Angel and Rachel || Distractions

[x-firestar.livejournal.com]

Angel witnesses Rachel murdering a punching bag, then drags her off to the pool for a round of Distraction Time.



It was one of those days where Angel was wandering around and actually missing school, and somehow she'd ended up wandering to the gym area. Maybe Kurt was around for some trapeze...

She stopped when she heard the familiar sound of someone wailing on a punching bag. She tilted her head as she stopped, peeking into the room. Oh! It was a fellow redhead! Oh...she didn't look happy. And she was going at it pretty hard with the punching bag. It was never good to interrupt someone when they were like that.

So she leaned against the door. And she waited for Rachel to finish punching out her demons.
But it did not happen for a long while, and it did not end with a graceful step back. Nope. It ended with a telekinetically-powered fist shoving its way through the bag, straight through to the other side.
Breathing heavily, Rachel winced as she removed her hand and the packed sand previously contained in the bag spilled out over her feet. The faint smell of burnt sand permeating the air made the teenager utter a short, but succinct curse word as she extracted herself completely from the mess she had made.

It was followed closely by a different but no less powerful swear word when she spotted Angel by the door. Damn it all, but she really wished her TP was still at full power. No one ever snuck up on her when she had it. Ever. This… irritated her.

“How long have you been there?”

Whoa. Angel's eyebrows shot way up as the bag met an unfortunate end. At Rachel's words she put up her hands in the universal sign of 'I' come in peace,' accompanied with an easy smile. She didn't actually think the young woman would hurt her, after all. "Just a few minutes. Heard you going at it with the bag." Well....going at it might have been putting it nicely. The poor bag never stood a chance. "You alright?" She meant physically - Rachel had just put her hand through a punching bag, after all.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Rachel replied, concentrating on her breathing as she shook sand off her shoes. Her hand was fine, protected by her powers, but she needed to tell Haller that she had, yet again, racked up property damage costs. “Sorry about that.”

"Eh. I don't pay for the punching bags." Angel shrugged in response, tilting her head as her face settled into a thoughtful expression. "So usually this is the part where I say, 'Are you alright?' and I'm assuming you say something along the lines of, 'Yeah, I'm fine,' but I think we can both agree you're not fine and we can probably also agree that I have a better chance of winning the lottery than I do of getting you to talk about what's bothering you. So, now that we've got that conversation out of the way, what can I do to help you feel a bit better? I can offer basically anything from stupid distractions to meaningless jabber to yummy treats. Well, the yummy treats aren't mine, but Lorna doesn't mind sharing."

“I have to meet this Lorna woman. Everyone who offers me food to cheer me up seems to use her as an authority,” Rachel commented in a deadpan, walking over to the benches as she unwrapped the tape from her hands. ‘Everyone’ being Remy and Angel, that is. Actually, she found that she liked the other redhead’s way of dealing with problems. “I don’t… appreciate food very much. Physical activity works better. Or complete relaxation.” She shrugged, draping a gym towel across one shoulder.

"Well she is the best in the business," Angel said with a serious nod. "But. Food isn't going to work. Okay. Well, I'd offer to lake you, but that really works better if it's a surprise and anyways telekinesis, you could drag me in with you. Which would be fun too. But we could just avoid the whole throwing thing and go swimming. It's physical activity and relaxing all in one. The indoor pool probably isn't being used right now if you want to avoid people. And, you know, distracting because you have to focus on not drowning. Or getting away from me because I splash."

“I… don’t have a bathing costume,” was the only protest as Rachel bundled the used tape into a ball and poured half a bottle’s worth of water down her gullet. “Hey, Red. May I borrow your phone to send a text message to David?”

Another head tilt as Angel eyed Rachel for a long moment, more than long enough to make it a probably uncomfortable experience for the other woman. "You're not that much taller than me," she finally said as she pulled her phone out and handed it over. "I can lend you one, I have...um...at last count, too many."

"No, that's fine. I like being uncontactable for now," Rachel admitted, kicking her gym bag out from under the bench and dropping her bottle in before accepting the phone with murmured thanks. Her anger had deflated, leaving her tired as she sent a quick text to Haller. "Unless, of course, you meant lending me a bathing suit, which is far more likely," she added belatedly with a sheepish sort of grimace. "In which case, thank you."

"I did mean bathing suit," Angel said with a grin. "Although I do have an extra phone or two laying around, but if you want to be uncontactable then those aren't doing any good. Great, though! Be right back, don't disappear!" And she turned and ran back upstairs.

Rachel blinked and the bubbly girl was gone. Seriously, it was like she was constantly on Prozac or something. The teenager sighed heavily, wondering if she could siphon some of that cheerfulness for her own use. The brief buzz of the phone in her hand distracted Rachel for a moment, though, and she responded quickly to Haller’s reply before carefully placing the phone on the bench; out of harm’s reach.

In the time that it took Angel to get back, Rachel finished her cool-down stretches, located a broom and cleaned up the mess – somewhat – and was just zipping up her gym bag when the doors were enthusiastically flung open again.

All things considered - all things being that she'd run up four floors - Angel hadn't been gone that long, and she was only slightly breathless when she returned, still grinning. "Found one!" She said triumphantly, holding up the one-piece suit. She hoped she wasn't making assumptions, but she got the feeling Rachel wasn't the type of person who liked to show off her body.

“Did you… get one for yourself too?” Rachel half-teased, with a quirk of her brows and the appropriate word of thanks. As someone with a (sort of, kind of) background in the (sort of, kind of) military, body consciousness never quite stuck with her, but the one piece would cover scars that might have made her companion – or anyone else, really – uncomfortable. “We need two, really, if this is gonna work.”

"I've jumped into pools with all my clothes before," Angel said with a grin as she tossed the bathing suit to Rachel. "I'm my own heat source, I can dry up like that." She snapped her fingers to demonstrate. "But yeah, I got my own too. To the locker room!"

Rachel allowed the chattering redhead to lead her to the indoor pool without a word of protest. In fact, Angel kept the conversation lively and going enough for the both of them, plus some, and successfully wheedled reluctant smiles from her at certain points.

“I’m just gonna change and shower off the gym muck first. I’ll meet you at the pool?”

"Yeah, sure," Angel said with a smile as she headed into the locker room to change real quick. She was proud of herself for getting those smiles out of the young woman - it was clear she needed cheering up. "Sounds good!"

While Rachel showered, Angel changed and bounced out to the pool, stretching by the poolside before diving in. One quick lap around the pool, and she pulled herself back out, sitting on the edge, her feet dangling in the water as she swung them back and forth, enjoying herself entirely.

So she got very little warning – if any at all – when an unseen force lifted her clean from the water and sent her out three feet above the middle of the pool. There was a good amount of water pooled at her feet in the dome she was contained in, but that seemed rather trivial at the time.

Rachel slipped carefully into the water, one arm raised with her palm facing the trapped redhead, a small, cheeky smile teasing at the corners of her lips.

“I don’t really know what getting ‘laked’ entails, but maybe it looks a bit like this?”

Well she got a little bit of warning when she suddenly felt herself being lifted into the air. "Whoa, hey!" She yelped as she hovered above the water, staring down with wide, wholly amused eyes at the pool below.

"Yeah, you'd be right," she said, laughing at Rachel's words. "Almost. There's a key element missing here." And they both knew what it was.

“Well, I don’t know, I thought it’d be kinda nice to sort of,” Rachel dropped her hand to brush her bangs from her face. A resounding splash echoed across the walls. “Give you a bit of heads up.”

Angel knew what was coming the second she saw Rachel's hand moved. She held her breath just in time to get dropped, and resurfaced a moment later, laughing. "Well warning is always nice, it's true," she managed after a moment. "Manners are good." She managed to recover herself enough to position her hands in the water and shove them forward, good and thoroughly splashing Rachel. "I'm not as nice though."

A telekinetic shield could have stopped that, but it seemed unfair – and more than an overkill – to employ her powers in a swimming pool with someone who wasn’t an enemy. So Rachel turned her head and returned the splash, then took a deep breath and went under. She headed straight for Angel’s legs, but took the time to poke her in the ribs – just to see if she was ticklish.

She was ticklish, horribly so - but what Rachel didn't know was that they were in Angel's natural element - the water. The precious time Rachel wasted to poke her gave Angel the advantage she needed to swing out of the redhead's way and dive under water, floating for a moment and grinning at Rachel before sticking her tongue out and turning, swimming off (keeping a careful eye over her shoulder).

Rachel had seen the reaction to the poke, and with a grin – and large gulp of air – took off after Angel with strong breast-strokes. She wasn’t quite the best swimmer around, but she did have a slight advantage in terms of willingness to play dirty.

Ooooooh, she was fast. Angel dove lower, almost skimming along the bottom of the pool and carefully not leaving enough space for Rachel to get under her. She reached the end of the pool and turned, pushing off against the wall to swim back, doing a small twist as she swam past Rachel to wave brightly at her.

Damnit. Screw overkill. Having to take time to break above water for a gulp of life-sustaining oxygen, Rachel fitted herself with her telekinetic ‘helmet’ while she was at it. It would not recycle the air for her, but it did make a couple of underwater breaths possible for her. With that, she dove down and propelled herself forward, a grin on her face as she tried – and failed – to gain an actual upper hand on the other redhead. Bloody water sprite.

Angel may not have had telekinesis, but she had the distinct advantage of having been swimming almost as long as she had been walking. And she knew it. She kept at it for a while, surfacing surprising little for air, all things considered, and grinning as she watched Rachel try to pin her down.

About fifteen minutes into the chase, Rachel abruptly stopped in the middle of the pool, her telekinetic powers fizzling away as she rolled over onto her back and floated lazily on the surface. A small smile was present on her face even as she focused on getting her breath back.

It was about time for Angel to resurface for air anyways, so she popped back up, taking in a deep breath, giggling as she flopped onto her back and kicked her way over to float next Rachel, tucking her hands under her head. "Nothing beats a good swim," she said happily.

A twitch of her fingers accompanied by a smirk sent a wave of water over Angel’s face – no warning, this time.

“You’re part-fish aren’t you?” Rachel commented idly, flipping over on her stomach to avoid getting a surprise faceful of chlorine water. Funny, but she’d never quite met Angel in battle in her faux world – on water or on land. But she knew, quite obviously, that the pyrokinetic had been one of the first defectors over to Apocalypse. It was hard to connect this cheerful, bubbly, girl to a soldier who had wrecked havoc on Manhattan once. “I’mma call you Bubbles.”

Angel sputtered and laughed at the wave of water, making herself vertical again as she shook her head. "Well, my parents say I am, but I don't know if I believe them." She giggled as she sunk so her mouth was below the surface of the water and she blew, creating bubbles. "I can think of worse names," she declared happily as she popped back up.

“All right then. Bubbs it is,” Rachel said, cheerfully enough, manoeuvring such that she was treading water and could push her hair from her face. “Now if only I could find Blossom and Buttercup.”

"Oh Dr. Grey is Blossom," Angel said without hesitation. "Buttercup....hmn. That one's a little trickier."

“The Pryor girl?”

"Oooooh, that's a good one." Angel nodded emphatically. "Maddie could totally pull off Buttercup."

“There we go. And I’m the crazy scientist dad, I suppose.”

"I'm totally calling you Professor," Angel said with a mock serious nod.

The water felt good – calming. Rachel took a deep breath and slipped under the water, eyes closed as she suspended herself there. She surfaced a moment later, wiping the water from her face as she kicked back and floated on her back again.

“Thanks for bringing me here.”

In the time it took Rachel to go under and come back, Angel had shifted from mock serious to actually serious - not in a bad way, more in a thoughtful way. "Yeah, of course. I'm always available if you need distracting. Or if you ever want to talk about what made you murder a punching bag. Bottling things up is bad for the nonexistent ginger soul, after all."

The other girl merely hummed in acknowledgement, waving a dismissive hand in the air.

“I’m dealing, don’t worry. S’just not something I wanna talk about right now, y’know? I’ve talked about my stuff with various people – I’m all talked out.” And cried out. And, well, generally the only thing that seemed to be able to abate the heaviness in her chest was mindless destruction. But that led to tiredness, which led to the pain coming back in a never ending, vicious cycle. Then there were the nightmares, the waking memories, the shaking in the dark and the violent starts when surprised. A voice that sounded eerily like Betsy Braddock’s was whispering the words: ‘Post Traumatic Stress Disorder’ in her head. Which didn’t quite make sense considering that she’d had PTSD for most of her fake life anyway – she’d long since learned to live with it.

At the end of the day, Rachel supposed that all her issues stemmed from the fact that her life was fake. She was fake. She didn’t even know what the hell she was doing in the pool, in the mansion, in New York, in America, on Earth, in this reality and dimension… alive.

“I should… I dunno. Probably go see my parents soon.” But she’d been putting that off too, despite having called them twice now.

"Alright." Angel gave easily enough. No point in pushing it, after all. "S'long as you're talking. And yeah, parents. They're always good to go see." She could tell this wasn't something Rachel wanted to talk about either, though. "But hey, unless you're gonna snap your fingers and go to them right now, how about lunch? I know you said food doesn't make you feel better, but it's sorta, ya know...necessary sometimes."

“All right. I could get on board with that.” And it was lunch time. “Nothing fancy, though, yeah?”

"Fancy is totally not my thing," Angel assured Rachel as she swam to the edge of the pool, pulling herself out. "No worries there."