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The currents are calm, the water still.
Doctor Casper Darling is in another dimension, and furthermore in what is perhaps another dimension from what he is used to. Tom tangles his fingers through gray hairs, soft and firm just like he would appreciate if Tom was also in a similar liquid state as his Casper is in.
There is little to nothing bothering the surface of the Lake, nothing stirring within it when Zane pulls Casper into him, to feel the warm exhale and satisfied sigh against his neck, to feel a warm body closer and closer to his own body, lonely and cold for so long.
“Where do you get this stuff?” his Casper asks once again, forgetting that it had already been asked.
“The ocean brings it to me,” Tom says again, knowing the repetition, knowing he can take more than Casper can, “I simply find it.”
Casper smushes his face against Tom’s collarbone, facial hair scratching lightly at the skin there, content with flowing along the undertow.
“Mysterious,” Casper says. No questions asked — he’s been trained to enjoy the moment. At least once in a while. An equal exchange of mystery and revelation that either of them decide to trade.
Mystery in the science of the Lake that his Darling can’t seem to ever wrap his head around, mystery in the scientific language that he uses that Zane can’t understand. Revelation in simpler language and analogies Darling creates to explain his theories, revelation in the direct wording Zane can use in his poetry for Darling to connect to.
Balance keeps the ocean calm.
“Quite blatant, actually,” Tom says against his hair. It’s true. People drop things in the Lake, Tom finds them playing along to the narrative that the Lake approves of.
“What do you want to do once we get out?” his Darling says lightly, not thinking deeply about the consequences, the hurt that it will take to get to that point.
Once we get out and trade places with something, someone, Tom thinks. Equal exchange.
But Casper’s eyes are closed softly, glasses folded neatly to the side of their pillow, speaking softly like he’s in a dream in a dream in this dream. The Lake gently approves of the conversation, the questions and the answers. They are neither at the surface, nor on the floor of the Lake, but somewhere safe in the middle, flowing and content and calm and perhaps even happy.
Tom entertains the thought of the aftermath. He thinks about the surface, about the level of land above the lake, about the sun on his skin, the sand underneath his feet, the rustling of the trees, the wind chilly through his soaked hair and skin.
But these are just memories. That is as far as he can imagine life outside of the Lake.
“Hm,” Tom says, truly stumped with the question. The world has changed, and Tom has changed too, separately and yet stagnantly. Perhaps he's scared to experience what it is now. He might not even be able to.
“You can take your time,” Casper teases, smiling against his skin.
“I’m not sure,” Tom says honestly.
His Casper laughs softly and drops the question, subjecting himself to the rest of the gentle tide, the unseen undertow, taking him further and further somewhere neither bad nor good, just somewhere. Tom closes his eyes, melts into the sheets and flows with him, with the Lake, with everything else in the Lake, a rare quiet moment where everything is one, where the scales stay equal and still.
The Lake hums in appreciation.