It didn't get better the next morning, but Ryan was expecting that.
His head /ached/ something fierce, almost feeling like a really bad hangover than a near-death experience. There was also a little blood on the hotel bed pillow he'd had his head on for the night. He didn't really have time to worry about it though, hearing Shane say that Matt managed to find them earlier flights home.
That meant no shower and only barely, a cup of coffee. Great.
He feels Shane next to him and looks up, seeing his eyes on his head and almost feels bad for him. He shouldn't have been so hard on him yesterday, but that didn't excuse his behaviour.
He knew why he was acting the way he was, however, and her name was Sara Rubin.
Sara and Shane had been in a relationship for practically a million years before they broke up mid last year and ever since BuzzFeed upgraded her status to Supervisor in...uh, something (he didn't really have the power to think right now), she'd practically taken her anger out over Shane breaking up with on the both of them and their department's staff.
According to Shane, they had broken up amicably when they realized they were becoming more like roommates than lovers and there wasn't much bad blood between them, but clearly, to everyone else, Sara was a little more bitter than she had let on at the time and there was no shortage of people bringing this up to the tallest member of the crew.
Shane, however, being as chill as he always was, just waved it off, calling it just kinks in the gears or some weird Midwestern term for 'we're just working it all out still'.
He honestly thought that it just couldn't get any more intense lately.
If only he really knew.
It was honestly a relief to get back to his downtown apartment after being in another state for a week. It was like a homecoming. Driving his own car, dropping in to see his parents, greeting the very few of his neighbours he could meet outside- it was nice.
(Well, it wasn't like Hawaii /wasn't/ nice, but you know, work trip and stuff)
First thing on the list? Shower. A nice long hot one too. He needed it after yesterday.
He sighed to himself as he turned on the water, stepping back for a moment and waiting for it to heat up, checking out his stitches in the mirror.
Other than the crusty scab (and self-deprecating bald spot) he would have for a little while, it seemed to be pretty okay. Still hurt like a motherfucker though.
Stretching himself out, he couldn't help but yawn, shaking himself as he stepped into the bathtub and closed the curtain, attempting to get warm in his nakedness. He hated having a concussion. Concussions made you feel weird and icky inside and he was certainly feeling the full effect of that at moment.
Thankfully, work had given them the next two days off (generous by any standard), so he could at least rest and wrap his mind around everything.
Just as he was about to reach for the soap, a sudden shock went down his spine, running through his whole body before he suddenly was back in the water, back in the rough tide that had thrown him about. Oh god, did he not escape? Did he drown? Was this all a dream?
His freakout only lasted a minute before the water suddenly cleared and he crashed down to Earth, his poor abused head hitting the tiled wall and missing the rim of the bathtub as he lied there, hyperventilating. What in the hell was that!? Did he just have a flashback?
He really didn't need PTSD out of this. That was the last thing he needed right now.
Pushing himself up on his elbows as best he could in the slippery environment, the lower half of his body felt heavy, incredibly heavy and he groaned, trying to get himself up and failing, hands trying to grab for some leverage and not succeeding.
Shaking his head, he managed to pull himself up to a somewhat sitting position and went to try once more to get himself up again and...the sight his eyes met made him freeze in horror.
Because where on his body where his legs would be (or at least, /should/ be), there were no legs at all. Instead of two hairy, stubby human legs, there were /scales/. SCALES!
Ryan's chest started picking up pace again and his skin drained of colour as he stared at his bottom half, shaking his head open-mouthed as he tried to process what was before him.
The object was long, if he had to make a guess, longer than his own body. It's rather large, blue, green, white and yellow scales running from down his narrow hips where other bits and pieces are running off, then it tapers, flaring out at the end in a beautiful tentacle-like shaped fin that pressed against his bathroom wall, lifted up slightly thanks to a fin-like ridge similar to the parts coming off his hips down the back of it.
It was a tail. A fucking, honest to God, fishtail.
"W-What the fuck?!" His voice to his own knowledge, if he remembered, sounded squeaky, his mind in overdrive as he was quite suddenly glad he was on his own for this one.
He didn't think calling Shane (or, fuck, anyone) at 3 PM in the afternoon and freaking out, saying he had a fishtail of all things, would constitute as someone sane and not someone still under the influence of a concussion and major jetlag.
But this, somehow, was clearly real and not a hallucination.
Rubbing his eyes in order to check if this really was his...well, his reality right now, Ryan noticed his hand felt weird and pulled it back, blanching more if that was possible.
His hand was covered in the same blue scales, the pattern reaching down his forearm and up to his shoulder, the other colours mixed in here and there, only faintly.
His hand (he should really say fingers) also had webbing between, not unlike an animal or something that swam and was very difficult to move and bend, his fingernails now long and sharp and clearly not human-looking.
Staring at it for a while, he finally moved and reached out to his new appendage, trembling as he ran the hand over it. It felt smooth and slippery, but still quite rough. Streamlined. He could feel that there was muscle underneath, working muscle (he tried moving it as if he would move a leg and watched the end of it jump a little) that moved. Somehow.
He would have gone over it a little longer in his head, but the shower was most definitely no place for this, he would need to get out of here, for one, and figure out how the hell to return back to his...human state? Was it an actual state now? His mind was imploding.
Using his hands like he was about to crawl, he managed to "slither" his way onto the floor, the tail dragging behind him as he used the remnants of his core strength (thankyou daily gym workouts!) to place himself against the wall, the cold making his shoulders ache a little.
Reaching above him, he produced a towel from his towel hook which after drying what he could, wrapped around his shoulders, attempting to put some logic to this to figure out what was going on. Was this him finally losing it? Had the head knock been worse than they said?
He would have thought about it a whole lot more, but suddenly, the air started to hiss and crackle somehow and goosebumps appeared over his skin before the scales fell away to reveal legs and proper arms again, hairy and as pink as they had ever been.
Checking his hands, he was quite relieved to find the webbing and claws gone too.
Maybe it was just a side effect after his concussion after all.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Ryan stood, attempting not to fall as he moved to the sink and looked at himself in the mirror, shaking his head after a while and going back to his normal routine, including brushing his teeth. Which was his next course of action.
But as soon as the sink water hit his toothbrush and splashed onto him...well, let's just say that those bruises on the side of his face weren't going away anytime soon.
A select few experiments later, Ryan had come to a series of conclusions.
No matter what body part gets wet (he had to so some /serious/ yoga poses to check everywhere), he will turn into a siren(not a mermaid, if he was straight up growing fins, he would not call himself a mermaid, he's a motherfucking siren)
The time for transforming, basically between him getting wet and turning into a siren was only 30 seconds (timed using a stopwatch on his phone) and no longer or shorter.
His clothes (due to a later experiment) would disappear when he got wet and transformed, but somehow, they would reform and be still on him when dried.
There was no one in the goddamn world he could possibly tell about this.
That last one only hit him as he wrote it and he looked at the words, swallowing hard as his hands shook on the desk.
There was no one in the goddamn world he could possibly tell about this.
What even in the hell was he supposed to do now?