FAKE Ficlet: Messages
Title: Messages
Fandom: FAKE
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Dee, Ryo
Rating: G
Word Count: 842
Setting: After the manga, and after Like Like Love.
Summary: Life can sometimes throw out some strange coincidences.
Written For: My Mini Summer Bingo Prompt ‘Message In The Bottle’ at fffc.
Disclaimer: I don’t own FAKE, or the characters.
It had been a wonderful day, peaceful and relaxing; the perfect antidote to the stresses of their working lives. Even though Dee had intended to sleep late on their day off and hadn’t exactly been thrilled when Ryo had shown up early to drag him out of bed, he had to admit that his lover’s plans for the day had been a lot better than his own. Left to his own devices, he would have spent the whole morning in bed then probably watched sports on TV all afternoon, wasting some of the best weather New York had been blessed with all year.
Instead, they’d driven out to Rockaway Beach, taking a picnic with them, and had spent most of the warm early fall day lazing on the sand, enjoying the sunshine, breathing in the fresh sea air, and taking in the ocean views. Now it was late afternoon and about time they started to think about making their way back to the parking lot. They still had a bit of a drive ahead of them, and they had work again in the morning, but Dee felt strangely reluctant to return to the noise and bustle of the city.
Ryo was gathering up the remains of their picnic, packing everything into the basket, and Dee knew pretty soon he’d be turfed off the picnic blanket so that Ryo could shake the worst of the sand off it and fold it up. Reaching for the wine bottle, he tilted it to see if there was any left, but they’d finished it hours ago. He studied the empty bottle speculatively.
“You ever send a message in a bottle?” he asked his lover.
Ryo turned to him with a lazy smile, obviously feeling as relaxed as Dee was. “No, never. Have you?”
“Once, a long time ago when I was just a kid. Jess had taken me to Coney Island as a birthday treat, I would’a been…” He frowned, thinking back. “Ten, I guess. He brought me a soda, and after I drank it, I wrote a note, with my name and address on it and everything, askin’ whoever found it to write me back. Stuck it in the bottle and screwed the cap on tight, then Jess threw it into the water for me. Man, he threw it so far! Way further than I could’a managed. I told him I wanted to be as strong as him someday.” Dee chuckled at the memory. “After I got back to the orphanage, I checked the mail every day to see if I’d gotten a reply, but I never did.”
“That must have been disappointing.”
“Yeah, it was, but then I decided the bottle probably got swallowed by a whale or somethin’ cool like that. Hand me an empty sandwich bag, will ya?” Dee grabbed a spare paper napkin and dug a stub of pencil from his jeans pocket, writing a hasty note and sealing it in the bag Ryo handed him before poking it in the bottle and replacing the cork, tapping it in tight with a rock. “Y’know what they say: if at first ya don’t succeed… Gotta be worth another try, right?” Walking to the water’s edge, he flung the bottle out as far as he could, sending it spinning end over end, hoping when it hit the water it would be caught by the outgoing tide and carried to some far-off place.
Returning to Ryo, Dee helped his lover fold the picnic blanket, packing it away, and they set off along the sand, walking slowly, carrying everything between them.
Unsurprisingly, nothing came of Dee’s message, and soon both men had all but forgotten about it.
A year passed, a second, and then a third…
Dee and Ryo had decided to spend their summer vacation on their boat, cruising up the coast, visions of dining on Maine lobsters filling their heads. Dee was lounging on the foredeck as Ryo steered them in towards the jetty where they were mooring for the night, when he spotted something bobbing about in the water, a little way off their port bow. It took some doing, but using a boat hook, he managed to draw it in close enough to reach.
“What’ve you got there?” Ryo called.
“An old bottle. Hey, looks like there’s somethin’ in it!” After a few minutes’ struggle, Dee finally managed to unscrew the cap and turned the bottle upside down so he could extract the crumpled piece of paper inside. Smoothing it out and reading the faint words written on it, he suddenly burst out laughing.
“What’s funny?” Ryo asked.
“It’s the message I sent when I was a kid! No wonder I never got a reply; it never made landfall!”
Ryo started laughing too, remembering what Dee had told him a few years earlier, that blissful day on Rockaway Beach. “Guess it didn’t get swallowed by a whale after all. You’d better keep watching the sea; you never know, if you wait long enough, maybe someday you’ll get the other one back too.”
The End
Fandom: FAKE
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Dee, Ryo
Rating: G
Word Count: 842
Setting: After the manga, and after Like Like Love.
Summary: Life can sometimes throw out some strange coincidences.
Written For: My Mini Summer Bingo Prompt ‘Message In The Bottle’ at fffc.
Disclaimer: I don’t own FAKE, or the characters.
It had been a wonderful day, peaceful and relaxing; the perfect antidote to the stresses of their working lives. Even though Dee had intended to sleep late on their day off and hadn’t exactly been thrilled when Ryo had shown up early to drag him out of bed, he had to admit that his lover’s plans for the day had been a lot better than his own. Left to his own devices, he would have spent the whole morning in bed then probably watched sports on TV all afternoon, wasting some of the best weather New York had been blessed with all year.
Instead, they’d driven out to Rockaway Beach, taking a picnic with them, and had spent most of the warm early fall day lazing on the sand, enjoying the sunshine, breathing in the fresh sea air, and taking in the ocean views. Now it was late afternoon and about time they started to think about making their way back to the parking lot. They still had a bit of a drive ahead of them, and they had work again in the morning, but Dee felt strangely reluctant to return to the noise and bustle of the city.
Ryo was gathering up the remains of their picnic, packing everything into the basket, and Dee knew pretty soon he’d be turfed off the picnic blanket so that Ryo could shake the worst of the sand off it and fold it up. Reaching for the wine bottle, he tilted it to see if there was any left, but they’d finished it hours ago. He studied the empty bottle speculatively.
“You ever send a message in a bottle?” he asked his lover.
Ryo turned to him with a lazy smile, obviously feeling as relaxed as Dee was. “No, never. Have you?”
“Once, a long time ago when I was just a kid. Jess had taken me to Coney Island as a birthday treat, I would’a been…” He frowned, thinking back. “Ten, I guess. He brought me a soda, and after I drank it, I wrote a note, with my name and address on it and everything, askin’ whoever found it to write me back. Stuck it in the bottle and screwed the cap on tight, then Jess threw it into the water for me. Man, he threw it so far! Way further than I could’a managed. I told him I wanted to be as strong as him someday.” Dee chuckled at the memory. “After I got back to the orphanage, I checked the mail every day to see if I’d gotten a reply, but I never did.”
“That must have been disappointing.”
“Yeah, it was, but then I decided the bottle probably got swallowed by a whale or somethin’ cool like that. Hand me an empty sandwich bag, will ya?” Dee grabbed a spare paper napkin and dug a stub of pencil from his jeans pocket, writing a hasty note and sealing it in the bag Ryo handed him before poking it in the bottle and replacing the cork, tapping it in tight with a rock. “Y’know what they say: if at first ya don’t succeed… Gotta be worth another try, right?” Walking to the water’s edge, he flung the bottle out as far as he could, sending it spinning end over end, hoping when it hit the water it would be caught by the outgoing tide and carried to some far-off place.
Returning to Ryo, Dee helped his lover fold the picnic blanket, packing it away, and they set off along the sand, walking slowly, carrying everything between them.
Unsurprisingly, nothing came of Dee’s message, and soon both men had all but forgotten about it.
A year passed, a second, and then a third…
Dee and Ryo had decided to spend their summer vacation on their boat, cruising up the coast, visions of dining on Maine lobsters filling their heads. Dee was lounging on the foredeck as Ryo steered them in towards the jetty where they were mooring for the night, when he spotted something bobbing about in the water, a little way off their port bow. It took some doing, but using a boat hook, he managed to draw it in close enough to reach.
“What’ve you got there?” Ryo called.
“An old bottle. Hey, looks like there’s somethin’ in it!” After a few minutes’ struggle, Dee finally managed to unscrew the cap and turned the bottle upside down so he could extract the crumpled piece of paper inside. Smoothing it out and reading the faint words written on it, he suddenly burst out laughing.
“What’s funny?” Ryo asked.
“It’s the message I sent when I was a kid! No wonder I never got a reply; it never made landfall!”
Ryo started laughing too, remembering what Dee had told him a few years earlier, that blissful day on Rockaway Beach. “Guess it didn’t get swallowed by a whale after all. You’d better keep watching the sea; you never know, if you wait long enough, maybe someday you’ll get the other one back too.”
The End