Chapter Text
Working in the Administration was like having lives being sucked out of souls. At least, that’s what it was like for Jay.
He had always imagined that he would’ve done something extraordinary in his past, like build human wings, travel to the Moon, or maybe fight Sky Pirates—which is totally impractical because Pirates love the sea, just like him.
Or he likes to believe he would love the sea, because the closest he’s ever seen it is through a digital screen.
And the furthest he’s ever gotten to experiencing the sea is through the hard water gushing from the tap in the break room.
The ebbing and flowing of each precise drip before it splatters onto the metallic sides of the sink. It’s so refreshing, which is why he’s certain he’ll love the sea.
“That or the sound of nothing but the waves. No more ruckus.” He whispers to himself, tightening his grip around his coffee. A coffee that was now turning cold from his lack of attention.
The break room’s empty. No agents in sight and Jay had planned for it to be this way. Over the past few months, he meticulously noted when there was a rise in workers rushing towards the room, in need of a break, and when there was no one in sight.
He couldn’t bear to sit around for another half an hour listening to a story an agent spewed out that had no plot.
The room was empty.
Until a man busted in, breath heavy and running the silence and his trousers rolled up, displaying his sweaty body hair for all of the Administration to witness.
“We’ve captured it!” Someone else shouts—most likely the other agent returning from a mission—before rushing into the room.
The word that spikes Jay's curiosity is the rise of ambiguity. It’s very rare that you hear an agent call something, or someone, “it” in a place like this.
“Captured what?” Jay speaks up, narrowing his eyes at the beaming man.
“Oh Agent Walker! I didn’t see you there. Me and Agent Nefarious just captured a sea creature.” The agent with sweaty body hair on display answers, pointing towards the other loud one.
“Who?” Jay narrows his eyes, peering towards the man.
“Agent Nef-”
“No. Who? What sea creature?” He shakes his head, cutting the agent off.
“This creature, made entirely out of water. God, it was a one heck of a beauty.” The man grins, far too cockily for a beginner.
“Where is it now?”
“Locked in some box filled with water.”
“Where?” He presses with urgency. Which is considered odd for him, because Agent Walker is known for investigating the items others bring in.
Agent Walker isn’t known for even caring about what missions others were assigned to or completed. But this one is different.
“Uh, it should be just through those double doors. Unless someone’s moved it already.” He adds, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly as Jay brushes past him, with little care if he bumps into the other man.
Hastily, he pushes the doors open, eyes frantically searching the room until it falls onto a green container filled to the brim with water. A container, the same width as his desk and as high as his desk chair. A container with a green lid, holding water.
Only water.
“Who the hell is giving missions to these people?” Jay sneers, turning his back on the box and rolling his eyes.
Agents are being given jobs to act like lunatics and waste other people’s time and people are actually buying this crap?
“What did you say?”
“I said, who the hell is giving missions to these Agents? They’re crazy! Bringing back a tub of water and saying there’s a creature in it. I mean they must be deprived of sleep or just human senses!” He shouts back, harshly and impulsively waving his arms in the air like he was playing a key role in the movie, Jaws.
“Creature?”
“Yeah, they said there was some water…” He pauses, turning around to try and find the person responding to him. His eyes scan the empty room, with shelves stocked with boxes—most likely full of paperwork—but no one else in sight other than that container.
Only this time the container with water, had brightening blue circles—shaped eerily similar to eyes—piercing through, fixated on the man in the suit. “Are you the...?”
“The?”
“Sea thing?”
“I... don't know, but I am the sea.”
“You’re the sea?”
“Yes. And what are you?"
“Agent Walker.”
“You're an Agent Walker?”
“Jay Walker. My name is Jay Walker.”
“Hello, Jay Walker.”
She tilts her head upwards, with the watery ends of what seems to be a ponytail dropping from behind her head.
She looks so much like… A real woman. A beautiful woman, with watery eyelashes that flutter shut as he gawks at her, lips that are pursed slightly, bangs that dangle above her eyebrows and a figure that was specifically crafted.
A blue woman and that seems to waver in the air. As if she’s using all of her physical strength to maintain this form.
“What's your name?”
She tilts her head, letting her bangs flicker above her squinted eyes. “I don't know. I can't remember.”
“If you're the sea, how did you get stuck in this box?”
She quickly cuts the rest of his thoughts off. “I'm not stuck.”
“You're not?” He furrows his eyebrows, boldly questioning her.
“No. I was curious.” She casually responds, as if being trapped in a container and brought to a storage room was more interesting than what was lurking in the sea.
And perhaps it was, for her.
“You made the wrong call. How are you going to escape?” Agent Walker folds his arms, examining how the lady—sea?—pokes the container lid.
“I’m not stuck.”
“You’ve already said that.”
“And I meant it. I’m choosing to be here.”
“Why?” He beckoned a reasonable response, raising an eyebrow incredulously. All Jay’s ever wanted was to be anywhere but here.
“Why what?”
“Why would you choose to be here? You could be anywhere and you chose here?” He gestures to their surrounding, sighing as the boxes of paperwork only seem to be mocking his current situation—he has nowhere to go, but here.
“It looked interesting.”
“This looked interesting? This place is the antonym of interesting in the Dictionary.”
“They looked interesting.”
“Who? The Agents?”
“If that’s what they were, then yes.”
He scoffs, shaking his head at her innocence. “That’s the weirdest thing anyone could admit, and I’m talking to the sea right now.”
She stares at him, blankly, nothing slipping from her watery lips. Only her bright blue eyes fixated on the agent, standing in front of her, with a hand on his hip.
“So… You don’t have a name?” He prods, elongating the ‘o’ too much to be depicted as anything but awkward.
“Should I?”
“Yeah. Everyone has a name.”
“Oh.”
“Okay, what’s your species?”
“Species?”
“What are you?”
“The sea.”
“I know you’re the sea, but what are you really?”
“Uhm, the sea.”
“Are you like the goddess of the sea? Do you command it?”
“I don’t think I’m a goddess.” She answers, unsure of herself.
“You look like one.” He rapidly slips out, biting his lips a tad too late to contain himself.
“I do?”
Roll with it.
“Yep.” He nods, with confidence that bubbled within him mere seconds ago.
“Have you seen many goddesses before?”
“Nope. Just you.”
“Then how do you know I look like one?”
“It was a compliment.”
“Oh.” She tilts her head away, and Jay swears that she’s blushing, but she’s see-through—and blue. “Thank you. You.. look like a goddess too.”
“Uh… Thanks..?” He squeaks out, earning a wince in response from himself.
Not a natural at flirting. Or choosing who to flirt with.
A muffled voice breaks the silence between the two. “Just through these doors!”
Jay turns back towards her, watching how she innocently analyses his look of distress. Not every agent would be as curious as him, and not every agent would be as respectful.
“You need to leave. Now.” He states, eyes flickering from her confused expression towards the door as the muffled sounds become more coherent.
“What’s wrong?”
“They’ll lock you up or do something else if they find you here.” He rushes towards the container, lifting the lid and allowing herself to push into the air.
Drops of water splash onto his freckled cheeks, some getting soaked onto his crinkled shirt and onto his neat tie.
“Who?”
Jay points towards the doors, chucking the container towards the side before begging for her to follow his warnings. “Those agents. Leave.”
“What about you?” She paints a look of worry across her liquid face, which Jay flinches at—he must’ve been hallucinating it, or maybe it was the lighting.
“I’ll be fine. I work here. Hurry.”
“I-”
The voices grow louder, and footsteps are now echoing from the sides of the wall as they increase in intensity.
“Go.” He snaps back at her, much more harshly than intended.
Her face plunges back into the water. The water splashes, until it stills with the rings of the waves stirring into nothing. He’s tempted to ask, to call her back because now he’s missing those glowing eyes.
But he can’t. He can’t because the doors are now opening, and Jay’s biggest concern is his escape route.
Briskly, he peers around the room and finally lands on another door, surrounded by boxes, hiding in the corner.
The doors are halfway open, before he’s pushing those exit doors open racing out and into an empty hallway with piercing bright lights questioning his every move.
His mind is still tainted with the sea. The goddess, but he’s at work.
Right. Work to do.
The paperwork for an update on the realm re-assignment department is due.
Trudging back to his desk, Jay glides a finger across white dividers, finally noticing the lack of colour in the workplace. All white. In some corners, there was a dull grey or a darkening black.
He couldn’t see any blue. He’s never noticed the lack of blue before.
Yet every time he closed his eyes, he could vividly see blue. Blue lips. Blue eyes. Blue hair. Blue everything.
He spent the rest of his day thinking about her. The goddess of the sea. A beauty he hadn’t thought he would ever see, yet maybe this showed that his life wasn’t as boring as he thought.
Yet there she was. In a container, in a dimly lit storage room whilst he was at work. Working in the most mundane office ever known—which wasn’t many because he hadn’t been anywhere else but his apartment and the Administration.
She plagued his mind. Her confused, innocent, blank looks. Lips that made him flush. See-through eyes that lit up the room—literally.
The sea was beautiful.
He could only dream of visiting her again, in his dreams, and that he did when he fell asleep.
When he awoke, she was still on his mind.
When he took a shower, she was there pooling beside him. He could almost reach out to hear and feel how soft her hands were. They would be damp, he assumed. If he could touch her that was.
When he was brewing a coffee, she was there near the sink. He fell so far into his hallucination of her, another agent had to turn off the tap before he flooded the break room.
When he spilt his new cup of water, she was there, bubbling from the spilt water and swirling into her form. Except this time she opened her mouth and spoke.
She hadn’t done that before in his imagination.
“Hello, Agent Walker. Are you busy?”
Now Agent Walker is fairly certain that he loves the sea.