Chapter Text
6:30 PM. There’s a lot of good things about 6:30 PM but there’s also a fat chunk of bad. You still have an hour and a half left of your shift. That’s the bad thing. (That is really the only bad thing, the fact you’re still at work, but it’s a very big bad thing!)
6:30 is good because it means you’re over halfway done with your shift! This also counts for quite a lot! The aquarium closes at 8 so you get to leave at 8.
Another big fat problem is you’re bored out of your mind right now.
Yes, the shark tunnel is absolutely gorgeous, you’ve just seen it a couple hundred times. This was supposed to be a summer job. You just happened to get rejected from all three colleges you applied for. Bit of a yikes. Being a janitor for an aquarium doesn’t need a degree though, and you’ve worked here long enough that you’ve gotten a noticeable pay increase. It’s nowhere near the level as the vets and junk who go into the tanks or the folks who take care of the fish but, you know, it pays. You don’t need to save money for gas at least since you ride your bike to work. Living with your parents is a little awkward but you’ve done it your entire life, no reason to stop quite yet.
It was uhhhh… Gosh. 4 or 5 years ago your life fell apart?
It was 5. Yeah. It was 5 years. But you manage, because your coworkers are nice and you get free admission to see water warble and the creatures inside.
Also there’s like, this one kid who comes every other day. He either sneaks in or his family is loaded because it’s not like this place is that cheap. And technically he’s not a kid, he’s a teenager, but tomayto tomahto he’s a couple years younger than you and seems like a kid. He just comes here to settle down in one room or another and draw in his sketchbook. You’ve never had anyone tell you to shoo him out so you let him stay there, but you try and keep an eye on him just in case. There’s nothing he could do to hurt the place, you’re just worried about the fact he’s always here alone. You very well could just be too nosy though and he just likes his personal fishy-fish drawing time. There’s just something about him that feels… Out of place? Every time you see him your brain screams that he doesn’t belong here.
On your way to go clean up some barf down by the touch tank, you find the kid hunched over on a bench in front of the octopus tank.
“What you up to, stranger?” You ask, holding the mop and bucket at your sides. The kid winces and just about snaps his charcoal pencil in two.
“They let me do this, I-” He whips around, eyes as wide as tennis balls and as dark as tinted water, before all of a sudden remembering he’s got to breathe, “Oh. Hi.”
He doesn’t look mad, just tired. Looks a bit uncomfortable up where he sits, too. Oversized pants and a band tour T-shirt seem like they wouldn’t do much against the slight chill of this place or the stiff solid bench.
“Just checking in on you. Haven’t pissed anywhere, right?”
The kid rolls his eyes, turning his back on you with a restrained smile.
“In the penguin tank.” He mumbles as he puts his pencil back to his paper. Considering this place doesn’t have any penguins, you figure he’s doing fine. You don’t know his name, and you figure he doesn’t know yours either, so your conversations don’t last longer than a few seconds, often it’s just you asking if he’s alright and the kid giving a simple (albeit quiet) answer. Within the past month you’ve started to joke with him and he’s been fairly receptive!
You’re not always on shift though, so you’ve gotten curious whether or not anyone else tries to talk to him. You’re the only daytime janitor, people uptop think it’d be redundant to have more, so you’ve never had the courage to ask any of the actually trained workers about it.
It’s kind of fun when you get to the point he recognizes you too. Started after the day you dropped a coupon onto his head when he was sitting in the food court with his face against the table. You get a handful of them each month (and don’t use them frequently enough) so you didn’t mind ‘losing’ one of your little notes that got you a free small drink and fry. Felt kinda good to see him later, happily sketching with one hand and tossing fries into his mouth with the other. He uh, ate them pretty fast, though. Little worrying.
So, you admit, you did do it again. Gave him another coupon. This time you didn’t drop it onto his head and just placed it on the table in front of him. The kid looked at it like it was trash before snatching it up the second you turned your back. Weird little guy. You stayed around that time and heard them call out the name for his order.
They said “Solace” which isn’t really a name. But it’s fine.
You think you’ll never really learn his name, anyway. No need to ask, you’re fine keeping to yourself and being content knowing the kid ain’t dead.
You wouldn’t… expect him to be dead. He hasn’t got a- well, well you really don’t know much about him, so you don’t know if he ‘hasn’t got a good reason to die randomly’ but you.
Okay. OKAY yes you feel bad for this random kid who showed up out of nowhere and does nothing but scribble slightly worrying charcoal drawings in corners of the aquarium instead of hanging out with friends, BUT it is Not your place, your circus, or your monkeys. Also you genuinely think he’s sneaking in somehow.
This is confirmed the day you actually see him come in through the front doors.
It’s a rainy day, and rainy days mean muddy shoes. Not much of a problem with it, you just wait until there’s a lull in visitors and clean the dirty entryway quick before more people come. While doing this, you see the guy, the little guy. The anti-social artist teenager guy. He’s actually here with a grown-up this time, which makes you wonder if he’s here with an adult every time and this dude just abandons his kid to wander alone.
Probably ain’t his kid, actually. Art Teen’s guardian looks like he’s in his early 20s and he’s got some nice hair, long enough to go to his shoulders. He looks buffer than you. He might actually go to the gym. He’s not taller than you though, got that on him at least. You’re staring too long, and you only realize this after making direct eye contact with his scary ice eyes. Definitely not like the teen’s heavy blue ones. He’s got a couple of ear piercings and even a lip ring. There’s also like, a huge scar across his nose that you have no clue how he got that and, as said before, you’re staring too much. He sees you staring at him and ogling his scar. It makes him look really badass, so hopefully he’s already used to it?
Thankfully, all he does is look down at his shoes before making an expression akin to “oh shoot” and walking forward a bit faster. The dry mop in your hand saved the day, hallelujah. Probably also helps that he genuinely was standing in the way of where you were cleaning.
You’ve got the urge to be a little brash, though. You look over at the teen and give him a little nod. He’s not looking anywhere near you, unfortunately, so obviously he didn’t see it.
“Hey stranger. Deep sea hall opened back up, tanks finished the deep clean.” You say, loud and clear so he doesn’t miss it this time. He sought you out to complain about the fact it was closed the last time you caught him here, which was…
Huh! Multiple days ago, actually.
Art Teen startles, quite the common thing for him, but you realize you might’ve made a huge mistake when he looks at you absolutely terrified. Your gaze shifts quickly to his guardian and you’ve got to scold your face into customer service. Could this guy be the reason this kid is always trying to hide here?
“Thanks for letting us know,” The adult gives you half a smile, it’s warm enough to be disarming, “Deep sea things are… Cool!”
Last part felt a little more forced. Guess he’s just a goldfish guy or something. The kid, behind his guardian’s back, juts his hand in front of his neck. Like a ‘cut it out’ motion or something.
Oh okay, yes, that kid totally sneaks in here and this guy knows nothing about it. Great. Scarily young abusive step-dad sort of deal? They look more similar than step-family, though, so maybe uhhh… Brothers. Yeah that’d check out, they’ve got similar black hair, but different eyes.
You are quietly thankful that the pair keeps on moving and you’re left to go back to mopping the muddy floor. Don’t wanna get chewed out for harassing customers and lose the scrap of future you still have.
An hour passes and you’ve got elsewhere to be. Always some room or other to clean up.
Admittedly, yeah you totally cross into rooms you don’t need to. Yes you could be called a creep but you are genuinely worried for that kid. He startles way too harshly, always seems to be just a bit starving, and you’ve peeked at his drawings before. Monsters with long fish tails and too many arms and too many eyes. He could very well just enjoy horror-themes, but everything adds up into a concerning mixture. You’re finally given a chance to learn a little more about the rando kid you pity because at one point you had a theory he was homeless. (That theory was put on hold when you saw him buy food on his own combined with the fact he doesn’t wear the same clothes everyday, but he had you going for a while there.)
From what you see, neither of the guys are all too excited to be here. The adult keeps trying to get the teen to look at all the exhibits but stands as far away from the glass as he can. The teen, having been here a billion times, isn’t spending too long in any one place. You don’t try and talk to them again, you realize that’d be too weird, and at this point you’re distracted by the new goal you’ve been given of cleaning up a soda spill in the shark tunnel. How it happened you don’t know because food and drink are supposed to stay in the food court, but whatever. You’ll fix it.
You’re using that ever so trusty mop again! You usually sweep much more than this, it’s pretty odd everything is ending up liquid based recently-
Something slams into the glass.
Everyone in the shark tunnel freezes and some little girl screams and starts bawling.
A quick survey of the place shows nothing cracked, but a great white shark shoving its big fat nose against the transparent boundary. Fun thing about great white sharks, is they are NOT A PART OF THE SHARK TUNNEL!!! It’s just supposed to be bull sharks!!! And now it’s an awful thing when more people start screaming because it’s frankly quite terrifying!
As the only employee right here right now, everyone turns to you. Oh goody.
You swallow down rising fear and stand as tall as you can.
“I need everyone to exit the tunnel in a- A calm and orderly fashion! We will be dealing with this right away!” You gesture to both ends of the tunnel, realizing you have neither informed the actual maintenance workers about this nor realized that the Art Teen is in this hall too. Absolutely great and awesome! You hate this. Any second now the sharks are going to start ravaging each other and the tank is going to fill with blood and then nobody will want to come here anymore.
You’re even more terrified when one of the bull sharks heads closer to the great white (which is still actively shoving its face against the glass) and it breaks your heart because it’s the only one you can recognize. It’s Hazzy, and the only reason you know it’s her is because she’s missing an eye and has a green mark all the way across her stomach. Something something medical problems, the vet team cares for her a lot. Not like you can do anything about this other than keeping customers away.
“I repeat!” You force yourself out of your thoughts, “Please, everyone exit the tunnel in an orderly fashion.”
People do listen, at least. Slowly, but surely. The families are moving out because they can guess the oncoming blood bath ain’t gonna be something to show their kids.
AH RIGHT THE KID. CRAP.
Art Teen is still in here, and you give him a harsh glare that begs him to step out. He’s busy trying to shove his guardian to the side, but the man is stuck slack jawed staring at the shark.
The shark is staring right back. That’s a trillion times worse because why the heck is the shark looking at him.
(Not Hazzy, she’s just lazily swimming over the great white. Guess it’s too distracted by this dude to care about what’s in the water with it?)
Oh god wait you’ve got to call someone about this. It’s horrible that you’re so bad at multitasking, because you need to get on it!
You fumble out your walkie-talkie to beg someone (anyone really!) for help when the great white backs up from the glass to slam its face against it again. The few stragglers left in the tunnel all wince at the echo and you hear the Art Teen start screaming.
“SEBASTIAN please PLEASE MOVE, WE! CAN’T! BE! HERE!” He’s yanking on his guardian’s arm as hard as he can, and it takes a moment, but something finally gets through to the man. He doesn’t move effectively, but he moves, tripping over his own foot and falling to the ground.
You run over to ‘Sebastian’ and grab his other arm, fighting to get him off the floor. The kid does not need to panic so harshly, that glass won’t break, but having a shark stare down your companion does seem terrifying. Sebastian is stiff as you dig your fingers into his dark jacket and try to politely as possible force him forward. His knees bend and you work together with the kid to get him out of view of the shark. He collapses back down onto the sticky carpet as Art Teen is mumbling something about ‘flags’ you don’t have time for.
“There’s a horrible situation down at the shark tunnel, something is in there that should not be, Hazzy is actively touching it. Daf if you don’t want your baby to die, get down here. I repeat, please someone get down here!”
Whew.
You handled that quite well, really.
Daffodil does too. She sure does love Hazzy. She’s the demi-human vet-in-training who cries whenever that shark has to go to the sick tank.
It takes a minute for anyone to even respond to your croaking over the radio, but when they do it sounds winded like they’re already hurrying over. Three of the vet team show up (plus Daf, because you don’t actually count her) and one of the maintenance crew. The great white has turned totally docile by the time they join you in the shark tunnel and no one has got a clue why.
That kid has stuck around though. His guardian is still here too, sitting against the wall with his hands ripping through his hair. Daf takes the cake for most dramatic entrance, because she’s sprinting forward just to slip on the concrete floor of the tunnel and land on her face. Her fox tail sticks straight up as her ears twist flat against her head.
You clear your throat because you were the first to overreact.
“Your baby’s fine. Sorry.” You point up at the iconic bull shark, who’s nuzzling up to the great white’s side. You don’t. Know why! Like, at all! The great white is swimming slowly side to side like it was lobotomized and Hazzy, well, that girl’s just following it.
“Please escort these guys away. They can get some coupons or something, we need the space clear.” One of the actual vets speaks up. It’s a bit disappointing that you aren’t going to get to see how they’ll fix this mishap, but maybe you’ll have the chance to ask someone later what happens. Not actually your job anyway. Your job relates to customers and cleaning, and you’re all out of things to clean.
The Art Teen and his buddy are loitering around the edge of the tunnel, grown man still sitting on the ground. You clear your throat as you stand beside the kid and try to figure out how to be gentle.
“Does he have a… Condition, or something?” You ask, not sure what else to say. The kid rubs his eyes and shakes his head.
“No, just doesn’t like fish. I mean, he’s not supposed to have a condition. Never said anything about it.”
You have to blink in surprise because that’s the longest sentence you’ve ever heard him say.
You’ll just… Approach this ‘Sebastian’ guy and try to get him standing.
“Are you good if I grab your shoulder?” You ask, crouching beside the kid’s guardian. He lifts his head to stare at you with a heartbreakingly panicked glare, “You gotta work with me dude, I’m sorry.”
You’ve never been in a situation quite like this, so you’re just going to have to hope this is the right thing to do.
Sebastian swallows thickly but nods. You’ll take it as a promising sign.
“…Yeah.” He grunts. You’re still confused why he’d go to an aquarium when he doesn’t like fish but you’ll just have to let that slide for now. You help him to his feet, holding up his arm as he struggles. The way he froze makes it seem like he’s got a phobia or something, but the shark that went right for him is also quite easy to blame for whatever is going on here.
You’re still holding onto his arm without realizing it as you guide him away from the tunnel. Art Teen follows close behind. And you’re still holding onto him until you’re letting go to allow him to sit on a bench right outside the deep sea exhibit, the area’s nothing more than a dark square room with slight glowing stars on the ceiling. You realize only because he looks over at you with a frown that could melt ice caps and slightly lidded eyes that make it feel much too romantic to be touching this man. Ha! Weird weird weird. Not your place with a single customer, no matter how conventionally attractive they may be. Dude had a panic attack over a magically appearing shark, let’s not get caught up in anything else at all in this moment.
The kid reminds you of his existence by sighing and hiding his face in his hands.
“I’m sorry… I didn’t think anything would happen. He just- Sebastian saw stuff I drew and brought me here.”
You squint against the soft darkness of this room to glance between the two visitors.
“So he’s Sebastian? What’s your name? Solace?” You think it would be a little funny if they both had matching ‘S’ names.
Sebastian, apparently, does not, and jolts with his back against the bench, fighting the urge to stand up.
“Are you a stalker?” He says through gritted teeth.
“What?? No, I just heard-”
“Heard??? Eavesdropping is stalking. What is wrong with you?”
Sebastian loses the fight and stands up, tilting his jaw up in a manner far too ready to instigate something. You hold your hands up in surrender because you do not want to have any sort of fight while you’re on the clock.
“Sebastian, stop! I’ve been here a billion times, they’ve probably just heard our name from when I order food.” The kid tries to stand tall even when his voice is quiet. Odd words though. ‘our name’. So they are brothers probably.
“We’ve been here like twice. It- I-” Sebastian glares at you before something simply breaks and he just slumps back down onto the bench. It’s uncomfortable, but you’re not attached enough to the kid to take the blame for him.
You look back at Art Teen with lips pulled thin and even thinner veiled judgment. He grimaces, yanking at his sleeves while he looks past your shoulder.
“I’m Isaias.”
At least there’s the answer to that.
Now you’ve just got to deal with his brother being mad(?) at you.
“Isaias, what… happened in there? I was busy cleaning so I didn’t see how the shark got in there.” You run your fingers through your hair, watching as the kid steps slowly to sit on the bench beside Sebastian.
“It- Why would I know? I thought I-” Isaias bites his tongue suddenly and even in the dim light you can see his face get pale, “I dunno. I just came here to look at fish. That freaky shark just… I don’t know!”
There’s no reason not to be polite to this kid, but. Something. A lot, actually. About the way he said that has you hesitating.
“I meant did it swim down or did it come from the side.” You try again, giving him simpler options.
“Oh.” The boy fidgets where he sits before shrugging. You severely fight the urge to face palm, because you’re doing fine, you’re not going to get upset over something as weird as this. Sebastian has a very similar way of fidgeting awkwardly on the bench and it reminds you that you are the adult and the one with the most power in this situation.
With that power, you realize you have no clue what to do. You want to ask questions, but you’re on the clock and these are still mainly strangers.
“Nevermind.” You hide your face in your hands. You’re stumped and this really is the weirdest day ever. Daffodil can tell you what happened, you don’t need to interrogate this kid. He might not even come back after this. Though. Though, you could just tell on him and let his brother know he’s been sneaking in. But, actually there’s really no point. You’re not petty, you don’t get mad, you need to breathe in and out and keep to yourself.
See? That’s better. No mistakes this way.
Isaias clears his throat. You look at him. Sebastian looks at him too. You haven’t a clue what Isaias has to say but he stands up with undeniable determination. Makes you a little nervous now. He opens his mouth wide and talks loud.
“I don’t know you!”
…Okay.
You choke back a hiss and turn around, not wanting to get fired for seeming like a stalker.