Under the Sea ⇔ Cashton ✓

Just Keep On Breathing And Live

Nothing particularly interesting happens for another week. Calum continues to swim down in the ocean during school hours, Ashton continues to blatantly ignore Calum, and Michael continues to ask Calum if he wants to surfing, the latter results in Calum letting Michael down day after day. Honestly, the entire routine had begun to bring Calum down a little.

It's not that he doesn't enjoy either one of his two vastly different and complicated lives. He does. He loves being down in the ocean and having the water on his skin, but he also loves being on land and hanging out with his cheerful best friend. And he knows, eventually, he's not going to have both.

But even so, after this uninteresting week passes, Calum is swimming down in the ocean to meet with his under-the-sea friends and mother, and he is greeted with the warm welcome of Ashton's hard and angry eyes. The merman has his arms crosses, absentmindedly pacing around a nervous huddle of other mermaids, and Calum stops in his tracks when he sees them. Everyone looks on the verge of crying, as though their favorite goldfish had died or something, and Calum's not sure how to handle it. He wonders subconsciously if when mermaid's cry, their tears just mix in with the water and no one can see them.

"You," Ashton practically growls. "I've already told you that you don't belong down here."

"Oh, Ashton," Calum's mother protests. "Calm down."

Ashton ignores her, which gets on Calum's nerves, but he stays quiet. "I'm stressed, okay? Because Luke got caught in a net last week and it's only a matter of time before someone else does, too. Nets are bad news. You wouldn't understand, because you're fucking human."

Each time Ashton over-enunciated his words, Calum flinched a little. But at the same time, Calum also really couldn't give a fuck about how Ashton apparently hated his human guts because frankly, Calum was going to keep coming down here regardless of whether Ashton approved or not. If he didn't, he would die. So it doesn't leave him much of a choice.

But under all that not-giving-a-fuck, Calum also worried a little about his mother getting caught in a net, or blissfully oblivious Luke getting caught again. So he said, "Maybe I can go on land and talk to a few fisherman about clearing any nets?"

Calum was pretty proud of the idea. He thought it over a second during the brief silence that followed and smiled a little, figuring he could actually maybe help.

So he wasn't prepared when Ashton snapped.

"No! No, you will not. Can't you wrap your ignorant human mind around the fact that that would just cause more destruction? Wouldn't they be curious as to why they can't have nets over here?"

Calum shrunk back a little as Ashton yelled. Everyone behind him watched silently. You could hear a pin drop. Or, a shell.

"They can't find out about us. You have no idea how awful that would be for us, and it would be your fault!"

Calum curls his hands into fists, growing angry. "Why can't you just trust me already? It's been an entire month since I found out about all this and nothing bad has happened! What the hell is your problem?"

Calum is red in the face, almost quivering with anger. He wants so badly for Ashton to say something else just so he could have a reason to yell again, but Ashton just turns and storms off, disappearing behind one of the thick rock walls. Calum frowns. The obnoxiously beautiful corals decorating the rock wall seem to mock him.

Luke and Joy rush over, spilling apologies for Ashton as fast as their mermaid mouths can muster, but Calum isn't listening. He's still mad as hell, and he wants badly to go and punch the judgemental dude in the face. But judging how Ashton revealed to him his terrifyingly advanced set of weapons just a few days before, Calum knew better than to chase him down.