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Pete can hold his breath for five minutes and thirty two seconds underwater, but normally he doesn’t have to. It was a fun party trick, the sort of thing a kid who spends large amounts of his time diving underwater and feeling around shallow sea-beds can do. The sort of thing that got more impressive when his social circles changed and most of the people he hangs around didn’t grow up swimming as often as he did, the Chao Praya not being nearly as much of a draw as the sea.
Chan teaches them all to hold their breath longer than the baseline they came in with but Pete’s had a headstart since the beginning. Comes in handy, mostly when training with and around poisonous gasses. Not that he’s ever experienced that live, when it actually matters beyond coming to sick in your own bed or the hospital wing. Comes in handy too for: dirty jokes, refusing food when someone’s pinching your nose shut up until the point when his fingers dig in behind your jaw and force, Khun Noo’s annual bodyguard-off against Kinn’s detail.
He can hold his breath for five minutes and thirty two seconds underwater but normally he doesn’t have to because he’s faster than that, because he’s good with knots, because he calms down when the rope cinches tight and the water closes in over his head and he’s out of the pool before he feels the strain.
Normally. Usually.
This time around Chan’s hands became someone else’s around his wrists and the rope rubbed up against skin made raw by metal cuffs and finally, finally he didn’t feel naked and too light and in danger of dissipating. Why would he want to change that by getting out and surfacing?
So he stays down.
He stays down.
He stays down.
Chlorine bites into his wounds like a belt and stings his eyes when he opens them. Pol and Ice loose their own ropes on either side of him, move in slow motion and kick upwards, sending ripples and bubbles across his line of sight. He watches them drift, break apart, looks up as the surface moves further and further away from him as he lets out his breath in a slow, controlled flow, makes himself heavy, makes himself sink.
Shadows move over him and he looks down instead, at the lines of the pool, at his own feet, made blue by the filtered light. He doesn’t inhale, couldn’t inhale, but Pete has the strange feeling that the air down here is actually more breathable than it is up there.
No one has actually ever died in training, even when rumors say otherwise. Khun Korn is too careful for that, so Chan is too. Waste of resources. Waste of talent. But Pete’s chest is beginning to burn which means they’ve long passed the three minute mark. Someone ought to have come after him by now. He thinks he wants that. He thinks. He thinks he wants what’s supposed to happen to just happen. Please. Please, if it could just, whatever it is, if it could happen, if it could -
Hands. Around him, pinning his already bound arms to his sides and he kicks out with bound ankles towards his assailant’s chest, but his assailant isn’t bound, isn’t short on breath, hasn’t inhaled pool water in a panic and he swims around behind him and grabs him and brings him up and up and up and Pete’s coughing, gagging, spitting out water and snot and tasting cheap soup in the back of his throat eat, I told you to eat, eat, eat it all. Hands close around his ankles and he kicks.
“Pete? Pete, look at me.”
Pete blinks. He thinks he was crying. Porsche looks down at him from where he’s crouching over his feet. Pol, Ice, the rest, they’re all staring down at him too but look away fast when he focuses on any of them, uncomfortable, confused, smiling awkwardly. Looking away except for Chan. Chan holds eye contact.
Pete breaks it first.
“Pete?”
He looks back at Porsche. Porsche looks so worried. Blurry. Pete blinks. That’s not right. He’s fine. He smiles, wide and big and tries to tell him so but his throat is burning. How long was he under?
When Porsche smiles, his voice is clear and slow, like he’s not sure Pete’s following. He is following though. He’s tracking him. Tracking him, tracking Pol hovering beside him. Tracking the wide open space of the room, the light coming in through the windows, the exits (none he’d be able to reach like this), the family (door to the living space is thirty meters away from him, not that he could reach it like this), the-
A touch to his ankle. He flinches and Porsche pulls his hands back, holding them up. So may he hadn’t been tracking what he’d been saying after all.
“No,” Chan says, stepping into his field of vision. Which Pete changes by turning his head. Not hard at all. “Get him up.”
“The rope-”
“Get him up.”
Pol grabs him under his arms and stands him up and as the adrenaline fades, Pete begins to feel... very stupid.
He grows his smile, knows what’s coming even if Porsche doesn’t. Lets himself reassure him. It’s fine, he wants to say, but his throat still burns from the pool-water, the spice packets, his own tears. It’s fine. Just not usually him who has to take the extra rounds. He just doesn’t remember Chan looking quite like that when it had been anyone else.
“Again.” Eat it.
Pol lets go and takes a step back and Pete doesn’t take in a fresh breath when Chan pushes him back in.
Water slaps his face like broth in a dogbowl.
He sinks faster this time. No oxygen in his lungs, already wet, already stinging. He opens his eyes, opens his mouth, lets the pool try and clean him out. Thinks about breathing in, deep and deadly. Thinks about undoing the ropes, breaking their grip, running away bleeding.
Does neither. Doesn’t choose at all. Just drifts. It’s nicer down here. All the light is blue. It’s an easy tactic, a smart one, disorienting a prisoner by depriving them of natural light, of routine. There had been some sort of shifting light system before, changing colors without pattern. Mocking the concept of a window. Pete still doesn’t know how long he’d been in the safe house and how long he’d been in the basement of the compound.
He doesn’t even know the date.
Just that it’s blue.
There’s no choice in waiting again. Someone will pull him up again. Or someone won’t. It’s faster to drown down here than up there anyway.
A crash. Bubbles. He doesn’t kick this time when he’s pulled back up but underwater he glares at Porsche for doing it. Porsche doesn’t notice and when they surface, he smiles at him, eyes streaming and nose running. “Sorry,” he says to him, to Pol, to Chan. “Don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
Pol looks around, unsure what to do with that. Chan’s face is cold, unreadable even by him. Disappointed, maybe. Pete gets that. He’s pretty disappointed too.
Porsche, though. Porsche looks at him like his bodysuit’s been stripped off and every one of his scarring wounds are on display. Pete looks down at the rope around his ankles. Keeps smiling.
“Again,” Chan says. Eat it, Pete hears. Pol heaves him to his feet and it’s not good that Pete’s dizzy for this.
A shove to his back and he’s in the water again.
You think you can choose?
Not really. He takes his time freeing himself, though, which isn’t a choice either. Just a slow-down. A break. Watches the rope drift and slowly sink lower down to the pool. His wrists and ankles feel wrong, feel hollow-boned and cold, his hands unheld. Pete blinks rapidly, watching the rope and massages his wrists underwater.
It’s quiet down here, at least. Quiet and blue and again he’s struck by that urge to just breathe in deep, fill himself full of something clean and scouring and sink.
He kicks upwards, breaks the surface, and pushes his hair out of his eyes before pulling himself up to sit at the edge of the pool. It’s just Porsche and Chan now, which means Chan must have dismissed everyone else. He wouldn’t have told Porsche to stay, though, which means Porsche will be facing discipline about this later.
Or not.
He’s got his own protection.
Pete smiles up at both of them, feels it expand until his jaws ache in the face of Chan’s hard expression, Porsche’s concern. Like it can swallow them both up. Like it can push them out.
“Back in,” Chan says and Porsche takes a very, very ill-advised step towards him, broadcasting threat in every line of his body. It’s sweet and unsubtle and perfect for a guy who once thought he could protect his brother against a crime empire with a set of bandaged fists.
Pete loves him a little but thought he’d learned better than that. So he hates him a little too. This is exhausting and it will be over faster if Porsche leaves.
“He came up within time.”
“He came up within the three minutes. Pete’s record is in seconds.” Chan looks away from Porsche back at him and Pete continues to smile, unbothered. Or he thinks he’s unbothered. He doesn’t really remember what that feels like. “And he left the rope in the pool.”
Oops. “It’s fine,” he tells Porsche and watches his lip twist in a dog’s snarl. Porsche would be better at his job if he remembered just who he was supposed to be looking out for. “It’s fine,” he says again and jumps back in.
The water is less welcoming unbound. He swims down, feels the pressure change against his ears and for a moment he’s a kid and there’s something besides concrete and nylon rope at the bottom of the pool. Something interesting, something soft or slimy he can run his fingers through, something that stings, maybe, but never, ever hits.
It’s quiet under the sea too, but it crackles more all the same, and if he shuts his eyes, it will be his grandma waiting for him up there, calling him in for dinner, and he’ll warm up in air that hasn’t been air-conditioned past his comfort point.
He hasn’t told her he’s back yet. Hasn’t called her since. He knows her, she’ll want to know how his vacation went, when he’ll be visiting her, and if he’ll be bringing his new friend that was so polite over the phone.
He reached out, touches rope, and swims back to the surface and knows from Chan’s face that he was down too long again.
Porsche’s jaw is clicking. Pete really wishes he would leave.
He pulls himself up to the side of the pool and begins to stand up when Chan shakes his head. He sits down. Begins to shiver. He’s not usually in and out this much, or maybe it’s just that he’s tired.
Chan holds out his hand. Pete looks up at him and almost forgets to smile. Does forget, for a moment and he doesn’t know what Chan sees only that it’s something he’s sure he shouldn’t. There’s nothing in him right now that anybody should see. Least of all anyone in this room.
He hands him the rope.
Chan holds it out to Porsche without looking at him and Pete sees Porsche roll his eyes, pace once in a circle, sees him expect for a moment for someone in charge to change their mind, which is always a little funny, always a little sad. Porsche is slow at this.
“Really?”
“Tie him up.”
Chan steps back Porsche crouches down next to him again, blocks off his sight so all he can see is him. It makes Pete wish it could go both ways. But Chan can see his face and there are about four different cameras in this room capturing different angles and he’s not in one of the blindspots. So he keeps smiling.
“Don’t worry,” he says and Porsche just shakes his head which makes him smile harder. “Please don’t worry,” he says again, quieter, and there’s relief when the rope closes again around his ankles and wrists, relief when it’s cinched tight, relief when it hides the welts there on his skin from view.
Given how many rounds of this he’s going through, it could be that he can convince people that it’s just ropeburn from the pool. Could be he won’t know the difference himself.
Sure.
“I’m sorry,” Porsche whispers into his ear when he hauls him up.
And pushes him back in.
He knows what he’s supposed to do. He knows how to make it so that he won’t be pushed in again, into water that’s feeling increasingly cold, into blue that’s starting to hurt his eyes, into chlorine that lashes and burns and hurts his nasal passages.
Or he can wait it out again. He’s alone down here, he can cry and he doesn’t have to smile and no one can see him and no one can untie him and tie him back up again and even if he passes out, he’s pretty sure he’d survive it. Or he wouldn’t. No, he probably would. He’s an asset. He’s the reason that Porsche is back and Khun Kinn won’t forget that.
Porsche wouldn’t let him drown even if Chan told him to. Porsche is just like that.
Porsche might even say he could stay down here where it was quiet as long as he needed, where he is heavy and weightless all at once, where the water touches him everywhere and nowhere, where everything stings and everything is clean and purified and quiet and blue and quiet and blue and quiet and blue and restrained and he can’t do anything stupid.
I told you to eat it. Good pets do what they’re told.
Pete gets himself out of the rope, takes it in hand, and swims upward.
“There we go,” Chan says, stopwatch in hand as Pete pulls himself out of the pool. The wounds in his chest scream. “Made good time, Pete.” He heads out and Porsche takes the rope, looks at him with a face so sad that Pete can’t understand it, and leaves after him.
Pete jumps back in.