fandomtownies | The beach [Saturday early evening]

"I don't see any bumblebees," Eleanor disagreed, pleasantly. She was stretched out on a towel, shoes off, letting the sand sift between her toes. "Do you mean that small one, over there?"

It was hard to see where someone else was pointing, even when you put your head near her arm.

"This was a brilliant idea."

Edited 2014-08-02 22:58 (UTC)

"I mean the one that looks like a bumblebee," Celia insisted with a giggle, turning to look at Eleanor. "So...yes, the small one."

She leaned back against her own towel, her hair pillowing out under her as she did so. "I feel like it was April yesterday. Summer's going fast."

"Clearly, you're mistaken about the appearance of bumblebees," Eleanor teased. "Have you ever seen one, up close? Are you having difficulties with your vision?"

The sun was sinking closer to the water, and the sky had the most unbelievable colors streaking through it. She could watch for hours and not grow bored.

"We ought to do something grand, before summer ends," she mused. "A party on the beach, with a bonfire and dancing."

Celia's eyes widened at the idea. "Dancing? And music, and a bonfire -- we could toast marshmallows! Apparently it's quite the modern tradition."

Though she couldn't picture it. She'd had a marshmallow treat once in Paris and it had quite fallen apart on her.

"We absolutely should. Before the new students arrive, and everyone gets caught up in the real classes again." Summer classes were different, somehow. Lighter.

Eleanor hadn't felt like her spring classes were especially intellectually rigorous, but then, she'd studied far too much on her own long before Fandom.

"Odd to think there will be a new batch of students soon," she said. "We've passed two semesters in this fashion. It seems longer and shorter all at once."

This had become her new normal. She didn't know what she would do, once she was forced to leave.

"We'll be two degrees removed from new," Celia agreed thoughtfully. "Eight months, now, we've been here. I've never been in one spot so long."

This was home, more than any other place had ever been, since she'd left her mother as a child. This was the only home she remembered.

"Even the new people aren't so new, anymore. Hard to believe."

"I didn't realize one could make friends so quickly," Eleanor nodded. "But then I'm hardly the expert on friends. Was your travel really so frequent? I envy you that. I always wanted to see the world."

"I didn't get to see much of it," Celia said, shaking her head. "I mean, yes, I've been all over, but it's all train stations and dressing rooms when you're traveling with my father. But certain things stand out -- we should go to Paris, or Rome, or Amsterdam. They're beautiful, even if you're just peeking from a window. I can only imagine how breath-taking they are when you're allowed to linger."

"Barry suggested that I take weekend trips, here," she considered. "Take Joker and hop to Dublin, for a weekend. Or the Sydney Opera House, or back to Bali."

The clouds were perfect, tonight, even if they only looked like clouds to her.

"I'm on an ethics committee," she added, sounding it out as if the words tasted funny. "Apparently my job is to tell Barry not to do immoral scientific things."

"Good," Celia said, slanting a look over. "I'm glad he's got someone around to keep him in check. We were talking earlier this week, when Ichabod was still an owl, and I kept waiting for him to propose we draw a blood sample to learn more about animal transformations. Not that curiosity isn't wonderful, and Barry's not utterly brilliant, but we could all use an extra conscience or two."

She might've agreed to a blood sample, for that matter, considering how much research she'd ended up doing on the topic, if she'd been certain Ichabod wouldn't have minded. Maybe she ought to have an ethics committee, too.

"I suppose we all could," Eleanor said, frowning at the thought of it. "I'm quite good with scientific experiments, but I fear there are bits of basic human decency I'm still spotty on. Maybe I'm just not a very ethical person."

It was a little disconcerting, to ponder such matters.

On a lighter topic, she raised an eyebrow. "Is Ichabod human again, then?" she asked. "I noticed his absence."

Edited 2014-08-03 00:52 (UTC)

"We're all spotty on human decency. Part of being human, and trying to be decent, I think," Celia agreed lightly, smiling over at her friend, though she lifted an eyebrow as she considered Eleanor's question.

"He is. Were you with Elsa when she changed back?" she asked, smiling a little and already feeling her cheeks heat up. "Because you really might have warned me."

Seriously. Any warning at all would have been nice -- not that Celia had necessarily minded, at all, once she'd recovered from her initial shock.

Edited 2014-08-03 00:56 (UTC)

Maybe it wasn't just her, then. That was a reassuring thought.

For the rest of it, she needed a moment to think back -- and then burst into peals of laughter.

"He didn't," she gasped, clapping a hand over her mouth. "He did!?"

She had thought that might have been specific to Elsa.

"Yes, he did come back wearing exactly as much clothing as he'd had on when he was an owl," Celia said, covering her face with a hand. "It was quite startling."

And...interesting. And had led to...things. Kissing things. Celia peeked at Eleanor through her fingers. "I gave him my blanket to cover up fairly immediately. And then conjured some pants."

Somehow that made her feel as though she'd tried to make things less scandalous, at least at first.

Eleanor couldn't stop laughing. And now, her mind was filling with curiosity. The dangerous variety.

"I've never seen a boy in the altogether," she admitted, turning a vibrant shade of pink. "My explorations of the male form have only reached the waist. You've surpassed me."

"I didn't look," Celia said hurriedly. "I mean...not much."

She'd tried to be as ladylike as she could, really, until she'd...sort of abandoned that.

"And he was nearly hanging out my window, so. I'm not sure the circumstances were what either of us would particularly desire, for that sort of thing." She looked up from where she was shyly tracing her finger in the sand and glanced over at Eleanor. "Explorations to the waist, though? That's new."

And it meant it would be easier to tell her about Celia's own explorations of that nature.

"I would have looked," Eleanor said, biting her lower lip. Well, she would have. "Curiosity, if nothing else. And we've been ... sometimes, when kissing, I remove his shirt. Or ... mine."

She was trying to sound like this was perfectly natural.

"... that sounds bad, doesn't it?"

Edited 2014-08-03 01:31 (UTC)

"It doesn't sound bad, unless -- "

Celia worried her lower lip in a mirror of Eleanor's expression, and decided she'd finish that thought in a moment. Shirt removal, when one was a young lady, seemed much less complicated than dress removal, and a much swifter path to bared skin.

"Yours?" she prompted, raising her brows. "Did -- have you had...everything off, above the waist?" Modern underthings confused her, mostly by virtue of their oddly streamlined enclosures. The few times she'd worn a brassiere, she'd spent most of her time longing for the security of laces down her back.

"Unless?" Eleanor asked, worrying a touch over what her friend might say. "N-no, I haven't. I ... would have, but I lost my nerve."

She couldn't bear to look over at Celia, now. "He called me beautiful," she admitted, very softly. "And somehow, that ... made it all real."

Celia smiled, ducking her head slightly. "I know exactly what you mean, about it being...real," she said to the sand. "I -- Ichabod said I was beautiful, too, um...after I vanished my dress while we were kissing."

That was what the 'unless' was, Eleanor. Because removing a whole dress was clearly much worse than taking off one's shirt.

"You did?" Eleanor asked, willing herself not to clap her hands with glee. "What did he say? How many garments did you have left? Did you ..."

How far had her explorations gone? Because that seemed like a delightful conversational topic.

Especially now that she was sure Celia wasn't judging her.

Edited 2014-08-03 01:57 (UTC)

"I still had my shimmy and corset and petticoat, so it wasn't...too bad, by modern standards," Celia said, glancing up bashfully. "It just didn't seem fair -- he was shirtless, and we...ended up kissing, because I'd really missed him, and I was touching him on his...chest, and his shoulders, and I wanted him to touch me, and...."

She felt her cheeks turning crimson.

"He said I was irresistible, before I magicked it off." She nearly shivered again, thinking about it. "And -- I've just never had someone look at me that way before. You know what I mean."

Because of course Eleanor hadn't removed her shirt or Joker's in a vacuum, and animal transformations clearly hadn't been the impetus.

"I do," Eleanor said, softly. "Like you're a treasure, except ... not one he'd put on a shelf and never touch. Like you're a violin whose strings he wants to caress, perhaps. Like he could melt you into liquid so thoroughly that you'd never miss having shape."

She shuddered, a little, just from the thrill of it.

"Sometimes it frightens me," she admitted. "How much there is, of it. How easy it would be to be swept away."

"I know," Celia said, her voice low and soft, as though someone else might overhear and hold her to this. "I...don't know that I realized how much there is, just lying beyond kissing. I never wanted to stop."

She drew a heart in the sand, idly, just for something to fidget with. "Plenty of people have told me I'm pretty," she said, worried it sounded a bit egotistical, even if it was true. "But no one's ever meant it the way Ichabod seemed to, if that makes sense. I just -- he just looked at my...chest, and I'm...sort of lightheaded thinking about it."

Saying it aloud made it somehow more, like she was reliving it (which she'd been catching herself doing -- it kept cropping up as an idle daydream.) But it made her feel a bit less confused, somehow, talking about the experience with Eleanor.

Edited 2014-08-03 02:32 (UTC)

"Me, either," Eleanor said, shaking her head. "Sometimes the moment hits and you don't want to ever stop."

She looked over at her friend. "You are pretty," she said, smiling gently. "But it's different when someone says it, and you can feel ... how much they mean it. Not just that they think it, would say yes if they were asked offhand, but the idea that ... that they can't breathe, for how much they feel it."

"Is that how it was with you and Joker?" she asked, brows lifting slightly. "Because -- it's more than just being pleased at his admiration, and it's more than just...the touching being nice. It's more. It's -- I don't think it'd be like this, with some random fellow I pulled off the street, you know?"

Not that Celia ever would do such a thing. Goodness.

"It's wanting to be with someone," she nodded. "There's an element of trust to it, and that's also what frightens me. But I'm not good with intimacy, so I supposed that's part of it."

She sat up slightly, so that she could catch the last rays of the sun as it started to dip down over the water. And so she could pretend to be perfectly casual as she added:

"Have you ever ... made it into a game?"

Hypothetically. Really.

Celia frowned in confusion, and slowly shook her head, propping herself up on her elbows to look more closely at Eleanor. "No, but...I don't really know how we would. How do you make...kissing into a game?"

Though, as competitive as she was, the idea held a certain appeal.

Eleanor was fully blushing now. "I'm ... not sure," she said, doing a terrible job of lying. "Theoretically, I imagine it'd be ... possible, depending on who was doing it."

She shrugged, trying to make it seem like she was making something up on the spot. "Like ... say. If one of you said that the other ... could only put his hands where you said, or ... trapped his wrists in a shirt, to see which of you might beg for mercy, first."

Complete hypothetical, Celia. Totally.

Celia raised one brow skeptically. "Hypothetically?"

But even if she doubted the veracity of that particularly aspect, she was thinking about this now, and felt herself blushing down her neck. "I...think such a game might drive a person mad."

Which, she reflected, was probably the point.

"The idea is, to see which of you can maintain your sanity longer," she said, biting the inside of her cheek firmly. "Whether the one with hands bound will beg to have them free, or the one without will insist on having those hands upon her."

She dared to look over at her friend. "So I've heard."

You were not fooling anyone, Eleanor. At all.

"So...."

Celia's eyes were dancing, because she saw straight through that, Eleanor, yes. The pronoun use, the details all seemed a touch too deliberate.

"Did you win?"

Eleanor couldn't help it. She burst out laughing.

"No," she sighed. "I didn't lose, but I ... panicked and cancelled the game. How pathetic."

"Not pathetic at all," Celia protested, "considering I don't know if I'd have the nerve to instigate something like that in the first place."

Though it wasn't as though the idea lacked merit. She just...wasn't sure she could imagine herself in that position.

(She did like winning, though. Hm.)

"Why'd you panic?" Not that Celia couldn't imagine a dozen reasons, right off the bat.

Edited 2014-08-03 03:52 (UTC)

"It happened by accident," Eleanor explained. "I don't think I would have dared to dream it up. And that's -- that was when he said I was beautiful, and he was looking at me, and I -- I couldn't breathe. And I felt like a fraud, and a ridiculous little girl, and I just -- I had to put my clothing back on, as quickly as possible."

"But -- Eleanor, you are beautiful," Celia said, puzzled. "Or was it -- was it how he looked at you?"

Because that part she understood. There was a vulnerability to that, to letting someone really look at you.

"No, you're beautiful," Eleanor said, smiling wryly at her friend. "Your hair curls just how you want it to. I hacked mine off with half a pair of scissors two years ago, and it's still uneven around the back. My limbs jerk themselves along like they've forgotten what they're connected to. I -- I'm not complaining, I'm certainly not hideous, but I'm gawky and ungainly. Beauty implies something you'd want to capture in oils and paints so you can frame it on a wall, and stare at it forever."

"My hair curls just how I want it to because I cheat," Celia reminded her, shaking her head in disbelief. "Eleanor, are you joking? I would kill to have your height, for one thing, and you have absolutely lovely bone structure, and -- "

She shook her head, holding a hand up. "And it doesn't matter -- beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder. And Joker thinks you're beautiful because you are, and because you're you."

"My ... my height?" Eleanor stared over at Celia in disbelief. "I tower over everyone in the oddest manner. I'm several inches taller than my own boyfriend. You're -- delicate, and feminine, whereas I look ridiculous in lace. Why would you want to be tall?"

"I'm tiny," Celia protested. "If I didn't have magic, I'd spend half my life asking you and Ichabod to reach things for me. No one ever thinks I'm capable of anything, because I don't especially look like it. You -- Eleanor, you look...powerful. No one treats you like you might break."

"I hadn't thought about that," she said, before shaking her head. "Not being respected. I'm sorry that people dismiss you."

She imagined that Celia could deal with anyone who did, but it still hurt being brushed off out of hand.

She shivered. "At least you won't actually break," she added. "I shift my weight wrong, at an odd moment, and I might snap one of Joker's ribs."

"Oh, honestly, you can't possibly be tha -- "

Celia caught herself, as she abruptly realized that that was actually a legitimate concern, given Joker's condition. "Oh, no, that is a real possibility, isn't it?"

She worried her lower lip fretfully, trying to puzzle through how to solve it. "Is there -- does it help to be mindful of it? I imagine there are...more dangerous positions than others."

To put it delicately. But that rather took the spontaneity out of it, a bit.

"One girl he was dating sprained his ankle, trying to remove his pants," Eleanor said, turning a vicious shade of pink. "And she wasn't any stronger than normal."

Though she had been heavily drunk, which might account for something.

"I try to be mindful, but being mindful just ... makes it hard to find the moment," she admitted. "And when I let go, what happens if I really let go? Maybe ... maybe we're just incompatible."

"No one's incompatible, not really," Celia said, shaking her head. "And...if you hurt him, it isn't as though it'll be irreparable. We know people who can heal magically, and there's a clinic, and...you can't worry about things like that."

Though, to be honest, she did fret a little about letting go, entirely. But that was mostly because she didn't want to interrupt Ichabod kissing her neck or something equally delightful with having to abruptly fix broken glass.

It would probably be an issue, sooner or later.

"If Joker was worried about it, don't you think he'd already have addressed it?"

"He's Joker," Eleanor said, shaking her head. "He makes a sarcastic remark and pretends it doesn't matter. He thinks everything will work out well because he wants it to. What if I puncture something serious, or snap his spine?"

Reason #89223 that she couldn't let go, no matter how well he kissed.

"I suppose it's for the best that we keep things ... innocent," she said, biting her lip. "If only I could remember that, when things turn decidedly less so."

"Then someone will fix it," Celia said, shaking her head. "Anders can heal. The clinic has doctors. Joker chose you, Eleanor."

She tilted her head, trying to lighten things up a tiny bit. "Best of luck to you trying to keep it innocent now, though. I don't know if I could go back, having had my first taste of what lies beyond kissing."

She paused, and added, cheeks heating, "Not that I'm ready to take it much further, I think." And now she was looking curiously at Eleanor, because...well, it rather sounded like she was in a different place.

"So you're tempted, too," Eleanor said, offering her friend a sympathetic smile. "It's hard remembering what is so virtuous about resistance when indulgence promises such delights. I'm ... I can't even say for sure what holds me back. I'm not worried about my reputation, or anything. I simply freeze."

"I just -- I don't think either of us is ready," Celia admitted. "I know I'm not, and I don't think he is either, though we haven't talked about it, really." The very idea of such a conversation made her cheeks heat. "And...it's not about being virtuous, because I've never been good at that, anyway, and I don't think he especially cares. I did ask about that, if he'd think less of me for...wanting."

She shook her head, lying back and watching the sun sink below the horizon. Half of her wanted to just bury herself in the sand. It wouldn't take long. "It's more...wanting to take my time, and still getting to know him, and being -- afraid to share all of myself, body and mind and soul. No matter how I already feel, it's...daunting."

The beach [Saturday early evening]

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