csi_sanders1129 | Fic: Safe To Shore

Title: Safe To Shore
Chapters: 1/1
Author:

csi_sanders1129
Genre: Angst. Drama.
Ratings: T
Word Count: 2,269
Pairings/Characters: Matt Hooper, Martin Brody.
Synopsis: In which Brody and Hooper deal with the aftermath of Amity's shark problem.
Comments: Written in response to cottoncandy_bingo prompt: friends/friendship (although this is arguably pre-slashy because I cannot help myself). This is my first and likely only Jaws fic (unless I get the feeling to add something to this). It's kind of a song challenge that I totally cheated on. The songs basically just serve as inspiring dividers, really. Title is from 'Little Talks' by of Monsters & Men. Characters not mine, please enjoy! Comments are awesome.

Into The Ocean / Blue October

By the time they finally make it to shore, it's just starting to get dark. They're both exhausted and it takes nearly every ounce of strength they've got left to stagger through the shallows and collapse onto the sand just above the tide line. They're both short of breath, chests heaving to suck in air now that they are finally, finally safe.

"Didn't think we were ever gonna make it back," Hooper pants, manages to find the energy to tilt his head to look at the other man, sprawled out right beside him.

"I had my doubts," Brody admits, staring up at the star-speckled summer sky.

They should get moving. Tell everyone that the shark is dead, but so is Quint. Really, they'd been hoping that someone, anyone, might have seen the explosion, the sinking ship, the two of them paddling back to shore, and called it in, but it seems that nobody noticed. Brody needs to get back to his wife and his boys. Hooper needs to get back to his gadgets and gizmos. But they're both just so tired.

"Oh, everything hurts."

Brody manages a laugh, and shivers as his a gust of cool evening wind hits his wet clothes. "Yeah," he agrees.

They should get moving. There will be questions to answer. The council, the cops, the Coast Guard. They'll have to explain what happened over and over again. Then Brody can go back to his job (this time with a solid excuse as to why he hates the water) and Hooper can go back to the Oceanographic Institute and all of his sciencey shark stuff. They can go their separate ways and they'll never have to deal with something like this again. How many gigantic, man-eating sharks can target the beaches of Amity, after all?

Slowly, Brody gets to his feet, offering a sand-covered hand to his partner in shark killing, hauling him up as well.

"Come on," he says, clapping Hooper on the shoulder, "let's get this over with. Then I'll buy you a drink."

Take A Drink / Quietdrive

Hooper is so goddamned done with today.

He's answered so many questions, most of them stupid and pointless. He's told the story so many times already and it's only been like six hours since they hobbled back into town. He's been poked and prodded by the doctors at the hospital, even though he told them that he was fine. He's been photographed by the press - cause he's totally in the mood for that after the harrowing events of the last couple of days. Really, he just wants to head back to his hotel and pass out with a couple of bottles for maybe a couple of days and forget this ever happened.

And that's exactly what he would do if it weren't for Martin.

Martin, who went through all of it with him - more of it, really - and is somehow still managing to hold it all together. If the small town police chief can manage it, so can he.

He glances at the clock on the wall of the Brody's dining room and wonders how much longer he can loiter here before they kick him out. He's betting on probably not long, judging by the yawns from Sean and Michael and the perpetually distressed look on Ellen's face.

But Martin appears from the hallway with a pillow and a blanket in one hand, and glasses of bourbon in the other, the bottle tucked under his arm. "C'mon," he says, and Hooper follows him to the couch, where the pillow and blanket are deposited in an unspoken invitation. "Here," he says, passing him a glass. It's a little harder than he usually drinks, but today it will do, he thinks. They sit side by side on the couch in a comfortable silence and Martin nudges his arm when he loses himself staring into the amber liquid and raises his own drink, clinks his glass against Hooper's and says, "To Quint."

"To Quint," Hooper echoes, except he's thinking 'to us' because quite frankly he's still amazed they got out alive.

Sleeping Sickness / City & Colour

The worst thing about dive masks is the loss of peripheral vision. This is not much of a problem if you're enjoying a nice, leisurely scuba session, but when you have a man-eating shark that seems to possess a stunning mental acuity for the hunt, it's a little more terrifying.

Compounded with the lack of glasses, and the just this side of blurry haze to his vision that causes, Hooper feels like a sitting duck.

Every sound, magnified by the density of the water, has him spinning, looking for any sign of that damned shark. Not that there's much he can do if it does come after him again. He's lost his spear, lost his cage, lost his mind coming out here.

So he hides.

He keeps his eyes on the hull of the boat above him, watching in stunned horror as the stern sinks down into the water, bits and pieces of the transom and a plethora of items scatter, some floating, some sinking. What the hell is this thing? But then comes the flash of red that tells him that the shark has claimed another victim, as the blood spreads and dissipates on the surface.

Who was it? Quint or Brody? Does it matter? There's no way any of them are getting out of this. All that blood will draw other sharks and that's just what they need right now.

All he can do is watch as the boat sinks lower and lower with every passing moment and he has to move out of the way as more and more debris falls. He can see the shark now, circling the boat with way more determination than any Carcaradon carcharias should rightly possess.

But then comes the explosion. There's no other word for it, and he's pretty sure it was his other tank. He can feel the blast wave wash over him, pushes him back with the force of it. He's stunned, forgets to breathe not only because of the physical effects of the boom, but also because the sight of a twenty-five foot shark literally exploding into a million bloody is something he'd prefer to never see again, thank you very much. There's pieces of someone in that mess, too, he reminds himself, whoever it got.

When he feels like he can move again, when he's sure it's safe, he kicks back to the surface.

And there's no one.

Hooper wakes with a choked off shout, in a dark, unfamiliar room.

A nightmare, he thinks, just a nightmare.

He sits up slowly, wondering how the blanket ended up on top of him and where his spare pair of glasses got to.

"You okay?" Comes a voice in the darkness, and Hooper squints until he can make out the form slumped in the chair across from his couch-bed in Brody's living room. As his eyes adjust, he notes that Martin doesn't look like he's been sleeping well either.

"Just as good as you, I'd guess."

Brody shoots him this exhausted half-smile, "that good."

Maybe they just need more alcohol.

Lean On Me / Bill Withers

The next day drags on and on and on.

Ellen begs him to take the day off, insists that he deserves it after everything he did for the town, that his kids need him right now, but there's just too much to do. He still has questions to answer, explanations to give. The City Council is trying to start damage control and for that they, unfortunately, need him. The Coast Guard is coming out, checking out the wreck. The tourists are either freaking out and taking their leave of Amity, or fucking around in the water like they have some sort of death wish and he doesn't even have close to the manpower to deal with all of this right now.

"The beaches are still closed, ma'am," he says, not for the first time this morning, his desk phone pressed to his ear.

Hendricks is pacing the other side of the room, having a similar conversation, and Polly is just trying to sort out all the endlessly ringing lines.

"No, the shark is dead, we're just waiting for - Yes, yes, I am sure. Very sure."

When that call finally ends, there's another and another and another. People walking in with the same damn questions and others vying to drag him off to some meeting or the other, a news station from the mainland is demanding an interview, and by the time noon hits, he's about ready to explode.

So, when the knock at his office door comes, he's starts with a biting "Now what?" that is not exactly professional in its tone.

"I brought you food," the familiar voice says, and Hooper appears with a bag of take-out in hand. "I've got beer, too. I don't think anyone could blame you for drinking on the job today."

"They're blaming me for everything else, so..."

Hooper lets himself in and drops the food on the desk. "Forget them."

Brody nods, heaves a heavy sigh and takes a beer. "How'd your meeting with the Coast Guard go? Your friend there tell you anything?"

The scientist sighs, sinks down in the chair across from him and looks just as frustrated with all of this as he feels. "Nothing left of it, really. Or the boat," he explains. "A couple of smaller sharks were hanging around, but none as brave as our guy. I did convince them to give me these, at least." He pulls out a couple of teeth, still intact, nearly the size of the palm of his hand. "You know, for research."

They seemed so much bigger in that thing's mouth. He takes one, and when Hooper says, "That one's yours," he sets it on his desk as a reminder of the monster they defeated.

"I think I'm done for the day," Brody decides, eyes still on the tooth. He's done enough, more than enough. "What do you say we get out of here?"

Hooper grabs up the food and the beer and happily resigns himself to another night spent on Martin's couch, glad to have someone who can relate to his nightmares, and follows Brody out.

Little Talks / Of Monsters & Men

Unfortunately, Hooper cannot keep crashing on the Brody's couch indefinitely. Eventually, he has to leave Amity and get back to the Oceanographic Institute. He has mixed feelings about it: being away from the place that showed him just what kinds of terrors really lurk in the ocean he loves so much isn't necessarily a bad thing, but leaving the only person who really gets what that was like, that proves kind of daunting.

But, he leaves. He leaves and goes back to work and goes back in the water and back to his sharks. Back to his research trips and study dives and back to some semblance of normal.

Until he loses that normal again.

He's off the coast of South Africa, which seems to have the highest concentration of Great Whites anywhere, with a team of other researchers analyzing migration patterns. It's his turn in the shark cage today, though not his first since the Orca, and that's fine. But when a hungry, curious specimen that's closer to twenty feet than the more typical fifteen, starts bumping him, things get a little out of hand. He has flashbacks, nearly has a panic attack under water, and his fellow researcher's pull him up and send him back to land. From there, he sends himself back to Amity.

The Brody residence is his first stop after he steers the Fascinatin' Rhythm into port.

He's surprised to see Martin out by the docks in his yard, but, he supposes, it's not like you can avoid the water forever when you're in charge of an island. He's sitting on the edge of the dock, with Sean building haphazard sandcastles and Michael wading in the shallows - that's surprising, too. Last time he'd been here, Michael had sworn he was never going back in, still reeling from the shock of seeing the attack in the pond.

"Hey!"

Martin spins, waves, and shouts, "Be right up!"

Ellen ushers him into the house. She looks tired and sort of eternally irritated, he thinks. "Everything okay?" He dares to ask, as she goes about fixing dinner.

"Martin hasn't slept a full night since the attack, we live on an island and everyone is half-terrified of the water. So, no, not really," she snarks at him, like it's his fault a crazy shark set its sights on what was supposed to be a quiet little town.

"I haven't, either," he admits. "It's not an easy thing to get over and Martin saw more than I did."

She doesn't seem interested in his excuses.

"Matt," Martin greets with a real smile, herding the boys in ahead of him before he catches Hooper in a hug that suggests the other man missed him just as much as he missed him. "When'd you get in?"

"Just now," he answers, "My trip to Dyer Island got, well, cut short."

Martin will undoubtedly get that story out of him later, over beers on the back porch, but for now he claps a hand on Hooper's shoulder and asks, "How long are you staying?"

Hooper sighs, almost relaxed for the first time since he left, and knows his answer. "Think I might stay for good."