The Science of Swimming

The Science of Swimming

~*~

A clear sky dawned over a scarcely awake city, and strangely enough, Veser was already awake for it. He yawned into his sleeve as the sky painted itself red against the dark blue background. He was thinking. Thinking about a certain incident a few weeks previous involving fishing and a lack of formal training in a certain art - though not the kind one would find at an arts college. It was a sailor's art, a working man's art. An art Veser felt he had a mastery of, considering his mother's side of the family. Swimming.

So with morning dawning bright around him, Veser considered his plan. One, find a local pool that would let him in before anyone else would get there, so there wouldn't be any disruptions. There was no going in the ocean for this, and not even in the shallows. Small steps, Veser had to remind himself, the man had to take small steps. Art form, right. He just had to keep thinking that and maybe, just maybe, Ples Tibenoch would learn how to swim today.

Step one was completed the night before, thanks to a phonebook and an ever present supply of caffeine.  It was almost scary how many indoor and outdoor pools there were in the area. Though, Veser found that with even the seemingly unlimited supply, he was forced into bargaining and haggling for what he wanted. Pools in the multitude, yes; generosity, no.

Okay, so the pool Veser finally had to settle with didn't seem like the best choice he could have made. Quite frankly, it seemed… sketchy. Veser called it that, anyway. He fished an address from his pocket and stared at it in the light of the rising sun, committing it to memory and wondering if he'd meet - or hell, beat the fuck out of - a hobo on the way there. He didn't know whether to hope for it, or not.

"Veser?" Ever the early riser, Ples was watching him from the doorway to his room, hands clutching the threshold. "What are you doing up?"

Veser turned to the figure in the doorway. The robe clad man looked rather worried that the not-quite-a-teen-anymore was actually awake at the crack of dawn. Maybe it was the habit of shunning any waking hour before noon that won Veser that worry. Whatever it was, Veser's glistening grin wiped it from Ples's mind. The last time he had that grin, Ples had ended up wet and half drowned. He hoped it didn't entail water again.

As the feeling sunk in, Ples realized how wrong he was. He briefly considered going back to bed himself, but he was already awake, and nothing could be as bad as getting pulled under water by a giant fish.

"I've got a surprise."

"You said that the last time." Ples commented. Veser's grin only grew a little.

"And I said this the last time, too: you're going to need to find some swim trunks."

Well, okay, it might just be as bad.

~*~

"Veser, I am not comfortable with this at all." Ples was currently standing at the side of an indoor pool, wearing something that resembled '60s era swim fashion and clutching a white towel. His ticking echoed off the tile and the water, filling the still silence of an unopened pool. Veser was already in the pool, warming himself up to the chilly water.

"C'mon, don't be a pussy." Veser stated, surfacing. "You're not going to leave the shallow end and I won't let you drown."

Ples frowned at him anyway - he thought his previous experiences with water would have kept this scenario from happening. No such luck. It wasn't that he didn't trust Veser, it was that he didn't trust himself. He didn't think he would be able to swim. He'd just sink.

"Get in." The order wasn't as sharp as it could have been, but it still made Ples's blood run cold.

"I don't think I should." Ples clutched his towel a little tighter.

"Look," Veser hauled himself from the pool, hoisting his trunks a little higher, as the weight of the water had pulled them down, "maybe these will help." He sauntered over to a bench and opened the seat, revealing various flotation assisters. He tossed Ples a pair of water wings with sharks on them, grinning.

"Blow those up and they'll help you float." Veser closed the bench, nearly on his own hand, and quickly helped Ples get the child sized devices on his arms. With a flick of his wrist, the towel was on the bench, and Ples found himself being led over to the shallow pool steps, feeling rather naked now that he was towel less.

Step one, Veser remembered, was locate the pool. Step two was get Ples into the water. Ples, though reluctant to submit himself to the same watery fate he experienced a week previous, stepped down the steps one at a time until he was on the bottom and the cold water was tickling his waist.

Now, Veser thought, inwardly taking a deep breath, came step three - the actual teaching bit.

~*~

"C'mon, Ples, floating isn't that hard." Veser encouraged. It was one thing getting Ples into the water. It was another getting him off his feet and the pool bottom. "You've got the floating things."

"They're not exactly the most helpful." Ples said, his arms well above the water.

"Because you're not deep enough to float yet." Veser briefly considered dunking Ples and getting over it, but if he did, there was little chance of ever doing anything water related with him again. Instead, he just had to continue to remind himself of the art form of all this.

When Veser glanced back at Ples, the man was sitting contently on the bottom of the pool, experimenting with the reliability of the floating things Veser had given him. This caused Veser to have an idea. A wonderfully, wickedly, lovely idea.

"Ples, c'mere." Veser met the man half way, where the water was still low enough for the selkie boy to stand. "I want to try something. Turn around."

The look on Ples's face at the instructions was somewhat priceless, and if Veser hadn't been trying to get Ples to trust him, he would have cackled out loud. Instead, he tried - and failed - to stifle his snickers, but Ples turned around anyway, hugging his arms to his chest. "Now, I want you to lean back into me and close your eyes."

"Are you quite sure this is a good idea?" Ples asked, turning a little to watch Veser's face.

"You've gotta trust me. Otherwise, this won't work. Okay?"  Veser held out his arms and tried to not grin too large and let his teeth make him seem more sharkish than trustworthy. Ples watched him for a long moment before turning back around and doing as he was told.

The ticking man tried to concentrate on anything but what Veser was doing - the steady, almost frighteningly quick heartbeat in Veser's chest, his own methodic ticking, the slosh of water against his sides, the feeling of air on his feet… wait.

Ples opened his eyes and saw his toes above the water. He nearly jumped out of his skin at the thought that nothing was touching the pool floor, but Veser's hand traveled to his shoulder to stop him.

"Woah, woah, calm down. I told you I fucking wasn't going to let you drown."  Veser's smile was evident in his voice, and Ples found himself looking up instead of at his feet. The sensation of floating wasn't actually bad, as long as he knew Veser was there for support. His eyes drifted closed again and he relaxed.

What he didn't see was Veser, very slowly, pulling away, leaving Ples floating on his own. The teen-ish was grinning broadly, watching Ples float. He felt… well, proud, if proud was the right word. He thought he was going to have to shove Ples in bodily, and now the man was floating on his own.

"You're getting the hang of it!" Veser cried, and it took only seconds for Ples to realize that the voice was too far away and that Veser was not there. He quickly jumped to his feet, Veser's laughter and the soggy ticking echoing off the tiles.

~*~

"Why did you protest floating so much?" Veser asked, a while later. They were taking a breakfast break, Veser munching on lukewarm Poptarts and Ples a granola bar. "You don't trust me?"

"No, I do trust you."  Ples wrapped his towel a little closer around him. He'd mastered floating in the time that had passed and Veser was going to teach him actual swimming when they got back in the pool.

Tick, tock. Silence. "But…?"

"I trust you very much." Ples let the water tickle his feet. "If I did not trust you, Veser, I would not have come in the first place."

Veser grinned so broadly it looked like there was a zig-zag line cutting his face in two. "You knew I was taking you here, and you still came?"

"I didn't want to disappoint you." Ples admitted. "And I knew that if anything did happen, you didn't mean it to."

The howl of triumph and sudden splash of selkie hitting water caused Ples to become completely soaked, towel and all. The man was smiling, though, chuckling at Veser's under water antics. He discarded his towel along the bench with their trash and made his way poolside as Veser emerged, slicking back his hair.

"Right! Now let's get you swimming!"

"Now, Veser, I know I said I trust you, but I still think we should take this one step at a time-!" Ples's words turned into a shout as he found himself toppled off balance and into the water, Veser jumping in right behind.

Well, Ples thought as he sank, trusting him was fun while it lasted. That was, of course, until he felt the strong arms on his back bringing him back to the surface, where the cackle of bliss bounced off the water.

"I told you I wasn't gonna let you drown."

"I know, Veser," Ples smiled faintly, "I trust you."