Marvel Imagines - Book 1

#25 Sam Wilson x Reader - The Mermaid

Imagine: Near the island of Black Conch, Sam, a fisherman sings to himself while waiting for a catch. But Sam attracts a sea-dweller that he never expected - Y/N, an innocent woman cursed to live as a mermaid.

I know that this has nothing really to do with Marvel but just go along with it ;)

Warnings: None

Word Count: 1030
(Unedited)

Sam Wilson's hair is brown, almost black and his body wizened to twigs of hard black coral, but there are still a few people around St. Constance who remember him as a young man and his part in the events of 1976.

It happened in April, after the leatherbacks had started to migrate. Some said she arrived with them. Others said they'd seen her before, those who'd fished far out.

Sam Wilson often went out as early as possible, trying to beat the other Fishermen to a good catch of king fish or red snapper. He would head to the jagged rocks one mile or so from the coastline, taking with him is usual accoutrements to keep him company while he put his lines out - a stick of the finest local ganja and his guitar, which he didn't play too well.

He would drop anchor near those rocks, lash the rudder and strum to himself while the white, neon disc of the sun appeared on the horizon, pushing itself up, rising slow into the silver-blue sky.

Sam was strumming his guitar and singing to himself when she first raised her barnacled, seaweed-clotted head from the flat, grey sea, its stark hues of turquoise not yet stirred.

The mermaid popped up and watched him for some time before he glanced around and caught sight of her.

"Holy Mother of Holy God on earth," he exclaimed. She ducked back under the sea. Quick, he put down his guitar and peered hard. It wasn't full daylight yet. He rubbed his eyes, as if to make them see better. Sam put one hand on his heart because it was leaping around inside his chest. His stomach trembled with desire and fear and wonder because he knew what he'd seen.

A woman. Right there, in the water. A red-skinned woman, not black, not African. Not a Chinee woman, or a woman with golden hair from Amsterdam. Not a blue woman, either, blue like a damn fish.

Red. She was a red woman. Or anyway, her top half was red. He had seen her shoulders, her head and her long hair like ropes, all sea mossy  and hook up with anemone and conch shell.

A merwoman.

He stared at the spot of her appearance for some time. He shook himself and gazed hard at the sea, waiting for her to pop back up.

"Come back," he shouted into the deep greyness. The mermaid had held her head up high above the waves and he'd seen a certain expression on her face, like she'd been studying him.

Sam waited. But nothing happened. Not that day.

From that moment, when that red-skinned woman rose and disappeared as if to tease him, Sam ached to see her again. He felt a bittersweet melancholy, a soft caress to his spirit. That day, a part of him lit up, a part he'd no idea was there to light.

He had felt a sharp stabbing sensation, right there in the flat part between his ribs, in his solar plexus.

"Come back," he said, soft and gentlemanlike. Something had happened. She had risen from  the waves, chosen him, a humble fisherman.

"Come," he pleaded, this time softer still, as if to lure her. But the water had settled back flat.

Next morning, Sam went to the exact same spot by those rocks and waited for several hours and saw nothing. Day after, the same thing. Four days he went out to those rocks in his boat. He cut the engine, threw out the anchor and waited. He told no one what he had seen.

He went home to his small house on the hill, the house he'd built himself, surrounded by banana trees, where he lived with his pot hound.

Sam felt on the edge. He went to bed early so as to rise early. He needed to see the mermaid again, to be sure that his eyes had seen correctly. He needed to cool what had become an inflammation in his heart.

He had never had this type of feeling, certainly not for no mortal woman.

Then, day five, around six o'clock, he was strumming his guitar, humming a hymn, when the mermaid showed herself again. This time she splashed the water with one hand and made a sound like a bird squeak.

When Sam looked up he didn't frighten so bad, even though his belly clenched tight and every fiber in his body froze. He stayed still and watched her. She was floating port side of his boat, like a regular woman on a raft, except there was no raft.

The mermaid, with long hair and big, shining eyes, was taking a long suspicious look at him. She cocked her head and it was only then Sam realised she was watching his guitar.

Slowly, so as not to make her disappear again, he picked it up and began to strum and hum a tune, quietly. She stayed there, floating, watching him, stroking the water, slowly, with her arms her massive tail.

The music brought her to him. It was the magic that music makes, the song that lives within every creature on earth, including mermaids.

She hadn't heard music for a long time, maybe a thousand years and she was irresistible drawn up to the surface, real slow and real interested.

That morning Sam played her soft hymns he'd learnt as a boy. He sang holy songs for her, songs which brought tears to his eyes and there they stayed, on this second meeting, a small patch of sea apart, watching each other - a young, wed-eyed fisherman with an old guitar and a mermaid who'd arrived on the currents from Cuban waters, where once they talked of her by the name of Y/N.