𝚋𝚘𝚛𝚗 𝚒𝚗𝚗𝚘𝚌𝚎𝚗𝚝 {𝚓𝚓 𝚖𝚊𝚢𝚋𝚊𝚗𝚔}

𝚜.𝟷 𝚎𝚙.𝟷 -𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚛𝚎𝚎-

"in the cold clear light of day down here, everyone's a monster / that's cool with all of us / we've been past the point of help since early april"

~

"No, no, guys. I'm serious. There's a boat down there."

Tate jumped up next to Pope and squinted into the water. Kiara and John B joined them, and they all scrutinized the indistinct white shape for a moment.

"Holy shit, he's right," Kiara murmured, turning back and hopping down into the bottom of the boat. She unbuttoned her shorts, and wriggled out of them, leaving them on the floor of the ship. She looked back up at John B, Tate, and Pope, still standing at the edge of the water in excitement. "Let's go."

The rest of them pulled their clothes off quickly, stripping down to only their bathing suits, or, in John B and Pope's cases, their shorts. John B was the first to dive in, followed by Tate. The water was colder than usual from the storm, but it felt good in the muggy weather. Tate pulled herself through the water with expert strokes. If there was anything she was really good at, it was swimming. Her mom and her Uncle John had been the ones to teach her how, around the same time as she was learning to walk. She'd been too young to remember it, but there were VHS tapes somewhere in the Routledge's house with home videos of Tate and John B splashing around in the sound as babies.

When Tate's head broke the surface, she could see the Pogues bobbing around her. "You think there's a dead body down there?" asked Pope.

"I guess we'll find out," Tate said, floating on her back towards John B and JJ. When she got close enough, JJ reached underwater to grab her arm and pull her under, catching her off guard. Tate managed to hold her breath just in time to not get water up her nose, and then fought JJ off, coming up just in time to dunk him back, tackling his shoulders and pulling him under the cold blue surface. Seconds later, they both came up sputtering and laughing. "You suck," Tate laughed, treading water with her legs and reaching out to mess up JJ's hair.

John B watched them with an expression somewhere between amusement and disapproval, and then Pope cleared his throat loudly. "If you two are done flirting, I wanna find some dead bodies."

"Shut up, Pope," JJ said quickly. "Let's go."

Tate took a deep breath and then dove down with the others, stroking her way to the wrecked ship. She touched it just as her lungs started to burn. She started counting the seconds to take her mind off of the pain and held onto the roof of the boat for a moment, opening her eyes to see the four other figures checking out the wreckage. Then, just as she started to feel as though she couldn't hold her breath any longer, she swam up and kicked off of the roof, rocketing towards the surface.

They all gasped when they came up and JJ whipped his head around like a dog to get his hair out of his eyes. "You guys saw that, right?"

There was a chorus of "yeah"s, as they all caught their breath.