Title: Swapping Shifts
Fandom: JAWS
Rating: PG
Length: 967 words
Summary: Brody wonders how he got into this situation in-between shift changes on the Orca
Author's Notes: Once again playing around in my little AU where the shark hunt takes a lot longer. Buck up, Brody, it's only day 4 out of 28!



The boat sways, sunlight dances off the waves of the ocean like millions of pinprick stars, and Brody is sick off the side of the boat.

It’s all this damned swaying, he surmises, lighting another cigarette though even the usually comforting spark of nicotine is enough to curdle his stomach now, and leans against the side rail, trying to breathe mostly through his mouth. It's his turn on the chum line again and the smell is enough to make him want to jump straight off the boat into the mouth of whatever is waiting for them just below. Four days, ninety-six hours, five thousand, seven-hundred and sixty minutes, three-hundred and forty-five thousand, six-hundred seconds. And some change. Sure, he's been counting, so what? It's not like he has much else to do, between the occasional rotation of jobs and vast swathes of empty hours waiting for that shadowy beast to rear its horrible head again. It seems almost to be taunting him. Dancing just out of his reach. He waits impatiently for the hour when the sun is mostly out of the way but still not quite behind the horizon yet, when they all swapped shifts like a well-oiled machine, Hooper's digital watch beeping that crunchy incendiary tone that always without fail gets Quint ranting about the good ol' days of wristwatches and how the new namby-pamby electronical things will never last - especially not all these newfangled waterproof ones they're constantly advertising to adventurous, seafaring types like Hooper. It's just part of their ritual, the arguments. There's no real meaning behind the words beyond a consistent reassurance that they're all still there, still alive, a little makeshift role call in the form of verbal abuse. What first incited that good old down-home anxious people pleasing streak inside of Brody now nearly soothed him - if they were fighting, it means they were both still bearing as normal, were both alive, and healthy, and fine. Nothing more than an additional auditory cue, on top of that irritating digital beep.

The beep stirred him from his little musings - always able to cut through whatever was happening with the sharpest of knives, even if Hooper was clear on the other side of the boat, even if the damned thing was stowed belowdecks with the rest of his unworn clothes. With a start he shook himself awake, ashing his cigarette into the murky waves and sighing. Quint was threading line through his fishing pole with the careful precision of a tapestry weaver and humming an off-key tune. Hooper was fiddling with some gear at the wheel. All the while the beep sounded. Echoed. Grated.

"Turn that damn thing off, will ya, Hoop?" Quint snapped, without much bite behind the words. He didn't even look up from his task. His interrupted tune resumed seconds after the words left his mouth.

"Yeah, yeah-" Came Hooper's mumbled reply. He snapped the engine off with a testy click and went to fiddle with the buttons at his wrist. Tamed only by him, the beeping subsided, replaced quickly with the sucking absence of sound where once there was clamoring noise. Like shutting the engine of your car off after a long drive and only then realizing how loudly your ears rung with the rumble of it all. Wind danced mildly around and waves slapped against the boatsides but all the rest was deathly quiet. All of time holding its breath. A moment taken out of reality and paused, so that the three of them may experience it forever. Damnation, maybe - Brody has contemplated the idea more than once. If Hell were real it certainly wouldn't be unlike an incessantly rocking boat in the poisonous waves of a deadly predator's home. He sometimes finds himself, in the swathes of time with nothing to do but stare out at the vast expanse of nothingness before him, trying to recall if that close call with Michael and the shark had actually taken him, instead, and he was well and truly dead, and his punishment for failing to kill the damnable thing was just this, trying to kill it for all and forever of eternity with two men that seemed to want to kill each other more than any shark that may be hanging around. But he knows better… mostly. He's got a sensible head on his shoulders and can straighten himself out and shake the silly thoughts from his mind and remind himself that no, he's alive, and this certainly isn't some eternal cosmic punishment because he had actually chosen this path for himself, every unfortunate step of the way, and maybe he was just trying to punish himself for failing to prevent the horrible deaths that preceded this or maybe he was just well and truly kind of an idiot but either way no hell compares to the blind, foolish choices of a living human being.

His cigarette is burnt down to a nub. He sighs.

Hooper clambers down from the boat's wheel with all the springy vigor of youth and dusts his knees off with his hands. Quint remains unmoved, threading that same line, refusing to break off even a single verse of his song unless it's to make some incendiary barb at Hooper and even then picking it right back up afterwards. Brody silently hands the bucket of chum off to Hooper and moves towards the ladder.

"Y'know, Quint, when are you ever gonna get in the shit with us and shovel some chum yourself?" Asks Hooper, his tone jovial and light but the look in his eyes nothing of the sort.

"Yeah, yeah-" comes Quint's mirrored reply.

The two dance together like that for the rest of the night. Brody mans the wheel in silence and, for a while, wonders about Hell. The beeping won't return until midnight.