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“I'VE GOT BLEACH IN MY EYES!!”
“It's diluted chlorine, and you'll live.” Mhin's dry reply does nothing to calm the child's frantic screeching, instead only changing their line of screeching to “I'VE GOT CHLORINE IN MY EYES!!” At least from the collective sighs of their friends around them, you can guess this is a regular enough occurrence. A stray splash from the pool catches you from the side and you sigh as you glance down at your paper fan in your hand, now thoroughly sodden and useless, for the third time that day. You're beginning to regret agreeing to help out at the pool this summer.
This was meant to be an easy job – key words, meant to. In the oppressive and muggy summer heat of Eridia, many typical jobs became nigh unbearable, each passing minute of work demanding twice the conscious effort as usual. You'd almost been tempted to stay inside, having also been landed an unexpectedly large amount of free time; but if the outside heat was burning, then the inside heat was suffocating. And then, twice as unexpectedly, a pool had opened up. You'd mentioned in passing conversation to everyone that you were thinking of applying as a lifeguard there, having done a fair bit of swimming yourself in the past. Looking back on it, that is the part you regret the most.
You'd shown up to your first day on the job to see five familiar faces looking at you with varying degrees of feigned surprise. You suppose the one upside to this is at least you don't have to get to know any new colleagues.
The summer sun, taking its job description extremely seriously, decided to rise early and steadily get stronger throughout the day, leaving you feeling overly warm from the very moment you'd arrived to work. The smell of hot concrete mingling with the chlorine of the pool permeated the air, soon joined by the sweet overture of sunscreen. Once the gates were opened, the splashing of water and shouts of children and young adults alike joined the cacophony of the pool. Beach chairs were claimed by towels, water guns filled and emptied and refilled in quick succession, and the very moment you all donned your lifeguard uniforms, people decided to start throwing one another into the pool – shallow or deep end, they didn't appear to be overly picky.
Vere, unsurprisingly, had claimed the raised lifeguard chair immediately. The fact that it is covered by shade may or may not have influenced that decision. From the moment the pool opened he's been lounging on the chair, fanning himself, his shirt arranged in a way that shows of his midriff that you are absolutely not getting distracted by, shut UP VERE-
Ais seems to be taking his job of keeping everyone cool a little too seriously. The owners have set up an inflatable obstacle course in the middle of the pool and Ais has armed himself with a cold water hose, spraying anyone who so much as pops their head above the PVC shield. The force from the hose, combined with the reduced friction from the water, often sends people sliding off the course whenever they attempt to dash across at high speeds. Following his job description, you're pretty certain Ais is meant to be keeping an eye out for potential drownings instead of adding to them.
“Afraid to get your feathers wet, Sparrow?” he teases from across the pool, breaking you out of your reverie and grinning at you as he waves the hose back and forth in a semi-threatening manner.
“Oh, I don't know,” you tease back in a sing song voice, slowly moving your foot behind you to press on the snaking line of the hose to the water pipe, “Are you sure your aim is that good?”
“I'd say I'm a decent enough shot.” Ais says with a casual shrug of his shoulders, but the look in his eyes says otherwise.
“From that far away?” you ask, raising an eyebrow, “I didn't think it was long enough.”
“Wanna bet?” he replies, levelling the hose right at you.
“Come on – shoot your shot.” you bite back with a mirroring grin. You can feel the growing water pressure against your foot.
Without waiting another second, Ais pulls the trigger on the hose and...nothing.
Well, perhaps nothing is not an accurate description. A small dribble of water leaks out of the hose, dripping onto his toes. You just about manage to hold back a snort. Leander's wheezing laughter in the background makes up for the lack of sound coming from you.
Ais brings the nozzle of the hose to his face with a confused scowl, his grip still tight on the trigger.
You figure it's probably best to not stretch the structural integrity of the hose, and lift your foot off at that exact moment.
To his credit, Ais doesn't react when the freezing cold water hits him square in the face. More so freezes, if anything. His only quick reaction is to release his grip on the trigger.
“Ah, point blank,” you comment drily, watching the water drip from Ais's mop of hair, completely obscuring his expression, “Seems you are a good shot after all, Ais.”
“Oh my, Ais, that was a quick one - even for you.” Vere chimes out from his perch to the side of you, a shit eating grin on his face, his eyes obscured by his sunglasses.
This soon turns to offended squawking when Ais aims the hose at him. Turns out it does reach that far, after all. A clattering sound joins in the symphony of squawking and hissing, and you look to the ground to find its source. Ah, there go Vere's sunglasses.
You're about to move back to your post (hopefully out of hose range) when someone runs past you, almost knocking you over. Before they can even begin to apologise, mouth opening to form sounds, they're cut off by the shrill shriek of a whistle.
“NO RUNNING BY THE POOLSIDE!” Mhin shouts, hands on their hips, sunscreen on the bridge of their nose and across their cheeks, and looking every bit irate as a tired mother of eight who's been at the beach from that crack of dawn would be.
“Relax, dude!” the jogger shouts back, still running but having slowed down a bit as they clock the fury in Mhin's eyes.
Without warning, Mhin takes a flip flop off their foot and holds it up in the air threateningly as they walk closer to you and the jogger slowly backs away. “Don't make me use this!” Both you and the jogger's eyebrows rise in tandem. Though you highly doubt Mhin would fling their sandal, you've had enough surprises for today as it is. Jogger, thankfully, seems to come to the same conclusion as you have.
“Alright! Saints Wept, take a chill pill my guy.”
From Mhin's deepening scowl, that only proceeded to make negative progress. Fantastic.
Before you can attempt to distract Mhin from the situation at hand (drowning is one lawsuit, but intentional homicide is a whole other), you feel something prodding you in the back. Something large, and firm, and-
“Put the damned pool noodle away, Leander.” Mhin sighs from your right, and you turn your head back to see Leander behind you both with a sheepish grin, a green pool noodle in his grasp.
For all that everyone else seems to be begrudgingly dealing with the heat wave, Leander seems to be thriving in it. He's lapped the pool several times over, refusing to take any breaks...though you suspect it's more from the ogling he's receiving as a life guard, if the occasional flex of his bicep is anything to go by. A glint hits the corner of your eye and you spot Leander's nipple rings shimmering in the sunlight, Leander having foregone the lifeguard t-shirt some time ago. You just about manage to hold back a wince as you not-so secretly eye them up. They have got to be getting hot in the sun.
“Aaw, that's not what you said last time, Mhin!” Leander says with a sunny grin, though the look in his eyes has a devious glint.
Mhin blushes furiously, and you take this as an opportune time to take a step back out of flip-flop firing range. Thankfully, Mhin ends up being so occupied with Leander (and Leander too busy trying to dodge an angry Mhin) that your escape ends up relatively unnoticed. You decide to head to the last bastion of sanity, conveniently located in a shady area at the corner of the pool.
Kuras looks up from writing down a first aid report as you dip into the medical tent, pushing a tent flap to the side with your arm as you make your way in. He greets you with a small smile as you ease yourself into the white plastic chair next to him with a groan, putting your sodden paper fan on an empty spot of the table to dry out. With the current temperature, it shouldn't take all that long.
“In need of a break?” Kuras asks, going back to his paperwork, but not before turning his desk fan in your direction. You're not sure you believe in saints, but if you could nominate one, Kuras would be at the top of your list.
“The sun is a deadly laser.” you reply, picking up a flimsy pair of sunglasses from an open box and putting them on, even though you're already in a shaded tent.
“Indeed it is.” Kuras nods, not even so much as reacting to your choice of words.
For a while, all is calm. You bask in the cool shade of the tent, accompanied by the muffled sounds of splashing, the hum of the fan, and the scratching of Kuras's pen against paper. The heat has shifted from painful to soporific, slowly but surely easing you into a drowsy state. Maybe you could hide away in here forever? After all, there are more than enough lifeguards on duty at this exact moment – it's not as if they need you out there, you reason.
Right before you decide to commit to becoming one with the cheap plastic chair, the tent flaps open once more. Both you and Kuras look up to see someone who looks several shades too pale in the face for a person that's tomato red across their shoulders.
“I don't feel very well.” they announce, and then promptly vomit all over the floor.
Never mind, peace was overrated anyway. That's your cue to leave if you've ever seen one.
Without another word spoken, you jump up from your chair and dart back out to the poolside before the smell can hit your nose (sorry, Kuras) and flag down one of the cleaning staff. You give them an encouraging squeeze on the shoulder as they take the news with the weary determination of a war veteran, don a plastic apron and a pair of gloves, and then enter the tent with a mop, a yellow and black striped plastic bag, and a bucket.
With a weary sigh of your own, you make your way back to your post, the concrete radiating a heat that you can feel even through your flip flops. You settle back into your position, arms crossed and eyes scanning the pool for anyone in need of assistance, the sunglasses making the job at least a little bit more bearable.
Then, because All Mother hates you, apparently, a beach ball bounces off the back of your head from the kidde pool behind you, knocking the sunglasses off of your face. You watch them disappear into the water of the deep end morosely. The ball rolls off somewhere to the side, a great distance from where it was thrown.
“My bad!” someone shouts from behind you, running past you as they go to get it. Before you can even get another breath in-
“NO RUNNING BY THE POOLSIDE!” Yep. There it is again.
You sigh.
It's going to be a very long summer.