The ocean tide can be relentless sometimes, as Calum as so often noted. Sometimes it's quiet, dull. Gently rolling across the sand as though it's afraid to crack the shells sitting upon it, serving as nothing more but a place to rinse the sand off your feet. Those are the days that parents bring their kids to play in it, since it's calm enough that they don't have to worry about their kids drowning under the waves. The water is soft, like a falling leaf.
Calum hates days like that. He prefers the ocean in all of its fury. He prefers the tide when the waves are so high to where the shore is empty, the red flag waving in the heavy wind as a warning to civilians to stay off the beach. He loves the way the waves rise high, touching the horizon before crashing onto the sand with no mercy for whoever stands in its way. He believes that's what the ocean truly is. Not some playground for children to wet their feet in.
Calum used to be a big surfer. He and his best friend, Michael, would ride the waves from morning to night, wind-tossed hair and skin smelling like saltwater. They both adored it, despite how pointless Calum's foster parent's claimed it to be.
Now, though, Calum can hardly stand on his own two feet, let alone balance on a surfboard. His knees are weak, joints painfully immobile, skin cracked and dry. Calum's not sure what's going on with him, and neither do the doctors. When they heard about how Calum's constantly thirsty, they brought up diabetes. When they heard about how Calum can hardly move his legs without his knees and ankles tightening and collapsing, they suggested arthritis. When Calum's head pounded and his vision blacked out three times a day, they brought up a brain tumor. Nothing they ever offered turned out to be true, and they finally just marked him down for an unknown disease that labelled him terminally ill.
He supposedly has a month left to live, and by the way he feels, Calum doesn't doubt it.
Calum's foster parents haven't handled it well. The doctors told them it may be genetic, and that puts the entire progress at a dead end, because he was adopted before he could even walk.
Michael hasn't exactly handled the news well either, but Calum just figures it's because he no longer has anyone to surf with.
Out of all the people who this has affected, Calum thinks he's the one handling the news the best. He just sits in bed and contemplates how to spend the next month of his life, and whether or not he looks as diaphanous as he feels, and wonders if he can somehow walk down the boardwalk and feel the ocean breeze again before he dies out in his bed.
That's all he wants, really. He yearns for it, he craves it. Every fiber in his body craves the ocean's attention, needing the water on his skin. The only thing keeping him from grabbing his surfboard and leaving is his own worthless body.
The need to be close to the ocean is unbearable if Calum wants to come to terms with it. He blames it on his lifelong love for it. After all, he was raised near the ocean, he grew up near it. Hell, his foster mother even told him once that he was found abandoned literally on the ocean shore. He has every reason to want to be close to it.
However, something in his brain tells him that it goes a bit deeper than just a love for it. There's a need for it deep down in his bones, something growing and gnawing and something that seems so far beyond his control that it scares him a little, but none of that makes sense. Calum blames it all on his delirious state from all the pain medications.
Someone can't physically need to be near the ocean.
Can they?
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A/N I guess this was sort of like half prologue half chapter I don't even know
hope you liked it though!!
okay so I'm interested, who is your favorite superhero/villain? from either DC or marvel
I really love spiderman but then again I also really love black widow so
anyway please vote and comment because it makes me happy and please tell me what you think about the new story! cashton is my weakness
bye, I love you
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Under the Sea ⇔ Cashton ✓
Fanfiction[MERMAID AU] When Calum turns 17, he is diagnosed as terminally ill by a group of doctors who can't seem to explain why he is feeling so sick. However, Calum's symptoms go away when he goes diving in the ocean, finding he has not a disease, but a ta...
