Meggan and Julian

[x-meggan.livejournal.com]

Meggan discovers a new powers trick and decides to test it out in the pool, but forgets to warn anyone that might be nearby. Backdated to June 11th.



Meggan was swimming in the pool since it was warm enough for it, and had discovered that if she focused on nothing but the water—besides the accompanying result of unconsciously shifting and turning a nice shade of blue that mimicked the water—she could grow gills. She wasn’t sure how long she could stay submerged for, but it was fun for now. She could time herself later—for now, seating herself at the bottom of the pool in between submerged laps was far more interesting.

Although, she thought with a shake of her head, maybe she should have put some sort of sign near the edge, telling people not to worry since she was only testing out some gills.

Julian strolled into the pool area and kicked off his flip flops by one of the many wooden loungers that surrounded the clear body of water. Shedding his robe and sunglasses, the Californian teenager meandered to the edge of the pool and looked down into the rippling surface. A soft breeze on the warm air made his skin rise in goose bumps, but they quickly faded as he noticed someone sitting at the bottom of the basin. At first, he thought it was Fred again, but this was someone much smaller than the greatly reduced Mister Dukes.

Jumping in, Julian swam to the bottom and came up behind who he came to find as Meggan, grabbing her under the arms and pushing off the bottom with his feet, rising toward the surface.

After a moment of surprise, Meggan rushed to reassure him that she wasn’t drowning once they broke the surface. “I’m okay, Julian. I’m okay! I just learned I could make gills, see?” She gestured to her neck with a sheepish grin. “I wasn’t drowning. Sorry about that.” She would definitely be putting up a sign near the edge next time—and warning everyone. Realizing she was still on the blue side like the water in the pool, she hurriedly shifted back.

Julian splashed her, "What the hell?! I mean, come on, you're sitting at the bottom of the pool, what was I supposed to think? I thought you'd gotten sucked down by the drain or something- that can happen, ya know?" His mind flashed back to trying to help his roommate in the same way, "At this rate I'm actually going to forget that there are people in this place who can't breath under water."

Meggan inadvertently splashed him as she moved back. She winced slightly, as she hadn’t considered anyone thinking she’d become stuck in the drain, just that he’d thought she was drowning. “Sorry. It was a new thing I figured out I could do…should’ve put up a great big sign as a warning, and I did think of that right before you grabbed me. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

"Well as long as you're alright," he smiled and leaned back, floating serenely as the adrenaline surge started to dissipate. "You know, between you being able to grow gills, Angel and I being champion swimmers, this school could really have an awesome swim team if we were allowed to compete in stuff."

She couldn’t help but laugh at the thought of that—it might be considered cheating. “I’d have to get someone to time me, too. Just to see how long I can stay underwater before I need to come back up. If there’s a time limit or something like that.” She shook her head, adding with a grin, “I think that was five minutes sitting there before you grabbed me, and nothing felt wrong. I didn’t feel like I was close to choking or anything.”

Most of the watches she had found weren’t waterproof, so she couldn’t really time herself all that well when she was down there. Maybe she’d ask Kurt…making sure not to suddenly surprise him with it, so he wouldn’t be teleporting in to rescue her.

The rush was finally starting to fade as Julian spoke again, "Well, why don't you give it another shot." He held up his wrist, showing her the waterproof watch he'd purchased as an impulse with the last of the money Manuel had given him for his time as his administrative assistant. "I'm just going to do some laps, so if anyone comes along, I'll let them know what's going on."

Meggan beamed happily, quickly adding, “Thank you!” It was a bit of a relief that she didn’t need to get someone else to help with that, because she didn’t want anyone to panic. She also didn’t need to check that the gills were back, she could tell. They were itchy for just a second or two. She dove back under, prepared to swim at least one underwater lap before settling down on the bottom again. It might be slightly boring to just sit there with nothing to do but stare at the bottom of the pool and the water for a long stretch of time, but it was the only way for her to really find out how long she could last.

*****
About an hour later, Julian hoisted himself up out of the pool and flopped down on the hard stone which surrounded it, exhausted. He'd lost count of how many laps he'd done, or how many times he had to stop someone from diving in to save Meggan, but it had to be at least five miles. His muscles ached as the endorphins created by exercise did their best to make him feel better. Slowly, he sat up and looked down at Meggan at the bottom of the pool.

At one point she wondered why couldn’t she have figured out this aspect of what she could do back in Malibu. It might have been even easier to catch lobsters without scuba gear. Just as long as she didn’t look like a mermaid, she was good with it. She was fine with webbed hands and gills and any variety of thing water would require—but for some strange reason she just didn’t like the idea of having a fish tail. Fish scales were slightly uncomfortable, so it was probably partly to do with that.

Just a little out of boredom and more than partly out of exhaustion, Meggan felt like that was enough time underwater. If she hadn’t made her hands and feet webbed a while back, they probably would have been so waterlogged it would have taken a month for them to look normal again. She waved at Julian with a tired smile as she reached the surface, and swam over to the edge. Moving her soaking hair out of her face, she asked, “So...how long was that?”

With a sigh he stopped the timer on his watch, "One-hour, one minute and thirty-six seconds. How are you feeling?"

Meggan considered that. “Just a little bit sore. I'm tired, but not so tired that I’m going to collapse or pass out or anything like that. It’s a good tired.” With a tired laugh, she added, “I didn’t think it would be that long. I expected thirty minutes.”

"I guess time can get away from you down there- I just finished swimming...couldn't go any further. Hell, I was waiting for you to come up for air to stop, I wasn't expecting a full hour either." With a huff of exertion, he sat up and looked down at Meggan in the water. "New powers work well though, that's great."

She pulled herself up onto the edge of the pool, nodding before she added a very grateful, “Thank you for timing me.” After a moment, Meggan determined with a slight shake of her head, “I need to tell Kurt and Amanda I can do that later, too. I scared Kurt enough when he learned I could eat electricity a long time ago, it wouldn’t be good for him to come by and think I’m floating dead in the water.”

Actually, scratch that—she’d tell everyone on the journals right after she told Kurt and Amanda. It would cut down on people getting worried. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to know the exact number of people Julian had kept from trying to fish her out of the pool—she’d spotted at least two herself.

"Shocking," Julian said, giving a moment for the pun to sink in. He chuckled at his own joke, "You're welcome anyway. Got any plans for the rest of the day?"

She shook her head after grinning at the bad pun. “Not really. Maybe just a little reading later, since I’ve been thinking of studying for a driver's test. Other than that, nothing.”