Snakes and Lovehearts by elvntari

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The Kind Of Drama Only A Local Leisure Center Has

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• Fingon

 

There’s a woman talking to me -- something about… what was it, again? I tune back into her voice -- something about the gates, and the dates -- actually, those sound similar, I think she only mentioned one of those and, well, we don’t have any real gates.

The front desk isn’t really at the front at all: it’s got it’s back to the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, and it faces the glass sliding doors, which sit below their own set of giant windows. If you squint hard enough, you can make out the birds in the bird’s nest in the ring of trees that encircle the centre through them. If you sit there long enough on a sunny day, you begin to overheat from the intensity of it. It’s so bloody hot. I reach to take my shirt off -- wait, there’s a woman standing in front of me. She looks mad .

“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?” I tap the lobe of my ear, hoping she’ll (wrongly) interpret that as meaning that I’m hard of hearing, and not just awful at listening to people.

“My membership hasn’t been renewed.”

“Right,” I try to contain my relief -- I can paint this as not my problem, “I’m sorry; I’m not responsible for finance, so if you could speak to my colleague over there --” I wave a Blue Seas Leisure Center (stupid name, really  -- we’re nowhere near the sea) branded pen in Molly’s direction -- “she should sort you out.”

The woman huffs, but does as I say. Okay, technically , I’m Molly’s superior, so technically, I’m at least a little responsible for that, but I can barely count, and Molly’s the kind of person that would rather do things right herself the first time than have to go through and correct someone else’s mistakes. And honestly? I’d rather just sit here and keep watching the birds. The architects really did a good job on those windows, but they did an even better job choosing to use misted glass on the ones overlooking the pool, because if birds can draw my attention, imagine what a pool full of people can do.

It’s still too hot in here, though. I reach for the back of my shirt -- wait. I’ve been here before. No stripping at the reception desk.

I bite my lip. That lawyer should’ve been here ten minutes ago . I’m only waiting at the front desk so they can find me easily.

I can just about make out the rough figures of the elderly swimming class through the glass, Uinen standing at the poolside, a group of heads bobbing in the pool beneath her. And there’s Ossë, of course (when are they ever separated?) slipping through the door at the side.

My gaze drifts up to the clock above. Ah. I was misreading it. It’s not ten minutes since the lawyer should’ve shown up; it’s ten minutes until they show up.

Then the view of the clock is blocked by Ossë looming above me in full lifeguard get-up (which isn’t very full at all).

“Fingon!”

“Oh, hi.”

“You -- you didn’t hear me the last two times?” The woman from earlier is staring at me.

“I did not.”

“Are you free this weekend?”

“Are you asking me out?” I grin. He punches me in the shoulder. Gently, of course.

“The police need someone to interview, and I don’t want to do it for, uh, reasons.”

I sigh -- I’d almost forgotten about that other problem. And of course Ossë wouldn’t want to hang around the police, not when he’s a notorious stoner. We used to get high and makeout in our dorm, back when he was a physiology student and I was training to be a doctor.

“Fine,” I take a deep breath, mourning the loss of my Saturday, “I’ll do it.”

“Thank you so much.” He gives me a lazy wave as he jogs back over to the changing rooms, and just as he slips through the door, the sliding front doors open, and a smart young man in a suit steps through. He’s young for a lawyer -- and I’m pretty sure that’s what he is, because no one ever comes to a leisure center dressed like that. He has a light tan and neatly styled copper curls. And his face -- his face is something else entirely, like out of a magazine, but also strangely familiar. I feel the corners of my mouth twitch.

“Maedhros?” I chance when he gets within earshot.

“You remember me?”

“Of course.” I stand up. I wonder -- should I shake his hand? Is that too formal?

This is the guy I used to sit on the beach of the lido and make sandcastles with; who would dress up with me in his grandmother’s old clothes; who’d I’d follow around at those huge fancy parties because he said he didn’t like to look like the only people he had to talk to were his brothers. Who I haven’t spoken to since I was sixteen.

I shake his hand, then nod at the people around us. “Maybe we should go somewhere private.”

We move to sit in a side room and talk legal, but talking legal takes a surprisingly short amount of time, and I get distracted trying to guess what all those big professional words mean anyway. I try to remember the last time I saw him as an adult -- probably at one of those parties, all dressed up in rust and gold. Probably let his parents pick out what he wore because his teenage self never saw the value in all that ‘frivolity’.

I would approach him, and we’d talk about our parents and how stupid big parties like that were. He told me about how his brothers would probably be looking for him, and how none of them were really allowed to slink off unsupervised into the crowd like that.

I asked him why, and he shrugged.

“Fingon?”

“Hm?”

“You still with me?”

“Yes! Sorry!” I sit up in my chair.

“Basically this is extremely clear-cut: there was no misconduct on the part of the centre and --”

“Are you free after this?” I ask.

“I’m sorry?”

“Wait -- no -- I didn’t mean that as in are you free after this? I meant it just, generally, are you --”

He cuts me off with a laugh. “I have some paperwork to catch up on, but after that? Sure.”

“Sweet!”

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” He smiles a little and a little wearily. Can’t be an easy job, he has. Actually, now that I’m noticing it, he looks really tired; dark under eye circles, dull skin, the way he squints a little in the light. Somehow he still wears it well. Stupidly well.

I wonder if that almost-kiss we shared back at that party was real, or just another case of my wishful thinking bleeding into my memories. It must’ve been real, though, right? I can still remember how I could almost taste his lips -- isn’t that too detailed to be fake? Is that too detailed to be real ? I’m not even sure if that moment is something to be ashamed of or not -- maybe it’s easier on my dignity if it is a fabrication.

“So I’ll see you back here in a bit?” I ask.

“Sure.”

It’s too hot in here, but this time I manage to keep my hands away from my shirt.

 

 

• Eönwë

 

Training at the leisure centre is always an experience. It always seems like something happens -- not necessarily goes wrong -- but definitelyhappens. This time it seems serious. Some official business, by the look of the guy bobbing his head in goodbye to the assistant manager, but if I look closely enough at their body language, neither of them look tense at all.

I don’t really consider the assistant manager a friend , but I do know his name, and I can list at least three of his family members from memory -- he really likes to talk, and to talk about his family, which is usually sweet enough to make me smile. But, God, does he like to talk. Father used to ramble on about making connections over dinner, and how I should talk to everyone I meet, but all I ever got from that was an affirmation that making friends was a good thing -- except I don’t tend to make them in high places, like he intended. Mairon once told me I was too nice to people -- that I was naive, which was probably another warning sign, looking back.

Mairon, I call him, but I know full well that calling him those unflattering nicknames would piss him off, and doesn’t he deserve to be at least a little pissed off?

Sauron never seemed to see any sort of optimism as a virtue -- only ever a weakness. I hate that he ended up being right.

Fingon catches my eye and waves. I might as well ask him what’s going on.

“Someone slipped.” He sighs as his eyes follow the man in the suit leaving. “You how we have all these signs telling people not to run on wet tiles? Apparently that’s not enough, and we’re being sued.”

“The centre is being sued?” I ask.

“Seems like it. Luckily, my cousin --” he freezes, frowning, “well, that’s not right -- he’s more my friend -- I mean -- we aren’t actually related, except by marriage.”

I hold up a hand. He always gets distracted so easily. “You were saying?”

“He’s a lawyer,” he says avoiding my eyes. Friends. From the way he says it, I suspect there’s a little more to it than that. There’s a pointed silence for a moment, as if there are words trapped behind the wall of his teeth that he isn’t too sure he wants to let out. He turns to me anyway, meeting my blue eyes with his turquoise -- both of us are strange like that, with light eyes against dark skin or, well, dark enough skin that it could hide the darkness under our eyes, but not so much to conceal the contours of any imperfections. Maybe I trust him because he feels familiar. Another fallacy for which Sauron would’ve chastised me. My father probably would, too. I smile at the thought that they actually used to get on.

“And some of your guys came around earlier.”

“What for?”

“Someone left some ‘suspicious packages’ lying around.” He shrugged. “They’re pretty sure it isn’t one of us, but apparently we’re all persons of interest until further notice.”

“I’m certain it isn’t one of you.”

“Hm?”

“I think I have a lead on that already -- just need to figure out how it links back to here, or why. ”

“Well --” he pats me on the shoulder -- “good luck with that. Hope you catch ‘em.”

“Thanks,” I say, as he turns on his heel and heads for the pool door, yawning. I recall that I’ve never seen him here this early. There must’ve been some reason for him to show up (probably had to do with his friend).

There’s some hint of a memory tugging at the back of my mind, telling me that that isn’t all I can learn from this place -- some malformed hunch.

As I leave, I circle the building, just to see, and one of the guys inside catches my eye and, despite the frosting over the glass, I can feel his eyes upon me. I scan through all of the names of the people I know, trying to find one that clicks into place, and one that clicks into place here . I come up blank on that front, but I do recall Sauron having a friend that frequented the leisure center.

Would it be inappropriate to slip back inside an ask about him? Almost certainly, but from the way I can tell he’s sizing me up, I don’t think I’ll have to.