Haroun and Alison - Glub, Glub, Glub

[x-jetstream.livejournal.com]

Who: Haroun al-Rashid, Alison Blaire
Where: Indoor Pool
When: Monday late morning
What Happens: Haroun wants to test to see if his power works underwater. It does, but he forgot about the airscoops. Oops! He nearly drowns, Alison fishes him out, they go to Medical. It's _cold_ in here!



Haroun stretched to himself as he stood on the tiled perimeter of the indoor pool. He'd chased all the kids out, and carefully taken water samples every five feet of the pool's Olympic regulation length. Those were already labelled and set aside to establish a proper baseline. Now all he needed to do was wait for Alison to show up to properly supervise the whole effort. Despite himself, he was hoping she'd dress appropriately for the pool instead of in the body armor that represented her X-Men uniform. She was a fine-looking woman.

The door opened and Alison took a quick step inside before it swung back closed, a SCUBA tank held in one hand and not quite touching the floor, various straps winding up her arm to her shoulder, one looped loosely about her waist. "Hey there!" she grinned in greeting, using her foot to nudge the door open another time before walking in fully, tugging at one of the straps idly to free her waist, the material gliding along the smooth fabric of her swimsuit easily. "Double-checked the tanks and we're all good," she said, lifting one leg up a bit to free herself entirely from the strap, looping it over her shoulder with the others before walking to the edge of the pool to join him.

Haroun couldn't help but grin widely. Score! He paused for just a second to take her in, then dragged his mind back to business. "OK. I'm going to start in the deep end, duck underwater, and then kick on the power and wind up in the shallow end. We'll take water samples from my flight path every five feet, to see if I'm doing something truly nasty to the water. If something goes wrong, you jump in with the SCUBA tank and make sure that I'm still breathing. Link to Medical should be on the bench there, and the recorders are running. You cool?"

Her gaze swiveled to track the link and she deposited the SCUBA tank on the ground, shrugging the straps off her arm. "Gotcha. I'll keep that closer, though," she said, walking over to pick it up before returning to the side of the pool and bracing it neatly near the edge. "Help me pull this thing on first and then we're set? It's one of Hank's new designs, light and small and all but he went on about straps being attached properly and stuff when he was working on it, so I figure it's best to make sure I get this right." She paused. "If it beeps at me and calls me names, I'm killing it. Just so you know."

Haroun tried very hard to keep the grin off his face. "Sure, no problem." he said as he helped ease the equipment onto her back, then helped to buckle it on and adjust it to her slender yet muscular frame. ~It is so very good to be me.~ he thought with a mental grin. ~Damn, she's soft. But muscular.~ "If it beeps at you or calls you names, you have my express permission to lase it into glowing carbon chunks." he said as the last fittings were adjusted.

Mm. Soft but steady touch, she noted distractedly, tugging at one of the straps and nodding in satisfaction, Alison turned to face him, grinning impishly, the equipment barely registering at all now that it was snugly in place. "Thanks. And it might heat up the pool unreasonably fast if the tank gets it, just letting you know." She took a step back and stretched out an arm, rolling her shoulder to test the straps and whether they restricted her motions in any way. They didn't, which was of course to be expected with Hank creating the doodads. "Well, I'm ready!"

Haroun swallowed heavily as Alison tested the shoulder fittings. Man, that motion right there should be _outlawed_ by the Geneva Convention for the things it did to his state of mind. Dragging his mind back to business, he grinned at Alison. "So noted. I'm all set, so I'm going to go ahead and hop in here." he said, and then did just that - with a passably good standing dive off the edge of the pool. Leather was never very easy to swim in, but Haroun managed it without embarrassing himself too badly in the process. Clutching the side of the pool wall, he looked up at Alison and nodded. "Ready?"

Wet leather was just something Alison had never considered before. Huh. Interesting. She nodded, bouncing on the ball of her toes lightly as proof. "Ready as can be!" she smiled brightly, glancing down at the link to the medlab briefly. She moved to the middle of the pool, to be sure to have the shortest route possible to him if anything happened and half-knelt, one foot still braced on the floor in case she needed to dive in quickly - the samples could be taken once he was on the other side and out of the water, safe and sound.

Haroun grinned, waved, and ducked underwater. He floated there for a second, and then activated his power. Immediately he was obscured by a veritable blizzard of bubbles and the most indescribably foul stench imaginable. But he seemed to be OK as he rocketed underwater towards the shallow end, trailing a cloud of superheated water and bubbles in his wake.

Alison blinked slowly as he progressed down the length of the pool, picking up the link to have in hand, just in case - the smell that was emanating from the water was not pleasant in the least, to put it politely. Still, he seemed steady enough and she rose to her feet as he reached the midpoint she was stationed at and followed him towards the shallow end, pacing his progress carefully and looking at him through the roiling water to make sure he wasn't showing any signs of discomfort. She wasn't happy with how the turbulence in the water was nearly obscuring the sight of him however, and she frowned as she quickened her pace.

Haroun surfaced, stood up, then bent nearly in half as he clutched at his throat. His body convulsed, and with each heave, chlorinated pool water came streaming out of his nose and mouth. He then tipped back over backwards during a particularly drastic spasm, and the water closed in over his head.

Eyes not quite, but almost, bugging out at the sight, Alison slipped on the mouthpiece of the SCUBA gear hastily, slapped one hand over the link to the medlab and then dove in smoothly, pulling up moments after she hit the water to not plaster herself on the shallow bottom of the pool. The heat was the first thing that struck her senses, almost body temperature and adding a sense of heaviness to her limbs - she ignored it however, the impetus of the dive taking her nearly right to Haroun, although she had to struggle the last few feet against lingering turbulence in the water.

Haroun, now in a somewhat serious need for some oxygen, latched onto Alison and let her pull him up to the surface. The cybernetics were not responding well to his decidedly-non-disciplined mind at this point, and he didn't _dare_ turn on his power again. She dragged him up over the lip of the pool and onto the decking, where he spent the next ten minutes or so shedding water from his lungs and sinuses at a prodigious rate. Not a fun thing to watch, and even less pleasant to listen to.

"Fuck." he swore, once he was able to talk.

Having shed the SCUBA unit at one point after they'd left the pool, Alison kneeled close by, one arm around his shoulders to steady him as best as she could, heart racing. Once things settled down somewhat she pulled back only a bit, patting his shoulder with a wince of sympathy. Trying not to breathe in the stench still lingering as his body cleared itself of the water had been interesting, but secondary considering Haroun's condition. But he was breathing, if painfully so.

"I am too stupid to be allowed to live sometimes." he said as his wind _finally_ came back to him. "Jetpack has airscoops to augment my breathing so I don't suffocate at high velocities or at high altitudes. They work _just fine_ on scooping water into my lungs - and the heat wasn't enough to keep all the water out." He coughed a few times. "I think I've got most of it out - but on the plus side, we know it _works_ underwater. Do me a favor and start grabbing samples for me while I convince my lungs that I don't actually hate them?"

The fact that this entire experiment had been geared towards obtaining those samples, among other things, was pretty much the only thing that convinced her to step away from him. With a small nod and a final pat on his shoulder, she made only one detour to grab a towel for him, trotting off smartly to collect the samples once she'd given it to him. She tapped the 'all clear' signal on the medlab link, grinning a bit as someone's voice grumbled something over the link's comm. The smell was still lingering in the room though she did her best not to make a face - she could always tease him later when he wasn't feeling as though his lungs had turned inside out, after all. He was still going to the medlab once the samples were collected though.

Haroun spent a few minutes purging his lungs of the foul hyperchlorinated liquid, and by the time Alison was done with taking and labelling the samples he was almost feeling as close to human as he ever got. "I feel okay." he said as she approached. "Probably should get down to Medical, get checked out by Hank. The meat will heal, but the machine is expensive." he said with a wan smile. "Feel like helping me make it there in one piece?"

"Oh good, you're actually reasonable about those things," she breathed out gratefully, leaving the SCUBA gear where it was for the moment. She could clean up later, after Haroun got looked at in the medlab. Not bothering with toweling off, what with Haroun in full leathers and still sodden, she instead made sure the samples were secure before closing the case and setting it aside, to be dealt with later as well. "Let's get you down to the medlab," she smiled a bit, leaning down to offer him her shoulder and help him up, a fair bit of relief showing through along with the worry.

"It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it." he said with a ragged grin. He was leaning on Alison far too heavily for his own good, and every once in a while he had to pause to get some of his breath back.  "Thanks for monitoring for me." he told her. "I really appreciate it, especially considering all this."

She braced herself solidly with each step, very grateful for the extra strength and fitness her stay in Asgard had granted her. "I'm just glad I could help. And hey, it's been ages since I've had the chance to witness one of those good old western keeling over scenes live, no less," she winked up at him, careful to let him set the pace. And it was a good thing she was too young to have heart attacks, although he didn't need to know that.

Haroun shrugged as best he could. "Man, wet leather is heavy." He complained. "And it wasn't my idea - I was busy trying to manifest a mutation that would let me breathe water."

She chuckled lowly, shaking her head as they navigated their way towards the medlab. The metal floor and cooler temperature of the hallways was a shock after the comfortable warmth of the indoor pool, and Alison shivered a bit. "But it still looks good," she pointed out helpfully - it wasn't as though she hadn't ended up wearing wet leather pants once or twice before, at the wilder after show parties. "You should tell any of the docs that line," she grinned, suddenly. "They'll love scolding you for the idea."

"See, the difference is that if I don't stay in good with the docs, I could find myself without the ability to fly, or even walk. So I kinda have stay nice." he said with a cold-shiver of his own. Glancing over to Alison, he smirked and then asked "Is it cold in here or is it just me?"

"It would be cruel and unkind of me to let you crawl to the medlab on your own," Alison replied solemnly, after a moment's pause and somehow managing to resist looking down at his question. "So I will help you all the way there. And then ask Hank to take out the medical tools that were in cold storage. Or any of the women there." She nodded wisely to herself, still making a promise to herself to get him for that one. Men. Somehow, she also managed not to snicker in amusement.

"No, I'm serious. I'm freezing." he said, but his grin gave him away shortly thereafter. "And you're just too kind. I can probably expect some sort of payback for this, shouldn't I?" he asked with a hacking cough. "Might even have to take you out dancing somewhere. Ah, Medlab's just over here. Good. I want to get out of these leathers ASAP."

"That would be telling," she informed him gravely, before sliding him a faintly worried look at the couch. That did not sound good. She leaned against him a bit more, propping him up against the side of the door before palming the door open. "What you really want to do is get out of those before they start drying. That gets uncomfortable real fast," she muttered, lips quirking a bit. "C'mon, in we go..."

Haroun shucked off his sopping wet uniform jacket, and then shrugged out of his soaked T-shirt underneath it, letting both fall into a soggy heap. "Good thing I left my commbadge in my room." he said with a shaky smile. "You don't get the rest of the show - not yet." He smirked, and then walked through the doors and into Medlab.