Splatter

2. The Royal 3945

Dean spent the whole day ruminating on what had happened with the Mer delegates. According to Bobby, they told him they'd seen all they needed and skipped over the rest of the tour. Bobby was convinced that someone in the delegation had been offended but Dean was sure that Novak guy wasn't that high up on the pecking order. The official Mer government was a pretty aloof crowd and according to Sam's friend Charlie, who studied Mer Anthropology, they barely wanted to acknowledge the existence of humans. The Mer that most people were used to were the refugees who have fled various part of the world due to one natural disaster or another, sometimes they were trying to get away from their own government. All of that stuff went right over Dean's head, since all his job involved was spotting them. He had never really had much interest in the Mer, that had always been Sam's thing. The only Mer Dean could recognise by face, prior to that morning's encounter, was Anna. The poster girl of the Mer integration movement. She was the first Mer to come out to the world, having swam up to the Statue of Liberty and shown her tail on eighties television. Dean wondered whatever did happen to Anna. After making the front page of Time and telling the world about the existence of the Mer she had faded from the spotlight. Charlie believed she might have been a member of the royal family, her disappearance was something that Charlie was writing a thesis on. Thinking of Charlie, Dean checked his phone, yep they were all catching up at their usual Friday night drinking hole. He was gonna tell Charlie all about what happened, discuss why on earth some royal Merfolk would want to view the screening process and maybe pick Sam's brain on how Novak had gilled out but managed to not show his tail under a heavy duty blast of sea water.

Benny seemed a little preoccupied when they were clocking out. Dean thought at first that he was mad about Dean's conduct with the delegation but after a while of watching Benny thoughtfully turn his t-shirt inside out and outside in three times in the locker room Dean figured Benny was daydreaming. Dean peeled off his waterproof jacket and pants, the fitted material resisting as he tugged them off, and changed into jeans and a flannel shirt. Unless they were on patrol duty, Dean didn't like to wear his uniform. There were lots of bleeding hearts out there who thought border processing was barbaric. Sam probably thought so as well, which was why he'd only helped with the design of the gates in terms of making it safe for Merfolk to tail out and not injure themselves in the process of an induced morph. Dean didn't fancy sitting in a pub being glared at by left wing Finners. Dean blushed a little at the phrase, he probably shouldn't use it, seemed kind of bigoted to call people with conviction about Mer equality a derogatory term. Sam would likely shake his head all disappointed if he ever heard Dean say such things aloud. Benny used the term though, on occasion. One time a Mer resisted going into the holding tank and was thrashing around injuring the other folk crowded in the same pool, Benny dragged him out with Dean's help and still had to get twenty stitches on his abdomen because an enraged Merman with fin spines was no easy rodeo. The ER doctor had asked if Benny was injured while 'roughing up' his 'prisoner', Benny had called her a Finner then. They had to go to a different doctor to get the stitches out. So that settles that, Dean wasn't a bigot because Benny was a good guy and he wasn't a bigot either. They had a tough job was all and someone had to do it, or they'd all be swimming with Merfolk down in the local swimming pools or something. At least that's how Dean justified it to himself. It was a respectable government job, it allowed him to live near Stanford where his brother was doing his PhD, let him work with his uncle Bobby who had raised him and he could afford to buy all the spare parts to keep his classic car purring along.

Once they were in their street clothes, Dean didn't even have to check in with Benny about whether he wanted a drink, they just automatically hopped into Dean's Impala and drove the three blocks to The Port and pulled into the mostly vacant parking lot. It was only 5 pm, since the final gate closure was at 4.30, to ensure that the wall was up in its defensive position well before dusk. It was an unspoken rule at M.A.P.S. whoever was on gate rotation staked out the back booth closest to the bar and waited for the rest of the shift to arrive. Dean ordered some beers while Benny flipped through the bistro menu as if he'd never seen it before, something was up with him. Dean didn't pry, he'd worked with Benny long enough to know that the man will speak up when he was ready.