Brigit's Flame -- "Thousand Island"
Prompt: "Thousand Island"
Word Count: 2,965
Warnings: language, wretchedly bad puns
Author's Note: Hey, it's Nick and Theo again. eltea owns my soul for betaing this for me. ♥
"THOUSAND ISLAND"
Theo lay spread-eagled in the sand, trails of it flung across him from the impact, and his eyes were closed.
“Holy shit!” Nick squeaked-taking “squeaked” to mean “uttered in a calm and manly voice”-as he scrambled over to his fallen companion, sand spraying behind his heels. He dropped to his knees, saw that Theo’s chest was rising and sinking steadily, and shook uncertainly at the other boy’s shoulder.
Theo stirred, cringed away from the sunlight, and opened his eyes.
“The hell?” he said.
“Pardon?” Nick prompted, brightly now as relief flooded in, replacing the sick tremblings of the terror he didn’t dare to name.
Theo sat up, shading his eyes. “What I meant,” he corrected, “was more like What the fuck is going on?”
Nick looked around. “Uh…”
Theo gathered himself to his feet, making an incredulous survey of his own. “This is an island,” he announced.
Nick got up. “Yeah…”
Theo raised an eyebrow. “We were not on an island a minute ago.”
“Actually,” Nick remarked, “it’s probably been at least two since we got here.”
Theo’s sardonic look would have incinerated him long before the intolerable tropical sun ever did.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” he wanted to know.
Nick considered. “I tossed my backpack down on the floor of your room,” he reported, “and then you tripped over it and fell on your bed. Except then you fell through your bed.” He itched at the back of his head. “So I jumped after you.”
Theo stared at him. “You want me to believe,” he said slowly, “that my mattress is a warp hole?”
Nick shrugged. “Stranger things have happened,” he replied.
“No, they haven’t,” Theo fired back.
“You’ve been putting up with my shit for almost a decade,” Nick countered. “That’s pretty strange.”
“Speaking of your shit,” Theo noted, “you jumped in after me?”
Nick shifted. “Of course I did,” he answered. “Your room’s pretty boring without you in it.”
Theo exhibited the maneuver known on the internet as the facepalm, but not before Nick discerned that he was at least a little bit flattered to learn that his best friend would leap through a warp hole in the form of a Martha Stewart Collection comforter on his behalf.
Nick had never trusted that woman.
“Well,” Theo sighed, “how do we get out of here? What is ‘here’?”
Nick looked out over the beach, the sand below nibbled at by lazy waves in a shade of turquoise so vivid that Crayola would have been forest green with envy.
“I have no idea,” he admitted. “Let’s make a sandcastle!”
“We’re not making anything until we figure out-”
Ignoring Mr. Negativity, Nick trooped down to the water’s edge, peering into its impeccable clarity as he kicked off his sneakers, which he knotted together by their shoelaces and slung over his shoulder, and peeled off his socks, which he tucked into his back pocket. Free at last, he stepped forward to meet the next rolling wave, white foam hissing around his ankles, and the temperature was perfect-warm enough to caress his feet with the utmost gentleness, but still just cool enough to be beautifully refreshing.
He turned to tell Theo to get the hell over here, and then something pinched his smallest toe.
A startled glance confirmed that he was being mobbed by a flock of tiny crabs, pincers at the ready.
As little spots of agony exploded all over his feet, Nick scrambled back up the beach, flinging less tenacious crustaceans in his wake and screaming at the top of his lungs.
…in a calm and manly way.
Theo looked skeptically at Nick’s toes, which were blanketed in angry red pinch marks.
“Hope those aren’t poisonous,” he remarked.
Nick gave an extremely masculine wail.
“I’ve never heard of venomous crabs,” Theo amended, taking pity on him, “so you should be all right. Just quit putting your feet weird places; next it’ll be sharks or something.”
With that pearl of cynicism, Theo removed his sweater (which was argyle), rolled up his sleeves (which belonged to his white Oxford), and pulled off his Converse (which met the same fate as Nick’s shoes, which had somehow survived the flight from the Demon Crabs) and started off towards a cluster of trees slightly reserved from the beach, some distance from where they stood.
Jogging after, Nick lasted five minutes before the urge to burst out into song overwhelmed him entirely.
“Many times I’ve tried to tell you… Many times I’ve cried alone… Always I’m surprised how well you cut my feelings to the bone…”
“I should have left you for the crabs,” Theo muttered.
Nick flung his arms out for better acoustics. “Don’t want to leave you, really… I’ve invested too much time… To give you up that easy to the doubts that complicate your mind!”
“I’ll be complicating your vital functions if you’re not careful.”
“We belong to the light; we belong to the thunder…! You could always sing along, you know.”
“Not a chance, Nicholas.”
“But you sound pretty good,” Nick persisted. “I’ve heard you singing Cars songs in the shower.”
Theo was not impressed.
“You can’t distinguish anything with the shower running anyway,” was the verdict.
“We belong to the sound of the words we’ve both fallen under,” Nick sang.
Theo shoved him, none too gently, and kept walking.
Nick was still going through the index of songs he liked to sing at an ungodly volume when they reached the small copse of sad-looking palm trees towards which Theo had directed their journey.
Theo frowned up at the anemic plants. “I was hoping for some sort of food,” he noted.
Vividly Nick thought of hamburgers as he gazed morosely down the beach, where boulders congregated in untidy piles.
“Hey,” he said. “There’s a boat over there.”
Theo didn’t waste time with words; Nick had to scramble to catch up as his inspired associate raced towards the dinghy Nick had spotted at the shore. Together they heaved it to the water’s edge, which Nick may or may not have eyed suspiciously in case of further crab offensives, and climbed in.
Apparently, it was extremely amusing that Nick was man enough to take up the oars.
“Do you even know how to do that?” Theo inquired.
“Of course,” Nick sniffed at him over one shoulder. “I saw ‘Pirates of the Caribbean,’ you know.”
“An educational film if I ever saw one,” Theo remarked. “Try to head straight out, if you can-I think there’s another island there.”
So it was that Nick rowed.
And rowed.
And rowed.
And sweated, and panted, and ached, and rowed some more.
After what felt like a few years of torment, he stopped, scrubbed forearm across forehead, and turned to Theo.
“You want a turn?” he asked. “I’d hate to keep all the agony to myself.”
Theo, who was lounging against the bow, face to the breeze, gazed at him idly. “Oh,” he replied, grinning slowly, “you can be selfish. I don’t mind.”
Nick heaved one of the oars out of the water, gripping it like a huge, unwieldy, extremely deadly baseball bat. “I’ll show you selfish-”
Theo held his hands up for peace. “My turn,” he conceded, trying not to laugh.
It was much more difficult to threaten people with grisly, paddle-y death when they knew for a fact that there was no danger.
Theo rowed like a pro with somewhere to go, and from his vantage point draped exhaustedly on the other seat, Nick watched the next island-which was evidently more than a figment of Theo’s imagination-draw steadily closer.
When the bottom of the boat ground against wet sand, Nick leapt out, darted out of the potentially-crab-infested water, and yanked their vehicle up after him.
Calculating Face securely on, Theo stepped delicately out of the boat and glanced around, pushing his sleeves up a little higher.
“That’s a hill,” he announced.
“I’m thrilled,” Nick muttered.
Theo gave him a reprimanding look and started up the thrilling hill.
Following, Nick discovered that it was, in fact, the killer hill from hell.
They were both gasping for breath by the time they reached the summit, dragging themselves to the top using the scrubby brush for leverage.
“Look,” Theo managed.
“One sec,” Nick responded in kind. “Breathing.”
“Look,” Theo insisted. “Ar… chipel… ago…”
Nick caved and looked.
Theo’s assessment was accurate-a series of small islands rose from the sea before them, scattered like lost marbles among the waves.
“How many do you think there are?” he asked.
Theo made a motion that, in circumstances that did not involve lying on a hill struggling to fill one’s lungs, might have been a shrug.
Nick grinned wolfishly. “Think there might be a thousand islands?”
Theo seemed unsure whether to be more personally affronted or simply appalled.
“I’m an English major,” Nick reminded him. “Soul-slaying puns are part of the territory.”
“Your gravesite will be part of this territory if you’re not careful,” Theo muttered, gathering himself to his feet.
“See?” Nick prompted, scrambling to his feet. “You’re good at this game.”
“Game over,” Theo sighed, starting down the hill.
“Where are you going?” Nick asked him. “The boat’s that way.”
“The next island’s closer,” Theo explained. “We’re swimming.”
“Swimming?” Nick demanded, chasing him down less than enthusiastically. “I don’t like swimming. In fact, I hate it. In fact, it’s the worst thing in the world. In fact-”
“Is there a word for fear of crabs?” Theo asked airily.
“It’s called ‘reasonable,’” Nick retorted, carefully maneuvering his bare feet around a prickly plant. “Our shoes are going to get soaked.” He sent Theo a grave look. “Your Converse are going to get soaked.”
Theo stopped and looked at the black high-top dangling against his chest.
“Boat,” he said.
Nick preened.
But only until they’d forged a ways into the jungle that blanketed the next of the Thousand Islands, as he had now christened them in his head.
“Theo.”
“What?”
“I claim this land in the name of vinaigrette.”
“I hate you.”
“Bleu cheese?”
“Please di-holy fuck!”
“Holy fuck!” Nick agreed, hearing a hint of a calm, manly screech in his voice.
“Is this quicksand?” Theo demanded, sweat gleaming on his forehead, knees shaking with the effort of staying as still as he could manage. “Why the fuck is there quicksand? Is this even the right climate for quicksand? Isn’t quicksand only-”
“Shut up!” Nick suggested, clambering up onto the broad roots of a nearby tree, grabbing the sturdiest branch in reach, and leaning outward, offering Theo his hand. “Less talk, more getting your ass out of there!”
Theo clasped his wrist, desperate fingers digging into his skin, and pulled hard. Gritting his teeth, Nick hauled back, bracing his now-donned sneakers against the tree bark, throwing his weight backwards, hoping that nobody ended up with any bones broken out here in the middle of Warp Hole Land-
A final, momentous tug brought Theo crashing down on him as they both tumbled to the path proper, panting again.
Nick wondered if this was a record for the Most Intense Warp Hole Trip Ever.
Then again, he doubted there were too many other Warp Hole Trips for comparison.
In any case, after they’d laid around being incredulous for a while, Theo gathered himself to his feet and offered Nick a hand up.
He took it.
They brushed themselves off, skirted the sinkhole, and carried bravely on.
Nick was pretty sure someone would have to make a movie of this shit.
…presuming that they ever returned to a world that included Hollywood.
Nick wondered if they could get Shia LaBeouf to play him.
Somehow, after eons of shoving through vines and being devoured by mosquitoes whose ravenous hunger was matched only by their sadism, they broke out of the miserable trees and onto yet another beach.
“Now what?” Nick sighed.
“Now,” Theo declared, hands on hips more to support himself than for dramatic effect, “we swim.”
Nick scanned the shallows for crabs as Theo wound his Converse around his bicep and waded in.
Pausing to observe, Nick wondered who would be cast as Theo, whose white shirt was about to get very, very wet.
As he followed his strangely-resolved comrade into the warm ocean, Nick tried to remember the last time he had seriously attempted to swim-rather than seriously attempted to splash everyone in the vicinity with epic cannonballs and/or seriously attempted to begin pool noodle wars the likes of which the world had never seen.
He was pretty sure it had been high school P.E.
Theo had done a flip off the diving board on their free day, and Nick had had to rescue him from the sudden interest of a dozen teenaged girls.
The recollection was still entertaining him when they crawled up onto another island still.
Two pairs of shoes squelched unpleasantly as they tromped through another forested section, this one thankfully somewhat less dense than the last. Nick happened to notice that his throat was dry, and the condition then became impossible to forget. Even distracting himself trying to count bizarre flora didn’t work.
And then, raising his gaze from the dusty path, glancing over Theo’s shoulder, he saw it: a clearing crowned by a wide pool of water rimmed with verdure, its depths unfathomable.
Nick didn’t hesitate.
He was dying of thirst out here, damn it.
Admittedly, the first cupped-hands-load of water he tested cautiously with his tongue, just to make sure that it was freshwater after all, but with that confirmed, he didn’t hold back.
Neither did whatever lived at the bottom of the pool, which flung out a slimy tentacle, wrapped it around his waist, and whipped him into the air without so much as a by-your-leave.
There was a great deal of calm and manly screaming like a girl on Nick’s part.
Wind whistled by his ears, the rush of it drowning out his half-choked shrieks, and then he was slammed into the water fast enough to smack the air right out of his lungs. His captor doused him once, twice, and a third time, presumably in the hopes of making its victim shut the fuck up.
Not that Nick could really blame it for that.
“It,” as he saw when it swung him high again, was the Octopus from Hell.
It put the hill from hell to shame-no adverse terrain could compete with a giant pool-dwelling thing with a bulbous head, blank black eyes, spines down its back, and, as Nick saw much too closely, rows of serrated teeth like a shark’s.
Weren’t octopi supposed to live in saltwater?
And weren’t they not supposed to wave you around and then eat you?
Nick didn’t like the Warp Hole rules at this particular moment-justifiably, he felt.
He reached down, grabbed the tentacle that held him fast, and bit into it as viciously as he could manage.
The Hell-Octopus tasted like extremely dubious sushi and did not seem to be perturbed.
Nick wailed.
Then something pffed against the creature’s head, leaving a small indent in the squishy flesh.
Nick, still flailing around above the level of the trees, looked down to see Theo hefting another rock.
This one pinged even harder against the Hell-Octopus’s head, causing it to rear and whirl, seeking the source of unexpected pain.
Theo, of course, had survived the strenuous training ground that was Little League, and he fired off another perfect pitch before the thing knew what had hit it.
This time, Theo had nailed it right in the bulging eye.
The Hell-Octopus roared-Nick had a chance to wonder just how much bizarre genetic splicing had gone into this motherfucker-and all its tentacles started undulating at once as it searched for its attacker. Seizing the opportunity, Nick thrashed as wildly as he could, losing one shoe and then the other, his ribs protesting as the octopus tightened its grip and then-let go.
Nick fell a long way.
The dirt was awfully solid when you hit it going however-many miles an hour, but at least he was free and no longer in such imminent danger of being dined upon.
Weakly, he rolled partway over, trying to laugh softly and discovering that his head rung long after he’d stopped making a sound.
Someone was shaking gently at his shoulder, voice thick with consternation. “Nick-Nick, come on-”
Wearily, Nick opened his eyes.
Theo was kneeling over him, dressed in an Oxford shirt and an argyle sweater, and beyond him lay the ceiling of a bedroom, only the slightest bit hazy.
Theo was babbling. “You-you tripped-over your backpack-”
Nick sat up, ignoring the way the room spun. “Dude,” he said. “I have the weirdest dreams of anyone ever.”
Theo opened his mouth and shut it again.
Nick blinked. Theo didn’t have a smartass comment? He must still have been dreaming.
There was only one way to be sure.
Nick curled both fists in Theo’s sweater and yanked him in for a clumsy, wet, stupid kiss.
Theo did not move for a full ten seconds after Nick released him, and even then it was only to twitch like a rabbit scenting a predator.
Nick considered.
“Yeah,” he decided; “I’m definitely dreaming.” And then- “Oh, snap! I wonder what kind of dream-food you have!”
Leaving Theo sitting dumbly on the floor, Nick galloped down the stairs and into Theo’s kitchen, where he prised open the refrigerator door.
The entire fridge was full of cheesecake.
Nick made the mistake of looking downward, at which point he discovered that his shoes had disappeared, and his socks were covered in sand.
He hoped there was a calm and manly explanation for this.
Word Count: 2,965
Warnings: language, wretchedly bad puns
Author's Note: Hey, it's Nick and Theo again. eltea owns my soul for betaing this for me. ♥
"THOUSAND ISLAND"
Theo lay spread-eagled in the sand, trails of it flung across him from the impact, and his eyes were closed.
“Holy shit!” Nick squeaked-taking “squeaked” to mean “uttered in a calm and manly voice”-as he scrambled over to his fallen companion, sand spraying behind his heels. He dropped to his knees, saw that Theo’s chest was rising and sinking steadily, and shook uncertainly at the other boy’s shoulder.
Theo stirred, cringed away from the sunlight, and opened his eyes.
“The hell?” he said.
“Pardon?” Nick prompted, brightly now as relief flooded in, replacing the sick tremblings of the terror he didn’t dare to name.
Theo sat up, shading his eyes. “What I meant,” he corrected, “was more like What the fuck is going on?”
Nick looked around. “Uh…”
Theo gathered himself to his feet, making an incredulous survey of his own. “This is an island,” he announced.
Nick got up. “Yeah…”
Theo raised an eyebrow. “We were not on an island a minute ago.”
“Actually,” Nick remarked, “it’s probably been at least two since we got here.”
Theo’s sardonic look would have incinerated him long before the intolerable tropical sun ever did.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” he wanted to know.
Nick considered. “I tossed my backpack down on the floor of your room,” he reported, “and then you tripped over it and fell on your bed. Except then you fell through your bed.” He itched at the back of his head. “So I jumped after you.”
Theo stared at him. “You want me to believe,” he said slowly, “that my mattress is a warp hole?”
Nick shrugged. “Stranger things have happened,” he replied.
“No, they haven’t,” Theo fired back.
“You’ve been putting up with my shit for almost a decade,” Nick countered. “That’s pretty strange.”
“Speaking of your shit,” Theo noted, “you jumped in after me?”
Nick shifted. “Of course I did,” he answered. “Your room’s pretty boring without you in it.”
Theo exhibited the maneuver known on the internet as the facepalm, but not before Nick discerned that he was at least a little bit flattered to learn that his best friend would leap through a warp hole in the form of a Martha Stewart Collection comforter on his behalf.
Nick had never trusted that woman.
“Well,” Theo sighed, “how do we get out of here? What is ‘here’?”
Nick looked out over the beach, the sand below nibbled at by lazy waves in a shade of turquoise so vivid that Crayola would have been forest green with envy.
“I have no idea,” he admitted. “Let’s make a sandcastle!”
“We’re not making anything until we figure out-”
Ignoring Mr. Negativity, Nick trooped down to the water’s edge, peering into its impeccable clarity as he kicked off his sneakers, which he knotted together by their shoelaces and slung over his shoulder, and peeled off his socks, which he tucked into his back pocket. Free at last, he stepped forward to meet the next rolling wave, white foam hissing around his ankles, and the temperature was perfect-warm enough to caress his feet with the utmost gentleness, but still just cool enough to be beautifully refreshing.
He turned to tell Theo to get the hell over here, and then something pinched his smallest toe.
A startled glance confirmed that he was being mobbed by a flock of tiny crabs, pincers at the ready.
As little spots of agony exploded all over his feet, Nick scrambled back up the beach, flinging less tenacious crustaceans in his wake and screaming at the top of his lungs.
…in a calm and manly way.
Theo looked skeptically at Nick’s toes, which were blanketed in angry red pinch marks.
“Hope those aren’t poisonous,” he remarked.
Nick gave an extremely masculine wail.
“I’ve never heard of venomous crabs,” Theo amended, taking pity on him, “so you should be all right. Just quit putting your feet weird places; next it’ll be sharks or something.”
With that pearl of cynicism, Theo removed his sweater (which was argyle), rolled up his sleeves (which belonged to his white Oxford), and pulled off his Converse (which met the same fate as Nick’s shoes, which had somehow survived the flight from the Demon Crabs) and started off towards a cluster of trees slightly reserved from the beach, some distance from where they stood.
Jogging after, Nick lasted five minutes before the urge to burst out into song overwhelmed him entirely.
“Many times I’ve tried to tell you… Many times I’ve cried alone… Always I’m surprised how well you cut my feelings to the bone…”
“I should have left you for the crabs,” Theo muttered.
Nick flung his arms out for better acoustics. “Don’t want to leave you, really… I’ve invested too much time… To give you up that easy to the doubts that complicate your mind!”
“I’ll be complicating your vital functions if you’re not careful.”
“We belong to the light; we belong to the thunder…! You could always sing along, you know.”
“Not a chance, Nicholas.”
“But you sound pretty good,” Nick persisted. “I’ve heard you singing Cars songs in the shower.”
Theo was not impressed.
“You can’t distinguish anything with the shower running anyway,” was the verdict.
“We belong to the sound of the words we’ve both fallen under,” Nick sang.
Theo shoved him, none too gently, and kept walking.
Nick was still going through the index of songs he liked to sing at an ungodly volume when they reached the small copse of sad-looking palm trees towards which Theo had directed their journey.
Theo frowned up at the anemic plants. “I was hoping for some sort of food,” he noted.
Vividly Nick thought of hamburgers as he gazed morosely down the beach, where boulders congregated in untidy piles.
“Hey,” he said. “There’s a boat over there.”
Theo didn’t waste time with words; Nick had to scramble to catch up as his inspired associate raced towards the dinghy Nick had spotted at the shore. Together they heaved it to the water’s edge, which Nick may or may not have eyed suspiciously in case of further crab offensives, and climbed in.
Apparently, it was extremely amusing that Nick was man enough to take up the oars.
“Do you even know how to do that?” Theo inquired.
“Of course,” Nick sniffed at him over one shoulder. “I saw ‘Pirates of the Caribbean,’ you know.”
“An educational film if I ever saw one,” Theo remarked. “Try to head straight out, if you can-I think there’s another island there.”
So it was that Nick rowed.
And rowed.
And rowed.
And sweated, and panted, and ached, and rowed some more.
After what felt like a few years of torment, he stopped, scrubbed forearm across forehead, and turned to Theo.
“You want a turn?” he asked. “I’d hate to keep all the agony to myself.”
Theo, who was lounging against the bow, face to the breeze, gazed at him idly. “Oh,” he replied, grinning slowly, “you can be selfish. I don’t mind.”
Nick heaved one of the oars out of the water, gripping it like a huge, unwieldy, extremely deadly baseball bat. “I’ll show you selfish-”
Theo held his hands up for peace. “My turn,” he conceded, trying not to laugh.
It was much more difficult to threaten people with grisly, paddle-y death when they knew for a fact that there was no danger.
Theo rowed like a pro with somewhere to go, and from his vantage point draped exhaustedly on the other seat, Nick watched the next island-which was evidently more than a figment of Theo’s imagination-draw steadily closer.
When the bottom of the boat ground against wet sand, Nick leapt out, darted out of the potentially-crab-infested water, and yanked their vehicle up after him.
Calculating Face securely on, Theo stepped delicately out of the boat and glanced around, pushing his sleeves up a little higher.
“That’s a hill,” he announced.
“I’m thrilled,” Nick muttered.
Theo gave him a reprimanding look and started up the thrilling hill.
Following, Nick discovered that it was, in fact, the killer hill from hell.
They were both gasping for breath by the time they reached the summit, dragging themselves to the top using the scrubby brush for leverage.
“Look,” Theo managed.
“One sec,” Nick responded in kind. “Breathing.”
“Look,” Theo insisted. “Ar… chipel… ago…”
Nick caved and looked.
Theo’s assessment was accurate-a series of small islands rose from the sea before them, scattered like lost marbles among the waves.
“How many do you think there are?” he asked.
Theo made a motion that, in circumstances that did not involve lying on a hill struggling to fill one’s lungs, might have been a shrug.
Nick grinned wolfishly. “Think there might be a thousand islands?”
Theo seemed unsure whether to be more personally affronted or simply appalled.
“I’m an English major,” Nick reminded him. “Soul-slaying puns are part of the territory.”
“Your gravesite will be part of this territory if you’re not careful,” Theo muttered, gathering himself to his feet.
“See?” Nick prompted, scrambling to his feet. “You’re good at this game.”
“Game over,” Theo sighed, starting down the hill.
“Where are you going?” Nick asked him. “The boat’s that way.”
“The next island’s closer,” Theo explained. “We’re swimming.”
“Swimming?” Nick demanded, chasing him down less than enthusiastically. “I don’t like swimming. In fact, I hate it. In fact, it’s the worst thing in the world. In fact-”
“Is there a word for fear of crabs?” Theo asked airily.
“It’s called ‘reasonable,’” Nick retorted, carefully maneuvering his bare feet around a prickly plant. “Our shoes are going to get soaked.” He sent Theo a grave look. “Your Converse are going to get soaked.”
Theo stopped and looked at the black high-top dangling against his chest.
“Boat,” he said.
Nick preened.
But only until they’d forged a ways into the jungle that blanketed the next of the Thousand Islands, as he had now christened them in his head.
“Theo.”
“What?”
“I claim this land in the name of vinaigrette.”
“I hate you.”
“Bleu cheese?”
“Please di-holy fuck!”
“Holy fuck!” Nick agreed, hearing a hint of a calm, manly screech in his voice.
“Is this quicksand?” Theo demanded, sweat gleaming on his forehead, knees shaking with the effort of staying as still as he could manage. “Why the fuck is there quicksand? Is this even the right climate for quicksand? Isn’t quicksand only-”
“Shut up!” Nick suggested, clambering up onto the broad roots of a nearby tree, grabbing the sturdiest branch in reach, and leaning outward, offering Theo his hand. “Less talk, more getting your ass out of there!”
Theo clasped his wrist, desperate fingers digging into his skin, and pulled hard. Gritting his teeth, Nick hauled back, bracing his now-donned sneakers against the tree bark, throwing his weight backwards, hoping that nobody ended up with any bones broken out here in the middle of Warp Hole Land-
A final, momentous tug brought Theo crashing down on him as they both tumbled to the path proper, panting again.
Nick wondered if this was a record for the Most Intense Warp Hole Trip Ever.
Then again, he doubted there were too many other Warp Hole Trips for comparison.
In any case, after they’d laid around being incredulous for a while, Theo gathered himself to his feet and offered Nick a hand up.
He took it.
They brushed themselves off, skirted the sinkhole, and carried bravely on.
Nick was pretty sure someone would have to make a movie of this shit.
…presuming that they ever returned to a world that included Hollywood.
Nick wondered if they could get Shia LaBeouf to play him.
Somehow, after eons of shoving through vines and being devoured by mosquitoes whose ravenous hunger was matched only by their sadism, they broke out of the miserable trees and onto yet another beach.
“Now what?” Nick sighed.
“Now,” Theo declared, hands on hips more to support himself than for dramatic effect, “we swim.”
Nick scanned the shallows for crabs as Theo wound his Converse around his bicep and waded in.
Pausing to observe, Nick wondered who would be cast as Theo, whose white shirt was about to get very, very wet.
As he followed his strangely-resolved comrade into the warm ocean, Nick tried to remember the last time he had seriously attempted to swim-rather than seriously attempted to splash everyone in the vicinity with epic cannonballs and/or seriously attempted to begin pool noodle wars the likes of which the world had never seen.
He was pretty sure it had been high school P.E.
Theo had done a flip off the diving board on their free day, and Nick had had to rescue him from the sudden interest of a dozen teenaged girls.
The recollection was still entertaining him when they crawled up onto another island still.
Two pairs of shoes squelched unpleasantly as they tromped through another forested section, this one thankfully somewhat less dense than the last. Nick happened to notice that his throat was dry, and the condition then became impossible to forget. Even distracting himself trying to count bizarre flora didn’t work.
And then, raising his gaze from the dusty path, glancing over Theo’s shoulder, he saw it: a clearing crowned by a wide pool of water rimmed with verdure, its depths unfathomable.
Nick didn’t hesitate.
He was dying of thirst out here, damn it.
Admittedly, the first cupped-hands-load of water he tested cautiously with his tongue, just to make sure that it was freshwater after all, but with that confirmed, he didn’t hold back.
Neither did whatever lived at the bottom of the pool, which flung out a slimy tentacle, wrapped it around his waist, and whipped him into the air without so much as a by-your-leave.
There was a great deal of calm and manly screaming like a girl on Nick’s part.
Wind whistled by his ears, the rush of it drowning out his half-choked shrieks, and then he was slammed into the water fast enough to smack the air right out of his lungs. His captor doused him once, twice, and a third time, presumably in the hopes of making its victim shut the fuck up.
Not that Nick could really blame it for that.
“It,” as he saw when it swung him high again, was the Octopus from Hell.
It put the hill from hell to shame-no adverse terrain could compete with a giant pool-dwelling thing with a bulbous head, blank black eyes, spines down its back, and, as Nick saw much too closely, rows of serrated teeth like a shark’s.
Weren’t octopi supposed to live in saltwater?
And weren’t they not supposed to wave you around and then eat you?
Nick didn’t like the Warp Hole rules at this particular moment-justifiably, he felt.
He reached down, grabbed the tentacle that held him fast, and bit into it as viciously as he could manage.
The Hell-Octopus tasted like extremely dubious sushi and did not seem to be perturbed.
Nick wailed.
Then something pffed against the creature’s head, leaving a small indent in the squishy flesh.
Nick, still flailing around above the level of the trees, looked down to see Theo hefting another rock.
This one pinged even harder against the Hell-Octopus’s head, causing it to rear and whirl, seeking the source of unexpected pain.
Theo, of course, had survived the strenuous training ground that was Little League, and he fired off another perfect pitch before the thing knew what had hit it.
This time, Theo had nailed it right in the bulging eye.
The Hell-Octopus roared-Nick had a chance to wonder just how much bizarre genetic splicing had gone into this motherfucker-and all its tentacles started undulating at once as it searched for its attacker. Seizing the opportunity, Nick thrashed as wildly as he could, losing one shoe and then the other, his ribs protesting as the octopus tightened its grip and then-let go.
Nick fell a long way.
The dirt was awfully solid when you hit it going however-many miles an hour, but at least he was free and no longer in such imminent danger of being dined upon.
Weakly, he rolled partway over, trying to laugh softly and discovering that his head rung long after he’d stopped making a sound.
Someone was shaking gently at his shoulder, voice thick with consternation. “Nick-Nick, come on-”
Wearily, Nick opened his eyes.
Theo was kneeling over him, dressed in an Oxford shirt and an argyle sweater, and beyond him lay the ceiling of a bedroom, only the slightest bit hazy.
Theo was babbling. “You-you tripped-over your backpack-”
Nick sat up, ignoring the way the room spun. “Dude,” he said. “I have the weirdest dreams of anyone ever.”
Theo opened his mouth and shut it again.
Nick blinked. Theo didn’t have a smartass comment? He must still have been dreaming.
There was only one way to be sure.
Nick curled both fists in Theo’s sweater and yanked him in for a clumsy, wet, stupid kiss.
Theo did not move for a full ten seconds after Nick released him, and even then it was only to twitch like a rabbit scenting a predator.
Nick considered.
“Yeah,” he decided; “I’m definitely dreaming.” And then- “Oh, snap! I wonder what kind of dream-food you have!”
Leaving Theo sitting dumbly on the floor, Nick galloped down the stairs and into Theo’s kitchen, where he prised open the refrigerator door.
The entire fridge was full of cheesecake.
Nick made the mistake of looking downward, at which point he discovered that his shoes had disappeared, and his socks were covered in sand.
He hoped there was a calm and manly explanation for this.