Author's Note: So, whenever I'm too lazy to work on actual projects, I invariably end up writing "doodles" (longer than a drabble, too underdeveloped to be a one-shot) about Tobias, Marco and Ax. So this'll be my dumping ground for those. No story arc, no planned amount of chapters, just some short scenes. All of them take place between #45 and #49. Reviews are welcomed, of course, as are ideas and prompts! It's pretty likely I'll end up writing most of the ideas you fellas pitch at me.
Swimming
-/-
-/-
"Take a deep breath, tuck the water in my chest, cross my fingers and hope for the best." –Florence + The Machine, Swimming
-/-
-/-
"It's four hundred degrees out here! I haven't been this hot since the last time I went to Disneyland. And that was when I was five." Marco flopped back down on the couch. "Did we get a second sun or something?"
{I believe that a second sun would incinerate any living thing on the Earth's surface. As much as I find this temperature uncomfortable, I highly doubt we have suffered such a highly improbable astronomical event}, Ax said, not lifting his main eyes from his Good Food magazine.
"Ugh, Ax, please look up the word "exaggeration" next time you're near a dictionary. Though it's not much of one, since I'm practically melting. Melting, I tell you."
{You could always head back to the Hork-Bajir Valley}, I told him rather unhelpfully. The truth was, I didn't want to spend my whole day listening to Marco whine about the weather. At least he wasn't wearing a coat of feathers. Or fur, like Ax.
"Do you have any idea what Hork-Bajir crap smells like in August?" He sat up, wiped sweat from his brow. "I'm hitting the pond."
{This magazine seems to imply that there are techniques to remove pizza grease to make the pizza more palatable. Isn't grease a desirable taste? I certainly find it to be.}
"So we've noticed. You coming?"
Ax stood up, closed his magazine and gingerly placed it on his little bookshelf Marco had scavenged for us. I suppose that was one good thing about having Marco around; he had no reservations about using one of his human morphs and hitting up garage sales and dumpsters for furniture. We had a lot more space to put things. And on the flip side, a lot more things to find space for.
His presence here had changed things, especially lately. At first he seemed fairly eager to spend time with his newly reunited family, but after about two weeks he started spending more time here with Ax and me. He jokingly cited "irreconcilable differences", which Ax and I took to mean a lack of internet access and cable TV.
There was a pretty big part of me that resented it. He'd taken Ax's and my quiet, cozy little home and made it busy, cluttered and loud. But there really wasn't anything I could say about it, and besides, it wasn't like Marco and I hadn't saved each other's behinds many times over. We just were probably not ideal roommates.
Ax didn't seem to mind, at least. He still sometimes found Marco's babbling bewildering, but the Ax-man enjoys human contact. There was only so much of that I could provide for him on my own.
I figured I'd follow them to the pond, if only because it was generally shadier over there, and the heat was no more fun for me than it was for them. The pond isn't really a pond, per se, just a sort of marsh that pops up where the river gets really wide. There's big cat-tails, lily pads and frogs, and quite a few mosquitoes, even though there's still some current in the water.
Marco stripped down to his boxers and waded in, then dunked his head in to get his hair wet. "I so don't know or care what's in this water." Ax followed a few seconds later. As soon as he had the deer-half of his body submerged, he looked much more relaxed and content than he had been a few moments before. I wondered how hot it was on his home world.
I didn't spend long wondering, though, as my eye caught a fat bullfrog resting on a big fallen branch. I hadn't had much luck with breakfast this morning, so both the human and the hawk part of me instantly decided to go for it. Less than two seconds later, I was flapping back up to my branch with a fresh meal in my talons.
"Oh God, what if that was Kermit?" Marco said in faux despair.
{Thanks, Marco. I love it when you anthropomorphize my lunch.}
"Glad to be of service," he said back, then submerged himself completely.
I ate my lunch in silence while Ax and Marco waded and paddled. Ax seemed pretty fixated on understanding the concept of less grease, which led to Marco trying to explain heart attacks with his incredibly limited biology knowledge. By the time I finished my frog, Marco was mixing up the aorta and arteries and Ax was possibly even more confused than when he first asked.
"Hey, Bird-Boy, come join us!"
{Yes, Tobias, I am finding this water quite refreshing. You could join us in human form.}
{Uh-uh. You're not supposed to swim for an hour after eating. Didn't you ever take a swim class?}
"Heck no. Ax and I learned to swim right here. Don't you remember? Rachel was in that cute little red tankini."
{Hey, that's my girlfriend.}
{None of you humans were very equipped to help me learn to swim}, Ax pouted.
"Yeah, like we're supposed to know how to teach an Andalite to swim." Marco rolled his eyes. "It wasn't exactly easy working with you back then. You were in your gung-ho "honor! Having you inferior humans support my weight in the water is dishonorable!" phase."
While a bit extreme, Marco's impersonation of early Ax wasn't entirely inaccurate. Ax had mellowed a lot over the last few years. He was still big on the honor thing, but it seemed that now he was fighting for Earth for honor and because he actually cared about the fate of this planet. And he still thought humans were inferior, but he'd learned not to say that out loud. Too often, at least.
I thought back to that time. It had been when we'd just met Ax. Marco had had a bad run-in with some sharks a few days before and Ax couldn't swim at all, so we'd decided everyone should learn how to do it. I'd scouted out this pond as a place where we could have an Andalite in fairly deep water. It had been spring, so the water had been several feet deep. They'd all spent a weekend practicing backstrokes, breaststrokes and doggie paddles. I'd stayed in the trees, keeping an eye out and trying not to stare too much at Rachel.
Teaching Marco had been fairly easy, though he still wasn't the strongest swimmer, but teaching Ax had been pretty difficult. No one, even Ax, knew how Andalites swam. We ended up having to check out books from the library about water buffalo and making educated guesses. Eventually, with enough practice, he got the hang of it.
It had been nice, spending a weekend with the six of us and no immediate threat. Back when we still thought the Andalites would come save us. Before Arbat's doomed mission or our assassination attempt on Visser One. Before the Ellimist and Crayak and David and Taylor. Before Rachel started intimidating me and before Jake got too serious. Before torture.
It had been at least two years ago. Strange to think how much we all had changed.
Marco and Ax went back to whatever conversation they'd been having. Ax attempted to make a joke and Marco was laughing at how awkward it was. I felt jealous, in a way. I knew they both had their personal demons, but they both looked at ease in the pond. Like they could put it out of their minds and just enjoy the cool water on a hot day.
"Dude, Tobias, it's only a few feet deep."
{Okay, fine,} I muttered. I dropped out of my tree and demorphed. With my entire morphing suit on, I jumped into the pond.