Part Six: Reaching Towards Shore

They passed into the lovely fern-laden area containing the third pool. It had been carefully sculpted into an impressive semblance of a fantastic rainforest, with piles of greenery, a small waterfall, and a soft mossy embankment by the glittering pool. Small, vibrantly coloured birds even flew here and there among the trees.

Andri gazed about, impressed at the design of the place.

"And to think, this is all indoors..."

"In a matter of speaking, of course." Shudoshi pointed at the glassed ceiling. "The whole wing is a gigantic greenhouse, basically. I can show you, if you want, the structures behind all the -"

"No, that's all right. I'm happy just looking at the surface of it for now."

"But-"

"It's very nice, though..."

Shudoshi sighed dramatically at Andri, pulled his hair out of the familiar ponytail, and started unbuttoning his pants.

"If that's the way you want it, then that'll do. You don't need to know how cleverly these grottos are constructed to provide complete privacy if it's desired, or how the noise of the waterfall is amplified to give a cover for some of the noises that--"

"I understand. It's impressive. But, really, I don't care to know."

"Oh, fine, then. Let's get down to this, then."

"...All right."

Andri stood there for a moment, a blush slowly darkening his cheeks. Shudoshi was honestly confused, and gave him a very funny look as he stripped off his jeans.

"What? Is something wrong, Andri?"

"Could you...I mean, just go sit in the pool. I'll be there in a minute."

"Why the sudden shyness? I undressed you that first day, remember?"

"Y-yes, but that was different."

"Well...as you will, I suppose."

"Thanks."

Shudoshi was astounded. Somehow, somewhen, Andri had acquired a sense of modesty. It was completely bizarre. He was shyly, slowly taking his clothes off behind a convenient fern while Shudoshi impatiently splashed his feet in the cool water. He started singing little doggerel verses from Shakespeare to keep himself occupied.

So distracted, he didn't see Andri, mouth gone dry, watching him from between the fronds, already quite nude, but thoroughly entranced by the charming dappled effect the afternoon sun through the leaves was producing on his Key's body and hair. He seemed like a forest spirit, a young Pan singing in the wood. An elusive woodland creature that suddenly intoned gravely:

"Speed it up, Andri. Not that the water's going anywhere, or that I am, but I'm going to go swimming with or without you, and you'll lose your chance at a lesson if you don't hurry."

Shudoshi suppressed a sigh as a little rustle sounded behind him. "I won't look. Andri gets no attention until...ah. Hell. I want to see," he thought. His resolution quickly dissipated, he turned his head, hair rippling down his back, and lost his breath somewhere between one blink and the next.

"...Are you alright? Shudoshi? You look like you've seen a ghost."

Andri had been beautiful before, but now he was in his (un)natural element--nude, showered in sunlight and half-concealed by foliage. His hair was rendered a shimmering halo, all the damage lending it a translucent quality. His eyes were sunshot, illuminated and shining vividly lilac. He was a miniature Adonis, an ivory statue come to life. Shudoshi swallowed his astonishment and gulped out:

"I'm all left--I mean all right. You?"

Andri blinked at him, and took a few steps into the clearing. Shudoshi had to quell the urge to go to him, swoop him into his arms, and commit theoretically indecent acts with him on the soft mossy ground.

"Are you certain? You really look just a bit...something. I don't know what." Feeling decidedly uncertain, Andri hurried over to the pool and settled on the edge, curling his arms around his knees as though trying to protect himself. Shudoshi was amused, but thought he understood completely. He slipped into the water, hoping that Andri would relax if he weren't sitting up there next to him.

"There's definitely a new aspect to this," he thought. "Andri's finally started thinking of me as something more than a slightly unwelcome roommate. A bonus, I think, though I hope he stops looking at me as though I'm going to eat him. One little easily controlled erection does not a molester make. And if he could see himself through my eyes...oh, he'd understand that, as well. If I were a painter, I'd paint him; if I were a visual artist of any type, I'd create something from him. As it is, all I can do is...not go there. I'm not going there again."

"Well," he amended to himself, "not until he trusts me, anyway."

Andri, too, was trapped in a brief erotic reverie. Shudoshi's hair looked so soft, and it gleamed so gorgeously in the sunlight, like a--no, not a grape!--like flower petals. That was the only thing he could think of that encompassed the blue and the violet at once, in a glorious whole with the same velvety texture and gloss. Pansies, irises, maybe a rare tulip, and that was all. He wanted to touch it, more than touch it, smell it, rub it over his face, his body...he shook his head, trying to clear the images that followed, and all but dove into the pool to hide. Shudoshi chuckled.

"And here I thought it'd be hard to get you into the water," he purred, gliding a little further out into the pool with a practiced sidestroke. Andri riffled the water with his fingertips, not quite willing to venture into the deep end.

"No, I like wading; my family had a lakefront property where we stayed every summer. I just don't know how to swim. If the water goes over my head, I just panic."

"You can't even dog-paddle?"

"I don't even know what that looks like when it's a human doing it rather than a dog."

"Hm." This vastly amused Shudoshi. He couldn't imagine not knowing how to swim, and said so, paddling in lazy circles. "Well, for a start, this is a dog-paddle, as performed by yours truly." Andri couldn't quite suppress a chuckle. "I know it looks silly, Andri. It's a good beginning, though. And this is treading water. This, a dead man's flo*burble*at."

He continued into breaststroke, butterfly stroke, backstroke, and would have gone on from there if Andri hadn't coughed by way of getting his attention.

"Well, it looks like fun, and you're very graceful in the water, but it's not teaching me a thing."

Shudoshi smirked, and responded in kind, mimicking Andri's slightly frustrated tone of voice.

"Well, first of all, you have to come out a little deeper into the water. You could try swimming where you are, but you'd end up with scraped knees, and I'd have to sit on -my- knees in order to actually hold you up. Here, let me hold your hands, and we'll walk out just until you're up to your shoulders. That should be deep enough to start, and I'll still be able to keep my footing easily so you won't feel insecure."

Andri blinked at him, eyes a little unfriendly because of the unintended insult, but acquiesced. He stretched out his hands and started walking very slowly towards Shudoshi. The hands that met his were warm, and the brown eyes went with them warmer. Andri felt the beginnings of a flutter of fear in his stomach, but resolved to try to trust Shudoshi enough to give him a chance to teach him how to swim, a task at which not even his favorite cousin Mandarin had succeeded.

"This must be far enough. I don't really feel like going any further out."

"Just another step or two, okay? Then I'll hold you and teach you to float."

"I don't want to learn to float, I want to learn to--"

"It's the first step, okay? Calm down. The water isn't dangerous on it's own, and I'm right here."

Andri closed his eyes, steadying his feet. He knew Shudoshi couldn't understand, wouldn't understand. To him, the water was dangerous. He'd never had a fear as great as his fear of drowning. It was a fear that had been with him as long as he could remember, for no reason that he knew. He had nightmares, had always had nightmares, about falling into the ocean from a boat, into a lake in winter, or countless other bodies of water. Always, the soft suffocation, always the water sucking him down, always...

Shudoshi was worried. Andri's pupils were dilating and he'd started hyperventilating, quick, shallow breaths that didn't put enough air into his lungs. His eyelids drifted towards closed and he started going limp, which Shudoshi considered quite enough warning that he was about to pass out.

"Andri! Andri! It's okay, I'm here!" He took him by the shoulders and shook him gently. Andri's eyes popped open, nothing but blind panic within them. He clung to Shudoshi's wrists with a deathgrip.

"Don't let me go. Don't let me fall underwater. I'll get lost..."

"I won't--! Here, I think this is a little too much for you, let's get back to the shallow water, we can start there--"

He started to pull away, thinking to drag Andri back to the side of the pool and start with something smaller. If just the thought of swimming brought on this sort of panic attack, who could know what sort of result the actual event might incur? Andri wouldn't let go of his hands, however, and drew closer to Shudoshi, causing little waves that sent water lapping at his chest.

"No, no," Andri said dreamily, blinking at the sky. "You said you'd try, so you have to try. And I said I'd try, so I have to try. What's the first thing?"

"Are you sure?" Shudoshi felt very skeptical of Andri's sanity at that moment. There was something decidedly not lucid floating in those lovely lavender eyes and the boy still hadn't relinquished his grip on his wrists.

"Yes."

"Well...all right then. The first thing is that you have to let go of my hands."

One finger loosened, then the next, and so on until one of Shudoshi's hands was free, then the next. Andri stood alone, up to his armpits in water, swaying gently, until his Key carefully reached out to hold him, one hand on either side of his waist.

"I'm not going to let you go, Andri, so don't panic. I'm going to lift you up so you're floating. Your feet won't be touching the bottom, but mine will be. You won't go under unless you panic, but even then I won't drop you. Just relax. Be one with the water."

Andri attempted a dry giggle. Shudoshi caught his eyes, smiled at him, and started lifting him off the bottom. He stiffened immediately, then caught himself and relaxed a bit.

"I can do this," he thought, desperately trying to remember that he was only a few inches off the bottom, only a spare several centimeters away from the earth. "I can trust him. He won't let me go. He won't let the water take me. He can't. He'd be punished, he'd be...I don't know. I don't know. Calm down, Andri. Let yourself just experience this. Forget the dock, forget the waves. This isn't even a lake...just...just a glorified kiddy pool. That's not scary. Not scary at all." He managed to relax enough that he didn't really notice when Shudoshi started tipping him backwards, and it was only his head touching the water that brought him back into awareness with a gasp. He struggled briefly, dousing himself thoroughly and getting water up his nose, but Shudoshi just set him upright and held him gently while he snuffled and snorted.

"I told you if you panicked you'd go under. But see, I didn't let you go. Do you want to try again?"

"Don't talk to me as though I'm a nervous toddler." Andri blurted it out before he thought about what he was saying. The smile faded from Shudoshi's face. "Why are you being so nice to me? It's not as though I'm really anyone special, after all. Why should you have to put up with a spoiled rock star? Why, why would you want to? Just let me go; I'll go back to the room, I'll--"

"Andri--"

"No, no. I know, it's your job. You don't have a choice in the matter--"

"Andri." The boy stopped short at the unusually serious tone in his Key's normal jovial voice. "Andri, I'm a Key, you know that. It's not what I do; it's what I -am-. I'm here by my own free will, here to make people happy, however that might be accomplished. But I don't have to be nice to my Owners. I've had some terrible Owners." A wisp of anguish traveled across his face, vanished. "You're not that bad. Spoiled, maybe, but I like you, and I want to see you happy. You're beautiful when you smile, but you almost never really smile..." He trailed off, noting that Andri was staring at him. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

Andri was suddenly very, very conscious of how close he was to Shudoshi's body, of the hands around his slender waist, of the proximity of their faces to each other. He hadn't even noticed that, when Shudoshi had picked him out of the water, his own arm had slipped over his broad shoulders and his hand nestled into the damp, silky tangles of that impossible blue-violet hair. He flexed his fingers, wanting suddenly to be anywhere but where he was, but at the same time feeling safe and warm and strangely comfortable. Shudoshi tightened his grip just a little, enjoying the feeling of Andri's body curled against his under the water, but not wanting to frighten, or worse, anger, his randomly volatile Owner.

"...It's alright. I, I suppose I don't mind. It's not the first time, after all. Clematis used to tell me that everyone thought I was pretty, too."

"Did she ever tell you that she thought you were...pretty?"

"No." Andri was beginning to feel just the tiniest bit awkward about the situation. It wasn't that Shudoshi wasn't attractive, nor that he was male--(think of Mandarin and his string of boyfriends...if Mandy is comfortable with it, why shouldn't I be?)--it was more the strange dynamic of unwilling master and far-too-willing slave. Never mind that his stomach did a swift dip-and-turn when Shudoshi's fingertips brushed against his stomach. Never mind the desire to tangle his fingers in his hair, pull him close, find out if his lips were as soft as the smiles that never left them. Never mind the gentle, warm, concerned look in his enormous brown eyes.

Pity again. Anything, hatred, passion, whatever...anything was better than that look that said, "I'm worried that you're incapable of doing this activity." Anything.

Suddenly, Andri shoved off of Shudoshi, who tried to hold on to him, but failed, feeling the slippery little body evade his grasp like a fish. He floundered around, reaching for the shore, but couldn't tell which way to go. All too quickly he felt the water closing over his head. He gasped, inhaling water, choked, flailed, finally contacted warm flesh...and was swiftly pulled up into the security of Shudoshi's arms. Shudoshi kept one arm around Andri's waist until they reached the side of the pool, practically threw him out of the water and jumped out beside him like a seal. Andri lay limp, feebly coughing out water while Shudoshi fought the urge to yell at him, something. Eventually he gave up, turned away, and put his pants back on. It was obvious that this wasn't going to work. Not yet.

He turned back to Andri, who was still lying on the ground, gasping for air.

"That was stupid." The anger was still showing through. Shudoshi tried to school his voice to a calm tone, tried to still his pulse, still racing on from the adrenaline of fearing, however briefly, that he'd lost another one...

"...I know." His voice sounded terrible.

"Why didn't you trust me? I told you I wouldn't let you go, I wouldn't let you drown."

"...I know." Andri wouldn't look at him, wouldn't meet his eyes.

"Then why?"

"...I...please don't ask me anymore questions, Shudoshi. Let's...let's just go back to the room, and..." Andri tried to think of something that might placate Shudoshi. "And...maybe you can sing for me? Or...we...can...together..."

Shudoshi couldn't help but melt. He recognized what Andri was trying to do, understood that apologizing was beyond his wounded pride. He knelt next to his Owner.

"Andri...if you want to be my friend, please don't do that to me again. It's all right if you're frightened, but you can always trust me to be there for you. I won't let you drown, in any way." Andri peered up at him through the limp spikes of his hair. Shudoshi stroked his cheek with one finger. "Let's get you dried off."

Andri sighed and shakily got to his knees. For once he wasn't trying to hide himself from sight, too drained to even make the attempt. There was something unspeakably attractive about him for a moment; fragile, half-drowned, eyes closed, there on his knees as though in supplication or offering himself up to some unknowable pagan god. Shudoshi knew he'd regret it, but a dismal streak of spite pushed him to try.

He leaned forward, sliding his hands down Andri's sides, pulling him into a sudden embrace. To his surprise, Andri didn't protest, let him do it, almost leaned into it. Shudoshi lifted his unresisting chin up, lay his lips over Andri's, and kissed him. He was still for a moment, unresponsive as a doll, then hesitantly put his hands on Shudoshi's shoulders. He suddenly gripped on tightly, fiercely, fingernails digging into the muscles of Shudoshi's arms, and kissed him back.

Then, just as swiftly, just as alarmingly, he stood up, ran to his clothes and grabbed the tee-shirt, threw it on, and ran off, leaving Shudoshi stunned and alone.

Shudoshi sat there for a moment, wanting to feel the sensation of Andri's body in his arms again, wanting that hungry mouth on his again, and knowing that he was in for the ride of his life if he wanted to make this particular Owner happy.

Then he stood, brushed himself off, grabbed the rest of the clothes and towels, and went to look for Andri.