: MUCH ADO ABOUT FISH (1/?) : Swim Slash : Phelps/Lochte
Much Ado About Fish [One fish]
:: Phelps/Lochte, Swim Slash, R for language (AU & CRACK WARNINGS)
Summary:: Ryan's just a normal guy, or he was before Michael washed into his life.
Much Ado About Fish: One fish.
Ryan straddled his surfboard and spread his toes, waving his legs back and forth through the cool water. He was waiting for the right wave but so far they'd all been a little lame this morning. He thought that he'd probably just caught the tide going out but sometimes if you just waited long enough you'd get lucky anyway. Besides, it was totally nice out, even if he wasn't an early morning person. The beach was empty and there was something that Ryan loved about being alone with the ocean, just chilling on his Charger and letting everything wash around him. It was the rhythm of the sound or something like that.
"Shit," he hissed, jerking to the side a little as something brushed his leg. He damn near upended himself. Steadying the board under him and leaning down until his nose was almost in the water, Ryan squinted through the grey swells that slowly lifted and dropped him. It wasn't like he was scared but there were occasionally sharks and he wasn't big on losing a leg though he knew that if you weren't bleeding or flailing around like a retard the chances of getting attacked were like, zero. Not that he could see anything anyway. He blew against the water and watched the ripples circle out before straightening himself up.
He probably should have been in practice. Ryan squinted at the sun, now all of the way up over the dunes. Probably. Well, most likely. Coach Gregg had mapped out the next few months of his life leading up to the Athens games and not that Ryan wasn't okay with seven-day-a-week practices but like, seeing it all out there in writing made him want to cry. Just a little. Ryan'd rather just take it day by day. Like today. It was a great morning and if he just waited a little longer it would be more great because the waves were bound to pick up. Then he'd get in the pool. He promi--
"What the shit!" Ryan jerked his left leg out of the water and all the way up onto his board, crossing it in front of him. He scrubbed the skin of his shin to get rid of the crawling sensation and the scatter of goosebumps. He only had on board shorts but it wasn't like a wetsuit would have kept anything from him. "I'm not tasty," he muttered at the water. "Lemme alone, seriously. Chill." There were jellyfish too and that was almost a less-pleasant thought than a shark. He'd gotten a jellyfish wrapped around one of his legs a few years ago and the lifeguard had been scraping it off of him with a credit card when the paramedics finally showed up. It was not an experience that he'd like to repeat. Ever. He glared into the water. Stupid fucking fish.
Going in before catching a real wave might have become an option if Ryan hadn't turned around to see a swell gathering behind him. And gathering. He dropped his leg back into the water with a splash, jellyfish-sharks be damned. For a still moment he waited, watching the oncoming water and holding his breath. This totally could be it. One good wave, that was all he wanted. It rose higher, started to crest.
Oh, it was so on.
Ryan dropped onto his stomach and yanked his feet up behind him, skin sticking slightly to the waxed fiberglass of his board. Just that feeling alone was enough to give a guy a boner in anticipation. He sank his arms into the cold water, cupping his hands precisely enough to break into a freestyle sprint and started paddling for all he was worth as the wave gathered underneath of him. It pushed him up higher and Ryan kept going, his arms burning pleasantly with each hard stroke as he waited for it. Waited for it. Waited--and then the swell started to break away and he grabbed onto the wet, tacky edges of his board and popped up. He heard the balls of his feet hit the board over the roar of the wave pushing up right behind him and stood, spreading his toes out and leaning into the water. The rear of the board swung out and caught the curl.
Ryan laughed as his arms went out for balance and he torqued back, cutting against the curl and causing a blast of salt water spray that wet his face and prickled on his tongue. He swerved back, leaning down to drag the board into the pull and stretched out his fingertips so that they brushed against the hard wall of water he was riding.
Something in the grey swell of water below his hand glinted, catching the light through the churned up sediment. Ryan's board wobbled with his sudden distraction and he yanked it back up against the current, grinding toward the top break and losing speed. It had probably been a piece of trash or something he'd seen there in the water. He always made sure to pick up his beer cans and stuff when he and his friends were done on the beach but not everybody did. Something about seeing that shiny flash though was like a word on the tip of his tongue, some memory that he couldn't quite reach. But why would he have a memory about garbage?
Ryan cut into the breaker and sent another spray up into the air, making a misty rainbow in the morning light. His board fell lower again, turning into the belly of the wave. He let it, gripping with his toes and feeling the way his hair stuck across his face. He couldn't think of a better place to be. Not in bed, not in the pool. This was it. Just him, his board and the wave. Totally awesome.
Another twinkle caught his eye, a shine from the depth of the curl beside him. Ryan glanced toward the water and then jerked away, feet slipping on his board.
There was a fucking face! There was a face in the water, distorted by the rush of the curl but definitely there, pale and dark-haired and what the fuck, what the fuck?!
Ryan's toes caught on the outside of his board before he fell off but it responded to the sharp shift in weight, tail jerking the opposite way and slicing right into the belly of the wave. There was a terrific thunk against the bottom of his board that Ryan felt all the way up to his knees before the power of the swell grabbed the ass of his Charger and flipped it up. Ryan was tossed butt-over-nose and dropped face-first into the bottom of the wave. He tried to tuck himself together against the rip of the water but it kicked him around anyway. His back hit the sandy bottom and he felt it scrape off a layer of skin but shit, it could be worse, it coulda scraped off an arm or something.
He rolled onto his stomach and swam with the wave until it broke over him and he could surface. In the shallows, Ryan kneeled on the gritty bottom with his hands on his thighs as the smaller swells broke around his waist, coughing and dragging in a few stinging breaths. He shook his head and pushed his hair back from his face. Shit. His back burned and he twisted around, trying to check out the damage. Not that the chlorine wouldn't kill any bad stuff that might have gotten in there but hell it was gonna sting like a mother every time he got in the pool for a couple days. Ryan didn't think that Coach was gonna feel bad for him at all.
Finally he just grabbed his slick shoulder and pretzled, craning his neck to see his back. There was definitely blood but he was wet so blood didn't mean it was bad. He'd have to dry off first and he hoped he had an extra towel in the Escalade because blood would be a shit to clean out of his upholstery. Damn.
Ryan raised his head, stretching his neck the opposite way to keep it from cramping as he released his shoulder. Waves continued to wash in and his board was down the beach a stretch, hitting the wet sand every time another little swell carried it up. Ryan scraped fingers against his cheek to pull away wet strands of sticking hair and it was then that something else in the water caught his eye.
A body.
Just a few feet further than his surfboard there was a body face down in the shallow and it was doing the same thing that Ryan's Charger was doing, rising and falling with each little bob of water. A startled noise pushed itself up Ryan's throat and he tripped to his feet, slipping once on sandy bottom before hitting a run, yanking his legs up over the water to go faster. He'd seen something earlier, that face--dude, had he fucking hit someone? Who the hell hangs out inside waves? But this dude was definitely face the fuck down and not getting up, wherever he'd washed up from.
Ryan nearly fell over the pale body, trying to stop fast as another slight wave nearly covered the guy, pushing him closer. He teetered, windmilling, and then grabbed the guy right under the armpits and without thinking anything other than getting him out of the water, hauled him toward the sand with an awkward side-stepping run. When he'd gotten far enough up that the incoming tide wouldn't reach them, Ryan flipped the guy over onto his back and lowered him down as he kneeled himself. Dude really was kinda pale, like, haven't gotten out of the house since oh-1990 pale, and there was seaweed and shit tangled in his hair. And Ryan might have noticed that, or he might’ve noticed the guy's thick, dark eyelashes or his strong jaw or even that he was built like he'd spent all that indoor time in a gym--he might have noticed all of it, except that he was way too busy staring at the guy's tail.
The guy had a tail, like fishes have tails. Ryan fell back onto his ass and stared.
For a moment the fact that the dude had been face down in the water and probably had a concussion or some shit that was Ryan's own fault if he wasn't dead already didn't even register over the fact that where legs should have been was a massive, scaly, tail. It shined in the brightening sunlight, the scales sorta... sorta translucent shimmery. Most of them were an electric sort of blue that Ryan was sure would glow even without the sun. There were smudges of deep navy near his hips that looked like they'd been applied with too much paint and had dripped downward. Ryan clenched his hands into fists because no matter how much those dark scales looked like velvet, he wasn’t gonna touch them to find out how they felt. No touching the fish man. But he still looked.
The spines of the fin at the bottom of the tail were the same dark navy, though the membranes between each were iridescent, changing from light blue to silver to pale yellow as the sun moved. That same sparkling iridescence was on the highest scales around his stomach too, though they started as bright yellow from a V up from his groin and then faded progressively paler until they matched skin and then were skin.
All of that, right below an outtie belly button. This was insane. This was totally what being insane felt like.
Ryan probably would have stared at that tail until the sun went down on the other side of the horizon except that a sound drew his eyes upward. It was a rattling sort of gasp and it made Ryan blink, kickstarted his brain again. He looked at the guy's face because like, little mermaid or whatever that noise meant he was alive. Or had been. Shit. Maybe he was pale because he was dead. Ryan stared at him. The guy's mouth wasn't open... so how had he breathed? Ryan didn't think his nose would have rattled like that. Ryan reached out tentatively and his hand hovered over the dead fish-guy's chest and wondered if he even breathed, period. Was he supposed to breathe?
The pale chest under his hand contracted suddenly and the cool, smooth skin rose against Ryan's palm. At the same time Ryan saw three long flaps of skin that ran along the line of the guy's ribs come up and there was another rattle of breath. Ryan yelled and fell back, kicking sand everywhere. He scrambled back a few feet and then got up and ran.
The Escalade was parked back up on the dunes; the riptide had pulled Ryan down the beach a ways and by the time he had run through the sand back to the car he was out of breath. He swung around the far side so that the big black SUV was between him and the dude lying on the beach. The fish. The fish man, what the fuck? Ryan's shoulderblades stuck to the siding as he hauled air and squinted at the sun. It was really climbing now and Ryan realized that he was sweating. It was hot. He wiped a hand over his forehead and then on his shorts, which had already started to dry.
All right, so what the hell was lying back on the beach? He needed to like, focus. Cause whatever it was it was like, real, but fish people did not exist, not even when he was high. And Ryan might have smoked up late last night and he might have left the house really early but like, no. He was not still fucking stoned. There was a goddamn dude with a tail back there on the sand and unless the pot had been laced with some seriously fucked up shit (and he knew his dealer, thanks) that tail was actually a tail and not a figment of his imagination.
Ryan pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes. He sure wished he was high. He wasn't stupid enough to carry any with him in the car but man, he wanted to be that stupid because he would have toked that shit up in a heartbeat right then. Instead Ryan had to settle for wincing as he peeled himself away from the car--he'd forgotten about his own back--and figuring that if he had to face sober reality, he might as fucking well do it armed in case reality decided to claw off his face or something.
The trunk lifted with an easy glide and Ryan rummaged around in the crap that had piled up back there. Extra towels, check, but most of them smelled a little funky. There were the Flipturn briefs he'd been looking for, shoved down into the side pocket under a bottle of glass cleaner. A pair of Reeboks which might have worked if he wanted to squish a goldfish or some shit. The carjack was just way too unwieldy and there was a bra that he would have to take Kyle to task for later since there was definitely a no-sex rule for borrowing the Escalade. There was also a half-finished bottle of vodka under a gym bag, but he didn't want to party with the thing. Ryan shoved the towels to the other side of the trunk and--
Yeah. A baseball bat from that pick-up game last weekend on the beach. That accounted for the vodka too and shit there was probably some skanky cranberry juice hiding somewhere but that so wasn't a priority right now. Ryan grabbed the wooden bat and slammed the trunk closed. He took a few deep breaths. Okay. He was okay. Maybe the thing was dead anyway and it wouldn't matter. Dead things didn't attack anyone.
Ryan stepped back from the car and looked down the beach. The first thing he saw was the red of his board and for a moment he thought that maybe he was high but... no. There it was. He'd just run farther than he'd thought. Double-fisting the bat and staring at his white knuckles, Ryan started walking. What a fucking way to start the morning, wiping out and killing a fish man. Gregg would never buy it. He'd probably insist on drug testing right then and there and then Ryan would really be up shit-creek because knowing his dealer or not, shit did not flush from your system overnight, not even with his metabolism.
The sand dug between his toes and Ryan muttered Lil Wayne lyrics under his breath to keep him calm. Because he was a fucking baller and this shit could NOT bring him down. When he reached his board he stopped. Stopped walking, stopped muttering. Ryan raised the bat and then his eyes. The fish dude was still laying there, still pale and prone and...
There was no tail.
Ryan blinked. There was no fucking tail. The guy's legs looked kinda slimy or something, covered in some weird shiny, like, moss? But Ryan could clearly see two separate limbs beneath it, toes and feet and knees and--
He raised one hand off the bat and stuck fingers in his eyes, rubbing hard enough to see stars in the dark behind his eyelids. Deep breaths. Deep fucking breaths. Maybe he really was still high, even if he knew there was no way. Or maybe he'd hit his head along with his back when he wiped out, Jesus, that was probably it. When he opened his eyes the guy was still lying there, legs--legs--still twinkling weirdly in the sunlight. The ground around him was twinkling too.
God, it was just a fucking dude. Ryan exhaled and let his arms fall to his side, swearing a little as the bat knocked into his knee. Just a dude. But then, if it was just a dude and Ryan really had smacked him with his board and then run off...
Shit. Shit, shit, and double shit.
Ryan broke into a run, hoping that he hadn't just like, killed the guy by leaving him all stranded and drowning while he ran off in a drug-haze to find something to protect himself from nothing with. He hit his knees at the guy's side and spared one glance downward--totally legs, what the hell had he been thinking?--before leaning in and hovering his ear over the pale lips. He watched the long, smooth chest. There was nothing.
"Fuck," he moaned, jamming his fingers against the guy's throat. Ryan closed his eyes and counted. And... yes! There was totally a pulse, thank God. It was like, far away, real faint, but it was there. Ryan grabbed the top of the dude's head and the bottom of his long chin and tilted his head back, opening his mouth and looking for anything beyond a pink tongue. Eck, his tongue was actually kinda bluish. Did that mean he wasn't getting air or something? Ryan didn't ever remember learning anything about that in his CPR classes but whatever, he knew the guy wasn't breathing.
Pinching his nose closed and ignoring the sand he'd kicked all over him before, Ryan leaned down and gave two long breaths against cool, thin lips. At least the guy's chest rose and fell but Ryan couldn't rescue breathe forever and his cell phone was all the way back in his car. Why the fuck hadn't he thought about his phone before? He could have like, called Animal Control instead of deciding to be a retard Rambo and get the bat. If Animal Control could handle gators then they could certainly handle one half-dead fish man who wasn't actually a fish. Ryan gave him two more breaths and then sat back on his heels, cursing again. Stupid, stupid--
The guy coughed. It was a great racking cough and Ryan nearly jumped back in surprise as the guy sputtered and choked. Ryan grabbed his shoulder and hauled him onto his side. Pale fingers clamped onto Ryan's arm as the guy spat up what looked like a ton of water and Ryan had the presence of mind to feel a bit damn guilty about that. "Shit, you're not dead," Ryan whispered, and it was mostly to himself as the guy's cold hand spasmed on his skin and he choked up a little more water before collapsing onto his back again. Then he lay very still.
Ryan sat for a minute but there was nothing else and maybe he had really died after all, which would really suck since Ryan had kinda just saved his life. He leaned forward, over the guy, looking down at his clumped eyelashes and shit, pale was an understatement--he was really almost transparent. Ryan could have traced his veins. "Hey," he said, quietly. "Hey, are you alive?"
Eyelids lifted, squinting, and there were really dark eyes underneath looking right at Ryan.
"'M not dead." The pale lips hardly parted to wheeze the words and Ryan laughed. It was relief, like, absolute relief in a burst of sound and Ryan realized that he was smiling and shaking at the same time. He fisted his hands in his pants and then let go.
"Fuck me, dude. Hey, uh, sorry about the sand." He brushed some of it off the guy's forehead but a hand reached up and stopped him, cool fingers around Ryan's wrist. Ryan looked at him and his breath stuttered and stuck because the guy's eyes were like, bottomless. Like a cat's or something, a shiny sort of endless until the sun moved behind a cloud and that was gone, just dark brown again. "Sorry," Ryan repeated, exhaling. He looked away. He felt a little lame. Okay, a lot lame. "I think I hit you with my surfboard."
Fingers fell away from his wrist and his arm and the pale guy turned his head to look past his shoulder toward the creeping waves. The tide had gone completely out and the wet sand only began feet away, drying further as they spoke. The guy raised a hand and touched his head, wincing, and sure enough when he brought it away there was blood on his fingertips. Not a whole lot, but enough. "I think... you did," he said. The words were kinda awkward, with a little wannabe lisp that made Ryan think that the guy didn't talk much or something.
"Can you sit up?" Ryan asked. He wasn't all up to code on head injuries but the only thing he could think was that it would be easier for him to drive the guy to the hospital instead of waiting for an ambulance. He wrapped his hands around the guy's arms and the back of his own neck was grabbed. Together they got him into a sitting position and then Ryan hunkered on his heels. "Uh." He cleared his throat. "You know you're naked, right?" Ryan wondered if that was the reason the guy was so cold, or if it was just because he hadn't been breathing right for a while.
The guy looked down at himself, his hair falling around his shoulders. Ryan noticed again that there was seaweed sticking in it, and little things that he thought were shells. He could taste that memory again on his tongue but it just sorta rolled in and out with the sound of the waves. Nothing major. Like a dream that you couldn't quite remember.
The guy dropped his hand from Ryan's neck and touched one of his thighs like he was afraid it was going to bite him. Then he made a sound low in his throat and flattened his hand, pushing at the stuff covering his skin. It came off. The driest of it flaked away and caught the breeze while the slimier stuff--it was almost totally transparent now, shimmering bluish in the sun--left the guy's skin looking wet and sorta glittery until that all dried, too.
Ryan sat by and watched it all because really he was just sorta amazed that he'd ever thought the guy had a tail. He must have totally cracked his head falling off his board. It didn't take long to get all the goop off, though Ryan did look away when the dude worked over his privates, maybe a little too carefully, though Ryan couldn't really blame him, because. Well, because he wouldn't want that there either, not because the guy had a nice... Anyway.
"You got stuff in your hair, too," Ryan pointed out. The guy looked at him, eyebrows pulling together, and Ryan reached out to grab a piece of seaweed and tugged it. The seaweed didn't go anywhere and the guy winced and that was when Ryan realized that it was actually braided into the long brown strands. Ryan laughed and let it go. "Sorry. You a hippy or something? Like, a nudist?" That was cool, he guessed. Or maybe the guy didn't have a house or something, just lived on the beach like they did in Hawaii.
"A nudist?" the guy said, looking around. His toes were flexing and pointing and flexing... Ryan didn't think he knew he was even doing it.
"A... nevermind." Ryan brushed sand off his knees and stood up, holding out a hand. "I'll take you to the hospital for a patch-up. I guess it's the least I can do. I'm glad you didn't die." The guy grabbed him and Ryan was almost pulled off balance at the amount of weight put on their gripped hands. He spread his feet and hauled and the guy came up but it was hardly graceful. He stumbled and tipped over and Ryan had to grab him or he just would have landed back on his ass.
"Um," Ryan said. They were very close. And the guy was very cool, and very smooth (everywhere, Ryan had noticed), and very, very naked.
"Um," the guy said back.
"I hope you can walk, dude," Ryan said, and then cleared his throat because he was not breathless at all, it was just, yanno, the hauling and the grabbing. "Cause I gotta get my board and my... uh, bat."
Walking his hands up to Ryan's shoulders, the guy pushed against him until he was upright and standing. "Bat?" he said, and then smiled. He probably could have used braces but Ryan guessed that like, Nudist parents probably didn't have money for that shit. And besides, the smile made him feel funny down in his guts. "Were you playing baseball?" the guy asked, lifting his feet and wiggling his toes. Ryan watched him. "I like baseball, I saw a game. They ran really fast."
Ryan raised an eyebrow and took a step back once the guy was done testing his parts. "Something like that," he murmured; the dude was wobbling a little but mostly staying upright so Ryan leaned down and grabbed the bat he'd dropped in the sand.
Cold hands on his back stole his breath. Ryan looked over his shoulder, holding his body still as he felt thumbs brush his skin, one on his side and one on the small of his back. The guy had made the step or two just to grope him a little bit. “Huh?” Ryan breathed out.
“You’re hurt.” There was a note in the guy’s voice that made Ryan’s scalp prickle. He straightened and turned almost reluctantly away from those cool hands with a shrug, slinging the bat over his shoulder.
“I’m okay, just some rash from wiping out. Probably looks worse than it is, you know?” He tried to look over his shoulder at it but gave up after a minute. It didn’t really hurt, maybe stung a little still, now that he was thinking about it. Mostly it just felt tight. Ryan looked at the guy, who was still frowning a little, and knocked his shoulder lightly with a fist. "What's your name, man?"
The guy rubbed fingers through his drying hair. It made the sunlight catch and twinkle on the little shells that were braided into the strands of hair behind his ears, which sorta stuck out from his head--and there was that nagging memory again. It was like déjà vu. The guy gave another smile.
"My name's Michael."
:: Phelps/Lochte, Swim Slash, R for language (AU & CRACK WARNINGS)
Summary:: Ryan's just a normal guy, or he was before Michael washed into his life.
Much Ado About Fish: One fish.
Ryan straddled his surfboard and spread his toes, waving his legs back and forth through the cool water. He was waiting for the right wave but so far they'd all been a little lame this morning. He thought that he'd probably just caught the tide going out but sometimes if you just waited long enough you'd get lucky anyway. Besides, it was totally nice out, even if he wasn't an early morning person. The beach was empty and there was something that Ryan loved about being alone with the ocean, just chilling on his Charger and letting everything wash around him. It was the rhythm of the sound or something like that.
"Shit," he hissed, jerking to the side a little as something brushed his leg. He damn near upended himself. Steadying the board under him and leaning down until his nose was almost in the water, Ryan squinted through the grey swells that slowly lifted and dropped him. It wasn't like he was scared but there were occasionally sharks and he wasn't big on losing a leg though he knew that if you weren't bleeding or flailing around like a retard the chances of getting attacked were like, zero. Not that he could see anything anyway. He blew against the water and watched the ripples circle out before straightening himself up.
He probably should have been in practice. Ryan squinted at the sun, now all of the way up over the dunes. Probably. Well, most likely. Coach Gregg had mapped out the next few months of his life leading up to the Athens games and not that Ryan wasn't okay with seven-day-a-week practices but like, seeing it all out there in writing made him want to cry. Just a little. Ryan'd rather just take it day by day. Like today. It was a great morning and if he just waited a little longer it would be more great because the waves were bound to pick up. Then he'd get in the pool. He promi--
"What the shit!" Ryan jerked his left leg out of the water and all the way up onto his board, crossing it in front of him. He scrubbed the skin of his shin to get rid of the crawling sensation and the scatter of goosebumps. He only had on board shorts but it wasn't like a wetsuit would have kept anything from him. "I'm not tasty," he muttered at the water. "Lemme alone, seriously. Chill." There were jellyfish too and that was almost a less-pleasant thought than a shark. He'd gotten a jellyfish wrapped around one of his legs a few years ago and the lifeguard had been scraping it off of him with a credit card when the paramedics finally showed up. It was not an experience that he'd like to repeat. Ever. He glared into the water. Stupid fucking fish.
Going in before catching a real wave might have become an option if Ryan hadn't turned around to see a swell gathering behind him. And gathering. He dropped his leg back into the water with a splash, jellyfish-sharks be damned. For a still moment he waited, watching the oncoming water and holding his breath. This totally could be it. One good wave, that was all he wanted. It rose higher, started to crest.
Oh, it was so on.
Ryan dropped onto his stomach and yanked his feet up behind him, skin sticking slightly to the waxed fiberglass of his board. Just that feeling alone was enough to give a guy a boner in anticipation. He sank his arms into the cold water, cupping his hands precisely enough to break into a freestyle sprint and started paddling for all he was worth as the wave gathered underneath of him. It pushed him up higher and Ryan kept going, his arms burning pleasantly with each hard stroke as he waited for it. Waited for it. Waited--and then the swell started to break away and he grabbed onto the wet, tacky edges of his board and popped up. He heard the balls of his feet hit the board over the roar of the wave pushing up right behind him and stood, spreading his toes out and leaning into the water. The rear of the board swung out and caught the curl.
Ryan laughed as his arms went out for balance and he torqued back, cutting against the curl and causing a blast of salt water spray that wet his face and prickled on his tongue. He swerved back, leaning down to drag the board into the pull and stretched out his fingertips so that they brushed against the hard wall of water he was riding.
Something in the grey swell of water below his hand glinted, catching the light through the churned up sediment. Ryan's board wobbled with his sudden distraction and he yanked it back up against the current, grinding toward the top break and losing speed. It had probably been a piece of trash or something he'd seen there in the water. He always made sure to pick up his beer cans and stuff when he and his friends were done on the beach but not everybody did. Something about seeing that shiny flash though was like a word on the tip of his tongue, some memory that he couldn't quite reach. But why would he have a memory about garbage?
Ryan cut into the breaker and sent another spray up into the air, making a misty rainbow in the morning light. His board fell lower again, turning into the belly of the wave. He let it, gripping with his toes and feeling the way his hair stuck across his face. He couldn't think of a better place to be. Not in bed, not in the pool. This was it. Just him, his board and the wave. Totally awesome.
Another twinkle caught his eye, a shine from the depth of the curl beside him. Ryan glanced toward the water and then jerked away, feet slipping on his board.
There was a fucking face! There was a face in the water, distorted by the rush of the curl but definitely there, pale and dark-haired and what the fuck, what the fuck?!
Ryan's toes caught on the outside of his board before he fell off but it responded to the sharp shift in weight, tail jerking the opposite way and slicing right into the belly of the wave. There was a terrific thunk against the bottom of his board that Ryan felt all the way up to his knees before the power of the swell grabbed the ass of his Charger and flipped it up. Ryan was tossed butt-over-nose and dropped face-first into the bottom of the wave. He tried to tuck himself together against the rip of the water but it kicked him around anyway. His back hit the sandy bottom and he felt it scrape off a layer of skin but shit, it could be worse, it coulda scraped off an arm or something.
He rolled onto his stomach and swam with the wave until it broke over him and he could surface. In the shallows, Ryan kneeled on the gritty bottom with his hands on his thighs as the smaller swells broke around his waist, coughing and dragging in a few stinging breaths. He shook his head and pushed his hair back from his face. Shit. His back burned and he twisted around, trying to check out the damage. Not that the chlorine wouldn't kill any bad stuff that might have gotten in there but hell it was gonna sting like a mother every time he got in the pool for a couple days. Ryan didn't think that Coach was gonna feel bad for him at all.
Finally he just grabbed his slick shoulder and pretzled, craning his neck to see his back. There was definitely blood but he was wet so blood didn't mean it was bad. He'd have to dry off first and he hoped he had an extra towel in the Escalade because blood would be a shit to clean out of his upholstery. Damn.
Ryan raised his head, stretching his neck the opposite way to keep it from cramping as he released his shoulder. Waves continued to wash in and his board was down the beach a stretch, hitting the wet sand every time another little swell carried it up. Ryan scraped fingers against his cheek to pull away wet strands of sticking hair and it was then that something else in the water caught his eye.
A body.
Just a few feet further than his surfboard there was a body face down in the shallow and it was doing the same thing that Ryan's Charger was doing, rising and falling with each little bob of water. A startled noise pushed itself up Ryan's throat and he tripped to his feet, slipping once on sandy bottom before hitting a run, yanking his legs up over the water to go faster. He'd seen something earlier, that face--dude, had he fucking hit someone? Who the hell hangs out inside waves? But this dude was definitely face the fuck down and not getting up, wherever he'd washed up from.
Ryan nearly fell over the pale body, trying to stop fast as another slight wave nearly covered the guy, pushing him closer. He teetered, windmilling, and then grabbed the guy right under the armpits and without thinking anything other than getting him out of the water, hauled him toward the sand with an awkward side-stepping run. When he'd gotten far enough up that the incoming tide wouldn't reach them, Ryan flipped the guy over onto his back and lowered him down as he kneeled himself. Dude really was kinda pale, like, haven't gotten out of the house since oh-1990 pale, and there was seaweed and shit tangled in his hair. And Ryan might have noticed that, or he might’ve noticed the guy's thick, dark eyelashes or his strong jaw or even that he was built like he'd spent all that indoor time in a gym--he might have noticed all of it, except that he was way too busy staring at the guy's tail.
The guy had a tail, like fishes have tails. Ryan fell back onto his ass and stared.
For a moment the fact that the dude had been face down in the water and probably had a concussion or some shit that was Ryan's own fault if he wasn't dead already didn't even register over the fact that where legs should have been was a massive, scaly, tail. It shined in the brightening sunlight, the scales sorta... sorta translucent shimmery. Most of them were an electric sort of blue that Ryan was sure would glow even without the sun. There were smudges of deep navy near his hips that looked like they'd been applied with too much paint and had dripped downward. Ryan clenched his hands into fists because no matter how much those dark scales looked like velvet, he wasn’t gonna touch them to find out how they felt. No touching the fish man. But he still looked.
The spines of the fin at the bottom of the tail were the same dark navy, though the membranes between each were iridescent, changing from light blue to silver to pale yellow as the sun moved. That same sparkling iridescence was on the highest scales around his stomach too, though they started as bright yellow from a V up from his groin and then faded progressively paler until they matched skin and then were skin.
All of that, right below an outtie belly button. This was insane. This was totally what being insane felt like.
Ryan probably would have stared at that tail until the sun went down on the other side of the horizon except that a sound drew his eyes upward. It was a rattling sort of gasp and it made Ryan blink, kickstarted his brain again. He looked at the guy's face because like, little mermaid or whatever that noise meant he was alive. Or had been. Shit. Maybe he was pale because he was dead. Ryan stared at him. The guy's mouth wasn't open... so how had he breathed? Ryan didn't think his nose would have rattled like that. Ryan reached out tentatively and his hand hovered over the dead fish-guy's chest and wondered if he even breathed, period. Was he supposed to breathe?
The pale chest under his hand contracted suddenly and the cool, smooth skin rose against Ryan's palm. At the same time Ryan saw three long flaps of skin that ran along the line of the guy's ribs come up and there was another rattle of breath. Ryan yelled and fell back, kicking sand everywhere. He scrambled back a few feet and then got up and ran.
The Escalade was parked back up on the dunes; the riptide had pulled Ryan down the beach a ways and by the time he had run through the sand back to the car he was out of breath. He swung around the far side so that the big black SUV was between him and the dude lying on the beach. The fish. The fish man, what the fuck? Ryan's shoulderblades stuck to the siding as he hauled air and squinted at the sun. It was really climbing now and Ryan realized that he was sweating. It was hot. He wiped a hand over his forehead and then on his shorts, which had already started to dry.
All right, so what the hell was lying back on the beach? He needed to like, focus. Cause whatever it was it was like, real, but fish people did not exist, not even when he was high. And Ryan might have smoked up late last night and he might have left the house really early but like, no. He was not still fucking stoned. There was a goddamn dude with a tail back there on the sand and unless the pot had been laced with some seriously fucked up shit (and he knew his dealer, thanks) that tail was actually a tail and not a figment of his imagination.
Ryan pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes. He sure wished he was high. He wasn't stupid enough to carry any with him in the car but man, he wanted to be that stupid because he would have toked that shit up in a heartbeat right then. Instead Ryan had to settle for wincing as he peeled himself away from the car--he'd forgotten about his own back--and figuring that if he had to face sober reality, he might as fucking well do it armed in case reality decided to claw off his face or something.
The trunk lifted with an easy glide and Ryan rummaged around in the crap that had piled up back there. Extra towels, check, but most of them smelled a little funky. There were the Flipturn briefs he'd been looking for, shoved down into the side pocket under a bottle of glass cleaner. A pair of Reeboks which might have worked if he wanted to squish a goldfish or some shit. The carjack was just way too unwieldy and there was a bra that he would have to take Kyle to task for later since there was definitely a no-sex rule for borrowing the Escalade. There was also a half-finished bottle of vodka under a gym bag, but he didn't want to party with the thing. Ryan shoved the towels to the other side of the trunk and--
Yeah. A baseball bat from that pick-up game last weekend on the beach. That accounted for the vodka too and shit there was probably some skanky cranberry juice hiding somewhere but that so wasn't a priority right now. Ryan grabbed the wooden bat and slammed the trunk closed. He took a few deep breaths. Okay. He was okay. Maybe the thing was dead anyway and it wouldn't matter. Dead things didn't attack anyone.
Ryan stepped back from the car and looked down the beach. The first thing he saw was the red of his board and for a moment he thought that maybe he was high but... no. There it was. He'd just run farther than he'd thought. Double-fisting the bat and staring at his white knuckles, Ryan started walking. What a fucking way to start the morning, wiping out and killing a fish man. Gregg would never buy it. He'd probably insist on drug testing right then and there and then Ryan would really be up shit-creek because knowing his dealer or not, shit did not flush from your system overnight, not even with his metabolism.
The sand dug between his toes and Ryan muttered Lil Wayne lyrics under his breath to keep him calm. Because he was a fucking baller and this shit could NOT bring him down. When he reached his board he stopped. Stopped walking, stopped muttering. Ryan raised the bat and then his eyes. The fish dude was still laying there, still pale and prone and...
There was no tail.
Ryan blinked. There was no fucking tail. The guy's legs looked kinda slimy or something, covered in some weird shiny, like, moss? But Ryan could clearly see two separate limbs beneath it, toes and feet and knees and--
He raised one hand off the bat and stuck fingers in his eyes, rubbing hard enough to see stars in the dark behind his eyelids. Deep breaths. Deep fucking breaths. Maybe he really was still high, even if he knew there was no way. Or maybe he'd hit his head along with his back when he wiped out, Jesus, that was probably it. When he opened his eyes the guy was still lying there, legs--legs--still twinkling weirdly in the sunlight. The ground around him was twinkling too.
God, it was just a fucking dude. Ryan exhaled and let his arms fall to his side, swearing a little as the bat knocked into his knee. Just a dude. But then, if it was just a dude and Ryan really had smacked him with his board and then run off...
Shit. Shit, shit, and double shit.
Ryan broke into a run, hoping that he hadn't just like, killed the guy by leaving him all stranded and drowning while he ran off in a drug-haze to find something to protect himself from nothing with. He hit his knees at the guy's side and spared one glance downward--totally legs, what the hell had he been thinking?--before leaning in and hovering his ear over the pale lips. He watched the long, smooth chest. There was nothing.
"Fuck," he moaned, jamming his fingers against the guy's throat. Ryan closed his eyes and counted. And... yes! There was totally a pulse, thank God. It was like, far away, real faint, but it was there. Ryan grabbed the top of the dude's head and the bottom of his long chin and tilted his head back, opening his mouth and looking for anything beyond a pink tongue. Eck, his tongue was actually kinda bluish. Did that mean he wasn't getting air or something? Ryan didn't ever remember learning anything about that in his CPR classes but whatever, he knew the guy wasn't breathing.
Pinching his nose closed and ignoring the sand he'd kicked all over him before, Ryan leaned down and gave two long breaths against cool, thin lips. At least the guy's chest rose and fell but Ryan couldn't rescue breathe forever and his cell phone was all the way back in his car. Why the fuck hadn't he thought about his phone before? He could have like, called Animal Control instead of deciding to be a retard Rambo and get the bat. If Animal Control could handle gators then they could certainly handle one half-dead fish man who wasn't actually a fish. Ryan gave him two more breaths and then sat back on his heels, cursing again. Stupid, stupid--
The guy coughed. It was a great racking cough and Ryan nearly jumped back in surprise as the guy sputtered and choked. Ryan grabbed his shoulder and hauled him onto his side. Pale fingers clamped onto Ryan's arm as the guy spat up what looked like a ton of water and Ryan had the presence of mind to feel a bit damn guilty about that. "Shit, you're not dead," Ryan whispered, and it was mostly to himself as the guy's cold hand spasmed on his skin and he choked up a little more water before collapsing onto his back again. Then he lay very still.
Ryan sat for a minute but there was nothing else and maybe he had really died after all, which would really suck since Ryan had kinda just saved his life. He leaned forward, over the guy, looking down at his clumped eyelashes and shit, pale was an understatement--he was really almost transparent. Ryan could have traced his veins. "Hey," he said, quietly. "Hey, are you alive?"
Eyelids lifted, squinting, and there were really dark eyes underneath looking right at Ryan.
"'M not dead." The pale lips hardly parted to wheeze the words and Ryan laughed. It was relief, like, absolute relief in a burst of sound and Ryan realized that he was smiling and shaking at the same time. He fisted his hands in his pants and then let go.
"Fuck me, dude. Hey, uh, sorry about the sand." He brushed some of it off the guy's forehead but a hand reached up and stopped him, cool fingers around Ryan's wrist. Ryan looked at him and his breath stuttered and stuck because the guy's eyes were like, bottomless. Like a cat's or something, a shiny sort of endless until the sun moved behind a cloud and that was gone, just dark brown again. "Sorry," Ryan repeated, exhaling. He looked away. He felt a little lame. Okay, a lot lame. "I think I hit you with my surfboard."
Fingers fell away from his wrist and his arm and the pale guy turned his head to look past his shoulder toward the creeping waves. The tide had gone completely out and the wet sand only began feet away, drying further as they spoke. The guy raised a hand and touched his head, wincing, and sure enough when he brought it away there was blood on his fingertips. Not a whole lot, but enough. "I think... you did," he said. The words were kinda awkward, with a little wannabe lisp that made Ryan think that the guy didn't talk much or something.
"Can you sit up?" Ryan asked. He wasn't all up to code on head injuries but the only thing he could think was that it would be easier for him to drive the guy to the hospital instead of waiting for an ambulance. He wrapped his hands around the guy's arms and the back of his own neck was grabbed. Together they got him into a sitting position and then Ryan hunkered on his heels. "Uh." He cleared his throat. "You know you're naked, right?" Ryan wondered if that was the reason the guy was so cold, or if it was just because he hadn't been breathing right for a while.
The guy looked down at himself, his hair falling around his shoulders. Ryan noticed again that there was seaweed sticking in it, and little things that he thought were shells. He could taste that memory again on his tongue but it just sorta rolled in and out with the sound of the waves. Nothing major. Like a dream that you couldn't quite remember.
The guy dropped his hand from Ryan's neck and touched one of his thighs like he was afraid it was going to bite him. Then he made a sound low in his throat and flattened his hand, pushing at the stuff covering his skin. It came off. The driest of it flaked away and caught the breeze while the slimier stuff--it was almost totally transparent now, shimmering bluish in the sun--left the guy's skin looking wet and sorta glittery until that all dried, too.
Ryan sat by and watched it all because really he was just sorta amazed that he'd ever thought the guy had a tail. He must have totally cracked his head falling off his board. It didn't take long to get all the goop off, though Ryan did look away when the dude worked over his privates, maybe a little too carefully, though Ryan couldn't really blame him, because. Well, because he wouldn't want that there either, not because the guy had a nice... Anyway.
"You got stuff in your hair, too," Ryan pointed out. The guy looked at him, eyebrows pulling together, and Ryan reached out to grab a piece of seaweed and tugged it. The seaweed didn't go anywhere and the guy winced and that was when Ryan realized that it was actually braided into the long brown strands. Ryan laughed and let it go. "Sorry. You a hippy or something? Like, a nudist?" That was cool, he guessed. Or maybe the guy didn't have a house or something, just lived on the beach like they did in Hawaii.
"A nudist?" the guy said, looking around. His toes were flexing and pointing and flexing... Ryan didn't think he knew he was even doing it.
"A... nevermind." Ryan brushed sand off his knees and stood up, holding out a hand. "I'll take you to the hospital for a patch-up. I guess it's the least I can do. I'm glad you didn't die." The guy grabbed him and Ryan was almost pulled off balance at the amount of weight put on their gripped hands. He spread his feet and hauled and the guy came up but it was hardly graceful. He stumbled and tipped over and Ryan had to grab him or he just would have landed back on his ass.
"Um," Ryan said. They were very close. And the guy was very cool, and very smooth (everywhere, Ryan had noticed), and very, very naked.
"Um," the guy said back.
"I hope you can walk, dude," Ryan said, and then cleared his throat because he was not breathless at all, it was just, yanno, the hauling and the grabbing. "Cause I gotta get my board and my... uh, bat."
Walking his hands up to Ryan's shoulders, the guy pushed against him until he was upright and standing. "Bat?" he said, and then smiled. He probably could have used braces but Ryan guessed that like, Nudist parents probably didn't have money for that shit. And besides, the smile made him feel funny down in his guts. "Were you playing baseball?" the guy asked, lifting his feet and wiggling his toes. Ryan watched him. "I like baseball, I saw a game. They ran really fast."
Ryan raised an eyebrow and took a step back once the guy was done testing his parts. "Something like that," he murmured; the dude was wobbling a little but mostly staying upright so Ryan leaned down and grabbed the bat he'd dropped in the sand.
Cold hands on his back stole his breath. Ryan looked over his shoulder, holding his body still as he felt thumbs brush his skin, one on his side and one on the small of his back. The guy had made the step or two just to grope him a little bit. “Huh?” Ryan breathed out.
“You’re hurt.” There was a note in the guy’s voice that made Ryan’s scalp prickle. He straightened and turned almost reluctantly away from those cool hands with a shrug, slinging the bat over his shoulder.
“I’m okay, just some rash from wiping out. Probably looks worse than it is, you know?” He tried to look over his shoulder at it but gave up after a minute. It didn’t really hurt, maybe stung a little still, now that he was thinking about it. Mostly it just felt tight. Ryan looked at the guy, who was still frowning a little, and knocked his shoulder lightly with a fist. "What's your name, man?"
The guy rubbed fingers through his drying hair. It made the sunlight catch and twinkle on the little shells that were braided into the strands of hair behind his ears, which sorta stuck out from his head--and there was that nagging memory again. It was like déjà vu. The guy gave another smile.
"My name's Michael."