Title: coastal

Chapter 1 of 3

Notes: Thanks to roily_rogue for the beta. Also thanks to everyone who reviewed my previous fics.

i think of Venus sinking down into the sea

Brad wasn't quite sure when it was that he started noticing that Chester kind of shimmered. Only it wasn't kind of. He shimmered, period. Blue-green, to be exact, his skin reflected blue-green and occasionally he was almost iridescent. Brad thought it was his eyes at first, but there couldn't be a problem with his eyesight if it only affected one person's appearance.

He sat on it for a couple of days, making out lists of possible explanations for this strange phenomenon. In the end he decided he wasn't losing his mind, so it had to be Chester.

and what it is to be alone and have nothing

The next time that Brad saw him, he pulled him aside. It was then that he noticed that Chester's skin felt different. It had never felt like this before. Soft, like silk, and slightly damp. Cool too, certainly cooler than any normal person should be. It wasn't an entirely unpleasant sensation, and Brad had to restrain himself from running his hands all over Chester's odd new body.

Chester was squinting at him, even more than usual, and Brad was waiting for him to snap something about his precious time being wasted, but Chester said nothing at all. He just squinted and waited. Brad cleared his throat and said, "Do you know you're kind of. Green."

"Oh," Chester said, his expression not changing one whit. "That. I always thought I was a shade of aquamarine."

"Chester." Brad glared at him and repeated. "You're green."

"I think it compliments my eyes, don't you?"

Brad considered. "Yeah, it does." He wanted to say more, but someone was calling him on his cell. It was the insurance company, and he'd been waiting for them to call all day so he held up his hand for Chester to wait a minute. "Yeah, I'm here. Hang on. Chester, can yo-"

But Chester was already backing away, and by the time Brad finished settling the problem and went searching for him, he was nowhere to be found. Brad looked for him, but everyone just shrugged vaguely, and only Joe seemed to have an inkling as to where he'd gone. "Tattoo parlor with someone from The Used," he said. "I think. Dave?" Dave only shrugged.

"Sorry, Brad."

don't know why you want to leave this space between

Mike clapped him on the shoulder after the show. "So I see you noticed that Chester's a fish."

"A what?" He was tired and cranky and had spent the entire show completely unable to concentrate because his lead singer fucking glowed under the spotlight, aqua-fucking marine, shimmer bright and radiant he didn't so much as move as he did glide, a breathtaking streaking image across the stage. And now. "A what again?"

Mike replied patiently, the grin spreading across his face, happy to spread confusion and disarray. "A fish. He's a fish, Brad. He told me you finally noticed."

"You see it too?" Strange, but he'd assumed that it was just him. He hadn't even considered that anyone might see him too. "Wait, finally? He's been like this for a while?"

"Always, apparently. But most people can't see it. Something about perception and how we only choose to see what our mind can comprehend." Mike was too damned cheerful to be having a conversation about how someone they'd both known for almost five years was a fish.

"So he's actually a fish but I couldn't see it before?"

"Yeah, from what he tells me. Ask him to show you his gills sometime. They're spectacular." He started to move off, but Brad grabbed him by the arm before he could leave.

"Wait. Why is it you could always see it, but I can only do it now? What changed? Does anyone else know?"

Mike shrugged. "I started seeing it when we were writing lyrics during the Hybrid Theory recording. He just said it happened sometimes, people start seeing. He's refused to elaborate, but I'm used to it now. And no, no one else knows except for me. And now you. It's cool though, you know. So he's green."

"Aquamarine." Brad corrected.

"Yeah, whatever."

is it easier to be alone and have nothing

Mike told him that Chester had sworn him to secrecy, and in any case, there wasn't any likelihood that anyone would believe what they couldn't see with their own eyes. Brad wondered why Chester didn't swear him to secrecy, but Chester seemed to be avoiding him nowadays, ever since that one conversation they'd had. He'd try to catch Chester after the show, but he always scurried off with one tour mate or another. Brad would catch a glimpse of him, a flash of brilliant blue-green, before he was gone.

He even woke up early one morning (and he never woke up early in the morning) to try to talk, but Chester didn't seem to appreciate the effort Brad had made in an attempt to communicate and had the audacity to be sleeping off a hangover in Jon's bus.

Mike snapped at him and called him a <i>sulky pusswad</i> after he'd accidentally deleted all the scores on their latest pointless mind-dumbing game on the playstation, and then he sighed and said, "Dude. Go talk to Chester, man. The two of you hating on one another means that he comes and bugs me sometimes, and I love him but I can only take him in small doses. Very small doses. I'm not even going to get into your atrocious behavior as of late. My fucking scores, Brad. I worked hard for those."

Brad sighed and spat out a few choice expletives. He withered under Mike's raised eyebrow though, and finally muttered something about Chester ignoring him.

"So that's it? Well, what do you expect?"

"What do you mean what do I expect? I didn't do anything."

Mike shook his head and spoke as if he were trying to educate a small child. "It's Chester, you know him. My guess is he just wants reassurance that you're okay with it."

"But I'm fine with it."

"Oh really? I couldn't tell from the way your face turns to stone whenever you look at him. My apologies for being unaware that you'd changed your "I'm okay with it" expression."

Brad wanted to smack Mike, which was rare enough as it is, but rarer still that he almost did it. Instead he tried, haltingly, to explain to Mike that Chester fucking glowed and that he needed time to get used to it, and that it wasn't as if they were together all the time that he could slowly grow accustomed to his sudden change in appearance. Outside of the two hours or so on stage or on those rare occasions when Chester wasn't partying on the other bus or Brad wasn't busy keeping the business together, they didn't see each other at all. So everytime he saw Chester, he kept expecting the old him, and instead he got this strange alien being that had skin the color of the ocean and shone when he walked. It was unnerving and terrifying and he couldn't school the expression on his face into submission quick enough.

Mike frowned, and then he said, "Maybe you just need to spend more time with him. That's how I got used to it."

you and me and everyone

It took him a while, but eventually he managed to grab hold of Chester, extracting him from the company of Snoop, who was decidedly unimpressed when Brad snapped at him in his haste to drag Chester away. "So tiny, but oh, so feisty," was what he said, or something equally embarrassing, but Brad neither had the time nor the inclination to stand there and take offense. Plus, the dude was huge. He pretty much had carte blanche to say whatever he chose to.

Chester complained all the way but allowed himself to be pulled to a relatively secure area. "What do you want, Brad," he asked grouchily when they were finally alone, rubbing at his wrist once Brad let go. Brad had to refrain from rolling his eyes. It wasn't as if he'd held on hard. But this wasn't a good way to start.

He breathed deep and flirted briefly with the speech he'd prepared, but in the end he decided to wing it. "Chester, look. I don't care if you're green. Or a fish, or whatever. You're still my friend, and I want you to stop avoiding me."

Chester narrowed his eyes at him, face hard and blank, but only said, after a pause, "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Yeah, okay."

"Oh, okay then."

That had gone easier than he'd expected it to. They went out for dinner (the first time since they'd been on Projekt Rev.), and by the end of the evening Brad had gotten used to the way Chester looked. So used that he couldn't imagine it any other way, and the old Chester seemed ugly and plain in comparison.

Chester's face flushed a delicate shade of pink under green hued cheeks. "You're staring at me," he said softly, ducking his head.

"What? Oh. Sorry." He shifted uneasily and turned away, his stomach rolling in an odd knot.

throwing fire at the sun

A number of things became clearer, since it happened. Most people couldn't see, but it didn't mean that they couldn't somehow feel it. They'd stop, and stare, and their eyes would glaze over, before they'd shake themselves and move on. He'd always attributed this to Chester's innate magnetism, that strange mixture of vulnerability and bravado that made him irresistible to everyone from grandmothers to your firmly heterosexual alpha male. But he was, objectively speaking, a skinny thing with odd features and squinty eyes, so this made an altogether surreal sort of sense.

He told Chester this the next time they were alone together, curled up on the bus watching Fight Club for the hundredth time. Chester stared at him strangely, then muttered, "I wasn't aware you thought I had ugly features."

"I didn't say that. I said. Chester." he said exasperatedly as Chester made to leave in a huff. "I think you have awesome features, okay? For someone that's a fish."

Chester scowled, but didn't leave. Instead he drew himself up and said with great effort and dignity, "I am not a fucking fish. I just have this skin, and the gills, and that's all. Otherwise, I'm one hundred percent normal."

"I know, I know. Do you breathe though them," he asked suddenly as the thought occurred to him.

Chester shrugged. "I can if i want to. But mostly it's when I swim that they're useful. Otherwise, it’s not necessary."

"Oh." That made sense. Chester would be able to swim underwater. Brad pictured him, cutting through the water at the bottom of some deep and unfathomable ocean, his lithe frame fast and free, silvery bright against the dark blue of the ocean. "So...I don't understand. Mike said that you were always like this?"

"Mike thinks that everything in this world carves itself to suit him. I never told him that." He scowled fiercely at Brad.

"Then what happened? You just woke up one day and you changed?"

Chester lowered his head and was silent for the longest time. When he finally spoke, his voice was faint and distant. "You ever wished that you were somewhere else so desperately that you could taste it? I did. And I thought. I thought that if I could just be different, that I'd escape. Only I woke up different, and nothing changed. There was no-where for me to run. But that's all in the past, right?" He smiled then, although it was brittle and sharp enough to cut.

Brad shook himself, and said slowly," You know what? I just realized what you are. You're like a hybrid. Hybrid Theory, geddit?" Chester threw a cushion at him as he dissolved into giggles, and Brad hit him lightly back with the remote control. He grabbed Chester's hands before he could retaliate, and then they were wrestling and struggling to gain the upper hand, and he'd missed his, missed it even though Chester felt different now, because he was still the same. The struggle was brief and unsatisfactory; he lost as usual, and ended up on his back, breathless and sore, trapped under Chester's hard, unyielding thighs. Chester sat up straight and crowed.

"And you're a ninety pound weakling, Brad. And your jokes are fucking lame."

Brad laughed, and then he grabbed Chester by the nape of his neck and pulled him down, wrapping his arms around his shoulders. Chester sighed and relaxed against him, and Brad could feel his body, familiar and yet not, an odd protrusion pressed up next to his ribs. Chester's gills. Brad slid his hand down Chester's back and hugged him close.

there’s a river that ties you to me

"I had a dream," Chester said one night. They were in Chester's bus, and he should have gotten off to join the other one, but he'd decided to stay instead and now they were on the road again and not stopping for at least a few hours.

Brad crossed his legs lotus style and said sagely, "Tell me what your dream was, child."

Chester threw him a withering glance. "I'm not sure. It was kind of boring. I think it involved sheep."

"Hmmm...that presents a problem. Dreaming of sheep, even in a non-sexual manner, usually implies some deeply hidden desires for illicit pleasures of the flesh." Brad pursed his lips and said disapprovingly. "I would recommend you stay away from livestock lest you give in to temptation."

Chester only snorted, mostly unamused. His hair fell over his forehead as he moved, slithered and the muted light didn't dim the way he glowed at all. "You're staring at me again."

"What? Sorry. It's just that. You're so different now."

Chester shifted uncomfortably, moving slightly away from him. "I'm the same person I was yesterday, and the day before. The only one different is you."

Brad wanted to say, No, no you're not. But Chester was right. The only one that had changed was him. So he leaned forward and kissed him. Chester gasped in what might have been surprise, but he didn't try to break away. His mouth opened under Brad's, softly sweet. In contrast to his skin, his mouth was hot and wet, tasting of the ocean and dark places that sang of untold secrets. Brad moaned and pulled him closer, wanting to drown, wanting to fall. When Chester broke the kiss, they were both breathing heavily and trembling, just slightly. Chester's fingers came to rest fanned across Brad's face, silver light like a veil. "I only wanted you to see who I really was," he said softly.

Brad kissed him once again, swallowing his lips under his own. "I know. I see now."

i put my hands up, lay my weapons down

He'd thought it would be peculiar, but it wasn't. Chester fit under him perfectly, as he'd always known he would. His skin was cool except for where Brad touched it, where it heated and flushed a dizzying hue of striking colors. Brad pressed his mouth against the side of Chester's neck, tasting brine and the faint hints of expensive cologne. Chester's pulse jumped, flutter fast, and he shivered and bucked his hips against Brad's. Raising himself up on his knees, he spread Chester's legs apart, then slid his hands up Chester's hips to Chester's gills, three rows on each side of his body, faint raised slits mostly, that were hard and almost leathery. Chester's reaction was immediate and startling. He gasped and arched his back, grabbing hold of Brad's arms and pulling him down against him. "Fuck, Brad." he gasped, his grip tight and unyielding.

Brad pushed him back on the bed, pressing his palms flat against Chester's collarbone. Chester let go, finally, but only to grab hold of Brad's cock, his fingers desperately guiding him forward. Brad was already wet, slick with pre-come, and he breathed, once, twice, before thrusting in hard and fast, making Chester shimmy and jerk his body against the headboard. Brad blinked sweat out of his eyes and searched, found a rhythm, hard and fast and driving, spreading pleasure like a wave across his spine. Chester moaned and wrapped his legs around Brad's waist, his body shimmering green-blue and wild beautiful, leaving silver streaks on Brad's skin wherever he touched.

Brad could hear the ocean, a beat far away and yet right next to him, roaring in his ears that drowned out everything else. He shuddered, and then he came. Chester made a tiny high pitched keening sound, and then he came too. Brad collapsed on top of him, sex and sweat smearing both their bodies as their breathing returned slowly to normal. Chester sighed and he patted the side of Brad's head absently with one hand, and Brad turned to kiss his palm, and didn't say a word when Chester wept, great wracking sobs drenched in grief and sorrow.

Blood is a river, ties you to me,

Blood is a river, ties everyone.

Blood is a river, ties you to me,

Blood is a river, ties everyone.

lyrics by heather nova