Chapter Text
The sky was grey and gloomy and the fierce, frigid wind billowed inland from the ocean, tossing wave after wave against the sandy beach. They smashed into the surrounding cliffs over and over again, spitting droplets of white sea foam high up the rock face.
A man, young and frail, stands on the edge of the cliff. The wind is so strong it pushes against him but, despite his weakness, he pushes back. He sways, the force of humanity against the force of nature, ramming head to head again and again.
But suddenly, the wind gives out causing the boy to stumble forward. He’s too close to the edge of the cliffs and he stumbles forward, trying desperately to regain his balance. He’s not going to make it! He topples forward and—
“Are you done with that?”
Bin stops typing and sighs. He looks up to see who could possibly have thought it okay to disturbing him from his writing. He sighs again.
“Dude, I was totally on a roll this time. What the hell?” He says.
Rocky at least has the audacity to look a little apologetic. He slides into the seat across from Bin, digging into the brownie that lay forgotten on the table between them.
“Sorry man, but I’m seriously starving here. Dance practise ran right through lunch and I haven’t eaten since breakfast!”
Bin glares at Rocky from over the top of his laptop. Sometimes he seriously wonders why he considers the dancer his best friend.
“So you came all the way from the studio out to the cafe just to steal my food?”
Rocky’s shit eating grin is answer enough. Bin grabs the brownie from the plate and shoves the whole thing into his mouth in one go. Rocky looks offended.
“Buy your own damn food, asshole.” Bin grunts around the brownie that has now taken permanent residence in his mouth. Rocky pouts at him before grabbing Bin’s laptop and spinning it towards himself. Bin lunges for it but Rocky has it off the table and far out of Bin’s reach long before he can grab it. He sticks his tongue out at Bin’s sad attempt to stop him.
“So, what are you writing about today?” He asks doing a quick scan of the document before him. “The ocean? Again? Dude, you really have to expand your repertoire.”
Bin stands and snatches his laptop back, slamming the lid closed and tucking it into his messenger bag.
“Also, you call that on a roll? You’ve been down here “writing” for like six hours and you’ve got, what, three paragraphs. Your parents gave you how long to write something before the ship you off to University?”
Bin sits back down and buries his face in his hands. “One year.”
“Damn, only a year to get a book written and accepted by a publisher? That’s rough, buddy.” Rocky says patting Bin on the shoulder.
That was the agreement Bin had made with his parents. All he had wanted for as long as he could remember was to tell stories. Even as a young kid he had been writing. He would go out onto his back porch and stare out across the fields. He would wander into the forest or through the suburbs and then he would come home and he would write. The stories were always short, mostly plotless and, looking back on them, pretty shitty, but he had been so proud of them at the time. His teachers had always praised him for his imagination and the unique way in which he was able to describe things. His parents had been very proud of him as well, but as he neared high school graduation, he lost his focus. He started wandering with no direction and his writing began to do the same. He stopped finishing his pieces and he began only writing when he needed to. His parents worried that he was uninspired and that if he didn’t have a deadline he would never finish another story so, they gave him a deadline: Finish the first draft of one full story and turn it into a publisher by the end of the year.
If he was unable to meet the deadline he would go to university to major in literature and become a professor or teacher just like his parents. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if he didn’t make the deadline because he did want to go to university eventually anyway, but Bin was taking this as his parent’s giving him one year where he wouldn’t have to focus on anything but writing. They had agreed to pay for him to live outside of the city and they would give him an allowance of a couple hundred dollars a month to buy everything he would need to live on his own.
Of course, he wasn’t living totally alone. He was sharing a little house with his best friend in a tiny seaside town six or seven hours away from the city. Rocky had wanted to move here because, oddly enough, they had one of the best dance studios in the country and it was something he hoped to pursue in university. Rocky had worked incredibly hard to finish high school a year early so he could take some time to save up some money so he wouldn’t have to rely solely on scholarships to make it through school. There had been an opening at the studio for a dance instructor, he had auditioned and had, unsurprisingly in Bin’s opinion, been given the job. They found what was now their house and had moved down the next week.
So that’s how they ended up here. Two teenagers on their own in a tiny seaside town pursuing their passions and making the best of their youth.
Except there was one problem. Bin hadn’t been able to write anything worth while and it had already been three weeks since they moved out here. He was utterly uninspired, hence why he had been sitting in a coffee shop for six hours and had only been able to write three paragraphs.
“Look man, maybe you should do what you used to when we lived in the city. Go out, walk somewhere. You can’t keep waiting around for inspiration to find you. Sometimes you have to go find it yourself.”
Ah, yes. That was why he considered Rocky to be his best friend.
“You know what? I think you may be on to something.” Bin says with a grin. He stands, scooping up his messenger bag as he goes. He tosses a five dollar bill onto the table calling over his shoulder as he leaves the shop. “Treat yourself to something nice. On me!” And the bell over the doorframe tinkles as the door clicks shut.
Bin goes to the sea. It was one of the places he hadn’t ever really been able to visit when he had lived in the city and, therefore, he hadn’t had much opportunity to write about it. Since moving to the little town Bin had been captivated by the ocean but he had yet to find the appropriate words to describe it. The ocean is vast and unknowable, mysterious and unexplored, powerful and essential. The ocean has no master. Not even sailors can tame the waves.
He strolls along the beach, eventually deciding to remove his shoes after stopping to empty them for the thousandth time. The sand is cool between his toes, the September sun no longer powerful enough to warm it up. The wind tugs at his hair, tosses the loose, dry sand upward and stings his cheeks.
He wanders onward, captivated by the sea. The waves slide up the sand with soft shushing sounds and though the wind feels quite strong to Bin it doesn’t even create white caps in the water.
On and on he wanders until he come upon some cliffs. Finally he realizes that he is actually quite close to his house. There is a set of old wooden stairs that lead up the side of one of the cliffs. A couple meters farther down the beach there is a gap in the sand dunes that leads to the road for people who can’t use the stairs. His house sits just at the top of the cliff and across the rode but Bin is reluctant to leave the ocean. He remains uninspired but maybe if he just starts to write, something will come of it.
Bin rolls up the cuffs of his jeans and wanders towards the edge of the ocean. He lets the water lap at his toes and he closes his eyes, losing himself in the feeling of being by the sea.
Suddenly, he hears something that doesn’t quite fit with the ocean sounds. In fact, it sounds almost human. A groan.
Bin opens his eyes searching around for something that could have made that sound, unsure if he actually heard something or if he was imagining things.
There it is again! Bin is sure he heard it this time. It sounds like someone in pain! He looks around again, frantic this time and then he spots it. Caught between two rocks at the base of the cliff is a long pale arm. Bin rushes over, deeper into the water. Luckily the arm appears to be attached to the rest of a person. A boy. His torso is caught between two rocks, out of the water and he appears to be unconscious. Bin wades towards the boy. He grabs him underneath his shoulders and hoists him off the rocks and back into the water. He wraps his arms around the boys bare chest and lugs him towards the sandy shore. For how thin the boy is he’s shockingly heavy, but still Bin pulls him onward. It’s only when the water is about ankle deep does Bin understand why the boy feels so heavy.
Where most people’s legs would begin this boy has scales. They are the darkest violet colour that Bin has ever seen, almost appearing black until the sun hits them. They taper downward, starting at the boys hips forming a v with the lowest point just under his belly button. The scales continue downward forming a long glistening tail ending in a large, fan-like fin, like a siamese fighting fish except that, with the boy now lying on his back, it runs parallel with the sand instead of intersecting. The boy also has some short dorsal like fins on his fore arms that appear to have the same membrane stretched between the spines that his tail has. The scales also seem to continue up the boys spine and creep inward from the back of his neck across his cheek bones.
Of course, following the scales leads to Bin staring at this strange boys face. It’s a good face, he’ll admit. High cheekbones, strong, slender jaw and pink, pouty lips that quirk up at the corners. He has long, dark eyelashes that fan out against his flawless, pale skin. Strong, dark eyebrows and dark hair that falls across his forehead, still somehow managing to look soft even though it’s soaked with seawater. Bin also notices that the boy seems to have strange slits covered by folds of skin on the sides of his neck.
Anyhow, good face or not, that really isn’t the most important thing right now. Bin currently has a weird, unconscious fish man lying on the beach. He’s bleeding from several deep looking gashes in his tail which also seems to be bent at a kind of odd angle at the end.
Bin places his fingers on the fish boy’s neck, pleased to find a strong steady pulse beneath his cold and kinda slimy skin. He can see that the boys chest is rising steadily as well. Bin heaves a sigh of relief. The last thing he needs is the odd fish boy dying on him.
Suddenly the fish boy gasps, eyes snapping open and wow, his eyes are the clearest, most beautiful, powder blue that Bin has ever seen.
The fish boy’s eyes flutter like he is desperately trying to keep them open and his arm shoots out to he wraps long, cold fingers around Bin’s wrist.
“Please, help me.” He gasps out. It’s barely more than a whisper but Bin catches it. Then the fish boy is collapsing against the ground, unconscious once more.
Bin pulls his cell phone out of his pocket and dials Rocky’s number. He waits for three rings before Rocky picks up.
“Did you find your inspiration?” Rocky asks.
“Dude, we seriously don’t have time for this. I need you to come down to the beach by our house right now. It’s an emergency!” Bin moves to hang up but not before adding. “Oh, and you might want to bring the wheelbarrow.”