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Night Raven College is on dry land, and for that fact alone Floyd wants nothing less than to shoot it and its inevitably equally abhorrent headmaster in the face.
Immediately as soon as he rises from the sea, the weight of the air bears down upon him and threatens to crush him until nothing is left but the weight of gravity where he had stood. But Azul, damn him, had promised him new entertainment. New prey.
Which — while it is a delighting prospect — Floyd begins to question if perhaps he should have stayed in the sea just a little while more.
The little fish there were not so awful — or at least, not yet. He could have squeezed the life out of them a little more, rather than lying here a victim himself.
And to gravity, no less. To air.
“Jade,” breathes Azul. He and Jade have both elected to take a delicate, porcelain approach to familiarising themself with their new legs, barely out of shallow water even now. Floyd cranes his neck back to watch them, swaying recklessly, caught in the drag of sand and water as malicious white waves ebb and flow around their feet. “Come. Let me steady myself on you.”
Although it is not directed to him, with his brother already obediently rising to oblige, an immediate urge to sabotage flashes within Floyd all the same.
“You’re so desperate, Azul,” he whines, cursing Azul from where he himself has given up, face-down in wet sand. “Just fall.”
The glare that Azul casts his way is sharp and deadly, even as Jade crosses to hold out his arm.
“Play nice, Floyd,” Jade muses, as Azul desperately grips his forearm. Ever polite. Too polite, and fooling nobody at all. “We’re no longer in the plentiful sea. He may dehydrate and die if he cries now.”
And if you keep needling him, he surely will .
Jade’s thin smile, gleaming in tandem with the glow of his gold eye, does not pass by Floyd unnoticed. Floyd cackles, a sound that the weight of gravity upon his chest grates grindingly into a groan.
Jade is so mean to an Azul who cannot afford to reciprocate. Floyd loves it, for this reason all the more.
Maybe it is foolish to throw these stones in matching glass houses, when the three of them all pretend Jade's own legs are not trembling too. But in the same breath — and Floyd draws one as he thinks it, the sea salt of the air newly foreign and dry on his tongue — Jade knows he is irreplaceable, where Azul clings miserably to him now.
He is correct, of course. Azul only gawks, gaping at Jade in astonishment, as the boy tugs him over a rock and nearly sends them both careening to the ground with the uncoordinated misstep.
Floyd catches his silver eye as he glances briefly between them, no doubt wondering if they have somehow planned these inconveniences together to draw out his misery, and his own grin pulls ever wider.
Tired, and bested, and still so, so cruel.
“Now I wanna see it,” Floyd croons. The image of that terribly unfortunate aforementioned scenario dances tantalisingly before his spotty gaze; Azul’s tears dribbling down his face and splattering on solid ground at his feet, waterfalling until his fragile new body can handle the dearth no longer. “Gonna squeeze you on land, Azul~ Wanna see you cry ‘til you pop!”
From the start, it had been fruitless for Azul to hope that Jade would ever side with him on the matter. And yet Jade’s small uptick of a smile now is enough to crumple his expression fully all the same, eyebrows drawing together and lips pinching into a childish pout, even as he continues to cling to Jade as a lifeline.
“Hm,” Jade hums, flowing a finger to his chin. “I’m becoming rather curious about it myself.”
It is here that something quite astonishing rears its head, as Azul blushes deep in embarrassment, or irritation, or a combination of both at once — a sight rising not for the first time throughout the course of their curious three-way friendship.
But on land, the colour that fills his cheeks has changed, strikingly so. His skin, pale as snow, glows with a burning red that the purple skin of his octopus form had softened far beyond recognition; that the dark of their sea had then smothered completely in its deepest blues, never once spotlighted by such exposing sunshine light.
Floyd catches himself staring. Jade is staring, too, however much he believes his own side glance to be subtle. Perhaps to Azul, brain addled with far too many components worthy of concern than the new blush on his own skin that he cannot see, their mirrored gazes trained on him sports nothing out of the ordinary — but to Floyd, the thought crosses his mind of a kiss, a devour, either himself or Jade pressing their claim to the rose that covers Azul’s soft skin so completely now.
“Aww,” Floyd drawls. “You’re all blushy an’ red.”
Were the beach any more populated than the three of them here, Azul would kill him for his overt teasing. Floyd speaks it aloud anyway, relishing in the fierce glare Azul directs to him thereafter.
But his own eyes do not stay on Azul’s; rather, they drift from him to rest on Jade, whose reaction has sparked in him an unexpected intrigue, unfamiliar and contemplative and delighting all at once.
His brother, rational and intentional above all — and the millisecond where his gaze slips just a touch too raw, hungry, and threatens to swallow Azul whole.
Very rarely, if ever, has he seen Jade allow pure fire to fuel his actions. Everything that he does is always carried out with precision and intent. It is Floyd, of the pair, who acts completely and utterly of his own volition; it is Jade who has always held such things back, leash hooked around urge and impulse and pulling taut and tight.
That leash has loosened now; perhaps only fractionally, but a fraction looser all the same. Watching his twin watch their dear friend — and what a word it is, friend , far too loose and vague to encapsulate the delicate symbiosis that has carried them here from the sea — Floyd wonders, damningly, if Jade would not like to kiss Azul.
If a mere kiss is where it would end.
Floyd considers it with the same wonder that one would consider a scenario in the mirror, nearly beyond his body. He watches his own reflection walk a shaking Azul to the shore and flow his arm forth to support him as he buckles at the knee. He, it , leans in as he catches the other man, long, signature strand of wet, dark hair draping tenderly over the pale expanse of his neck; finely, he presses a single kiss by his blushed ear, whispering the modicum of encouragement needed for Azul to lift himself the minute distance left until the water no longer laps abysmally at their heels.
The man that kisses Azul so sweetly in his mirror warps — Floyd, or Jade, or Floyd after all, simple and singular again — and that is where Floyd of the now continues to remain so woefully unsure
In the end, it is not he who had been requested to bring Azul to safety from the shoreline, who had faithfully held him in close, intimate proximity. And yet, of the three, Floyd is the only one who sees the red strings that intertwine him and his brother so intrinsically to Azul.
He watches as Jade finally collapses onto the sand beside Azul. There is no sheen of a kiss that shines on his brother’s cupid’s bow, nor that has been swept against Azul’s rosy cheek. Floyd catches Jade’s eye once more, and finds the ravenous hunger that had broken it before has long since fled from sight.
Unsurprising. Almost boring, were its unconscious cowardice not so fun on its own. Were he not so tired — were they not so tired — he would offer a quip about it — about them. As is, he only kicks out a leg in their direction as acknowledgment, and tries and fails not to laugh when Azul splutters at the sand that blows into his face.
“You are both terrible,” Azul declares. He grimaces as Jade feigns an attempt to help, his wet hands only sticking more sand to Azul’s skin.
Jade smiles, faux kindliness long perfected — or as close as his brother has managed it to be. Floyd watches the curl of his lip, its curve gentler than he is sure his brother intends, and very briefly wonders if a similar ghost of affection shines through in the grin that he offers Azul, too.
“S’why we're doing this with you~”