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The beaches of Puerto Lobos are narrow, but still long and beautiful enough Sean's surprised they're not groaning under the weight of tourists. Too far from the cities, maybe, and the other popular vacation spots, a nothing coast for a nowhere town.
Nothing certainly doesn't fit the water spilling out before him, though. Vast and blue and bright as the sky above, it spills out in a glittering, heaving mass, scattered with just a few fishing boats here or there. It's a watery cavern of a mouth, sighing and mumbling, dripping pale tongues lapping at his feet.
Cold fucking tongues, too, even if the waters are supposed to be warmer down here. Sean flexes his toes, gritting his teeth, feeling chilled sand scape across his callused soles, curls of foam wrap around his ankles like shackles. The salt-scent presses in on him, so heady it makes his heart skip a beat.
A small, insistent tug on his hand. "Come on," Daniel whines, bratty as ever. "It's your birthday, you gotta do something fun. I'm not gonna let you work or watch TV or whatever all day again."
Fun. Sean picks at the waistband of his trunks, the birthday "gift" Daniel foisted on him this morning. Cherry red, too loose in some places and too tight in others--Daniel had been looking for his old size, apparently, before hunger and muscle took turns fucking Sean up--complete with a matching set of swim goggles, so he can't even used his eye patch as an excuse.
"Unless you're scared?" Daniel skips into the water, drops glistening like beads on his own skin. His silvery scars gleam as bright as the water around them, ragged and beautiful--nothing like Sean's one. "There could be sharks in here, you know."
He raises a hand and twirls a bright sphere of water over his palm, tossing it from palm to palm. "Octopuses and krakens and zombie pirates with their skin falling off..."
"Shut up." Sean stomps into the water just to show him, trying not to hiss at the fresh chill spreading farther up his legs. He adjusts the goggles again, trying to keep them from pressing too hard on the tender outline of his socket, trying not to feel like a total fucking moron.
The ocean springs and froths all around him, whipped up by the wind. He folds his arms over his chest, trying to look stern and pretend he's not hiding the way his fucking nipples have started to fucking pebble, almost jagged to the touch.
For some reason, he thinks of the ruins of that old fishing town he and Brody had looked over a million years and miles ago, how cold and slow the waters had looked there, their taut, uniform grey. Tombstone colors, for a town little better than a cemetery, fucked up and torn down as Sean's world had been. As his world still is, really.
The sea at the one hippy party had been a bit livelier, glittering black waters full of starlight, and Daniel had begged to jump in. Sean hadn't let him, didn't want to have to deal with how cold he'd be afterward when they didn't even have a place to stay at night, let alone a warm one.
So Daniel started whining, crying, and the water had jumped around them, and the nearest hippies had all been sweaty faces and pawing hands, and Sean hadn't known what to do. And then Finn had been there, and Cassidy, grinning...
"Gotcha!" Daniel launches out of the water like the fucking Jaws shark, small hands whipping through the air. Sean yelps as water splashes his chest, sharp and unforgiving as a punch.
"You little--" He lunges without really thinking, splashing forward, awkwardly paddling through the water before he quite realizes what he's done as he tries to scoop up a wave of his own. He flounders, gagging on the sharp salt taste, and lurches back to a standing position.
"See?" Daniel backstrokes smoothly around him, graceful and gleaming like a little brown fish. While Sean's found every excuse to avoid the water, to throw himself into work or sit and down nothing, he's been out here almost every day since the bandages came off, and it shows. "Not so scary, is it?"
"Shut up," Sean mutters, rubbing his face. He's smiling, though; he can't help it. He never could, with Daniel.
And besides, the ocean isn't the problem. Sean knows that, Daniel knows that. The problem is today, the problem is that 'work or watch TV or whatever' is a generous expression for how Sean had been playing to celebrate his birthday: lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the door to open and Dad to say, mijo, what's wrong?
That's what he'd said at Sean's first birthday without Mom, when he'd still hoped she'd come back, she wouldn't miss, she'd never miss it. And when she'd seemed pretty damn intent on missing it, all through his party and his presents and the cake, Dad had known.
Dad had taken them swimming, him and Daniel. Held Daniel by the poolside as they cheered Sean on, Dad's deep booming voice and Daniel's excited babbles, chubby little fists waving. They'd both laughed enough that it had almost drowned out the ghost of the woman who wasn't laughing along.
Sean had plunged his head underwater and come up with streaming from his hair, tears streaming from his eyes, chlorine raw in his nose. But he'd felt himself glitter in the sun, felt his father's love shake the water around him, and it hadn't hurt quite as much as it did before.
And now...now it's Daniel watching over him, with his smug little grin and his eyes that miss nothing. He braces himself in the sandy shallows and rises to his feet, resting small, cool hands on Sean's hips.
"Come on," he whines, teeth winking as bright as the water around them. "You know you want to." A beat, softer now: "It's okay."
It's not. Because Dad's not here, and neither is the Sean who spent his last birthday with his father, the Sean who got a sketchbook he's filled with wonders and horrors like he's never imagined, the Sean who was lazy and spoiled and took it all for granted.
That Sean saw the oceans of Puerto Lobos as a bright blue smear in a photograph, a quarter of an emblem on Dad's good lighter. This Sean--this Sean is standing in those oceans, now, with his little brother pressed up against him, breath a hair too close and a shade too warm.
And instead of breaking away from that like he should, Sean lets folds like wet fucking paper, because he always gives in to Daniel eventually. His knees bend as he sinks down, down, sand twirling around him. He'll probably be washing it out of his ass for days, knowing his luck--
"Shit!" He reels back, sputtering as a wave slaps across his face, a blistering kiss of knife-sharp salt sending him flailing through the surf. He probably would have washed all the way up on shore if it weren't for Daniel's power, holding him in place like a fish writhing in a net.
He finally gets his head sticking up the right way, cursing and spluttering as he wipes the water off his goggles--they may look stupid, but at least they're effective--and Daniel lets out peals of laughter. "You should see your faa-aace--ack!"
Sean tackles him with a furious howl, or as close as he can get while spitting out seawater. They roll through the deep, hissing and growling, spinning out far enough that when Daniel finally gets bored and breaks away, Sean's feet can only just touch the bottom.
The water buzzes beneath him as he slides onto his back, paddling slightly to keep afloat. It supports him more easily than the swimming pools of Seattle ever did, a heavy cushion of salt holding him up, holding him close. Water pulses in his ears, muffling out the world as his eyes drift shut.
He wonders what it would have felt like to swim in the lake compared to this--fucking cold, no doubt. He'd never learned, he hadn't even said goodbye to Cassidy, ignored her offer for Finn's promise of making his way to Puerto Lobos in style (in style: meaning not filthy, hungry, and cold, not on his knees, not gagging on a every different kind of salt, not)
It had been a stupid idea, Sean knows that, but he'd been desperate, and that made him greedy. Greedy enough to take the gun, greedy enough to get Finn killed, greedy and stupid and cruel and--
He flinches at small fingers brushing through his hair, jerking his head up from the surf. Daniel floats next to him, head bobbing gently up and down. He doesn't seem to be making much effort to stay afloat, but Sean can feel a small whirlpool ticking through the water beneath them, the ripple of power holding his brother up for as long as he needs.
"You're brooding," Daniel says, crossing his arms over his chest. "Stop that."
"Brooding, huh?" Sean does his best to ride Daniel's aftercurrent as he treads water, feeling it rush around his throat and chin. It's so blue here, everywhere he looks, everywhere except for Daniel.
"Yeah, brooding." Daniel butts up against him like in a little dolphin, seaweed strands of black hair tickling Sean's neck. It'll be as long as it was at Humboldt sooner rather than later. "Like one of Sarah Lee's chickens." He pokes a tiny, sharp finger along Sean's eggs. "Sitting on your eggs and feeling sorry for yourself."
"You're the only egg I've got," Sean shoots back. He's about to make a joke about sitting on Daniel, maybe provide a demonstration, but there's a shadow flowing into his brother's eyes that stops him in his tracks. "Everything okay?"
"Fine, I--" Daniel looks away, over the horizon, the clouds gathered like sheep. "I miss Sarah Lee."
"Oh." Of course he is, she'd been his only real friend in Lisbeth's hellhole. "Me too," Sean says stupidly, trying to paddle a bit closer. "She--she and Jacob, they're probably up surfing in California right now." He does his best to smile. "Maybe they'll surf down and hang out with us?"
Daniel doesn't giggle at the idea, still staring out across the water. "I--I got another letter from her. Right before we left Away."
"Yeah?" David and Karen must've brought it; he can't remember Daniel saying anything about a new letter. "What was it, a marriage proposal? Lyla will be jealous."
Daniel's eyes shift to Sean's, looking impossibly weary and impossibly old. "She found out about Lisbeth." His voice is drained, flat. "She told me I'm a liar, a killer, a false messiah. She said I'm going to hell."
Fuck. Lisbeth keeps haunting them, the fucking bitch. It's not enough that Daniel still flinches at an unexpected touch, that he sometimes sleeps pressed to Sean's side with an eye on the bedroom door. She has to creep into their daytime, too.
"Oh, little cub." Sean does his best to get back onto his feet, trying to stand well enough he can pull Daniel into a decent hug. "I'm so sorry."
"It doesn't--" Daniel squeezes his eyes shut, the water trembling around him. "It doesn't matter, it's stupid. I shouldn't have talked about it, it's your birthday."
"I don't stop being your brother on my birthday," Sean shoots back--he's standing now, finally. He reaches out to wrap his arms around Daniel's too-slender shoulders, cuddling him close. Daniel's legs wrap around his waist, his power steadying them both, as light in Sean's arms as he'd been the day they ran away from home.
"She doesn't know what she's talking about, enao," Sean murmurs. "Sarah Lee, she--Lisbeth's been missing with her head since she was little, it's all she knows. She'll figure it out, you'll see. Jacob will help her." Hopefully.
"I don't care." Daniel's voice is quiet, but firm. "It doesn't matter what I am, it doesn't matter if I'm a monster or not, if I'm going to hell or not. I don't care what she thinks of me, what anyone thinks--not as long as you're still here. I'd do it all again, to keep you here. I'd do worst."
His hand skates across Sean's throat, fingers trembling. He'd woken the other night screaming about a dream where Sean got killed in the border, a bullet through the neck, a few hellish red wheezes and then gone.
"I'm still here." Sean agree, reaching up to gently tug Daniel's fingers away. This hand could channel enough power to rip him to pieces, but it's small in his grip, fragile as a bird. Fragile as the bird he'd freed from a box beside that gas station, all that time ago.
"Seventeen." It's the first time Sean's dared to say it aloud. "Getting on in years, yeah?" He shakes his head with a dramatic sigh. "Poor old Grandpa Sean. Gonna be counting my gray hairs soon."
"Yeah." Daniel's eyes are tired, but he still smiles as he gently disentangles from Sean's grip. "You will." He shifts away from the horizon, facing the shoreline, facing home. "You wanna come in with me?"
It's tempting to follow, to fuss, but something tells Sean that his little cub needs some time to prowl alone. "You go ahead. I'll be there in a few."
Daniel nods and turns away, splashing towards shore. Sean waits until he's almost at the beach before turning back around and sucking his breath in, chest curling tight, as he plunges.
It's colder in the ocean depths, darker, wilder, low currents scraping his face as he pulls himself deeper and deeper. Sean stays low as long he can, muscles trembling, all fours frantically scraping the ground as he pushes up for a quick gasp of air before lunging again, again.
The ocean tears at his lungs, his skin, his hair. Cold hands, familiar hands, cruel hands and kind ones and mijo and slut and faggot and beaner and thug and sweetie and bitch and mine and little lost lamb and and and
He stops, finally, pressing belly flat with salt scraping his nose, with trash and dead fish drifting around him. He stops, air festering in his chest, the tender pockets slowly drifting away. He stops, still as if truly dead.
It'd be easier to stay down here, maybe. To never have to confront the reality of seventeen, the possibility of eighteen, of twenty-four, forty, sixty, ninety. To never have to deal with the memories, or the nightmares, or the fear of being found again, or the way Daniel's body fits against his so perfectly and dangerously. To see Dad again, and ask for forgiveness after all his fuckups.
But Dad wouldn't want that, Sean knows. And Daniel...it would destroy him, leave nothing but fire and ruin in Sean's wake. He can't do that to them, or even Karen.
And when it comes down to it, Sean doesn't think he wants to do that to himself, either. He's tasted death enough times, and he's tasted all the perfect agonies of life, to know which one he prefers.
Not to mention that after all this time, he can't help being curious about what lies behind the next bend in the road. Can't help wondering what it would be like to go the next distance, tear through the next banner.
So he lefts himself rise. Up from the water, up to the beach, splashing a bit to make sure he doesn't end up coming ashore a million miles away. He pulls himself out of the surf, checking his goggles and rinsing bit of water out of his socket, wringing out the patch. He'll have to do a more thorough cleaning later; maybe Daniel can help.
But first, Sean curls up by the seaside and lets himself cry. Sobbing low and heavy and endless as the ocean around him, until he's wrung out, too, staring dazedly up a pristine blue sky.
He feels...clean. Like a whole layer of crud and shame and handprints and rot that the good ol USA smeared over him has been scraped off, cut away by a salt blade. Maybe reborn is too strong a term for it, maybe it's not.
When he's ready, Sean picks himself up off the ground, wincing (sand in the ass, yep) and makes his way back up to the beach. Back to the house, their home, where Daniel is waiting, and their new life can begin.