I'm Not Much of a Fisherman
Jun. 4th, 2026 01:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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deantestineswritingTitle: I'm Not Much of a Fisherman || Ao3
Fandom: Welcome to Night Vale, Jaws
Rating: PG
Ship: Martin Brody/Matt Hooper
Warnings: Drinking, Mountain Believers
Word Count: 1,308
Whats in here?: Drunk kisses, Bittersweet Ending
Summary: A night on the beach, watching the flowers swim and the non-existent moon glow.
Darkness. The same conditions in which the first girl died, Brody watches the tides shift. It's all dark, a navy blue or a deep black. The moon is incomprehensible, unreal. Specks of white turn in from the foam.
Hooper is next to him.
Beers in hands, they sip in sync. The night looks over them and they came out here to swim but they wont. They both knew they wouldn't but they wore swim trunks and a wetsuit anyway. The night is just like that first night. The "boating accident".
Silence presses into them like aggressive wind.
"I love sharks." Hooper lets the words fall out of his mouth, children's letter block toys pressing into the sand and staying there. It sounds like any other fun fact someone would tell you in casual conversation, it soundslike a widower telling you about his past
Flowers swim past in the dark of the night, flapping their petals like wings through the water. Pink and yellow, blue and white, stems all green, wading.
"Do you have a favorite flower?" Brody asks.
Hooper looks out to them as they swim, as they do what he and Brody will not. Would not.
"I've always likes daisies." A sip from his beer can. "Bellis Perenis, that's their scientific name. They're common swimmers, but they're elegant. They were the first flower ever discovered in the ocean."
"Hmm, I like sunflowers." Brody doesn't particularly have a favorite anything in terms of the marine. It feels bad to be scared of something he wasn't ever scared of before. Was he scared before?
"Why?" Hooper stretches out and lays down on his stomach, facing brody. He'as a little closer and it makes Brody's heart skip, his very own clay and straw and… whatever else is in there. No one really knows. There are no human scientists on Amity island, just fish scientists. As in scientists that study fish not scientists that are fish. There's only one of those in the world and he lives in Europe.
"Sunflowers are my wife's favorite." Something sinks behind Matt's face. Not in any typical, normal way where a friends face will melt off as you talk to them. That would be easier to fix than the snap or twist or break that happens behind Hooper's eyes, one unreal. One metaphorical. It was always interesting when known information could cause something like that. Reminders always hurt, even the 1000th time.
"Mm." Hooper twists himself onto his back.
"How do you think you're going to do?" The water laps at the sand, aggressive as the gnashing jaw of a shark. "When you get back to work, I mean."
"Bad." Hooper takes one final sip and crushes his can up, throwing it at the small bag they brought. He missed. "Bad at first, then okay. I think I'll probably stagnate at okay for the rest of my life."
Brody chuckles. "Yeah, me too." He picks the can out of the sand and puts it in the makeshift basketball hoop. "Ellen thinks we should move out to the mountains."
"She believes in mountains? I didn't take her for the type."
"I think she's joking. She's just gotten into decorating the house again, embroidering on all the walls. Shes painting our pipes yellow."
Hooper nods.
"The kids… They're doing really well for what they saw, y'know. They've gotten into a bit of a bird phase."
"Kids do that. I have a nephew, my brother took him out to see an opera. He didn't transform back from a bird for weeks."
"What is opera?" Brody replaces the empty air in Hooper's hand with another beer.
"I dunno!" He gestures wildly before accepting it. Their fingers touch. Invisible and nonexistent residue remains where there was once contact.
"Martin, I've been thinking…" Hooper rolls the unopened can around in his hand. Brody can't exactly see his face but he can picture the shift in it just from the tone of his voice. "I know you don't like the water much, I know and.. and I know you aren't exactly qualified." Rambling, speaking what shouldn't be.
"Hooper-" Brody says it like a warning.
"I want.. Whenever it is that I go back-"
"I can't-"
"I want you to join me. There are things you can do, I just.. I know I won't be doing good." He still doesn't open the can. "I want to be doing bad with you. Just for a little while, maybe a month-"
"Hooper." Brody cuts him off with a hand on his shoulder and he knows, knows what's being insinuated. Something he wants that he knew he shouldn't. Brody kows so much in just that one moment that he wants to forget it all. "I… You know I'm not much of a fisherman."
"You don't have to be." Hooper makes upside down eye contact with him, impossible to break away from. Impossible, Brody just can't rip his eyes away.
There are a lot of things Brody can't do.
He can't let those eyes down but he can't rip his life up into shreds for them either. He can't stand to see what expression Hooper will form his whole self into if he says no but he can't do anything to prevent it. He can't go. He can't not.
"I…" Can'ts are a hard thing to say to people. Harder to a family than an almost stranger. "I can't, Hooper."
Hooper looks up into the sky like it could swallow him out of this situation. Maybe it'll open up, eat him whole. Take him away. Maybe he doesn't want that.
"I know, Martin." He opens the can and then places it down on the sand. "I'm sorry. I'm… I'm sorry, but, god I just.."
He takes off his glasses, sitting up and turning towards Brody. Brody doesn't understand, or he pretends he doesn't, pretends to pretend. He doesn't want to understand that look cause it means he knows it, that feeling.
Brody isn't sure whether he initiated the kiss or if it was Hooper or if it was some invisible cupids arrow. But it was initiated and it almost hurt, emotions poured in through Hooper's lips, like an infection. It crept into him, the idea of never doing this again. He felt it in his mouth, his cheeks, his head, his neck. He felt it in his whole body. The kiss couldn't have lasted any more than 10 seconds.
It felt like a lifetime. Maybe it was, time does that.
Hooper puts his glasses on, Brody has a faint, withering thought that he's cuter with them on.
"I'll…" Words writhe out of his mouth in the same way a reptile might. "I'll call you, one day. Hopefully."
Hooper takes his can out of the sand, standing up unsteadily, laughing like he did that night on the boat. Brody hates to add another scar to his life.
"No." He sighs, still just almost laughing. "No you won't."
And he won't.
Fandom: Welcome to Night Vale, Jaws
Rating: PG
Ship: Martin Brody/Matt Hooper
Warnings: Drinking, Mountain Believers
Word Count: 1,308
Whats in here?: Drunk kisses, Bittersweet Ending
Summary: A night on the beach, watching the flowers swim and the non-existent moon glow.
Darkness. The same conditions in which the first girl died, Brody watches the tides shift. It's all dark, a navy blue or a deep black. The moon is incomprehensible, unreal. Specks of white turn in from the foam.
Hooper is next to him.
Beers in hands, they sip in sync. The night looks over them and they came out here to swim but they wont. They both knew they wouldn't but they wore swim trunks and a wetsuit anyway. The night is just like that first night. The "boating accident".
Silence presses into them like aggressive wind.
"I love sharks." Hooper lets the words fall out of his mouth, children's letter block toys pressing into the sand and staying there. It sounds like any other fun fact someone would tell you in casual conversation, it soundslike a widower telling you about his past
Flowers swim past in the dark of the night, flapping their petals like wings through the water. Pink and yellow, blue and white, stems all green, wading.
"Do you have a favorite flower?" Brody asks.
Hooper looks out to them as they swim, as they do what he and Brody will not. Would not.
"I've always likes daisies." A sip from his beer can. "Bellis Perenis, that's their scientific name. They're common swimmers, but they're elegant. They were the first flower ever discovered in the ocean."
"Hmm, I like sunflowers." Brody doesn't particularly have a favorite anything in terms of the marine. It feels bad to be scared of something he wasn't ever scared of before. Was he scared before?
"Why?" Hooper stretches out and lays down on his stomach, facing brody. He'as a little closer and it makes Brody's heart skip, his very own clay and straw and… whatever else is in there. No one really knows. There are no human scientists on Amity island, just fish scientists. As in scientists that study fish not scientists that are fish. There's only one of those in the world and he lives in Europe.
"Sunflowers are my wife's favorite." Something sinks behind Matt's face. Not in any typical, normal way where a friends face will melt off as you talk to them. That would be easier to fix than the snap or twist or break that happens behind Hooper's eyes, one unreal. One metaphorical. It was always interesting when known information could cause something like that. Reminders always hurt, even the 1000th time.
"Mm." Hooper twists himself onto his back.
"How do you think you're going to do?" The water laps at the sand, aggressive as the gnashing jaw of a shark. "When you get back to work, I mean."
"Bad." Hooper takes one final sip and crushes his can up, throwing it at the small bag they brought. He missed. "Bad at first, then okay. I think I'll probably stagnate at okay for the rest of my life."
Brody chuckles. "Yeah, me too." He picks the can out of the sand and puts it in the makeshift basketball hoop. "Ellen thinks we should move out to the mountains."
"She believes in mountains? I didn't take her for the type."
"I think she's joking. She's just gotten into decorating the house again, embroidering on all the walls. Shes painting our pipes yellow."
Hooper nods.
"The kids… They're doing really well for what they saw, y'know. They've gotten into a bit of a bird phase."
"Kids do that. I have a nephew, my brother took him out to see an opera. He didn't transform back from a bird for weeks."
"What is opera?" Brody replaces the empty air in Hooper's hand with another beer.
"I dunno!" He gestures wildly before accepting it. Their fingers touch. Invisible and nonexistent residue remains where there was once contact.
"Martin, I've been thinking…" Hooper rolls the unopened can around in his hand. Brody can't exactly see his face but he can picture the shift in it just from the tone of his voice. "I know you don't like the water much, I know and.. and I know you aren't exactly qualified." Rambling, speaking what shouldn't be.
"Hooper-" Brody says it like a warning.
"I want.. Whenever it is that I go back-"
"I can't-"
"I want you to join me. There are things you can do, I just.. I know I won't be doing good." He still doesn't open the can. "I want to be doing bad with you. Just for a little while, maybe a month-"
"Hooper." Brody cuts him off with a hand on his shoulder and he knows, knows what's being insinuated. Something he wants that he knew he shouldn't. Brody kows so much in just that one moment that he wants to forget it all. "I… You know I'm not much of a fisherman."
"You don't have to be." Hooper makes upside down eye contact with him, impossible to break away from. Impossible, Brody just can't rip his eyes away.
There are a lot of things Brody can't do.
He can't let those eyes down but he can't rip his life up into shreds for them either. He can't stand to see what expression Hooper will form his whole self into if he says no but he can't do anything to prevent it. He can't go. He can't not.
"I…" Can'ts are a hard thing to say to people. Harder to a family than an almost stranger. "I can't, Hooper."
Hooper looks up into the sky like it could swallow him out of this situation. Maybe it'll open up, eat him whole. Take him away. Maybe he doesn't want that.
"I know, Martin." He opens the can and then places it down on the sand. "I'm sorry. I'm… I'm sorry, but, god I just.."
He takes off his glasses, sitting up and turning towards Brody. Brody doesn't understand, or he pretends he doesn't, pretends to pretend. He doesn't want to understand that look cause it means he knows it, that feeling.
Brody isn't sure whether he initiated the kiss or if it was Hooper or if it was some invisible cupids arrow. But it was initiated and it almost hurt, emotions poured in through Hooper's lips, like an infection. It crept into him, the idea of never doing this again. He felt it in his mouth, his cheeks, his head, his neck. He felt it in his whole body. The kiss couldn't have lasted any more than 10 seconds.
It felt like a lifetime. Maybe it was, time does that.
Hooper puts his glasses on, Brody has a faint, withering thought that he's cuter with them on.
"I'll…" Words writhe out of his mouth in the same way a reptile might. "I'll call you, one day. Hopefully."
Hooper takes his can out of the sand, standing up unsteadily, laughing like he did that night on the boat. Brody hates to add another scar to his life.
"No." He sighs, still just almost laughing. "No you won't."
And he won't.
