sixthiterationlogs | ψ come away little lass come away to the water

ψ come away little lass come away to the water | SWIMMING MINGLE OTA

WHO: E V E R Y O N E
WHERE: The waterfall
WHEN: During the hot weather in late May
OPEN TO: Anyone
WARNINGS: PROBABLY NAKED. cw your warnings in individual threads.
STATUS: Open. THIS IS A MINGLE, have at it, tag around, you know what to do. If you want Finnick, let me know in the comment subject!

He wouldn't actually say it was really hot yet, but it's definitely getting to the sort of temperatures that make Finnick miss swimming. There's no substitute for the sand of a beach underfoot, the reassuring roar of the surf, the taste of salt in the air, but there is at least water here, tumbling down from the waterfall and flowing through the canyon until it disappears into the rocks to the south. And he knows from constantly checking his fish traps that the water is deliciously cool.

He's tested out a few spots along the river for swimming, and it's good to be in the water again, after being kept out of it for so long by the harshness of the winter. Not swimming doesn't feel right to him, and it never has. He's never spent this long somewhere with a winter this cold, and he can't remember ever going this long without swimming. So Finnick's been testing the water out since before it was probably what most people would consider to be warm enough to swim. It had helped that he and Annie had some gifts to hunt for in the river, but those have long been found, and now it's just for relaxation.

The calmest, most relaxing place he's found so far for swimming in the river is the pool at the foot of the waterfall, where the water plunges into the canyon crisp and cool from the heights of the cliffs. It's deep around the falls, and it's big enough to swim, and Finnick spends most of the hottest parts of the day there.

So whenever he hears someone talking about the heat while he's dropping food off in the village, he suggests they try the waterfall pool. Word's likely to get around, so he won't be entirely surprised to find other people stopping by the falls.

When they do, they're likely to find him swimming around the deep part near the falls, stripped down to his underwear and, from the grin on his face, having the time of his life. It's clear just from looking at him that he's good at this, moving through the water with a confidence and grace more like to a sea-creature than a man. He's in such a good mood that he even calls out to greet many of the people who approach.

Of course, he's not the guardian of the waterfall: everyone's welcome to stop by whether he's there or not. Once or twice, there's even a moose to be seen standing at the edge of the pool taking a long, relaxing drink.

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"It's still better than what I've got." It's not that he wants to wear a red bikini. He'd just prefer something other than his underwear.

"You'd better hope that you have time to dry those out before you have to get dressed again," Jean pointed out, brows arching a little in amusement. She could make a little fun at Erik's expense, considering where they were; she wouldn't have dared to do it if he still had his full powers but here where they didn't have anything that made them mutants? They needed the levity.

"I bet Logan would have just jumped in naked. He seems like the type."

"Wet clothes are a good way of keeping cool." Not that he's going to make a habit of it, but he'll deal with it if he has to. Or go back to the inn and let them dry out in his room there.

Maybe he needs to start trying to get his hands on some different clothes. He's tired of the too-bright scrubs.

"Then it's a good thing he's not here." There are some things they just don't need to see.

"Yeah, it's probably a good thing. Most of the women would have enjoyed that," Jean pointed out. "And maybe some of the men. But it probably is for the best."

She would have been embarrassed, probably, because her feelings for Logan are a tangled, complicated thing that she doesn't feel prepared to examine most of the time and certainly not with Erik in front of her. Erik was a lot more straight-forward - Jean looked to him as a mentor and, in some ways, a father figure. Definitely not the same way she looked at Logan.

"We had a pool at the mansion before it got destroyed. I didn't swim very often but it was nice."

He's about to comment on Jean's assertion that women would have enjoyed the sight of a naked Logan swimming -- though she can probably tell what he thinks about that from the look on his face -- when she mentions something else of interest instead.

"The mansion. Got destroyed?"

"Stryker did it," Jean lied. Her voice was a little softer; this was information that only needed to be shared with mutants and not with the population at large. If too many people knew, she'd have to keep up the lie and then she'd be found out and Erik would know the truth; they were on friendly terms and Jean wanted to keep it that way.

"He was looking for Raven and the Professor, maybe some others. He rigged the whole mansion to blow. Peter saved most of us but Alex didn't get out."

The name Stryker doesn't mean as much to him as it does to others, but he does still know how the man feels about mutants, so Jean's explanation is plausible. It's not like there's anyone else here who could tell him any differently.

"Alex? Shame. He was a good kid." Not that much younger than Erik, either, to be called a kid, but that's still the way things had been the last time Erik saw him, twenty years ago.

"Peter can be helpful to have around."

"Yeah he's got...an interesting power," Jean agreed. She was happy to be off the subject of the mansion and onto the subject of Peter Maximoff, which was more neutral territory. He was older than her by a good bit but she still considered him a peer and a friend - mostly because Peter seemed like a big kid.

"Do you know him well? I only met him the one time."

"You could probably say the same for anyone's power." They all have their uses, and he definitely can't deny the usefulness of Peter's ability to get out of sticky situations.

"I only met him once. Ten years ago." If Jean paid attention to the news recently, she should have some idea of what Erik was up to ten years ago.

Jean had been young then, of course, but she remembered Raven saving the world ten years ago. That had been one of the reasons she stopped hating being a mutant and wanted to embrace it, honestly, and she'd looked up to Raven ever since. She'd looked so confident on the television screen, so sure of herself.

"I only met him recently. He's very nice he's just...he just seems like he's always in a hurry. I suppose when you can go that fast, everyone else seems very slow."

If she remembers Raven saving the world, then she probably remembers what she was saving it from. Though of course he'd been different then, in plenty of ways. Which doesn't really seem as important right now.

"Going that fast can be useful." He'd still be locked in the Pentagon if it weren't for that particular ability of Peter's. "He never seems to stop talking though."

"No, he definitely has a lot to say," Jean said, laughing softly. That was a mild way of putting it, to be certain, but she liked Peter even if he tended to exhaust her within about ten minutes of conversation. She couldn't imagine anything that extended past that.

"I'm more of an introvert. I can only handle so much of a person like that before I need to go inside and read a book or just...be quiet for a while. I like the quiet. It's soothing to me."

Luckily, here in the village, she got plenty of it.

He can't imagine what it must have been like for Peter's parents, having to deal with that all the time. With Nina's mutation, they may have had to deal with random animals in their backyard, or even on some memorable occasions, in the house, but they'd never had to worry about her getting away from them because they couldn't catch her.

"At least he probably can't help it, and isn't doing it purposely to annoy someone."

"Probably not any more than I could help hearing every thought in the mansion at one point," Jean said. She had spent years being unable to control her telepathy at all and had it spiral out of control on her more than once whenever she was particularly emotionally volatile but now, at least, she'd gained a measure of control over it that allowed her some semblance of normality.

Now there was no power at all, no sound that came to her from others and everything was quiet. It had been blissful at first to not have the intrusion of other thoughts, to not always be distracted by trying to keep others away but she did miss it. She missed having that part of her as much as she'd miss a hand or a foot.

"It is who he is. We can't judge people for things they can't help. It makes us no better than humans."

There were a few things he'd done unintentionally when he'd first learned to use his powers, although since it had been Shaw's office that he trashed and the men who had died were the Auschwitz guards who had brought his mother in, he's not that torn up about it. His abilities had never bothered him much, either, but then, it's not his power that keeps him from sleeping. It's everything that happened as a result of its existence.

"I didn't say there was anything wrong with it. He's quite useful to have around sometimes."

"I wouldn't mind having him here," Jean said. "Then again, I'm glad he isn't. I don't think we need any more depowered mutants around here."

She still didn't have any idea why they were all being collected but whatever the reason, it made her uneasy and wary. She felt like as much as she liked some of the humans here, the only people she could truly trust were Logan and Erik because they were mutants just like her.

"We have to look out for one another."

"He could do all of the talking so no one else had to." Unless that's part of the powers he'd lose too, which it very well might be. Or Peter's just the sort to talk a mile a minute for no reason at all.

"No one else will."

"I'll always look out for you, Erik," Jean said. She didn't know how much of a promise that was, considering he was a powerful mutant in his own right and a man who had been on his own for longer than she'd been alive but she meant it. She didn't want Erik to think that here in this place without their powers that she would abandon a fellow mutant. She wouldn't. Not now and not ever.

"I'm always going to make sure you're all right, whether you want me to or not. It's what the Professor would want, I think, so I'm going to as long as I'm here."

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ψ come away little lass come away to the water | SWIMMING MINGLE OTA

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