Pairings: None

TW: None I'm P sure

Notes: I wrote this while I was on vacation. Also self insert kinda??? First time writing in the second person perspective.

Words: 3110

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You're so excited. You get to see the marine life at an aquarium today while you've been at vacation on the beach. You've been anticipating seeing some of the wildlife that roam the waters and skies of the beach, and while pulling up into the Sanders Marine Wildlife parking center, you couldn't help but shake in excitement.  

    You pay the parking fee and for your ticket, then follow the sidewalk out to the main entrance. As you walk, you see the renovations that are being worked on the aquarium. The mess was expansive and there was a lot that seemed to be a work in progress. You wonder how long the expansion will take, and if it'll be done by the next time you visit, which will most likely be next fall break.

    You enter after being greeted and stand in a small booth that tell you to wait for your tour guide. Looking out of the small tic tax sized booth, you see that there are tarp-covered areas and a hodgepodge of catering places everywhere. You assume this is because of renovations and that things will have their own place and organization soon. 

    You wait for a while, maybe ten minutes, before a distressed man approaches you. He doesn't seem like a tour guide, but he is wearing a wet suit with the aquarium logo on it, so you assume it's legit.

    The man stumbles when he reaches the booth, and for a second you think you might have to hold him up to keep him sturdy, He inhales quickly and deeply before giving a bright smile towards you. You don't know how to take it, seeing as how the man is trying his hardest to regain whatever air he lost.

    "Hello! Welcome to the Sanders Marine Wildlife Sanctuary Aquarium whatever-you-call-it!" He twirled a finger in the air as you silently ponder why you thought this man would be anything more than professional.

    But then he looks at you, and you can tell this is his passion. His eyes light up despite you being the only one willing to take a tour and his voice is fond like he loves talking to adults and kids alike. His hair is a little messy, which gives you the impression that he had no time at all to dry before rushing here. His cheeks crinkle in happiness and it drags his freckles up with it. It also pushes his glasses a little down his face, and he has to push them back up before he can continue.

    "My name is Patton, I'll be your tour guide today, even though I'm supposed to be a diver." He smiles and giggles a little, which makes you smile back. There's something about him that's familiar, but you can't seem to place it. Patton snaps you out of those thoughts before you get a chance to explore them.

    "You're a little quiet, huh?" He remarks, and you shrug. You're not fond of talking, but you're not shy.

    "It doesn't matter." He waves it off. "Anyways, I'm supposed to be a diver, but our tour guides are severely under staffed today so I suppose I'm next in line." He's finally not hunched over and gasping for air anymore. He's standing straight and optimistically now, and something about his demeanor makes you want to straighten up too. "But that's okay! That means you'll get a little more educated today that anyone else!" He winks, and you can't help but laugh. This man certainly has a way with people.

    His smile widens, and uddenly, you're being dragged along to the first exhibit.

    He talks to you while you pet the stingrays. The stingray's wings are soft, and you enjoy petting them, so you listen and pet for about five minutes before Patton stops talking, and politely waits for you to finish. Fortunately for him, he doesn't have to wait long since a family of at least six comes in behind you and crowd all around you. You don't like crowds, so you follow Patton for a couple of feet before stopping to look at a tank from the underground part. There, you see fish bigger than you've ever seen. You smile in awe, which makes Patton smile too.

    You watch the fish for a little and listen about how they were rescues from the red tide that's been going on recently for a while until the sight starts to get a little boring until... wait... is that a sea turtle?!

    You gasp and point, which cuts Patton's sinister tone off. He smiles, a little thankfully to be honest, and chuckles. "Yes, that is our sea turtle, Logan. We rescued him after his got hit by a boat. The shell had a dent in it and when it regrew, left an air pocket so Logan had a real hard time swimming too far down into the tank." You notice that Logan doesn't swim very far down, and when he does, you notice the abnormal hump on the turtle's shell. You whine in pity to which Patton chuckles.

    "Don't worry about him, he's doing fine, better than recently actually." You can't help but smile at that. You'd also like to think that when the sea turtle looked in your direction, he smiled too.

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    Patton dragged you into another room with a few tanks. Some were in the walls and some were in the middle of the room. Honestly, you didn't care. This was all so exciting! That's why you weren't so surprised to fin yourself pressing your face up against the glass of the the tank in the middle of the room. One side of the tank harbored various crabs and conchs and the other side was filled with pufferfish. You found the pufferfish to look quite funny up close.

    Patton filled you up about facts on sea urchins, let you pet one, filled you up facts about nurse sharks, filled you up on facts about eels and shrimp and pufferfish and crabs and all sorts of things until he was interrupted. A man with an aquarium uniform on came up to whisper in his ear. Upon further price, you saw the name tag read "Terrance" and again, you found yourself pondering the familiarity of these names.

    Once again Patton interrupted your thought process with a huge panicked yelp. "I totally forgot!" He shouted. Terrance didn't look amused by the fact that Patton literally just destroyed whatever secrecy Terrance had worked so hard to protect.

    "Kiddo," you questioned the ethics of calling a stranger 'kiddo' but let it slide, ", I totally forgot I'm supposed to be doing a presentation." Patton sounded so worried, that probably wasn't good. He was obviously torn between teaching you and presenting, so you helped him pick.

    "I'll go with you." You offered. It was the first time you had actually spoke, and he seemed to notice that by the way he flinched.

    "Really? You'd skip all the other things to stay with me?" Patton's eyes harbored nothing more than extreme thankfulness which if you hadn't already wanted to go with him, that would've sold you.

    A grin broke out on Patton's face as he stepped forward and gave you a small hug to which you decide to accept. You didn't have the voice or the heart to say no anyways. After that small event, Patton starts to loosely drag you through the exhibits you'll only get to see now and only for a second, and you wave hi to all of them, smiling when you catch a fish's line of sight. Patton drags you through the gift shop and through some corridors before getting to a large room with a huge containment center. It's made for people to watch in becasue there were bleachers with patrons sitting in them waiting for the show to start. In the middle of the room is a large tank that digs into the ground. You wonder what's in there, but don't get enough time to see before Patton zooms you away.

He lets go of you near the Pelican place which was a divet in the containment room. You wonder if you can ask about the big tank in the middle of the room before Patton has to go, but Patton is already sprinting away and yelling 'I'll meet you after the show' s before you get a chance. You sigh. You then wonder if you can ask him a little later. You shrug to yourself and turn your attention to the room behind the glass which houses four great white pelicans. In there with them was a variety of toys, it the pelicans looked like they really didn't care. They were all grooming and preening at the moment.

That was disturbed when Patton opened the door. The pelicans all turned to look at the moving door and when Patton emerged with a microphone headset, one pelican flew over and literally landed on Patton. Patton lets out an oof and you wonder if he's okay, but then Patton laughs, and it's heard all over the room becasue of the speakers.

"Virgil! Buddy I missed you!" Patton chirps, and the pelican, Virgil, tried to nuzzle his way into Patton's arms. You get the feeling that Virgil is attached to Patton.

Fortunately for Patton, his outburst grabs the attention of several observers and they all gather to watch through the window. The room is a little small and crowded, but you manage, There wasn't a lot of people there and you weren't awkwardly shoved into people's personal bubble so you decided it wasn't as bad as it looked.

Patton continued to blab about pelicans for half an hour. Sometimes he'd play with them, other times he'd pet them. Whenever Virgil couldn't perch on Patton, he'd follow him around or nuzzle into Patton's midriff since he was half Patton's size. You learn that Virgil weighs only around 20 pounds in weight which amazes you since he looks so big.

All in all, you find the show to be rather cute and amusing, especially watching Virgil cling to Patton like a child. Patton only chuckles at the affection and pets Virgil. It never seems to enough since Virgil keeps following Patton around like a lost puppy.

When Patton threw toys around the room, Virgil would be the quickest to getting there despite being the furthest set back. The pelicans would proceed to try and get the toy away from the others because it was theirs! The crowd would laugh everytime Virgil went to bite at another pelican and Patton would only claim "Yep, Virgil is the sassiest one out of all of them."

When the show is over, Patton comes back with the headset in hand and asks you how you liked it. You nod and smile wide and Patton grins. "Glad you liked it." He gives you a toothy grin, then remembers what he's supposed to be doing.

"So I have another show in ten minutes, and after that the aquarium closes, I'm sorry I didn't get to teach you more." You wave a hand.

"I want to see it." You say, and Patton's eyebrows furrow in confusion before he understands what you're talking about.

"You want to see the show even though theres a lot more to see?" He asks quietly, and you nod. It was the consequence of coming late only for a discount. Patton doesn't look convinced, so you smile wider. You're curious about the show anyways, why the heckity heck not?

"Really?" He asks again, and you're suddenly wondering why he's so attached to you. It doesn't matter anyways, you nod, determined to make your new friend happy.

Suddenly Patton has a smile of glee on his face, and you're smiling too. Yeah, friend.

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Patton is dragging you again, but not nearly as far. He drags you through the containment room and you only stop to look at the others for a few seconds before being dragged away. You're dragged down another corridor. But it's not nearly as long, and this time you're outside on some sort of catwalk. There's little bird foot prints leading to where you assume you're going to establish where to walk in case of human traffic.

There's nobody really though, so you walk through with ease to a large balcony. There are bleachers surrounding a large tank with banners strung around everywhere. On the banners are a picture of a dolphin and the words: "The prince of the aquarium, Roman!" It's then when it hits you, you're being drug by a dolphin trainer, and you're going to see a dolphin show.

He must have heard your little gasp because he turns to give you a wide smile. "Yep! I train dolphins mostly! They're so fun to work with!" You can only nod.

Patton offers you to sit in in a spot with a intentionally sneaky wink and smirk. You wonder what that means but you don't have time to decipher it before Patton slides on the headset and greets incoming observers and people already in the stands.

It's three minutes until the show actually starts, yes you counted, and when it does, both you and Patton are vibrating with excitement. You're going to get to see a real life dolphin, up close!

"Guys, gals, and non binary pals!" Patton greets, and you smile. "Thank you for coming to see Roman the dolphin! He's very excited to meet you! He loves an audience!" Then Patton smacks the water in the tank next to him. For a few seconds, you wonder what he's doing. And then you spot the wave. It gets closer and closer to Patton before you see a fin rise out of the water, and then a mouth pokes up to nuzzle into Patton's hand. Patton makes a hand motion, then the dolphin zooms into action, He swims on his side and waves with his fin. You "Wow!" In awe like the rest of the crowd while Patton declares "Roman says hello!"

But then Roman puts his fin down too early and zooms over to Patton. Patton clicks his tongue. "You see that? He cheated. He wasn't supposed to stop yet. Tsk tsk tsk." As if Roman could sense the disappointment, he dove underwater to what Patton called "His sulking state."

"He pouts when he doesn't get a trick right." Patton explains, and you can't help but chuckle a little. Patton hits the water again, and Roman obeys like a good dolphin, but this time Patton declares that he'll go for a different greeting, then makes a fist and rests it on his waist. Once again, Roman zooms into action again. He dives, and then theres silence before he's suddenly out of the water and flipping in the air.

There's cheering, and Roman knows he does good because Patton blows a whistle. Roman jumps again, and you can almost see the smile on his mouth as he swims around and chatters excitedly.

"He's got a little ego, he does. He loves getting tricks right, he goes into victory dance mode." As if on cue, Roman chatters again.

Patton is then spouting facts about echolocation and how deep dolphins can swim and how some male dolphins are rather mean but Roman is the exception to that rule.

"Above all else, he loves showing off." Patton says right near the end. Roman does some flips and turns in the air in response and chippers away as Patton feeds him again for doing well.

"But one thing he likes to do" Patton makes eye contact with you and grins evilly, "is to splash people." Roman makes a funny noise while you process what he just said. It's only then you notice that you're seated in the front row on benches that have labels that read "Warning: Splash Zone." And suddenly you're glaring at Patton while he gives you a smug smile. He takes a stick that he calls the target pool and smacks it at the wall nearest you and Roman slams into the water, successfully showering you with water.

Bubbly laughter makes its way out of your throat as Patton does this to all sides of the tank. There are shrieks of small children and panicking or amused parents or adults filling the air with noise. It all makes you smile.

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"I'm still so sorry that you couldn't see the rest of the aquarium." You shrug. You still had a good time, even after getting splashed.

"I want to come back next year." You state, and you're not lying. You are pretty bummed that you didn't get to see as much as you wanted, but that was okay becasue you got to see some stuff that others didn't get to and you think that's pretty cool.

Patton turns to you and smiles. "I'll be here when you come back, I'd love to walk you around again and tell you about new animals or show you the things you didn't get to see." You smile.

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Bonus:
You kept your promise. You came back, and this time, you disregarded the discount you got the trip before. It wasn't worth only seeing the aquarium for two hours.

You look around. Renovations are looking better, there an actual catering place now instead of the makeshift stands they had to use tarps and canopies for. You notice that not much else has changed from what you can see, and you hope that the staff hasn't changed much either. You were hoping to see Patton again. It was so much fun last time, and you were secretly hoping that he'd keep up his end of the deal.

You remembered the way to the containment facility so you went there, you were hoping to find out what was in those large tanks.

Upon arrival, you smack yourself in the head. Of course it was dolphins, how did you not see that? Or guess for that matter. What else would need that big of a cage?

You peer down into the water. You make out the figures of three dolphins. You the scarring on one dolphin that you recognized as Roman, since Patton pointed it out last year. You hadn't gotten to see the other two but you were glad to have seen them now.

You turn your attention to a platform down in the tank. A man was there, and he was petting one of the dolphins. You recognize him, how could you not?

You make eye contact for a brief moment, and you wave. He smiles.