Chapter Text
Tyler’s first thought as he broke the surface was that the water was way colder than would've expected.
Mark had warned him about this, about how dangerous and careless it was to hide from his problems by the rapids every day. About how drinking his sorrows away nestled against one of the trees on the small cliff overlooking the river was a recipe for disaster.
He should’ve listened. In his humble opinion, everybody should listen to Mark, especially when it came to keeping idiots like him alive.
Tyler hadn’t even been that drunk when he slipped, only pleasantly intoxicated, Scout's honor, trust him. Yesterday’s rain had turned the beaten path into a slick, treacherous mess. Upon further thought, maybe “path” wasn’t the proper word. In all honesty, it was closer to just him power-walking straight through the underbrush, praying to God almighty above that his uncanny knowledge of the forest wouldn’t betray him.
Mark would have loved to get all in his face right now. Tell him again and again that messing around that close to the water was a horrible idea.
Too late for that, Tyler realized as the current yanked him under, dragging him mercilessly, forcing him to surrender to it's will.
He collided with something hard. Pain shot through his left side. He gasped, swallowed water, thrashed, clawed at the river, hoping to find something, anything, but his energy was slipping fast. His lungs burned. Every muscle ached.
He’d underestimated just how much effort it took not to drown in water this angry. Now he understood why Mark had always been squeamish about this spot. Why he’d begged Tyler to find a new one.
Once or twice, Mark had joined him here, smoked, stared into the distance, and wondered at the universe or whatever else two pleasantly buzzed guys wondered about while admiring the landscape blessing their eyes.
The view was gorgeous. That tree, that cliff– they framed the forest almost entirely, with the clearing on the far side warranting him access to the sky at any hour, any given moment. Tyler didn’t stay past nightfall often, preferring the warmth of his apartment, but on rare occasions, he loved lying back on cold earth, staring at stars like they held secrets he could decipher he he simply looked at them for long enough.
Another rock hit him. Pain spiked. Tyler realized he probably wasn’t going to make it. Desperation clawed at him. He reached blindly for the cross around his neck.
It was gone. The river had claimed it.
Tears threatened. Not just for the cross, not just for the fight, but for how foolish he’d been. For ignoring Mark’s warnings. For thinking he could bend the forest and the river to his whims.
The current pulled him under again, and Tyler let it. Every kick, every thrash, felt futile. He surrendered to the water’s rhythm, the cold, the inevitability. And in that surrender, he felt a strange clarity, an acknowledgment of his mistakes, of his recklessness, and of the small, stubborn beauty of the world he had taken for granted.
And then– he felt it.
A pull, gentle but unrelenting, like the river had hands instead of water. Not the current, not a rock, something else. He tried to fight it, but his muscles didn’t obey. There was a strange smoothness beneath his fingertips, scales brushing against his palms, strong yet soft. Tyler barely had time to register the sensation before he was ripped free of the rapids entirely.
He came up coughing, gagging, and then nothing, just silence, calm water. A strange, shifting figure darted beneath the surface and vanished before he could see it properly. A tail, glimmering, pale, iridescent.
Tyler rolled onto the shore, soaked, shivering, completely convinced he had hit his head. No rational explanation for what had just happened.
Why the actual fuck did a guy with a fish tail swim away the second he opened his eyes?
He sat there coughing, lungs on fire, water dripping off of him and into the sand, staring at the empty river, utterly confused. His brain tried desperately to rationalize: concussion? hallucination? alcohol-induced delirium? None of it made sense.
Not so far away, the sound of emergency sirens could be heard, Tyler wasn’t sure he wanted to check, too exhausted to move any part of his body more than was strictly necessary. He just laid there, soaked and stunned, until the distant sound of a first responder's voice reached him.
And somewhere in the river, the faint shimmer of a tail disappeared beneath the ripples.
He felt his eyes close again as he was transported onto a gurney, a woman in uniform asking him questions he couldn't actually process, his brain too busy thinking about whatever happened back in the water. Tyler almost started crying again, he'd get to see Mark again, he'd get to meet up with Chris and Nick for band practice again, goddamn it, Maddie's basketball game was next week, her team had made it to the finals. How horrible of a brother he would've made of he died right before that?
But for now, the only thing he felt was fatigue. He barely noticed as his gurney was dragged inside the ambulance waiting for him by the tree line. He closed his eyes a final time as an oxygen mask was placed on his face.
In that moment, Tyler promised himself to figure out what actually happened to him, no matter what it took.
———
Tyler woke up to the sound of something steady and irritatingly consistent.
Beep.
Pause.
Beep.
It took him a second to realize it wasn’t coming from inside his head, the beeping drilling inside his temples, making him almost dizzy.
His eyes felt glued shut. Dry, heavy, like opening them would take more effort than it was worth. He tried anyway, squinting against harsh fluorescent light that made his skull throb even more.
Yeah, that was a mistake.
He let his eyes fall shut again, breathing shallow through his nose. The air smelled wrong, too clean, too artificial, not like damp earth and river water and– the river?
His eyes snapped open.
That hurt more this time, but he pushed through it, vision swimming as the room slowly came into focus. White ceiling. White walls. Machines. Tubes. A hospital.
Right.
That made sense, probably. Didn’t it?
Tyler swallowed, immediately regretting it. His throat felt like sandpaper. His whole body ached, a deep, bone-level soreness that made even breathing feel like effort. He shifted slightly and something tugged at his arm.
An IV, he watched the clear liquid make it's way towards the inside of his body for a few seconds, staring quietly before experimentally shifting his arm. Just to see what would happen.
“Hey, don’t move too much.” The voice startled him. Tyler turned his head too fast and instantly wished he hadn’t. The room tilted unpleasantly before settling again.
Mark. If course it was Mark. Who else could it possibly have been?
He was sitting in a chair pulled way too close to the bed, elbows on his knees, looking like he hadn’t slept in about a year. His hair was a mess, his eyes bloodshot, jaw tight in that way Tyler knew meant he was trying very hard not to lose it.
“You’re awake,” Mark said, like he wasn’t entirely sure that was a good thing.
Tyler blinked at him slowly. “Hey,” he rasped. His voice came out wrecked, barely there.
Mark let out a sharp breath that might’ve been a laugh or might’ve been something else entirely. “Hey? Really? That’s all you’ve got?”
Tyler tried to shrug. Big mistake. Pain flared through his side and he sucked in a breath through his teeth.
“Yeah, don’t do that either,” Mark muttered, already half out of his chair. “You’ve got a couple bruised ribs and a concussion. Maybe more. They said you’re lucky as hell you didn’t crack your head open on one of those rocks.”
Tyler’s brain snagged on that.
Rocks, water, current. He remembered slipping, the fall, the cold. And then Something.
His fingers twitched against the thin hospital sheet.
“Hey,” Mark said again, softer this time. “Stay with me, alright?”
Tyler frowned slightly, confused. “I am.”
Mark studied him for a second, like he didn’t quite believe it, then leaned back in his chair with a quiet exhale.
“They found you downstream,” he said. “Some hikers called it in. You were out cold.”
Downstream. Tyler stared at the ceiling again, the steady beep of the monitor suddenly a little too loud. He hated how aware of it he was now.
That wasn’t right. He remembered the current. The way it dragged him under, slammed him into rock after rock. He remembered the pull. The overwhelming feeling of the river all around him.
Not the river, something else, something that had hands.
His chest tightened.
“Ty?” Mark’s voice cut in, careful now. “You with me?”
“Yeah,” Tyler said automatically. Liar, he thought.
His gaze drifted to his hands. Clean, no river dirt under his nails, no cuts deep enough to match what he remembered.
That wasn’t right either.
“Do you remember what happened?” Mark asked.
Tyler opened his mouth, paused, then closed it again. Because what was he supposed to say? "Yeah, I drowned, something with a tail dragged me out, and then I woke up here?" Way to go and get yourself locked up, buddy.
He let out a quiet breath through his nose. “Slipped,” he said finally. “Hit the water wrong.”
Mark watched him for a long moment. Tyler refused to look back.
“You’re an idiot,” Mark said eventually, breaking the silence that was beginning to build, but there was no heat in it. Just exhaustion, relief, something tight and fragile underneath.
“Yeah,” Tyler murmured.
Silence settled between them again, broken only by the steady rhythm of the monitor.
Beep.
Pause.
Beep.
Tyler closed his eyes again, but sleep didn’t come. All he could see was water. The feeling, cold, violent. And then strangely mooth, not rock, not current.
Something alive.
His fingers curled slightly against the sheet, like he could still feel it there. Scales, movement, the impossible strength of it.
A tail. Tyler’s eyes opened again, staring blankly at the ceiling.
No. That wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. He refused. His head was playing tricks on him, it couldn't be.
Right?