Mermaids are supposed to be a myth. A fairytale, a Disney movie. They aren’t supposed to be real.

So when Rafe Cameron goes to the small stretch of beach that’s now quite Figure Eight or the Cut one day while high, he sees a pair of eyes watching him from further out in the water. Eyes that are such a vibrant shade of blue they reflect the full moon above.

He convinces himself that it was just the high. Though he knows cocaine doesn’t cause hallucinations. It’s his only explanation because any other seems impossible. Mermaids don’t exist.

Then two nights later, this time he’s not high but just angry. He’s had a bad argument with his father, Ward Cameron. He shouts into the night air: damning God, shouting curses to his father, hating himself so viciously that the heart of this mermaid cracks.

Unbeknownst to Rafe, his mermaid, Y/N, does exist. She watches him from the deeper waters every time he returns to this beach. Sometimes, when she’s feeling mischievous, she’ll create splashes that he will say was caused by animals.

Tonight, Rafe is unable to sit still. The cocaine running through his veins makes it so. Y/N watches from about two hundreds yard out as her human boy walks the edge of the water with a funny looking rectangle in his hand that emits light. Occasionally, he bends down to pick something up before chunking it back out into the water with a vile curse or shoving it into his pocket.

She watches him for a good while until he sits down on a rocking outcropping that holds several small tide pools. Y/N knows this is where many little ocean creatures sometimes get stuck because of thr low tide, that’s what her sister told her.

Tonight, she decides, she’ll show herself fully. She makes sure to stay under the water until she reaches the place where her human is sitting. When she decides to emerge from the water, she does it slowly, watching the boys face as it changes from exhausted rage to pure shock and then to astonishment.

For a moment, the human simply stares at her. Then he’s scrambling to his feet, though he nearly loses his footing in the process.

“What the fuck?” He manages to choke out. “What the fuck?”

His mind has to be playing tricks on him. He’s still high. That’s the only explanation. The coke he snorted earlier must be a bad batch, because what the fuck?