CYOA – Life And Death Situations (Patreon)

Chapter 2 –  warnings: None

Rather than check in with the robot, Lúcio decides to call his old friend...

Jesse picks up at the seventh ring, just before it would go to voicemail. Lúcio’s eyes flick a bit frantically to his wristwatch to make sure that he hasn’t just completely lost track of time and ringed him in the middle of the night.

But no – it’s just shy of going to eight, and Jesse does not sound tired, but he also doesn’t sound like his usual chipper self.

“McCree,” he grunts into the phone, and Lúcio can feel a few of his muscles relax despite himself. Jesse has always been a good friend, and just hearing his voice is… nice. Lúcio leans back and mutes the television, eyes on Gabriel as he resumes to slowly drag blunt fingernails in nonsense patterns across his scalp.

“Hey there, Jesse!”

“...Lùcio? Lúcio! Oh… wow I hadn’t had a peek on the- … how are ya? Haven’t heard from you in a while.”

“Oh, you know… swamped with work. As usual.” He smiles a bit as he drags his palm across Gabriel’s head and the hybrid closes his eyes and sinks some more against him; just enjoying the sensation.

He’s become incredibly affectionate since Lúcio has taken him in.

“Hmmm don’t I know it. Workaholic… Are they treatin’ you right?”

The smile somewhat fades from Lúcio’s face at that. He hums and shrugs his shoulders despite Jesse not being able to see it.

“It’s a job. Me and my colleagues… we’re not really on the same wavelength but I like working with the…” there’s a second that the word ‘animals’ is on the tip of his tongue and he stares down at Gabriel with shocked dismay. In the end he settles on a lame: “...specimen.”

Jesse is quiet on the other side. Lúcio can hear the TV through the line and imagines Jesse sitting at his checkered little plastic kitchen table with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth and a bottle of beer in front of him.

There’s finally a soft grunt and then Jesse’s deep voice is back.

“Don’t let ‘em get to you, ya hear me? You’re too good to be confined in that shitty… shitty… research facility anyway. Ya should try and get another gig.”

Lúcio hums softly. He’s thought about it a lot as well; had been, in fact, already hunting for new jobs when Gabriel and specimen 76 were dragged bleeding and fighting from the coast just off-

Well.

They had changed a lot of things.

“Ah well. I’m looking into it,” he murmurs evasively. “What about you, though? You sound… weird.”

There’s another silence on the other end of the phone. He can hear the soft drag of Jesse pulling on a cigarette and stares down at Gabriel looking absolutely blissed out getting his head and shoulders rubbed. He’s thought Jesse had started getting off of cigarettes by trying to sublimate them with… just about anything else he can stuff into his mouth.

“There was just something… weird about today, and I’m still thinking about it,” Jesse says eventually. Lúcio hums.

“It’s been pretty grey and stormy these past days. I can’t imagine a lot of people going to the beach.”

“True…”

.o.

It had been pretty grey for almost a week now, but still there are those that are not daunted by the winds getting colder. They still trudge down to the water and lie on their blankets pretending like they aren’t freezing their asses off.

Jesse doesn’t mind; he really likes his job. It is laid back most of the time – as long as it’s not the height of season. Being out here and saving lives (and being admired by kids, lets be real) is something of a calling to him, if he is being honest.

He is good at what he does.

They’re always at least two, and his buddy is inside the HQ, doing paperwork while Jesse is outside keeping an eye on the few people scattered across the beach – when something flashing in the corner of his eye catches his attention. He turns his head, glancing towards the jagged cliffs that abruptly start not too far off at the side of the beach. They are a foreboding rock formation that very neatly and clearly cuts the beach off to one side while the other one stretches on for miles and miles.

The water there is an agitated grey and white from crashing against the sharp rocks that jut out from the foot of the stone wall. The place is dark and foreboding, but something Jesse enjoys when it comes down to it.

On sunny days, it is a breathtaking sight; like someone ripped a picture in half. It makes him always feel a little woozy to look at.

He grabs the little binoculars that are hanging between his pecs and lifts them to his eyes, peering at the crashing waves. It seems impossible that something from so far away should have caught his eye but Jesse has seen all sorts of weird things at this beach and he’s better safe than sorry.

(Like that time he had been sure he saw a lady drown but by the time he got to the spot, there’s been neither hide nor hair to be seen – and when he went back, waterproof walkie-talkie already in hand to call the authorities, the lady had been right there on her beach towel, looking eerily calm and waving her fingers at him with a goofy little smile on her face that reminded him of someone under a spell)

He slowly looks along the jagged rocks that litter the beach, bringing to mind the bright teal fleck he thinks he has seen glinting out of the corner of his eye. He’s just about to give up and attribute it to an unusual reflection of the sunlight in the water, when he spots something and his blood freezes in his veins. 

There is a hand peeking out behind one of the larger rocks, the fingers digging claw-like into the little pebbles that make up the beach over yonder.

“Aaron!” he calls back, already loping over the short railing he’s been standing at. “I gotta go!”

He doesn’t hear if Aaron calls something back, his body moving before his mind has really caught up with what is happening.

He is shooting along the beach, his long legs eating up the distance. It is a shitty underground to run on but his thighs are thick and muscular from training for so long and catapult him along the shore line, aided by the sudden rush of adrenalin that is being pumped through his blood stream.

In his mind’s eye he is just seeing that hand; impossibly pale against the dark backdrop of the wet stone; the only saving grace for that person that he’s even spotted it. The fingers had been dug deeply into the pebbles and the sand beneath. The person must still be alive, right?

There is a hitch in his step. The closer he gets to the foreboding cliffs, the more his heart starts to race. His teeth are digging into the wooden stem of the popsicle he had been eating earlier. His temples are pulsing with the onset of a headache.

It feels like he is entering through a veil into another world. The beach is a sunny, happy place, but the cliffs are… not. They have a strange aura about them. Like they are frequented by beings that don’t like to be watched by humans.

He sometimes thinks of Harry Potter and how the wizards have spells to make people remember other urgent things they have to attend to when they wander into places they are not supposed to be in. He thinks the same might be true for these cliffs – only that the energy feels less benign.

There is a moment in which Jesse’s legs just stop moving, and tremble like a colt’s. They want to make him turn and run back towards the good place again.

But then he spots it again and there is no way he could turn back. There between the rocks: no longer just a hand, but a hand attached to an arm.

He comes closer, the rushing of the water and the breaking of the waves against the rocks masking his steps.

“Hey!” he calls and the part of him that is sure that the person has to be dead flinches as the arm suddenly is snatched back behind the rock. Annoyance flares in his chest over being such a scaredy-cat, and over this idiot that’s wandered in here. “Are ya hurt? Ye’re not supposed to be here!”

He comes closer. There is the sound of something thrashing against the rocks and the water. Something big and heavy. He can see pebbles flying into the air.

“Easy now,” he says, pitching his voice deep and gentle as he realizes they could just as well be injured. “Easy. I’m here to help ya. Are you hurt? Don’t you worry none, you are in the best of-”

Jesse rounds the boulder, and when he sees what’s behind it, his hand shoots out to brace himself against the wet stone. He has to because his world seems to tilt on its axis.

There’s a man lying there – only that it’s not a man. For one heartbeat Jesse thinks that his lower half is stuck inside a huge fish but that is just as impossible as the actual truth: which is that this writhing teal blue mass hanging to the man’s hips actually is his body.

It is wrapped in a heavy black net, making it difficult to figure out the specifics of what is going on there. The man – though Jesse is not too sure about that either – is pushing at the wet fabric, trying to get it off, his massive biceps bulging with the effort; and Jesse is just left staring until the man, the… the creature suddenly whirls on him and opens its mouth wide on a hiss, showing off a fierce looking set of sharp canines. Its eyes, made up of thin black slits inside the sclera, look absolutely murderous.

Jesse takes a hurried step back and lifts his hands in surrender. Something at the back of his mind is screaming for him to run, but what he instead does is pitch his voice low and calming.

“Easy now. I’m not here ta hurt ya. Ye’re in kind of a predicament, aren’t ya?” The creature has stopped hissing and instead is just staring steadily at Jesse. It has long, black hair in which all kinds of bits and baubles are caught in. It falls into its face now, making it look even more deranged.

Him. Making him look even more deranged. He looks like a normal man, except for a few bits and pieces that just don’t seem to fit.

Jesse’s heart is pounding up to his throat and he slowly lowers himself into a crouch – far enough away to be out of the range of arms that end in ferocious looking claws.

He reaches back, but probably a little too fast because the man’s mouth opens a bit again on a soft hiss. Jesse slows his movements down, eyes glued to the man. The creature. The man.

The waves are still relentlessly crashing, foam hiding most of his lower body in waves that come and go, but it is impossible to deny that this is indeed this man’s body.

As Jesse drags his little red backpack off of his shoulders he has to think of mermaids. Only that the creature in front of him looks a lot less magical and a lot more… murderous. There are things that he thinks might be his fins, and they look bony and like they end in very sharp tips.

This creature is made to fight, and Jesse does not know what to do to calm him down to get close enough to help him out of his predicament.

The man has stopped hissing for now, at least, and is just steadily staring at Jesse, hands planted on the rocky beach and fingers digging in. He looks ready to pounce if he could even move an inch.

“I uh… I can help you,” Jesse says. He has no idea if the creature understands him. The flinty dark eyes just keep staring at him.

He glances into his backpack. It is stuffed full of first aid material in a little plastic baggie to keep it from going wet. There is a Swiss Army knife in there somewhere, he knows it; and a chocolate bar as well.

He stares at it with a sinking feeling while chewing on the little stick of the popsicle he’s had earlier.

He imagines himself pulling out the Swiss Army knife and showing the creature the sharp edges of it. He is pretty sure it would feel threatened and try to kill him.

He could maybe try and gentle it down with the bar of chocolate, but… the thought of getting even remotely in swiping distance of these muscular arms is making his belly sink – and what if it decided that it rather is on the market for meat anyway?

So… either get it over with quick and let it go back to freedom, or try to calm it down. What… should he do?