under the sea

stop, kieran reminds himself. they’re just friends. he shouldn’t be thinking of weird stuff like that, especially if the probability of it happening was far too low. heart drooping at the thought of how she was so close yet so far away from him, he lets out a silent sigh. 

but a chuckle escapes his lips while she swats away at his hand. he likes that he’s a lot taller than her, especially when he can pet her with affection and disguise it as an act of brotherly love whenever he’s questioned. but the urge to rest his chin on her crown is always there, but he holds back. too fast, too intimate. 

friends. he likes the idea of being near her as a companion, but he fights the thoughts of wanting to be something more. kieran will never know if she truly reciprocates those feelings. what if she doesn’t? would they even still be friends, given the fact that she might withdraw from his life if his feelings were to spill like a bowl of warm soup? 

“well, i made it. so it’s a word, and i said so.” he counters, eyes curving up into small crescents. “i’m not,” the act of redemption begins, “harleen’s a good actress, but just not what i was looking for.....unless you strongly recommend her? to boost my grade?” kieran jokes, pinching her nose in the process. a swipe of the paintbrush against his crisp, white shirt stuns him, fabric now stained blue. he isn’t mad though, but curious.

“you painted on my shirt,” he pouts, “but i like it. gives it a nice touch.” the pastel blue lingers in his mind, colour oddly like ones he’d see in art films, where the female protagonist would be pink and her male counterpart, blue.

“that’s because i know that you can’t even without seeing you try,” he joked, sticking out a tongue playfully at his friend. “but it’s filled with creatures, and you’d probably be freaked out by a jellyfish.” kieran does the same, lowering his tone to match with the other’s while cupping his hand beside his lips. as much as it was just a friendly contest, he knew that he needed to win the hercules descendant. being in water was his forte after all.

noticing that the other had already begun to zone out, he splashed the water towards ari, laughing heartily at the reaction that was ignited upon doing so. “don’t daydream when war’s about to begin!”

the kid had to be joking-- who was he to claim that he would defeat the descendant of atlantis? the punishment ideas that would follow had already begin to present themselves in his mind, and he grinned inwardly at the things he could order ari to do. buy him lunch for a week, buy him dinner for a week, buy him food for a week-- the possibilities were endless. 

“i’ve always been considerate to my friends,” placing emphasis on the last word, he patted the other’s shoulder, “you’d be my lunch ticket for the week.” 

blue // @kierands

saturday morning is usually when the majority of the university student population would be spending that time in bed. and yes, that would include xylia herself, but because of excessive napping and a shift in her sleeping schedule, she was reborn as a morning person kind of. 

despite of being an introvert, xylia doesn’t find the beauty in doing nothing unlike most of the people she’s surrounded with; probably due to the athletic traits that came from her father or maybe her mother’s unconscious search for trouble. nonetheless, being in bed and gluing her eyes on a laptop screen or a book isn’t her most ideal activity which probably explains why she took two physical education classes rather than one. 

& vigorously and manually working was how weekends and free time were commonly played-out. 

she sat at the edge of the pool with her feet dipped in the clear chloric water. her swim team jacket was zipped to the very top to prevent any warmth that planned to leave her body, and her breathing patterns going in a weighty pace. the swimmer has been here for the last hour doing laps, not exactly trying to get her mind off of things yet not exactly having a desire to consider any issues she may have in her life. 

the smell of chlorine made its way up his nostrils the moment he stepped into the location, and at that moment, he thought of the clear, pristine, chemical-free waters of atlantis. making a mental note in his head to gather his brothers to visit their homeplace one day, he walked blankly towards the changing rooms, before familiar locks of brown hair and the swim team jacket came into sight.

“xylia?” he thought to himself, slowly changing his direction and making his way towards her instead. kieran never really expected the girl to be here, not outside of allocated practice times. he has never seen her here on saturday mornings, and he felt slightly bummed that he had lost this place that was once to himself. nonetheless, he still approached her and tapped her shoulder lightly.

Mermaids are nice, but they tried drowning people– and they still do.

It isn’t planned, but for a moment he sees a mermaid, he draws closer as if the Enchanted Lake has this magic that surges through him and pulls him into a less cohesive reality, and he finds himself staring so close 

and before he knows it, he can taste the lake from plump lips, his mouth on a beauty, the heat and dampness of water and the fact that it’s cold.

There isn’t much to notice but, it’s weird– he can’t breathe now.

There’s a hand that grabs his collar and pulls him to be swallowed by the lake. The light is brighter, more blaring and he’s laughing at how fucked up his situation is– he stops his thoughts because it gets dark 

he doesn’t feel scared though. he knows the boundaries, and he knows how not to cross them.

as soon as he stops near the lake, sharp eyes catch on the submerging head near the side of the lake. last he checked, human heads didn’t belong in the lake. he dashes to the edge, diving in with all his clothes still on (he doesn’t have a change) and shoes (they were new…) still on his feet. his hands fumble a little before the right one grabs the collar of the other, and he uses his core strength to pull the drowning male towards him before getting him out of the lake by pushing all his weight and new water weight up to the ground.

the boy’s unconscious, and kieran knows exactly what to do. he’s certified, trained to do cardiopulmonary resuscitation. he pushes his interlocked hands down on the centre of the other’s chest, hoping to at least get the water that had been trapped in his lungs out to get him breathing, to at least save a life.

there– keone thinks when he hears footsteps behind him in the distance, and yelling. there it is.

“okay, maybe not just fresh air. i, uh,” his words start coming out in one fast breath as he starts scoping the area for possible hiding places. “i may or may not have accidentally broken school equipment and professor’s face looks like she wants to kill me, yes, okay i will go now, you haven’t seen me in the last ten minutes okay–”

“fresh air?” kieran questions, the lack of belief evident in his tone. 

before he could continue his sentence, keone had already blabbered his way through his explanation, but he did manage to catch the keywords. ‘accidentally’, ‘broken’, ‘professor’s face’, ‘kill me’ were the most stressed upon words, and before he could offer any solution, his younger brother had already bolted away.

he blinks, but notices a panting female professor heading his way. quickly straightening up, he continues to move forward, looking at the scenery from time to time while closing the gap between the professor and himself.

“oh, keone? i haven’t seen him around, it’s my free period now and i believe i’m the only one who’s out of class at this hour.” he answers the professor’s query, swiftly covering up for his brother. “i’m sorry that i can’t be of any help.” 

“Thanks,” she repeated, the word emerging as whisper of breath even as pink began to dust her cheeks. It was nice to have someone truly understand what the award meant to her, although she was rather surprised that he did know about it in the first place. 

At the mention of the art piece, she shrugged with forced nonchalance. “It’s in the art room — they wanted to hang it up.” The faint exasperation in her tone belied her pride at that, and just for that moment it almost felt like nothing had changed between them. The change of subject came at just the right moment then, pulling her back from the precipice before she forgot herself and said something embarrassing.

“Oh, three? That’s great!” Her smile was sincere, although there was the briefest pause of consideration, as if mentally testing their boundaries, before she continued, “Was one of them yours?” Her gaze was expectant, the corners of her mouth already tilting in preparation for a congratulatory smile.

“i’d want to go and see it soon,” he grinned, “but there’s no hurry. i doubt they’d take down a masterpiece so quickly anyway.”

mentally cursing at the pain (that wasn’t going away), he bit his lip but tried to smile at the same time. “yeah, some of them’s mine. it’s nothing anyway, the timing wasn’t to good. guess i still have a long way to go before i can ever be part of the olympics, eh?” he joked. although he did want to be a part of the olympics someday, but it was a wish that he never told anyone. probably not even her (unless he sleeptalked that night).

✂

“kieran—” she coos, wickedly calm, because she just knows it was him. who else would, honestly? “i’m going to need you to come back over here so i can murder you.” 

not that she actually would, but even just imagining it could do some good in calming her down.

he glances at the pale-skinned, big-eyed girl that was lying leisurely on one of the spectating benches near the pool. her name? ivana heart. her nickname that he had mentally given her? the slacker.

up till this moment, he had no idea to why the girl had even joined in the first place. she was the least interested out of the bunch, and was always feeding the coach with excuses (”stupid excuses”). as the others swam lap after lap, arms and shoulders feeling so sore that some would even struggle to lift them, she was just laying there, enjoying herself while everyone slaved away in the pool, aiming to break records and to clinch gold medals in competitions. 

“the slacker is at it again,” he lifts his chin upwards to point at her direction. his fellow swimmer at the next lane merely sighs. even the coach had rendered her to be a ‘hopeless one’, completely excluding her from competition sign-ups and events. 

kieran decides things should be put in order and she has to learn her lesson.

he pushes himself out of the pool and grabs a towel before walking up to where the female is. with his hand still wet, he flicks the water at her face to get her to wake up from her midday nap. trying to get away before she gets up, he throws the towel aside and dives back into pool.