What the fuck!

Shit, this is fucking cold! I’m freezing my fucking nuts off!

Shit, shit, shit!

Rise and shine Nick!

Rise and shine my ass! Nothing is rising out of me and it’s friggin’ freezing, what the fuck is supposed to shine? Stupid fuckin’ AJ not making any fucking sense at all!

It’s not supposed to be this cold. Oh my God! I need to get out of here, what if it turns to ice? I’m gonna be a friggin’ lollipop!

What’s so funny?

It’s not…fu…funny!

It’s not supposed to be funny on your side kiddo. It’s pretty damn funny from where we’re standing though.

Kevin can go the fuck away.

Jesus! What the fuck just touched my foot!

Hey, any idea if there’s jellyfish swimming around in here?

No idea. Why?

Think something just touched my foot!

And what do you care, Brian? Traitor ex-bestfriend of mine. You should be on my side!

There it is again. What the fuck?

Hey Nicky, you okay in there?

This is just too creepy for words. Maybe there’s a swamp demon in this ocean. Maybe it’s hungry and looking for some fresh human meat.

Maybe there really are jellyfish in there man.

Fuck.

We just feed Nicky to the jellyfishes.

Fish.

He’s being eaten alive and you’re correcting my English?

Oh! That’s not…

Argh! Guys…

Nick! Hey!

Guys!

Okay. Yelling while drowning is not good.

Even when you’re faking it.

Checked.

… okay?

He’s not…

Okay, kick legs, float damn it.

…friggin’ drowning!

Hold on Nick!

Just get in there!

Call 911!

Uh. 911. That’s not good.

---

“OH MY GOD, MY NUTS JUST FELL OFF!”

Brian started hitting his arms against the water wildly, splashing AJ in the process. “AJ, stop being a drama queen for a second!”

“Oh my God this is so cold!” Howie squeaked next to Brian. “I’m going to kill that little runt, I swear!”

Brian tried for grinning but his jaw hurts too much from the chattering of his teeth. “Get…in…line…D!”

“I wish you’d called 911, D. That’ll show…the idiot…to not mess around…like that!” AJ spluttered and splashed Brian in retaliation.

Kevin stared at Nick, who was still laughing nearby. He was laughing so hard that Kevin swore the kid was beginning to wheeze. He felt the cold stabbing his every bone and his muscles were already going numb. He figured at the rate they were going, they’d either die of hypothermia or drowning.

“I can’t believe we fall for that.”

“Payback’s a bitch, bitch.” Nick grinned.

“You realise you’ve been in the water longer than any of us right?” Kevin smirked. “And that your lips are turning blue and you’re wheezing and you’re probably gonna get sick from this and be miserable for a very long time and still tour?”

Nick actually had the decency to look worried for a few seconds, and Kevin wished it had stayed that way longer. All too soon, Nick was back to grinning again and Kevin knew nothing good would ever come out of that.

“Great. I get to…infect all of you…with my…germs. Kaos Germ…Warfare.”

- - -

So it wasn’t a swamp demon thing. I’m very disappointed. Definitely not jellyfish. Maybe it’s a mermaid with a feet fetish, cause you know, they don’t have feet, they’re probably jealous I have two.

Come on kiddo, drink the hot cocoa and go to sleep. You’ll feel better tomorrow.

Yeah, definitely a mermaid.

a/n: apologies for the confusion you might have gone through reading that, lol. I'm just experimenting different ways to write POVs and for this one, in Nick's POV, you see bolded dialogues when he talked to the guys and things the guys said are in italics to him...probably cause of distance, they sound echoey to him, who knows? My muse didn't really explain that in detail, lol. Then the normal stuff is just stuff he said in his head. Hope this helped!

At first it was funny. I mean, come on. You’re just suddenly there. In the middle of the friggin’ ocean. No recollection of what you were doing before. And Nick liked to think that underneath it all, he was a man who knew how to appreciate humour when it slaps him back in the face. And this, right here, was funny.

Then it was kinda funny. I mean, come on. You start calling out to your friends and all you could hear is your own voice echoing what you just said back at you. Nick couldn’t help the smirk on his face. He could almost see it – the four of them, decked on some big boat (because he was in the middle of the ocean and even though he couldn’t remember how he got to be here, a boat is only logical) – Kevin, Howie, Brian and AJ, all four doing a really great job at not laughing, not making a sound.

Now, it stopped being funny entirely. I mean, come on. You’ve been out there in the middle of the friggin’ ocean and the water is cold, to the point where it was getting really hard to breathe and the guys were still not talking, not saying anything! Nick was ready to bust some ass when he got out of this mess.

Come to think of it, he couldn’t really see anything beyond his ten fingers when he tried stretching them in front of him. It seemed dark but then the sky was blue. There was not a sound, not even birds flying overhead, except for the soft lapping of water around him as he kicked his legs to keep him afloat.

He was really cold now, his jaw ached from trying to stop his teeth from chattering too much. His nose was runny, the back of his eyes burned from the cold. His throat felt dry and coarse from all the yelling he had done in the fit of panic not long ago. The muscles on his shoulders and arms ached, his legs felt numb and he wasn’t too sure how long he could keep himself floating before his body shut down.

And then he laughed. Really laughed. Out loud. Because who cares? Definitely not him. There was no one else here. And he thought it was funny (not really), because while he still couldn’t remember how he had ended up in the middle of the ocean alone, he remembered the last thing he had said in the fit of anger.

I wish everyone would leave me the fuck alone!

He laughed because the one time he hadn’t actually meant what he said, he got his wish granted.

Famous last words, he thought, and then everything faded away.