair, the faint circles of the ECG pads, the rope of pearls draped around his neck, at the tops of Stede’s pink nipples visible at the bottom of the screen. He thinks some more about biting.
“My name is Stede, and I’m a mermaid. A merman. Merperson! I’m a merperson, and welcome to my underwater spa .”
Stede gestures with his hands as he says the words ‘underwater spa’, and Ed sees long golden nails sparkling on the ends of his fingers. They make a softly clattering noise with the movement that scratches a particular spot in Ed’s brain and makes him shiver. Ed imagines them pattering down his spine and scritching at his scalp and that makes him shiver again.
“This place is for rest, relaxation, and most of all, feeling safe. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, I hope you feel safe. You’re safe now. I’m here to take care of you.”
Ed feels his eyebrows crease together. Something is familiar about those words.
“Now, thanks to my special merperson magic, you can breathe underwater, so I want you to just relax, and imagine you are floating in the warm ocean.”
Some wave noises begin playing in the background, drifting softly under Stede’s voice. Ed is suddenly conscious of the tension in his jaw, so he tries to unstick his teeth from each other, wrenching them apart like they are stuck with toffee. He runs his tongue over them, wiggles his jaw from side to side. Slightly better.
“Have you been remembering to breathe today?”
Ed inhales through his nose, feeling his lungs inflate and his chest rise. His heart is still thudding in his chest in the aftermath of his bad dream, but the deep breath helps slow it down to a more regular level.
“I was reminded recently just how important breathing is, so I want to take some time to pause here, just to breathe.”
Ed remembers Stede’s face as he gasped for air on the forest floor. How pale and frightened he looked. Stede looks much better now, relaxed and bright and shining all golden, but there’s a hint of something in his eyes that Ed wants to examine. Stede is focused on the screen, on the camera in front of him, but Ed can see the anxiety lurking beneath the surface. Stede is thinking about that day too.
“Deep breath in through the nose, for the count of four -”
Stede holds up four manicured fingers, counting down the seconds.
“Hold -” Stede counts for four again.
“And out through the mouth, for the count of four.” His long fingernails shift colour under the light, golden to yellow to orange, shimmering like fish scales.
“Let’s keep going, for a few more counts.”
Ed follows along obediently as Stede coaches his viewers through the same breathing exercises Ed showed him, that day in the forest. And Ed has talked people through these exact techniques a million times, in a million situations, but he never takes the time to do them himself.
In through the nose, 2, 3, 4, out through the mouth, 2, 3, 4.
It’s helping. Ed can feel his heart rate returning to a slower rhythm, his muscles relaxing and his thoughts calming. And it could just be a coincidence, but Ed likes to think that maybe Stede remembers him, and maybe even thinks fondly of a certain paramedic who helped him that day. Unlikely, Stede was probably too upset to pay much attention. And Ed’s not exactly known for his bedside manner, that’s normally Fang’s job, to comfort and sympathise with people in their time of crisis. Stede clearly couldn’t wait to get away from the ambulance once it was just the two of them - he practically ran back to his own car - but he remembered the breathing techniques at least and that makes Ed feel pleased.
Stede seems to have warmed up now, and has launched into a bit about merperson skincare techniques. Ed giggles at Stede’s description of tail exfoliation, and how sea anemones can be milked for moisturiser. Stede even acts it out, holding up a vibrant silicone shape with flopping tendrils that he runs through his fist in a way that is, frankly, slightly pornographic. Stede seems to realise this about halfway through, looking at the camera sheepishly with a flush on his cheeks. Adorable.
“Anyway! We have a special offer at the spa today - undersea scalp massage!”
Ed blinks at the screen. Because yes, he started imagining that very thing the moment he saw those nails, and yes, he happens to maybe have a very particular fantasy about getting massaged by an attractive merperson. A number of very particular fantasies, in fact. Admittedly, none of them involved a golden, bare-chested man with long fake nails pretending to run an underwater spa, but they absolutely will from now on. Stede leans forward, pearls around his neck clicking softly, and reaches out a hand.
“Would you like me to touch you?” he whispers.
Ed nods, letting out a small whimper into the quiet of his bedroom. Stede’s fingers brush the edge of the screen, moving slowly but deliberately. His face is close now, hazel eyes soft but full of concentration. He motions running his fingers through imaginary hair, and the sound of hard fingernails scraping through soft hair echoes from Ed’s phone speakers. Ed feels his scalp tingling in response, the delicious prickling of it dancing behind his ears and down his neck. Stede is scratching his long nails deeper into Ed’s hair, stretching his strong arm to reach further back, and Ed tilts his head forward, as if to allow him better access. The scraping sound continues, Stede’s fingers moving deftly. He’s whispering small encouragements, like ‘there you go’ and ‘that feels good, doesn’t it?’ and Ed feels a bit drunk with it, head all fuzzy and mind blissfully blank as he submits to Stede’s ministrations.
It feels like too soon when Stede’s fingers withdraw, and he’s saying something now that seems to be winding up for a goodbye, and Ed doesn’t want this to end, doesn’t want to say goodbye to this loving little goldfish. The room feels colder somehow, now that Stede is further away from the screen.
“I’d like to dedicate this video today to a very special person, who helped me feel safe when I really needed it.”
Ed freezes, all his muscles stiffening.
“Ed, if you’re watching this - thank you, for everything. If you’d like to chat more about lichen, I’ll be at the forest tomorrow afternoon.”
Stede smiles shyly at the camera.
“Perhaps I could see you there. Anyway, goodbye crew, take care, be safe, and remember your breathing.”
Stede remembered. He remembers Ed, and he wants to see him again.
–
Ed dreams that night.
He is floating.
His body is held by the water surrounding him. He’s weightless, totally supported by the ocean. His back doesn’t ache, and his knee doesn’t throb, and he’s completely, utterly relaxed. He can see clearly through the blue, sunlight glinting in the waves and the golden glow of Stede, floating in front of him.
Stede is smiling at him, and Ed smiles back.
–