Hello! My name is Cecil. I make art sometimes, and you may recognize me (or you should recognize me) as your local Night Vale radio host. 📻 !! I am probably older than you are, but I do get a few surprises every now and then. I am starting this blog because I have been told over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again that I share too much of my personal life on my broadcast, and if I am so desperate for strangers to know everything about me, at least post it on ther internet. That's the modern, cool way of giving away personal information!
Of course, Ill try not to do too much of that, but it's hard to help myself! Also, I heard that you can send people questions in a little mail box on this app -- so send away!
It seems to be very awkward to end things on this app. In conversation, and on the radio, it is much easier. I suppose I'll get the hang of it but for now...
Matt Hooper/Martin Brody, 1,167 words, Jaws (1975)
Crossposted on Ao3
Thank you to my interns (The first one died while I was writing this, Rest In Peace, condolences... ehhhh, whatever.) for helping me edit and publish this.
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 was just like that first night. the "boating accident".
Silence pressed into them like aggressive wind.
"I love sharks." Hooper let the words fall out of his mouth, children's letter block toys pressing into the sand and staying there. It sounded like any other fun fact someone would tell you in casual conversation, it sounded like a widower telling you about his past
Flowers swam 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 looked out to them as they swam, as they did what he and Brody were 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 didn't particularly have a favorite anything in terms of the marine. It felt bad to be scared of something he wasn't ever scared of before. Was he scared before?
"Why?" Hooper stretched out and laid down on his stomach, facing brody. He was a little closer and it made 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 sunk 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 went on 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 twisted himself onto his back.
"How do you think you're going to do?" The water lapped at the sand, aggressive as the gnashing jaw of a shark. "When you get back to work, I mean."
"Bad." Hooper took one final sip and crushed 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 chuckled. "Yeah, me too." He picked the can out of the sand and put 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 replaced the empty air in Hooper's hand with another beer.
"I dunno!" He gestured 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 couldn't exactly see his face but he could 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 said 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 cut him off with a hand on his shoulder and he knew, knew what was being insinuated. Something he wanted that he knew he shouldn't have. Brody knew so much in just that one moment that he wanted 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 put his glasses on, Brody had a faint, withering thought that he was cuter with them on.
"I'll…" Words writhed out of his mouth in the same way a reptile might. "I'll call you, one day. Hopefully."
Hooper took his can out of the sand, standing up unsteadily, laughing like he did that night on the boat. Brody hated to add another scar to his life.
"No." He sighed, still just almost laughing. "No you won't."
Great question! I love all kinds of movies, let me tell you the things that people can come up with are amazing. Creativity is one of the bests things about being.. well, a being!
It changes all the time, but currently I've been rewatching the Jaws movies, I was right there in the theatre when the first one came out and and it was truly an unforgettable experience.
Entirely innacurate to shark behavior, sure! But unforgettable.
I've actually been writing some fanfiction about the characters of that one! ;)
I also really like documentaries like Saw and American Psycho. Y'know, real light and fluffy stuff to eat your lunch to.
Carlos has recently opened a whole new world for me by making me watch these god-awful, disturbing, terrifying things called "romcoms". I Love romcoms. Have you seen The Notebook? Really gory.
I couldn't thank you enough to offer me a place to stay while I search for me friend, their name is Noren, I keep trying to understand strange message left after the smiling God speak, but it is very hard. For now I believe they are message send from Noren to get help.
( Also do not listen to a word said by the smiling God, only lies come out of those multiple smiling mouths )
-non-smiling anon
I am always open to helping people!
I have seen glimpses of those messages, too, but I haven't been able to understand any of them. They're so... garbled.
But I assume you know Noren better than I do and can understand this garbled language.
I don't listen to that smiling "God" anyways, don't worry. • -) (Is a smiley face insensitive in this scenario? Let me know.)
Hello night vale citizen, I seek refuge into your city as an ex-dessert bluff citizen because I have realized how the smiling God ( @welcome-listeners-to-night-vale ) kidnapped one of my friends and I try to help them. I know how our cities have always been rival and even enemies but I seek refuge from a fate worse than death, would you help me ?
Non-smiling anon
Hello! I am very sorry to hear one of your friends has been kidnapped. Desert bluffs... Is definitely a place. But kidnapping is wrong no matter the town, unless initiated by a vague yet menacing government agency. As a citizen of Night Vale, I am certainly not fond of this smiling god. I am fond of no gods, as of this current moment.
I'm glad that you're contacting me, Non-Smiling. Nice name! I want nothing more than to help you and nothing more then to get you out of that wretched place called... called...
Oh I can't even type it!! Blegh!!
I can't say that my fellow citizens will be incredibly willing to accept you, but I will see to it that you have a place to say while this smiling god rampages unchecked through your life.
Cordial? Cordial after you ripped my family and my friends from their homes and from their jobs? Cordial after you caused a war? Cordial? Cordial that you possessed and ruined and devastated what could have been an okay (yet still stupid. of course) town? Cordial after all you've done to us, to everyone you've come across? Cordial?
I'll never be cordial with you and I will not smile in your presence. And you have a very optimistic mindset about having an unresolvable existence. You have an unprecedently optimistic mindset, it seems.
And I do not know why we are speaking in coloured text, so I will stop. I had to ask Carlos to help me with it and he is getting frustrated.
Hello night vale citizen, I seek refuge into your city as an ex-dessert bluff citizen because I have realized how the smiling God ( @welcome-listeners-to-night-vale ) kidnapped one of my friends and I try to help them. I know how our cities have always been rival and even enemies but I seek refuge from a fate worse than death, would you help me ?
Non-smiling anon
Hello! I am very sorry to hear one of your friends has been kidnapped. Desert bluffs... Is definitely a place. But kidnapping is wrong no matter the town, unless initiated by a vague yet menacing government agency. As a citizen of Night Vale, I am certainly not fond of this smiling god. I am fond of no gods, as of this current moment.
I'm glad that you're contacting me, Non-Smiling. Nice name! I want nothing more than to help you and nothing more then to get you out of that wretched place called... called...
Oh I can't even type it!! Blegh!!
I can't say that my fellow citizens will be incredibly willing to accept you, but I will see to it that you have a place to say while this smiling god rampages unchecked through your life.
