Cut and Run 3 - Fish and Chips

Zane held out both hands, palms up, and lifted them in a “what’s up?” motion.
    Ty shook his head and pointed to his mouthpiece. He then made a quit motion across his throat and pointed at the gauge again. He wanted Zane to turn off the air? That couldn’t be right. Zane shook his head, shrugged, and peered at Ty, waiting for him to elaborate.
    Ty threw his head to the side, rolling his eyes behind the mask in frustration. Then, to Zane’s growing surprise, he pulled the mouthpiece out of his mouth and shrugged out of the tank, leaving him with no air at all. Zane called out a garbled “what the hell” through his mouthpiece and grabbed at Ty’s arm as he looked around for one of the yellow suits. If Ty was jerking him around, Zane didn’t want the instructor to see it. But another look told Zane that Ty wasn’t having fun anymore.
    Ty pointed at Zane, then himself, and then jerked his finger upward. Ty wanted them both to surface. Ty waved at the air tank and swiped his fingers across his throat again, Zane glanced down at the discarded tank, and it clicked. Despite what the gauge said, the tank was out of air… just as Ty had been for some time now.
    Zane nodded, but he caught Ty’s arm and tapped his own mouthpiece and then Ty’s chest. Zane just had to pull the strap off his equipment, and they could share the mouthpiece and the air.
    It had worked in that James Bond movie. Why not now?
    Ty nodded jerkily. He wasn’t flailing or panicking. Much like his reaction to dangling over the rock wall platform, he was maddeningly sedate. But he had probably been holding his breath for a while, and if the air tank hadn’t been full, there was no telling how much air he’d been able to get in that last gasp. When Zane got the mouthpiece free, Ty took it and hastily put it to his own mouth, breathing in deeply before handing it back and nodding.
    He reached for the discarded tank and slung it back over his shoulders, his motions clumsy in the water. Then he pointed upward, touching his watch with several slow, exaggerated taps. Zane nodded as he resettled his mouthpiece without fastening the strap and started swimming up toward the light. They had a long way to go.
    But Ty wrapped an arm around Zane’s neck, pulling on him forcefully and shaking his head. His eyes were almost an aqua color behind the mask, the color of the sea and sun far above reflecting to play tricks with the light. He looked Zane in the eye worriedly as he stopped their progress, and they hung in the water together in the silence, an oddly peaceful moment in the midst of an emergency. Zane knew Ty was trying to tell him something important, but he just wasn’t getting it, and that worried him almost as much as his desire for them to get to the surface quickly.
    Then Ty shook his head and tapped his watch again, each tap slower and more deliberate than the last before pointing upward again. Zane frowned and shook his head as he clenched his fist in the water. He knew getting frustrated wouldn’t help, but he hated not being able to understand.
    Ty seemed to sense what he was feeling, and he patted Zane’s hand with one hand as he reached with the other to Zane’s belt and loosened one of the weights, letting it fall away. They began to float upward lazily. Ty took hold of the mouthpiece, giving Zane a moment to take one last deep breath before he pulled it out of Zane’s mouth. But instead of putting it to his own, he held it out to the side and leaned in to kiss Zane as passionately as the dive masks and the water allowed. The strength in it surprised Zane, and he clutched at Ty, trying not to let the kiss distract him from their problem. Not the best of ideas when they didn’t know what had happened to Ty’s tank.
    They didn’t know what had happened to Ty’s guide rope on the climbing wall, either.
    Zane pulled back, eyes wide as he looked at Ty, then up to the surface and back. There could very well be danger up there.
    Ty was shaking his head, as if telling Zane not to think about it. He took a deep breath from the mouthpiece and then popped it back into Zane’s mouth. They were rising very slowly, clutching each other close and being pushed around one another by the current in a leisurely dance that would have been wildly romantic and fun in any other scenario. Schools of tiny, colorful fish darted around them playfully. Bubbles chased them upward.
    Ty seemed determined to make them go slowly, and Zane slowly calmed. Ty