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The sun had long since set when Shiloh returned to the dock after a long day of winter diving. She paused to mentally collect herself before leaving the calm, quiet ocean for the loud, bright surface. At least it was late enough that there shouldn't be anyone around to bother her.
Goddess you sound like such a bitch right now.
The people of Coral Island were all so nice. Really they were. And they had all been so welcoming when she'd arrived at her new home here. But it was so much work! Everyone smiled at her, so she had to smile back at everyone. Everyone said hello to her, so she had to say hello back. It was overwhelming and exhausting. She was fully aware that this was 100% a her problem. Who complains about people being too nice?? It was all such a stark contrast to living in the city, where she was instead ignored by everyone she walked past. She was definitely still in the adjustment phase of living where people cared. And the guilt-ridden phase of not appreciating the caring people like she should. Which then spiraled into the whole overwhelming and exhausting thing again.
It was a lot.
And it all made her ocean excursions that much more satisfying. The chance to really make a difference in healing the local ecosystem had already sold her on volunteering her time, but the added benefit of the calm meditation of her dives recharged her social battery better than anything she'd experienced before. Diving late into the night also meant the beach and the subsequent walk home was nearly guaranteed to be devoid of human interaction.
At least there were a couple people that didn’t drain her social battery. She didn’t mind the blacksmith Rafael or the astronomer Wakuu. Both were always polite but never overwhelming when she saw them.
But first on her list of ‘People I Enjoy Spending Time With’ would definitely be the marine biologist Surya. His calm demeanor and quiet smile served as a beacon of serenity whenever she traveled through the bustling town to drop off samples at the lab. The way his eyes lit up and the passion in his voice when he spoke about the work they were doing on the island made her heart do this weird thing where it both stopped and raced simultaneously. Lately his eyes had started lighting up when she smiled at him, and now her heart was doing that weird thing a lot more often. He didn't even need to actually be there anymore; just thinking about him seemed to be enough to get her heart going. Like right now. It was definitely doing the weird thing right now.
Cold winter air greeted her as she surfaced, and she grabbed onto the old wooden ladder attached to the end of the deck. When her eyes reached ground level she saw a dark, vaguely human shaped blob mere feet away. The noise she made as she let go of the ladder and fell back in surprise was easily the most embarrassing sound she'd ever made, a mixture of surprise and panic that came out in a garbled “Guah!”
Moments after hitting the water she heard another splash as the blob from the deck followed after her and she was soon face-to-face with a wide-eyed and fully clothed Surya. They both surfaced again and after a few moments of sputtering from the water she'd unexpectedly swallowed during her surprise ocean reentry, she looked at him incredulously.
“Surya? What are you doing”
“Um, saving? You?” He paused and scratched the back of his neck sheepishly, made even more awkward by the fact that he was also treading water with a heavily waterlogged coat. “Well that was the plan at least when I saw you fall backwards. I think I might have panicked a little. You're okay, right?”
“I’m good,” Shiloh laughed breathlessly, the ridiculousness of his statement combined with the adrenaline spike from the dock-scare leaving little room for much coherent thought. “I have. A lot. Of questions.”
“I have answers,“ his teeth were already chattering a bit from the shock of the frigid water. “Not necessarily good answers but-”
“Let’s get back on land first, yeah?”
“Yes please.”
Shiloh went up the ladder first, then turned around to help Surya, who struggled between the cold and the extra weight of his water-logged clothes.
“I swear I'm not this useless.” He huffed as he climbed up and collapsed on the edge of the dock.
“I know you’re not,” she smiled reassuringly at him as she removed her fins and retrieved a pair of tennis shoes from her supply bag. “I’m wearing a suit designed for this crap and you are very much not. You’ve got, like, a million pounds of extra water weight right now.”
“Definitely feels like it,” he sighed as he sat up and peeled off his coat. It hit the ground with a loud, wet thud. “I should probably get going before I turn into an ice cube. Raincheck on the Q&A?”
“Absolutely not, you’re coming home with me.”
“I am?” There wasn’t much about winter that Surya cared for, but the harsh cold having already reddened his cheeks and thus hiding the blush he felt spring up was something he was very grateful for at the moment.
“My house is closer. Plus I’m pretty sure Dinda would kill you if you tracked all that mess into her house. And then she’d come for me.” Shiloh offered her hand to Surya. “Your aunt is a wonderful person but she is absolutely terrifying when she’s mad.”
“You noticed that huh?” Surya chuckled as he took her hand in his and stood up. “One time, I tracked in a couple leaves and the look on her face… For a whole week she put blueberries on everyone's pancakes except mine.”
“The horror,” she deadpanned as she squeezed his hand lightly. “C'mon let's get going.”
After quickly collecting their belongings, the pair took off down the dock and through the outskirts of town as big, wet globs of snow began falling from the sky. They had to slow down over the small footbridges that ran over the stream before her house as the wooden planks were slick with freshly fallen snow. By the time they reached her front door their heads and shoulders were covered in a blanket of snowflakes. Once inside Shiloh grabbed the old plaid throw blanket that had been draped over the back of the small loveseat In the living room.
“Get those clothes off, I'll see what I can find for you in my bedroom.” She called as she headed into the adjacent room and shut the bedroom door.
“This is not how I imagined I'd be getting undressed in this house,” Surya nervously muttered to himself as he began disrobing. His numb fingers and racing heart made it all the more difficult.
“What was that?” Shiloh's muffled voice called out.
“Oh uh nothing!” came his panicked reply. “It's um, just getting messy in here.” A pause. Then, “WITH THE WATER! From the whole falling in the ocean thing. Nothing weird!”
After a few minutes of pants struggles - seriously those things were suctioned to his legs and did not want to give up their hold, Surya hastily donned the throw. While clearly well-loved, it was…not very big. The blanket. The blanket wasn’t very big. Other things were just perfectly sized, thank you. With the blanket over his shoulders he had to stretch the thin fabric in front of himself, hands clasping the two ends together to keep himself decent, though this did require some…sacrifices on the backside.
“Okay, I’m decent. Mostly.” He backed up to the kitchen island for protection as he called out.
The bedroom door opened and Shiloh slowly exited. She had changed into a much more comfortable pair of grey leggings and teal pullover sweatshirt. Her arms were full with a much larger down comforter and what looked to be some clothing options; her chin rested on top of the pile in an attempt to keep it stable. She nudged a laundry basket filled with towels along the ground with her feet as she shuffled forward.
“Sorry,” she grimaced sympathetically when she saw the poor job the current blanket was doing. “In the future I’ll get a better blanket in the living room for emergencies.”
“Appreciate it. Although I hope to never need it.” He tracked her as she moved further into the living room, scooting around the room to keep his front facing wherever she was.
She dropped the arm pile onto the couch, then picked up the laundry basket and rushed to the pile of wet clothes in the entryway. She bent down to quickly collect everything into the basket and spread the towels in their place, making sure to keep her back to him as she did so. With Shiloh afraid to accidentally see something she wasn’t supposed to, she kept herself facing away from where she thought he was, making navigation towards the laundry room stilted and awkward. He shifted around the room, circling to stay out of her line of sight, bumping into an end table and then the back of the couch he was too nervous to notice in his peripheral vision. It was a sensual mating dance, except that it was the exact opposite in every possible way.
Once Shiloh was safely in the next room, Surya hastily scrambled to the pile of clothes she had left on the couch to see what he had to work with. By the time she returned, he was sitting on the couch in a pair of loose flannel pants that came up about halfway up his calves and a plain black t-shirt that fit just a bit too tight, revealing the barest of midriffs.
“Thanks, this is much better.” He smiled at her, half thankful and half embarrassed.
“What are you doing?” She frowned and rushed over to him. Before he had a chance to ask what he had done wrong, she’d already unfolded the comforter and was wrapping it around his shoulders. “There is no way you’re not still cold.”
“I didn’t want to impose.” He stood up briefly to get the quilt fully wrapped around himself.
She looked at him incredulously and a small burst of hysterical giggles erupted from her mouth. She slapped a hand over her lips as if to physically stop the noise from escaping. Her hand was shaking.
“I think the adrenaline is starting to wear off,” she whispered and placed an unsteady hand behind her as she lowered herself to sit next to him. Almost immediately she popped back up to light the fireplace. “Shit, I should have got this going right away. I’m so sorry, I wasn’t thinking straight.” She turned on wobbly legs to head to the kitchen. “And I should get something warm heating on the stove too.”
“Hey,” Surya grabbed her arm to stop her. “Sit down for a sec. It’s okay.”
She sat back down and immediately took his hands in hers, inspecting each finger. “Are your hands okay? Your feet!”
She went to bend over and lift the bottom of the blanket he was wrapped up in but he held tight to her hands to keep her where she was.
“Shiloh.” He waited for her to look back at him. When her eyes met his, he smiled reassuringly. “I’m okay. Promise. Just sit down for a couple, yeah?”
Shiloh sat back, closed her eyes and took a shaky breath. When she looked at him again there was a wet sheen to her eyes. Her face scrunched and she threw herself at his chest, wrapping her arms around his torso. He brought his arms around her as well, enveloping her within the quilt’s warmth and began rubbing what he hoped were soft, comforting circles on her back.
“What the hell happened back there?” Her voice cracked as she asked.
“Okay. So.” He took a deep breath - she smelled like saltwater and lilac. “I was reviewing some of the footage from your dives earlier this week - usually Ling does that but she’s been super busy lately and I figured I’d help out with the backlog. Anyways, I saw something kinda interesting. Maybe. I need more data. That’s why I came to find you.”
“Back up. What exactly did you see?”
“Right, that. So, it was super fast, like a handful of frames fast. Don’t know how I even caught it really.” It certainly had nothing to do with the fact that the footage had initially paused on a frame where Shiloh had been bending over to investigate something in the sand that had caught her eye. “When I slowed it down, I saw a fin of some kind.”
“So, a fish?” Shiloh leaned back and quirked an eyebrow at him.
“Well, yes,” Surya sighed and frowned at her in an attempt at chastisement.
She grinned. “Sorry, couldn’t resist.” You’re just too cute when you’re being serious.
“The thing is I didn’t recognize the fin structure and the markings were off too - might have just been a weird angle or some kind of water distortion. I’m not even sure how big it was. We need to get a better, clearer shot of whatever it was. And preferably more than just the tail fin. It’s more than likely nothing.
“Worst case scenario it’s an invasive species that came in with a pack of tourists - and that would be a whole thing - we would want to get ahead of it before it establishes itself.
“But best case scenario? An undiscovered species!” He leaned forward excitedly. “If, and it’s a big if, I know, but if that’s what we’ve got here that would be huge for the town. It could be proof our revitalization efforts are making even more progress than we imagined! It could mean additional grants for the lab!”
Okay, excited, smart Surya was even cuter.
“That would be really cool.” Shiloh agreed, smiling at his enthusiasm.
“More than cool - plus we’d get our names into some journals, I might be able to write a paper or two on this…” Surya laid back against the cushions and sighed. “I’m getting ahead of myself of course. It’s like a 2% chance that’s what I saw. Probably not even that. A glitch of some kind is significantly more likely. We need to find whatever that was and get better eyes on it. Then we’ll have a better idea of what to do next.”
“Well, obviously I’ll help. Is that why you were there on the dock tonight?”
“Yeah, I uh, guess I got excited, wanted to tell you right away.” Surya looked away sheepishly. “Figured you were diving and when I saw your supply bag by the bench I knew I was right so I waited. I must have dozed off.”
“You scared the absolute crap out of me, you know.” She pulled her knees to her chest and shivered. “I thought you were a ghost or something.”
“Sorry,” he apologized and opened his arms to invite her back into warmth. ”Also I’m hogging the blanket.”
“No, it's my fault. I packed pretty light when I moved here. And the winter’s been so mild so far I hadn’t gotten around to getting more than just this one.” After a moment’s hesitation she scooted back over and fell forward into his embrace, shuddering again as warm replaced cold.
“Better?” He murmured as he enclosed them both in a blanket cocoon.
“Mmmm.” She hummed in agreement. He smelled like cedarwood and fresh rain. “Better.”
“Wait, mild? It’s freezing outside! Literally!”
“Well, it’s warm enough to snow. That’s something at least.”
“Nope, literally impossible.”
“Really? Where I grew up it always stopped snowing when it got super cold. Are you telling me that the anecdotal evidence I’ve believed all my life is false?” She asked in mock horror.
“Conditions would certainly be less favorable for it the colder it gets,” he allowed. “But it’s only impossible to snow at absolute zero. Which is in itself impossible to naturally achieve so… More importantly, it’s plenty enough too cold out there as it is!”
“So why in the name of the Goddess did you jump in the ocean tonight?” She peeked up at him curiously.
“Ah yes, that.” Surya shifted uncomfortably and rubbed at the back of his neck. “When you fell back in, I was in the water before I knew it. I didn’t think, didn’t even have time to panic really. Just jumped in. You fell, I jumped. It just happened. It’s not a good answer, I know. It wasn't logical at all. But that's what I did.”
“It’s a good answer,” her arms tightened around him. “It was a stupid thing to do, but it was a good answer.”
“Yeah, my brain’s been doing this thing where it doesn’t work right when you’re around. I just said that out loud.”
She could feel his heart racing under her ear. Its pace matched the one currently pounding in her chest. She hugged him even tighter. He stayed still, afraid to move, afraid to call any attention to himself.
“Surya?”
“Yeah?” He swallowed nervously.
“My brain does the same thing around you.” She confessed quietly.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh.”
She loosened her grip on him so she could sit up and look at his face. Their eyes met and time stopped for a moment. It started up again when the blanket began to fall as he brought a hand up to cup her cheek, thumb lightly brushing across her chin. Then again across her bottom lip. Her heart was doing that weird thing again; it couldn’t decide if it wanted to stop or take off faster than it had ever beat before.
Neither dared breathe as she leaned infinitesimally closer. His hand curled to cradle the back of her head and he dipped his face closer. Their lips brushed, the lightest of touches, like the flitting of butterfly wings. The kiss deepened with steady insistence on both sides as he used the hand at the small of her back to pull her closer to him. Her hands slowly traveled up his chest and past his shoulders to tangle her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck. They opened their mouths to each other almost simultaneously and soft, airy moans announced the moment their tongues touched. Their breaths deepened as they pressed themselves to each other, insistent hands searching for a way to bring more contact, to bring themselves closer.
She smiled against his lips as the kiss broke and they paused, forehead to forehead, to catch their breaths.
“I, um,” Surya chuckled softly, still slightly out of breath, “That was. Really nice.”
“Understatement.”
Shiloh slipped her hand into his, fingers intertwined, and she brought the back of his hand to her lips for a soft kiss as she settled into the crook of his other arm. He hugged her close and smiled into the top of her head. They stayed like that for a while, enjoying the new sensations that came with an infatuation reciprocated; soft words of affirmation murmured, soft touches that left goosebumps in their wake.
The washing machine buzzed from the next room and she moved to get off the couch. Surya moved as well.
“Please, let me,” he whispered. “I can take care of my own clothes; you don’t need to do everything.”
“Nonsense, it’s my house, my chores.” When she saw him open his mouth to argue, she quickly continued. “You brought your laptop right? You could pull up that video you wanted to show me.”
“That’s cheating,” he huffed in defeat. “You win.”
Shiloh grinned and gave his cheek a quick peck before getting up and bounding out of the room. By the time she’d transferred his clothes into the dryer and returned, he’d brought his laptop to the coffee table in front of the couch and was booting it up.
“Are you thirsty? I can make tea.” She had already detoured to the kitchen and began filling the kettle.
“That sounds amazing, thank you.” Surya glanced over his shoulder to smile.
Before long she set down two steaming mugs onto the table. One was shaped like a pufferfish, with the tail serving as the handle and the other was a more traditionally-shaped deep blue mug with a colorful jellyfish circling the cup. His eyes lit up as he reached for the pufferfish mug.
“Okay, this is the coolest mug I have ever seen.”
“I thought you might like that one,” Shiloh laughed. “I collect them, can’t say no to a good mug.”
“How many do you have?”
“Oh gosh, I don’t know. Probably like 20? 30 maybe? Any time I see a cool or unique one I pick it up. Haven't been keeping track.”
“So, you have 30 mugs but only one,” he eyed the discarded couch throw. “And a half blankets.”
“Choose your next words very carefully.” She raised an eyebrow as she took a sip from her jellyfish mug.
“I think the video’s ready to play.”
“I knew you were smart.” She giggled as she leaned forward to look at the screen. “Okay, show me what you’ve got.”
He took her through the frames, pointing out the unusually sharp transition of the peduncle to the caudal fin, the strange absence of a lateral line. The alien words came out of his mouth so naturally and Shiloh guessed this was barely the surface of a vast pool of knowledge she didn’t even know existed until moments ago.
“You are really smart.” She said in a much more solemn tone this time.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” he bumped her shoulder and leaned in conspiratorially. “I’m a scientist.”
“You are a scientist,” she laughed in agreement. A sexy scientist. Her face instantly turned beet red.
He raised a questioning eyebrow at the very obvious and sudden change in her countenance.
“It would appear,” her blush turned an impossibly deeper shade of red. “That I have a thing for nerds.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m a nerd,” he leaned forward to whisper in her ear. “Epibenthic.”
Shiloh burst into a sharp laugh before asking, “What’s that mean?”
“Oh, it's the, uh, term for organisms that live on or just above the bottom sediments of a body of water, typically various fish and decapods.”
“Goddess, why does that work on me so well,” she muttered as she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him to her lips.