This is Not Good
Above, the sky was a weak whitish colour, glowing faintly with the sunlight scattered through the clouds. It was warm, but humid, and the air seemed to hang over the earth, damping out any sound but that of the ocean.
The waves fell down on the beaches, too rough to lap and too gentle to crash. Daisya loved this type of sea, just like he loved the winds that almost but not quite blew you off your feet, the cold that brought clouds out of your lungs without freezing your insides as you inhaled. Almost too much, but not quite.
"Hey, Kanda, hurry up!"
He was nearly bouncing up and down. Most of the time they got sent out somewhere inland, like Germany or Austria or somewhere boring. He'd been waiting weeks to have some spare time near the ocean when he and Kanda got sent stumbling down the road to Portsmouth, and on to Spain.
The finder, bless his heart, was too hungover to care what they were doing, so he'd let Daisya go down to the shoreline. Kanda went with him, of course, and kept grumbling as he got dragged by the sleeve down to the beach.
"I'm coming. Why don't you shut up for five minutes?"
Daisya laughed, obnoxiously and loudly. He'd been practicing.
"Nah, can't do that. I've got a reputation, you know."
Kanda was walking way too slowly on the road that wound over the scrub and down towards the set of cliffs that dropped off on to a beach. It was always more fun to jump in that just wade like some sissy. Daisya had already bundled his cloak and boots up, wearing a grimy set of bandages and a set of cotton shorts, tied at the waist with a length of cord. He waved at Kanda.
"Hey, slowpoke, I'm not waiting any longer!"
"Good."
Skipping on one foot, Daisya walked up to the edge, scouting for the right overhang. You didn't want to jump off and crash into some rocks, and if the water was too shallow you'd break a leg. If you miscalculated how big the waves were, they crashed you into the rocks. But these ones weren't nearly enough to move you, if you jumped.
He bounced up on his toes, then back on to his heels. Time to jump!
The water parted with a splash, covering him briefly before he floated back up to the surface. The waves tugged at him, making him sway like a willow in the wind, but he got the better of them, swimming over to the beach. It wasn't that nice, and it was all coarse sand with bits of seaweed, but he's seen worse. At least there wasn't a body on this one.
Quickly, he scurried up the beach and up the cliffs. Kanda was standing where the elevation was just a couple of metres above the water. He'd left his pack with the finder, wearing a similar pair of shorts and a t-shirt. The way he was standing, leaning just a bit away with his feet turned in, made him look almost a bit nervous. Kid probably hadn't been swimming in ages.
"You gonna stand there all day?" Daisya asked, walking up beside him. "The water's nice."
"Yeah."
Kanda was staring at the water. Maybe he was scared of the waves, or something.
"Come on! Promise, the waves aren't strong or anything."
Kanda carefully stepped up to the edge, staring down the couple of feet between him and the water. What a sissy. The waves were nothing, and the water was only six or seven feet away.
"You gonna jump?"
Kanda seemed to shake his head.
"I—"
Daisya planted a hand in the small of his back, and pushed. Hard.
It was only a couple of metres, anyway. The water was deep, the sun filtered weakly through the low-hanging clouds, and Kanda was fine.
"Was that so hard?" he asked mockingly, waiting for Kanda to get a purchase on the water. "It's always better when there're waves."
Kanda flailed for a moment, paddling at the water. He wasn't having trouble doggy-paddling, was he? He looked like Daisya's sister, when she was just learning.
"Kanda?"
When Kanda looked up, it struck Daisya that he'd never asked if Kanda could swim. From the look on his face, he couldn't.
"Help—"
Kanda didn't quite finish the sentence before a wave swamped him, dragging him beneath the surface of he water. That was a bit pathetic, actually. Drowning in a pool like the one all the kids in town loved to play in. Sinking beneath in a trail of waving arms and bubbles against the navy surface of the water.
Daisya was vaguely aware of his heartbeat seemingly freezing and speeding up fast enough to blend into one, but for now he was thinking of something else. Something rather specific.
Shit.
He hurriedly looked for another opening, one that didn't have Kanda in it, and dove, plunging in a stream of bubbles beneath the sea. Kanda was keeping himself not above water, but close to it.
At any rate, he could be further below the surface. He was only two, three feet under. For some reason he'd frozen. What sort of survival instinct was that?
Daisya remembered how the bottom of the dive looked. A lot further.
He'd done this plenty of times, with siblings learning to swim and tourist kids who got cocky. He came up under Kanda, drifting through the water in slow motion. After grabbing him by the shoulders, he got purchase on the water, swimming him up he surface. The guy had the good sense not to fight, but him freezing up wasn't all that helpful either.
The water broke easily above their heads, and Daisya maneuvered himself into a side crawl, sculling towards the beach and keeping Kanda's head above water. Seriously, he was being useless. Wasn't swimming one of those innate skills or something? What sort of weird God doesn't give people the ability to swim?
Daisya knew his mind was drifting, but that's what it always did.
They hit the beach, and he hauled Kanda up, out of the water and up beyond the reach of the waves. He left him there for a moment to grab a towel from his kit. Kanda was frozen in the same position he'd been the moment he got dumped on the sand.
The sounds of waves on each other and on the sand filtered through Daisya's ears, rhythmic and powerful in a manner so deceptively calm that some stupid kid could think that they wouldn't swallow up anyone delivered to their jaws.
"Sorry about that."
The words scraped off his vocal cords. It was a bit pathetic, but, well, what else could he say?
Kanda's stare became more a glower, but he gave no response. There was still that same movement behind the blankness of his eyes. Daisya had seen it in the inn, when he burned, and in that town, where he'd run away.
It had something to do with "Alma."
"I, uh, didn't know you couldn't swim."
He took a closer look at Kanda. He was hunched over, arms criss-crossing his body in what could have been an attempt to keep warm. Beneath the wet fabric of his shirt, Daisya could see some sort of tattoo traced on his skin.
He's caught glimpses of it before. It probably had something to do with the past Kanda never wanted to talk about.
"Kanda…you okay?"
This seemed to snap him out of it.
"I'm fine."
He slowly untangled himself, folding his knees under him and swelling with a slow inhalation that ended in a sigh.
In a fraction of a second, the tips of his fingers rested gently on Daisya's throat. Normally this would be an invitation to one of their rounds of sparring, but Daisya had chosen not to move.
"I told you. I'm sorry."
"Are you?"
Kanda already knew the answer. Daisya held his gaze.
"Yes. Promise."
Kanda still looked shaken, like a rescued child. In a way, that's what he still was.
Daisya raised his hands slowly to Kanda's shoulders, then up to his jawline. He could feel the pulse echoing through the skin, and Kanda's hands mirroring the position of his own. This was the time where seconds slowed down to the consistency of treacle, pulling each moment through the air as laboriously as if they were made of gold.
The reassuring feeling of steadiness was there, and his pulse slowing down to a pace still quicker than average, but that was normal in Kanda's presence.
Neither of them knew what this was. It was friendship, yes, and it definitely wasn't anything sticky and romantic. It was just…living. It was Kanda carrying his unconscious body out of forests, out of castles, out of danger. It was him pushing Kanda away, staying behind to burn or dragging him by the collar if needed out of the path of a blow or a bullet. It was sparring and teasing and stealing his hair tie and trying to get a hand around his throat before he could do the same.
It was listening to each other's breaths, each other's pulses when the mind drew a blank, and letting it fill in the details. It was nights spend in the cold beneath a web of coats and blankets, intertwined if only for the sake of heat. It was the dark of night, when Daisya cried in his sleep and Kanda just called out for someone, anyone, Alma.
Daisya leaned in, as if to drown himself in the coal-black gaze. This was the selfish part of it. Kanda's fingers clasping his cheeks and his own moving to grip the collar of Kanda's shirt as if to let go would be to do so forever.
Slowly, after what seemed like an eternity, it quietly ended.
"Promise."
They both relaxed a moment later.
"If you ever tell anyone about that," Kanda started, pulling himself to his feet, "I'm going to kill you."
"You're going to have to catch me first," Daisya answered.
This was back to normal.