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“Mac, it’s just 5 meters. You can literally see the tiles in the bottom of the pool from here. Not that high.” Billy gestured towards the edge of the jump pad, lifting his eyebrows in question.
Beside him, the Italian clang stone-faced to the metal pole screwed into the wall of the diving tower, his legs shuffling on the slippery surface.
“It is more than enough to cause a serious damage to one’s organs if done incorrectly.” He glanced down before jerking himself back, shivering. “I never wanted to do this in the first place. Water and I don’t mix, Billy.”
The cowboy ran his hand through his messy heap of hair, looking at his lover with a bemused eyes. “You have fought ancient monsters ten times your size, looked into the eyes of a giant, blood-thirsty spider, and clawed your way to the top of the food chain in dark, back-stabbing 1400’s Italy. But you can’t dive from 5 meters in a perfectly safe swimming hall?”
The older man just shook his head, pursing his lips together. The slender hand was turning white from the force with which he gripped the rail.
It was foolish, he knew it himself. A man like him, lived a life that he had lived, should not by any means be afraid of swimming. Well, if he was being honest, the act of swimming itself did not bother him all that much. It was the diving that got his legs trembling and made his stomach turn. Putting his head beneath the water was something he just wasn’t willing to do, even if his lover was there to root him on.
There was a gentle pat on his shoulder, Billy’s blue eyes tender as he leaned in to plant a kiss onto his nose. “No worries, darling. I’m not going to push you to jump if you truly don’t want to. But I’m gonna dive, so go quickly to the pool’s side if you want to witness a magnificent performance carried out by the man of your dreams!” He winked and moved forward to prepare himself, bending down to show off his backside to his one-man audience.
Machiavelli sniggered, and with a sigh of relief hurried down the stairs to stand next to the tower, ready to see if his lover would actually manage to follow through with the dive he had promised. Even when he was safely standing far from the high platform, he couldn’t help but wince as he saw Billy dancing near the edge, waving at him with a grin as if he had no worries in the world, completely confident in his own skills and abilities.
But that was because the man was so infuriatingly impulsive. He acted before thinking, jumped before looking and spoke without a filter. And it was slowly driving Machiavelli insane. As a politician, he had come to realize quite early on that planning beforehand was a vital talent for one to possess, and if you acted too rashly, your head could be found from a tip of a spear when the next day arrived.
Their personalities were, in many ways, complete opposites. Billy was not a man of reflection nor was he capable of seeing the bigger picture most of the time. But then again, Machiavelli had noticed that even if the cowboy took no pressure from a possible backfiring, he did get the job done. Perhaps, and this was something he only ever admitted to himself, that was the very reason Billy did succeed in his career as a criminal outlaw. He had the courage to do when others preferred sitting still, and despite what the world might held in higher regard, Machiavelli couldn’t deny that if everyone was like he himself, a lot less progress would have been made during the run of the mankind. It was people like Billy who pushed the change forward, good and bad, and it was people like Machiavelli who controlled the after-burst with their incessantly ticking minds.
They complemented each other, in a way. Billy pushed him to try and break his limits, and he made sure the younger man didn’t cause too much mayhem with his wild ideas and actions. It was comfortable for them. It felt balanced.
“I’m about to do it now! Are you watching, Mac? Learn from the master!” A loud shout was all the warning he got before he was splashed thoroughly wet by a human cannonball hitting into the water right in front of him. As he wiped his face dry with a huff, the smiling man from the depths resurfaced and let out a booming laugh which echoed piercingly inside of the nearly empty hall.
“You should see your face! My god, Mac, your hair just won’t get along with water, does it?”
Machiavelli snorted, pointing with his finger at his partner’s flat hair pile. “And how is that any better, if I may ask? You look like a dog coming out of a rainstorm.” Carefully, he slipped from the edge of the pool into the water, leisurely swimming towards Billy. The cowboy smirked, slowly sinking lower below the surface until only his nose and eyes were above the water. Machiavelli stopped immediately.
“Billy, no.”
The young man slithered entirely beneath the waves, a cold shiver ran through Machiavelli’s body.
“This is not funny, Billy. I told you, I don’t like diving.” There was no answer, only a shadow of a man moving alarmingly fast behind his back, a slight touch in his left thigh making him jump with an embarrassing shriek.
Just when he was about to go and climb out of the pool, a slick head popped up beside him, almost causing him to fall backwards into the water with a start.
“Billy, stop that! You nearly made me slip!” Face red, the older man grabbed a hold of the tiles on the brim of the pool, steadying himself and taking a deep breath. “Don’t pull me beneath the surface, please. I suspect I could not keep myself calm if my head would end up under the water.” He glanced at the roaming waves around him, swallowing hard. “It is an irrational fear of mine. I can’t seem to remember when it began, exactly, but it has been there for a while now. It might have gone worse over the years.”
Blinking, Billy looked at him for a short second before taking his free hand into a firm hold, squeezing his shaking fingers with his stable ones.
“We don’t have to do this now, Niccolò. But I want you to promise me that when you start to feel like overcoming this, you tell me and I can be here to help you through it.” He smiled widely, nudging his head against the magician’s. “We all need a little push every now and then.”
A faint smirk tugged the corners of Machiavelli’s mouth as he lifted their intertwined hands up to his lips.
“Such a smart man you are, my amore. You have my word.”