3. That’s Just Flirty Pool

CHAPTER THREE

THAT’S JUST FLIRTY POOL

The Past: Patrick at the swimming pool

Patrick tried not to completely panic but he was scared. He might even have cried a little, not that there was anyone to see. Super embarrassing if he were caught, though.

A series of stupid decisions having to do with his crazy human friends who wanted to break into the local high school and drink and swim had resulted in Patrick, locked inside the pool, alone on a Saturday night. And he knew that no one was coming to open the darn thing back up again until swim practice started Monday morning.

That’s assuming the high school team had swim practice on Mondays.

He didn’t want to yell because he didn’t want to get caught. But he also didn’t want to spend the next forty-eight hours at a swimming pool.

Not that anyone would hear him if he yelled. The high school was on the outskirts of town.

His stomach growled.

He looked at the gate again, topped with barbed wire. Decided he better go see if he could find a ladder or something. He hated heights, though.

“Seriously?” A familiar gruff voice made intentionally less pretty by a smoker’s burr emanated from outside. Sato materialized out of the shadows on the other side of the gate.

Patrick’s tears and fear instantly vanished. He became annoyed with relief and humiliation. Why did it always have to be Sato rescuing him from dumb shit like this?

“Oh, it’s you.”

“It’s me.” Sato stared for a long moment. His face was as deadpan as always. Beautifully sullen. “What are you doing, Patrick?”

“Oh, ya know, just hanging out.”

“If you wanted to go swimming, you coulda just asked.”

Patrick crossed his arms. “It’s not like that.”

“Oh no? What’s it like then?”

Patrick went on the defensive. “How’d you know I was here? Were you following me?”

“Like I don’t have better things to do than tag after a group of idiot middle-schoolers.”

“Ah ha! So you were following me. Otherwise how’d you know I came with friends?”

“Some friends. They abandoned you.”

Patrick bristled. “They were drunk and I was exploring the locker room. I think they forgot about me.”

“The locker room? Seriously, Patrick?”

Patrick grinned. “I can’t have fantasies?”

“You’re twelve. You’re a child .” Sato spoke with all the disgust of a fourteen-year-old.

“Tell that to my hormones.” Patrick stuck his tongue out.

Sato gave a very big sigh.

Patrick grinned at him, enjoying the feeling of having gotten the upper hand. Upper fin, maybe?

Sato turned away. “I can leave just as easily as I came. You’re the one who’s stuck.”

Patrick went on the defensive. “Would we say stuck?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not your responsibility. You don’t have to always look after me like I’m your kid brother.”

“You wanna stay there all night? I thought you hated the smell of chlorine.”

Patrick wrinkled his nose. “I really do.” Also, he was a terrible swimmer. As a human. Ironic, really. That’s why he’d been in the locker room and not playing in the pool with the others. Well, that was partly why. He did also have his fantasies.

The object of them continued to glare. Finally Sato said, “Sit tight,” and disappeared off somewhere.

Patrick sat on the cold concrete, as instructed, and waited, as instructed. He only squirmed a little bit. He had no doubt that Sato would return. Sato would never leave him behind. To Sato he was indeed the annoying little brother, always in trouble, always up to no good. Sato’s responsibility. Assumed, of course, because Patrick had slotted himself into Sato’s life since the moment he moved in next door. Sato had accepted it with a startled grace. Of course he should look after Patrick. Who else would do it?

“Why you still sitting there? Come on.” Sato’s head was sticking out of the infamous locker room. Patrick’s hormones got a sugar rush from that idea alone.

“Wait! What?” said Patrick knowing he sounded like an idiot.

“This is my high school, remember? I know how the damn gym is constructed.”

Patrick leapt up and trotted over.

Sato hustled him through the door with a webbed hand at the nape of his neck. Guiding him through the dark. Patrick didn’t have very good night vision. Neither did Sato, but this was familiar territory to him.

Wait a minute.

How familiar was Sato with the boys locker room!

“Clearly you didn’t explore very thoroughly,” said Sato, prodding Patrick around a pile of wrestling mats. “There’s a door to the soccer field on the other side.”

“Well yes, but it was locked.”

“Now it’s unlocked,” said Sato, unfussed.

To be precise, now it was broken. Sato never seemed to have much patience, especially if there was a barrier between him and Patrick. This delighted Patrick. The door was hanging askew. Sato had destroyed the old hinges rather than try for the solid bolts or the handle. Smart boy.

Patrick grinned at him. “You gonna be in trouble for this?”

“You gonna tell on me?”

“No cameras?” Patrick looked around for small red flashy lights or something equally sinister.

“How could a school this rundown afford cameras ?” Sato scoffed. “You watch too much Team Werewolf .”

“Fair point. Oh boy, am I looking forward to this hell hole.” Patrick was all sarcasm.

“There is no point in being cheeky about it. If you weren’t looking forward to high school, you wouldn’t have broken into our pool. Stop chattering nonsense.”

Patrick pouted. “I told you, it was my friends’ idea.”

“I told you not to listen to humans. Especially not actors.”

“But I like the drama club.”

“This is my surprised face.” Sato’s surprised face looked exactly like his regular face. So Patrick supposed it was nice of him to point it out.

They walked in silence off school grounds and down the dusty road back toward town.

Finally Sato said, “Locker room, Patrick, really?”

“You’ve seen my manga collection. It’s a trope .”

Sato arched a sarcastic brow. “You have any idea how gross they are?”

“High school boys,” insisted Patrick, “getting naked in locker rooms. What’s not to love?”

“High school humans,” spat Sato in response, as if that put a stopper on everything.

But you’re not human , thought Patrick, but didn’t say.

Not that he didn’t get to see Sato naked whenever he wanted. They still swam together regularly. Nothing more than swim, sadly. Sato was ever conscious of their age gap. Also, he probably never considered Patrick as anything beyond a sibling.

Also , he was probably straight.

Patrick, even Patrick Mr Word-Biscuits Covered in Sentence-Gravy himself, had never yet worked up the courage to ask outright. Sato never displayed any sexual inclinations. His room remained as sparsely decorated now as it had been when he first arrived. Oh, there were textbooks and school supplies, but no posters, no manga, no DVDs, nothing that showed interest in anything, really, let alone the opposite sex.

Mermen don’t collect stuff was all Sato ever said about it.

Like no matter how many years passed with him on land, living among the humans, he was always about to leave.

“I wanna go swimming,” Patrick said. Because he did, but the locker room had made him want to see Sato naked. Because, quite frankly, that never got old and it was all he could get.

“Now? Tonight?”

Patrick nodded vigorously.

“You need to eat. You’ve had nothing but alcohol.”

“Not even that.”

“You didn’t drink?”

“Naw, that was human fun.”

“You don’t swim in pools and you didn’t drink? What was the point then?”

“ Locker room ,” explained Patrick again, patiently. Sato wasn’t very bright.

Sato sighed in a long-suffering way. “Come to my house, there’s katsu. We can swim in the morning.”

“Can I spend the night?” Patrick walk-flopped to drape himself partly over Sato’s back and side, because he loved how solid and dense he was.

“Like you need to ask.” Sato snorted, tolerating his contact and his absurd words.

Patrick bounced along happily, still half hugging the merman.

Everything was better now.

The Past: Sato at the Pool Party

Sato sneered at yet another freshman girl trying to flirt with him. The lure of the older boy seemed to be strong with this year’s crop. Or maybe they liked his emo image. He hadn’t washed his hair in days, and with his current cut the sea made it extra spiky. He had on his ubiquitous leather gloves, to hide the webbing, and he was smoking to put gravel in his voice. Because every part of him – hands, hair, eyes, voice, cheekbones – told the story of what he really was to anyone who knew to look carefully. And he never forgot that, especially not at a party full of humans. It required a lot of effort for mermen to hide among humans. Fortunately, humans were dumb and self-involved and lacked basic observation skills.

Didn’t stop Patrick from calling him an accidental punk meets salt-lick and would it kill him to take a proper shower once in a while ?

Sato certainly wasn’t interested in human freshman girls coming up to him, awkwardly twirling their dull hair and asking if he wanted a drink.

He was looking for Patrick. Where the hell was he?

The house was packed. Someone was a trust-fund kid. It was one of those super fancy beach bungalows that usually only rich tourists rented, but this one seemed to be owned by one of this year’s freshmen. Or the family of said freshman. Sato didn’t care which.

Sato ignored them all. Because none of them were Patrick.

He spotted a flurry of activity out the back, near the swimming pool. Because of course there was a big fancy swimming pool and a hot tub. Even though the ocean was right the fuck there. Humans were insane .

There came a puff of white from the center of the group of humans and someone yelled in surprise. Was that… snow? Sato had never seen snow in real life, only on TV. No? Tiny feathers? Cotton fluff?

Patrick suddenly emerged from amid the group. He was covered in the white fuzz, and had some young human kid of indiscriminate age and gender by the wrist and was dragging them bodily after him.

The kid was also covered in white fuzz.

Sato squinted. Definitely feathers. Had the kid molted or something? Shifter of some kind? Did bird shifters have a molting season? Were there even bird shifters?

Patrick brightened at seeing Sato. “You’re here.”

“I’m here.”

“Good, let’s go.”

“What’s going on, Patrick?”

“Jake’s brother is home from college and was picking on this one, their youngest sib.”

He raised up the attached child’s hand. The kid’s eyes were round with confusion. One cheek was red in a way that would be a bruise tomorrow.

Sato didn’t ask who Jake was, presumably the host of this appalling party. “Siblings bully each other. You know that better than anyone. What’s this kid to you?” Patrick’s parents barely cared that he existed most of the time. His siblings only noticed him to yell or beat the shit out of him.

Patrick made a face. “It’s what they were bullying the kid about .”

Sato stepped forward to start brushing feathers off Patrick’s head and shoulders. His hair was a total mess.

“They used a mean word for lesbian ,” explained the kid, quietly. “It’s normal.”

“It’s disgusting,” objected Patrick, “And you shouldn’t have to put up with it, just because they’re older, and bigger, and jerk-faces.”

“Jerk-faces?” Sato teased, annoyed that Patrick had involved himself in human family drama. “What’s with the feathers?”

“I might’ve busted open one of those big pillows. Who knew there were so many feathers inside?”

“At a pool party?”

“I brought the pillow out from inside the house.”

“Why?”

“Well, you see—” Patrick was interrupted before being able to relay the details of what Sato was sure was an absolutely riveting, if completely confusing and very long, story.

A couple of large college humans came lumbering at them with arms akimbo, looking pugnacious and swollen, ripe with testosterone. Waterlogged with ego. They were wearing trucker hats and hockey jerseys – at a pool party. They too, like Patrick and the kid, were covered in feathers.

Sato moved fast. He was between the trucker hats and Patrick as quickly as possible. Protecting the kid too, of course, but Patrick was the one that mattered.

“Who the hell are you?” one of them asked Sato, correctly identifying him as the real threat.

Sato felt absolutely no inclination to answer. Or, indeed, to talk at all. No doubt such humans as these possessed vocabulary levels at an inverse proportion to the amount of hair gel and body spray strewn over their pink bodies.

The front one swung at him with a giant-clam-sized fist.

Sato dodged easily. He was faster in water, of course, but even on land he had good reaction time compared to humans, especially of the large drunken variety. His time of falling down stairs and hating gravity had long since passed. He still didn’t love gravity, but he was good at it, or at least good enough to activate it against others.

Yellow trucker hat punched at him next.

Sato dodged again, balancing his weight on the balls of his feet.

Blue trucker hat tried to go around him to get at Patrick or the kid.

Sato tripped him with one foot and then pivoted on that same foot and shoved him in the stomach with the other, sending him into the pool with a satisfying splash.

Patrick, who was never particularly concerned or worried about his own safety, especially if Sato was around – spoiled little thing – suddenly yelled, “Careful! Don’t fall in the pool!”

Sato didn’t dignify that with a response, just gave him a brief, incredulous look. Then went back to dodging trucker hats and pushing them around.

But then Patrick added, “It’s one of those newfangled salt-water pools.”

Sato hadn’t noticed the distinct lack of chlorine smell. Now he did. He quickly moved away from the water, drawing the last remaining trucker hat to follow him toward the house.

It’d be terribly embarrassing if he fell in.

Sato would keep his legs if he fell into a normal swimming pool, and he was a decent swimmer in his human form now. But if he fell into saltwater? He’d spontaneously shift into merform right then and there, in full view of most of the freshman class. And while Sato was proud of his tail – it was gorgeous, if he did say so himself – he didn’t want to display the damn thing for all the world to see. The point of being a merman among humans was not to be noticed as a merman .

The final trucker hat, a red one, seemed to be smaller and meaner than the ones that had come before. Sato had occasion to observe that smaller humans were more vicious than larger ones, like scorpions. Which meant that this human was a bit more on Sato’s level.

The vitriol coming out of this human’s mouth was colored by all possible slurs – some that Sato hadn’t even heard before. And Sato had lived in the South for seven years now, looking like he did with Patrick tagging after him, dressing like he did.

Accordingly, Sato did the most logical thing – punched red trucker hat as hard as he could in the mouth to shut him up.

As hard as he could , being an extra dense shifter, probably knocked loose a couple of teeth. Red hat’s opinions on all matters gay and Asian would not be altered by a punch, of course, but Sato felt better. He really couldn’t be bothered with trying to rectify small human minds. Knocking out small human teeth was easier.

The trucker hats were now all officially down or dripping.

Sato gave the small human kid that he’d sort of rescued a nod and then grabbed Patrick by the wrist, and simply dragged him away from all the threats and out of the house. The human kid was gonna have to figure out its own family drama. Sato had absolutely no inclination to adopt another stray. Patrick was more than enough responsibility.

“Oh, well, I guess we’re done with that party, are we?”

Sato gave Patrick a look .

Patrick sighed and skipped along beside him, kicking up dust on the side of the road. He was still shedding small white feathers, like dandelion fluff. “It was boring, anyway.”

Sato agreed wholeheartedly. Why did Patrick bother hanging out with humans? He didn’t ask that, though, because he pretty much knew. Patrick needed people. He liked people, all kinds of people. Sato wasn’t enough for him. Even in this shit-hole of a small town, Patrick was bound and determined to find his people and collect them, because Patrick didn’t really have his family and otters were nothing if not social.

Instead Sato asked, “Why did you have a feather pillow out by a pool, Patrick?”

Patrick gave him a cheeky grin. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Sato glared, if he didn’t want to know, he wouldn’t have bothered to ask.

Patrick executed a funny, taunting dance move. Probably from that production of West Side Story he was in last summer. Then he stuck out his little pink tongue.

Sato wanted to bite it.

“Boy’s gotta have some secrets, Sato-san.”

Sato rolled his eyes and resigned himself to another one of Patrick’s mysteries. He’d collected a lifetime’s worth. Like, how had Patrick gotten stuck in the water tower that one time? Or, why were there two dozen horseshoe crabs in the trunk of Sato’s sire’s car? Or why had Patrick dressed as Sailor Monsoon, Queen of the Dragon Seas, three Halloweens running when he preferred manga to anime?

“It would have been so funny if you’d fallen into that pool,” said Patrick, dark eyes glittering.

“Funnier if you had.”

Patrick pouted at that. Unlike Sato, Patrick could change into his otter form at will. He wasn’t compelled by salt water to do so. But his family insisted on keeping a low profile. No human was to know they were dobhar-chú. So if he’d fallen in, he certainly would have flailed about and embarrassed himself.

He batted his eyes at Sato. “Would you have jumped in to rescue me, revealing yourself in all your glory?”

Sato changed the subject, because they both knew he would have simply thrown pool noodles at Patrick and let him save himself. Patrick wasn’t incompetent, just reckless. “Why’d you antagonize the trucker hats, Patrick?”

“Seemed like a fun thing to do at the time.”

“Party was that dull, was it?”

Patrick sashayed a bit. “Exactly. So let’s do something even more fun!”

“Swim?” suggested Sato, because it was always his favorite thing to do, especially with Patrick.

“Yes, please!” Patrick sparkled at him, sharp bright teeth and fathomless dark eyes. Sato forgot, briefly, how gravity worked. Stumbled slightly.

Patrick didn’t notice. “Can I have a piggy?”

Sato stopped and crouched slightly.

Patrick launched himself onto his back, wrapping his arms tight about Sato’s neck, where the gills were when Sato shifted. Wrapped his legs around Sato’s hips, where his tail sprouted. A dear familiar weight, as easy and as welcome as those gills or that tail.

Sato waited until the dobhar-chú was safely settled, then stood straight, hoisted Patrick up. Sato let his long legs eat up the dusty road after that, happy with them for a change. Did not mind gravity at all, when it pressed Patrick into his back, a welcome burden.