Blackened Tide (part one)
Pairings: Keith/Lance (eventual)
Summary: One night in the mouth of a volcano was all it took to change Keith’s life forever.
A.N.: An H2O: Just Add Water AU in honor of mermay, nostalgia, and my lack of self control. This is my first VLD fic, so I hope I do ok! Klance will happen eventually, just hang in there. This chapter is more of the ‘origin story’, if that makes sense.
Read the whole chapter on Ao3!
At fourteen, everyone thinks they’re ready for the world. Invincible, able to take on anything and think for themselves. Keith was certainly not an exception.
For as long as he could remember, Keith had always wanted to be an explorer. Explorers didn’t show fear. No matter how steep the incline or how far down the chasm dropped. Whatever fear Keith had was dropped into that pit, and he’d sprint a great distance before it hit the bottom.
He felt that emotion once, and never wanted to feel it again. So when his brother had warned him to stay away from that volcano, he didn’t listen.
That same night, Keith prepared. He had his goggles around his neck, waterproof LED flashlight in his pocket, even his sneakers and swim trunks were on as he got under the covers of his bed and pretended to sleep.
He waited for Shiro’s soft snores to fill the hall before making his way out his bedroom window with silent movements, closing it with the softest sound he could manage.
His bike took him as far as it could on the asphalt roads and gravel trail leading to the volcano base. When he arrived, he found a beach. One he’d never seen or heard of. It was small, probably no more than 20 meters in width. Black sand covered the expanse of the space that abruptly ended at the foot of the obsidian cliffside. The smoothest, cleanest sand that Keith has ever seen or felt.
From the looks of it, most people avoided the beach. Signs were posted around the entrance, warning about the dangerous animals in the water, but it didn’t seem like the water was unfit to swim in quality-wise. Keith shined his flashlight out to the calm water. Buoys with cables connecting them bobbed in the water. No large water vehicles could get past them, except for kayakers and paddle boarders, if they were brave enough to go into the bay.
Well, if those imaginary kayakers weren’t, Keith certainly was. He didn’t settle for getting his feet wet, he pressed his goggles against his eyes and kicked his shoes off in the direction of his toppled bike and ran into the water. He dove down towards the sand floor and let his flashlight lead the way.
The only animals he saw were slender sharks no longer than the length of his hand and pearly, jellyfish here and there. The coral reefs had urchins on them, but they were easily avoidable. From what Keith saw, there was nothing dangerous here.
He swam out to one of the cables, breaking the surface and resting his arms and upper back on it to observe the lights of his town.
Keith loved where he lived. Every night was a colorful light show that stretched for miles and reflected like jewels in the water. The edge of the city granted access to the clearest water for swimming. However, if there was one thing he’d change about it, it would be to have the city go completely dark in the night. He could see the stars, but they were faint glimpses that dotted the sky on the nights where the sky was the most visible. He wanted the view where he could see the cosmic dust that made the Milky Way. The way his brother talked about them made the stars seem like the next best place to the water. But he supposed he should be grateful for the artificial lights now, as they were his only source of light in the night since the moon was behind the clouds.
The tide lowered as the night went on, and Keith followed it with his eyes when he wasn't swimming laps from buoy to buoy. He followed it further down, watched it reveal finer sand underneath. As the water receded, Keith discovered just how far the beach curved down, and how quick the tide revealed it. He’s been there for quite some time, but surely no longer than a few hours.
Keith took in the new view of the beach and his home from the far lower point. The reflection at low tide wasn’t as prominent as the high tide but it was just as beautiful. The cliff, even though the tide only went down about ten feet, it seemed to have grown by twenty or thirty. He blinked a few times and rubbed his drowsiness away before he saw it: a cavern mouth at the water’s edge.