FAKE Fic: Off The Charts - Part 4
Title: Off The Charts - Part 4
Fandom: FAKE
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Dee, Ryo.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1782
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Whatever the boys were expecting to find on the mysterious island, safe to say it wasn’t this.
Written For: spook_me 2023.
Disclaimer: I don’t own FAKE, or the characters. They belong to the wonderful Sanami Matoh.
A/N: Set after Like Like Love.
Previous Part
With very little light except for where their flashlights shone, and nothing but shadows, trees, and water around them, it was easy to lose track of both time and distance travelled. Nevertheless, Ryo thought they must be getting close to the center of the island, the water by now well past their knees, when they noticed a faint glow up ahead.
As they drew closer, the glow gradually brightened, and peering past his partner, Ryo could see they were approaching a clearing among the trees where the moonlight was shining down on something pale and smooth. Maybe it was a pile of weathered rocks, either a natural formation or the remains of a building. Despite being longsighted, even with the brightness of the moon it was still too dark for him to see clearly, while the hanging moss and tangled undergrowth further obscured his view.
Dee was the first to reach the clearing, and what he saw made him stop dead in his tracks: it was his worst nightmare made flesh, and as he stood there he wondered if he was just having a weird dream. Maybe he and Ryo had never left their boat at all and were still napping on the foredeck; that would make a whole lot more sense than what was in front of him. Surely it couldn’t be real.
“What is it? What d’you see?” Dee was blocking Ryo’s view, standing as he was in a gap between two massive trees.
“Snake.” Dee’s voice came out in a hoarse croak he barely recognised, which was hardly surprising. If there was one thing he hated more than anything else, it was snakes. He shuddered; the very thought of them made his skin crawl, and the one in front of him was bigger than any living creature past the reign of the dinosaurs had a right to be. Its pale, flesh-colored body had to be three or four feet in diameter at least, and its head, resting on its coils, was practically the size of a small car.
“You mean on the rocks?” Ryo asked from behind him, standing on tiptoes, trying to see over Dee’s shoulder and the coil of rope he had looped around him.
“There aren’t any rocks; that’s the snake.”
“Seriously?”
“Uh huh.”
If it had been a giant spider, Ryo would have been halfway back to the dinghy already, but unlike Dee, he wasn’t afraid of snakes, not even big ones. He squeezed in beside his lover, wanting to see it for himself.
“Wow, it’s huge! Wish I had my camera with me. I had no idea snakes could get that big!” he whispered. “Looks like it’s asleep though.” The snake’s eyes were closed, its thick coils barely moving as it breathed, slow and even.
“Yeah, and with any luck it’ll stay that way. Think it’s time we headed back to the boat; I’ve seen all I wanna see. Hell, I’ve seen way more than I wanted!” Dee started trying to ease his way back amongst the trees, not wanting to turn around. As long as he could see the snake, he could be sure it wasn’t moving, but if he took his eyes off it, he wouldn’t know what the hell it was doing, which would be so much worse than having to look at it.
As he stepped backwards though, something shifted and rattled under his feet, the odd metallic sound clearly audible despite the depth of the water, and he froze again, tensing up and holding his breath, but the snake didn’t react at all.
“What was that?” Ryo whispered.
“Don’t know, and I don’t care,” Dee hissed back. “Let’s just get outta here while big ugly there is nappin’.”
“In a second.” Ryo stooped down, reaching beneath the water and coming up with a handful of flat metallic discs, which shone brilliantly in the moonlight. His eyebrows rose in astonishment as he realised he was holding almost a dozen large, gold coins. “Well, guess you were right about the buried treasure. I wonder how long these have been here.” They were so bright they might have been freshly minted.
Anyone else would likely have been trying to shove as many coins into their pockets and backpack as they could, convinced they were about to become millionaires, but Dee was too intent on watching the snake to pay any attention to what his lover was looking at, and Ryo was more curious about the historical significance of the find than what it might be worth. That probably hadn’t even crossed his mind. He turned the coins over in his hand, making them clink together almost musically, and studied both sides in the beam of his flashlight.
“I thought they might be Spanish, but they don’t seem to be,” he mused. “I don’t recognise the writing on them.”
“Ryo?” Dee interrupted.
“Hm?”
“Can ya look at those later? It’s an awful long way back to the boat, and I think maybe the snake’s wakin’ up.”
That got Ryo’s attention. He turned to look, letting the coins fall from his hand to splash into the water as he saw that Dee was right. The snake’s eyes were opening and it was raising its head, its body slowly uncoiling with a soft rasping sound.
Dee was already backing away, flashlight aimed shakily in the snake’s direction, the cutlass, its blade barely two-feet long, held before him in a white-knuckled grip, and looking woefully inadequate against something so gigantic.
Although regular snakes had never bothered Ryo, the sheer size of this one made it the exception. While it had been sleeping it hadn’t posed a threat, but now it was stirring, he found himself wishing he hadn’t convinced Dee to leave their guns locked away in the safe back at their apartment. If it attacked them, they had no defence; it could easily crush both of them to death with a single loop of its body.
That might almost have been preferable to what happened next, because at least it would have been something he could comprehend. Instead, as it woke, the snake began to transform.
It didn’t happen all at once, so at first he thought he must be imagining it, that it was nothing but the shadows moving over the snake’s body. But as the serpent shifted, the pale coils began to darken, a flush of vivid green starting at the head then spreading through its entire body, like coloured ink on wet paper. At the same time, the snake’s eyes snapped fully open, their gold color as bright as the coins Ryo had briefly held. The head rose higher and higher on the sinuous body, the jaws parted, revealing a pair of long, curved, bloodred fangs, and an even longer forked green tongue that flickered in and out of its maw, tasting the air. It hissed, a sound that reminded Ryo of the steam escaping a pressure cooker, and then…
Neither man, on the rare occasions they spoke of that night, was ever sure afterwards whether it was real or just a trick of the light, but it very much seemed as if the whole snake burst into flickering flames that rippled back and forth along the length of its body, a coruscating green luminescence, tinged in places with yellow and red. The serpent’s tail whipped out behind it, shattering the trunk of the nearest tree into kindling, and its massive head reared back in preparation for a strike.
Ryo was the first to break out of the momentary paralysis they’d both fallen into at the impossible sight. He grabbed for the coil of rope looped over Dee’s shoulder, the most convenient handhold available, and tugged on it hard, almost pulling his lover off his feet.
“Come on!”
Staggering, Dee managed to get his feet under him but lost his grip on his flashlight in the process. He reached for it even as Ryo tugged urgently at him again.
“My flashlight!”
“Leave it!”
“No!” Dee had no idea why he was being so stubborn, except that it was dark under the trees and one flashlight might not be enough to guide them safely back to their starting point. The last thing they needed was to lose their way, or blunder into worse trouble, just because they couldn’t see where they were going. Thanking God that they’d had the sense to invest in waterproof equipment to keep on their boat, he aimed for the glow beneath the water, a surge of relief flooding through him when his hand closed around the flashlight’s solid rubber handgrip at the first attempt. As he straightened up, the snake lunged at him, and he defended himself without thinking, slashing at it with the sword that was still gripped tightly in his left hand.
His first blow glanced off one of the serpent’s fangs, making a ringing sound and chipping off a fragment. The snake jerked its head away, as if surprised that he was fighting back, but it was only a momentary hesitation. It came at him again before he could retreat, and in sheer desperation he swung the sword again. To his amazement, the blade, sharper than a razor, connected, opening a deep wound across the snake’s blunt snout. The creature drew back with an eerie screech that set his teeth on edge, like fingernails on a chalkboard.
Not waiting to see what it might do next, Dee swung around, shoving Ryo ahead of him. “Go! I’ll cover our backs!”
“Don’t be an idiot; I’m not going anywhere without you!”
“I’ll be right on your goddam heels! Just move!”
Grabbing onto the coiled rope again, determined not to leave his lover behind, Ryo plunged through the gap in the trees, floundering through thigh-deep water, back the way they’d come. Faster would have been better, but running through water, unable to see obstacles below the surface, was difficult enough at the best of times, and getting up any kind of speed was impossible.
Behind them, they could hear the enraged serpent thrashing about, screeching and hissing, accompanied by the sound of trees falling. Glancing back, Dee saw the great green head, with its flashing golden eyes, trying to force its way past the two massive trees he’d paused between only a few minutes ago, when he’d first seen the creature. The long tongue darted towards him, a clear fluid dripping from it, making whatever it touched sizzle and smoke, and he swung the cutlass again, severing one of the forks so that it fell hissing into the water. With a keening cry, the snake’s head withdrew, and Dee scrabbled after his partner. He didn’t look back again.
Part 5
Fandom: FAKE
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Dee, Ryo.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1782
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Whatever the boys were expecting to find on the mysterious island, safe to say it wasn’t this.
Written For: spook_me 2023.
Disclaimer: I don’t own FAKE, or the characters. They belong to the wonderful Sanami Matoh.
A/N: Set after Like Like Love.
Previous Part
With very little light except for where their flashlights shone, and nothing but shadows, trees, and water around them, it was easy to lose track of both time and distance travelled. Nevertheless, Ryo thought they must be getting close to the center of the island, the water by now well past their knees, when they noticed a faint glow up ahead.
As they drew closer, the glow gradually brightened, and peering past his partner, Ryo could see they were approaching a clearing among the trees where the moonlight was shining down on something pale and smooth. Maybe it was a pile of weathered rocks, either a natural formation or the remains of a building. Despite being longsighted, even with the brightness of the moon it was still too dark for him to see clearly, while the hanging moss and tangled undergrowth further obscured his view.
Dee was the first to reach the clearing, and what he saw made him stop dead in his tracks: it was his worst nightmare made flesh, and as he stood there he wondered if he was just having a weird dream. Maybe he and Ryo had never left their boat at all and were still napping on the foredeck; that would make a whole lot more sense than what was in front of him. Surely it couldn’t be real.
“What is it? What d’you see?” Dee was blocking Ryo’s view, standing as he was in a gap between two massive trees.
“Snake.” Dee’s voice came out in a hoarse croak he barely recognised, which was hardly surprising. If there was one thing he hated more than anything else, it was snakes. He shuddered; the very thought of them made his skin crawl, and the one in front of him was bigger than any living creature past the reign of the dinosaurs had a right to be. Its pale, flesh-colored body had to be three or four feet in diameter at least, and its head, resting on its coils, was practically the size of a small car.
“You mean on the rocks?” Ryo asked from behind him, standing on tiptoes, trying to see over Dee’s shoulder and the coil of rope he had looped around him.
“There aren’t any rocks; that’s the snake.”
“Seriously?”
“Uh huh.”
If it had been a giant spider, Ryo would have been halfway back to the dinghy already, but unlike Dee, he wasn’t afraid of snakes, not even big ones. He squeezed in beside his lover, wanting to see it for himself.
“Wow, it’s huge! Wish I had my camera with me. I had no idea snakes could get that big!” he whispered. “Looks like it’s asleep though.” The snake’s eyes were closed, its thick coils barely moving as it breathed, slow and even.
“Yeah, and with any luck it’ll stay that way. Think it’s time we headed back to the boat; I’ve seen all I wanna see. Hell, I’ve seen way more than I wanted!” Dee started trying to ease his way back amongst the trees, not wanting to turn around. As long as he could see the snake, he could be sure it wasn’t moving, but if he took his eyes off it, he wouldn’t know what the hell it was doing, which would be so much worse than having to look at it.
As he stepped backwards though, something shifted and rattled under his feet, the odd metallic sound clearly audible despite the depth of the water, and he froze again, tensing up and holding his breath, but the snake didn’t react at all.
“What was that?” Ryo whispered.
“Don’t know, and I don’t care,” Dee hissed back. “Let’s just get outta here while big ugly there is nappin’.”
“In a second.” Ryo stooped down, reaching beneath the water and coming up with a handful of flat metallic discs, which shone brilliantly in the moonlight. His eyebrows rose in astonishment as he realised he was holding almost a dozen large, gold coins. “Well, guess you were right about the buried treasure. I wonder how long these have been here.” They were so bright they might have been freshly minted.
Anyone else would likely have been trying to shove as many coins into their pockets and backpack as they could, convinced they were about to become millionaires, but Dee was too intent on watching the snake to pay any attention to what his lover was looking at, and Ryo was more curious about the historical significance of the find than what it might be worth. That probably hadn’t even crossed his mind. He turned the coins over in his hand, making them clink together almost musically, and studied both sides in the beam of his flashlight.
“I thought they might be Spanish, but they don’t seem to be,” he mused. “I don’t recognise the writing on them.”
“Ryo?” Dee interrupted.
“Hm?”
“Can ya look at those later? It’s an awful long way back to the boat, and I think maybe the snake’s wakin’ up.”
That got Ryo’s attention. He turned to look, letting the coins fall from his hand to splash into the water as he saw that Dee was right. The snake’s eyes were opening and it was raising its head, its body slowly uncoiling with a soft rasping sound.
Dee was already backing away, flashlight aimed shakily in the snake’s direction, the cutlass, its blade barely two-feet long, held before him in a white-knuckled grip, and looking woefully inadequate against something so gigantic.
Although regular snakes had never bothered Ryo, the sheer size of this one made it the exception. While it had been sleeping it hadn’t posed a threat, but now it was stirring, he found himself wishing he hadn’t convinced Dee to leave their guns locked away in the safe back at their apartment. If it attacked them, they had no defence; it could easily crush both of them to death with a single loop of its body.
That might almost have been preferable to what happened next, because at least it would have been something he could comprehend. Instead, as it woke, the snake began to transform.
It didn’t happen all at once, so at first he thought he must be imagining it, that it was nothing but the shadows moving over the snake’s body. But as the serpent shifted, the pale coils began to darken, a flush of vivid green starting at the head then spreading through its entire body, like coloured ink on wet paper. At the same time, the snake’s eyes snapped fully open, their gold color as bright as the coins Ryo had briefly held. The head rose higher and higher on the sinuous body, the jaws parted, revealing a pair of long, curved, bloodred fangs, and an even longer forked green tongue that flickered in and out of its maw, tasting the air. It hissed, a sound that reminded Ryo of the steam escaping a pressure cooker, and then…
Neither man, on the rare occasions they spoke of that night, was ever sure afterwards whether it was real or just a trick of the light, but it very much seemed as if the whole snake burst into flickering flames that rippled back and forth along the length of its body, a coruscating green luminescence, tinged in places with yellow and red. The serpent’s tail whipped out behind it, shattering the trunk of the nearest tree into kindling, and its massive head reared back in preparation for a strike.
Ryo was the first to break out of the momentary paralysis they’d both fallen into at the impossible sight. He grabbed for the coil of rope looped over Dee’s shoulder, the most convenient handhold available, and tugged on it hard, almost pulling his lover off his feet.
“Come on!”
Staggering, Dee managed to get his feet under him but lost his grip on his flashlight in the process. He reached for it even as Ryo tugged urgently at him again.
“My flashlight!”
“Leave it!”
“No!” Dee had no idea why he was being so stubborn, except that it was dark under the trees and one flashlight might not be enough to guide them safely back to their starting point. The last thing they needed was to lose their way, or blunder into worse trouble, just because they couldn’t see where they were going. Thanking God that they’d had the sense to invest in waterproof equipment to keep on their boat, he aimed for the glow beneath the water, a surge of relief flooding through him when his hand closed around the flashlight’s solid rubber handgrip at the first attempt. As he straightened up, the snake lunged at him, and he defended himself without thinking, slashing at it with the sword that was still gripped tightly in his left hand.
His first blow glanced off one of the serpent’s fangs, making a ringing sound and chipping off a fragment. The snake jerked its head away, as if surprised that he was fighting back, but it was only a momentary hesitation. It came at him again before he could retreat, and in sheer desperation he swung the sword again. To his amazement, the blade, sharper than a razor, connected, opening a deep wound across the snake’s blunt snout. The creature drew back with an eerie screech that set his teeth on edge, like fingernails on a chalkboard.
Not waiting to see what it might do next, Dee swung around, shoving Ryo ahead of him. “Go! I’ll cover our backs!”
“Don’t be an idiot; I’m not going anywhere without you!”
“I’ll be right on your goddam heels! Just move!”
Grabbing onto the coiled rope again, determined not to leave his lover behind, Ryo plunged through the gap in the trees, floundering through thigh-deep water, back the way they’d come. Faster would have been better, but running through water, unable to see obstacles below the surface, was difficult enough at the best of times, and getting up any kind of speed was impossible.
Behind them, they could hear the enraged serpent thrashing about, screeching and hissing, accompanied by the sound of trees falling. Glancing back, Dee saw the great green head, with its flashing golden eyes, trying to force its way past the two massive trees he’d paused between only a few minutes ago, when he’d first seen the creature. The long tongue darted towards him, a clear fluid dripping from it, making whatever it touched sizzle and smoke, and he swung the cutlass again, severing one of the forks so that it fell hissing into the water. With a keening cry, the snake’s head withdrew, and Dee scrabbled after his partner. He didn’t look back again.
Part 5