Iceworm- It might take me a while to get there but I will. ;)

Tyler poked the body with the bottom of his fishing pole and waited. The morning was cool for summer and the sun was just starting to really come into bloom. He took a step closer, set the bucket of fish he'd caught that morning on the sand and crouched down. The wind ruffled his hair and tickled his cheek. He bent over, his hand reaching out inches from the body and then he let it hover in mid-air. The figure appeared dead or heavily sedated, and he didn't know which was worse. Dead people didn't wake up swinging, so that was a plus, he could deal with that. Drugged up frat boys were a different story. Not that the figure really struck him as the frat type, but he'd seen it all before, some rich preppy thinking he could use the beach as his personal lair to avoid the 'rents while he slept off a hangover.

The stranger was on his stomach, curly dark hair matted to the side of his face, long arms at awkward angles, knees digging into the ground like he'd just collapsed and hadn't been able to get up. Tyler frowned. Definitely not one of the local boys or one of the summer snobs that inhabited the cottages on the hills and drove expensive cars, throwing their Daddy's money around like confetti. The boy was skinny, like a girl skinny, and his bones jutted out at sharp points. The sea birds cawed overhead like vultures waiting to pick his skeleton clean.

Tyler's concern grew when he let his hand jut out and touch the body, giving it a little shake, and nothing happened. By his crumpled clothing and the pallor of his skin, Tyler estimated that he'd been there the whole night. Tyler's fingers hesitated before he moved the unruly hair off of the strange boy's face, the skin was warm and as he moved his hand forward he felt hot breath on his fingertips. Tyler's heart thudded in his chest with relief.

"Hey," he said tapping the side of what he now recognized as a teen's face.

"Fivemoreminutes," the boy grumbled and then jerked up, inhaling sand and breaking out into a choking fit.

Tyler clapped him on the back, laughing. "Ah, so you're alive then?"

"Barely," the boy muttered, straightening out and turning over onto his back, his elbows digging into the damp sand around him. "What time is it?"

Tyler didn't even bother to check his watch, he replied automatically, "just after seven."

He squinted. "A.M.?"

"Yeah."

"Oh," he said, still puzzled. "Wait, sorry, who are you? And where am I?"

Tyler got to his feet, ignoring him. The sun was full now and the air was getting warmer. It felt good.

Tyler licked the sweat from his upper lip. "Your rudder is bent."

"Excuse me?" Seth asked, picking grits of sand from his tongue.

"The rudder, it's bent. That your boat?" He pointed with the skinny side of his fishing rod toward the Summer Breeze.

"Yeah." Seth spat into the sand and kept spitting until he appeared to have no spit left.

Tyler inspected the craft. "She's a little banged up; did you get caught up in that storm last night?"

Seth shook the sand from his hair. "Yeah, couldn't bring her in until early this morning; I kept her floating in the cove, hoping the wind wouldn't blow me right into the rocks. I'm not a fan of getting crushed."

Tyler smirked. "You got lucky then, there's not much damage. I can fix it if ya want."

Seth got his first good look at the Summer Breeze. It didn't look too bad. "I can probably manage most of it myself. I'm crafty that way."

"All right, if you're sure. I work at the marina," Tyler said, gesturing further down the beach, "if you do find you need some help, the name's Tyler. Just ask for me at the desk if I'm not around." The sand was still a little damp and so were the boy's clothes. He thought of offering him the extra pair of jeans he kept in his locker, but he outweighed the kid by a good twenty-five pounds so there wasn't much point.

Seth got to his feet, shielding the sun with his hand. "Yeah, thanks."

Tyler nodded, picket up the fish bucket and started down the beach.

"Hey!"

Tyler turned.

"My name's Seth by the way," Seth said standing on the balls of his feet, his neck craned, making him look like an ostrich.

Tyler smiled and winked. "See ya around, Seth."

After a good stretch, Seth spent the day getting supplies. The first thing he did was buy a gallon of water and drink until his mouth felt frozen and his stomach sloshed when he walked. He stopped at a seaside restaurant and ate greasy bacon and burnt toast while an old woman fed breakfast sausage to her small dog and watched him from the corner of her eye. He left the waitress a twenty-five percent tip, even though she'd forgotten to bring him the coffee he'd ordered and the food was terrible.

He found a store and bought new clothes. Most of his stuff was still drenched and he didn't feel like spending another minute with soggy underwear than was necessary, or even more upsetting, he was starting to get a rash from his wet jeans and there was nothing more unpleasant than that.

He'd slipped on a loose pair of khakis and a blue polo and instantly felt better.

The rest of the day he spent looking for a room, looking for somewhere to crash. He found a somewhat respectable, cheap hotel but there were no vacancies. The woman at the desk had told him that if he still needed a room, tomorrow he could come back and there would be some available then. Seth said that he would and laid down a ten dollar bill to secure it.

On the boat, he'd spent most of his time trying to avoid thinking about why he'd done it, why he'd left, but now...now that was all he could think about.

Seth unwrapped half the sandwich he'd picked up at a Deli and set the other half on the canvas body of the boat. He kicked off his shoes and leaned against the mast. Taking a bite, he chewed slowly.

It had been nearly ten months. Ten months since Ryan came to live in the pool house; ten months of having a friend, someone to talk to, someone to laugh with, someone to scowl at him. Ten months of pushing thoughts out of his head and pretending the feeling in his gut wasn't really there; of chocking up Ryan's occasional prolonged glances to his imagination, shared touches to accidents. He thought it would go away, thought it wasn't really what it was until Ryan walked out the door and the ache took over his body, his heart. He wanted to laugh, laugh like he had about Luke's Big Gay Dad, but he couldn't because it wasn't funny anymore. And every time Luke had pushed him against the lockers and whispered fag in his ear or peed in his shoes while he and the rest of the water polo team chanted queer in his direction, he had been right. He just hadn't known it until Theresa drove away, taking what Seth treasured the most with her. He had put too much hope in every single day of those ten months, every hour and every second because he'd been so sure that at least he'd always have Ryan. That, at least, someone understood him now. He'd been wrong. Ryan was gone. And he was alone.

One of the things he'd convinced himself of was that he could exist, he could survive fine on his own, as long as he didn't have to look at any reminders of Ryan and the house -the pool house specifically, was a giant barrage of memories that couldn't be blocked out, so he left. It was as simple as that. Only it wasn't simple and he knew that, in the back of his mind, he knew people would be worried, but he couldn't care about that, he forced himself not to.

The second night on the beach was much more unpleasant. He wondered how those people on Survivor did it night after night. Clearly a person had to be insane to willingly subject themselves to this kind of torture. He struggled to find a comfortable position, shooing away sand crabs while he gazed up at the stars and wondered what Ryan was doing at that same moment. If he was worried... If he even cared...