You should join me for a swim some time. The words had fallen from his mouth without him really meaning them to when he’d been talking to Neeka about hobbies during their Care of Magical Creatures class. But he had said and it she had agreed before he’d even really had time to think about it. He’d had plenty since though and still wasn’t sure whether it was a dreadful idea or the most genius move ever. On the plus side, he was going to be alone with a girl. On the downside, he was going to be alone with a girl. He still found his feelings about them confusing but perhaps if he could just get some make out time, he’d snap to his senses, get it all out of his system. It would be kind of like an exorcism, only over girl lust. Neeka seemed like an excellent prospect for that, in that she barely knew him or, it seemed, anyone else. There weren’t likely to be confusing feelings of mistrust, of being led along for years or of needing to go back to being friends afterwards. He could just snog her a bit, realise it was kind of gross and move on with his life. Of course, the thought of trying to get to the point where Neeka agreed to make out with him was tricky and confusing. He had played through many, many scenarios that ended that way but his mind tended to skim over the finer points of how he got there, or the Neeka in his head was much easier to impress than the real one was likely to prove to be. The possibility probably wasn’t likely to cross her mind seeing as she probably assumed he wasn’t interested, and he couldn’t rely on his natural easy manner with girls because it deserted him as soon as he thought about awkward things like kissing them. There was also the fact it was swimming and that meant a girl in a swimsuit (in his mind, a very minimal bikini) and him in swim shorts and it all having the potential to get seriously embarrassing. .
He arrived first into the MARS room, which resembled a pool at an exclusive resort. There was a small pool with bubble jets, and a larger pool in an abstract curvy shape, lined with palms. For rest and relaxation, there was a choice of a pair of sun-loungers, or a small wooden structure with open-sides and a palm-leaf roof, designed to provide shade from the inexplicable sun. A small table by each rest area had a pair of elegantly served mocktails, their ingredients hinted at by the wedges of fruit on the edges of the glasses.
Charlie slid into the large pool, glad of having somewhere to hide a bit, whilst he waited for Neeka.
OOC - permission obtained from Neeka’s author for her to have agreed to a swim “date”
13CharlieLooking for some action (tag Neeka)252Charlie15
Don't look too hard; you might strain yourself
by Neeka Campbell
Neeka wasn’t entirely sure she knew what she was getting herself into, but on the other hand, she also wasn’t entirely sure that she cared. There was a lot of stress in her life, questions of What are you going to do next fall? swirling perpetually, all hinging on the results of the exams ahead of her. She wasn’t the best test-taker out there, so the idea that a few hours’ worth of answering questions she should remember but probably wouldn’t was more than a little nerve-wracking, which was why her best preparation strategy was ignoring the tests until it was super close, then cramming at the last minute. Until that time, she intended to have fun.
She dressed for the occasion. And having the good fortune of not being a Pureblood gave her a bit more freedom in terms of attire. Her swimsuit, for example, was much less modest than what she had seen on other girls at Sonora. She wore a white cover for the walk to MARS, but beneath that was a scarlet bikini set. It was a bit more revealing than her uncle had been terribly inclined to purchase, but as the seventh year had convinced him, the smaller the suit, the smaller the price tended to run. It was hard to be modest on a budget. That was almost an American promise.
When she entered the room, she didn’t even see Charlie at first. Her attention was grabbed quite forcefully by the created atmosphere of the place. It mimicked some kind of fancy resort, and had it been real, it easily would have been the most expensive place Neeka had ever been. Thinking she might have been first to arrive, she sat down her towels and purse, removed her cover, and lowered herself into a one of the sun-loungers, the fake sun raining down on her.
Just as she flicked her sunglasses down over her eyes, she noticed Charlie in the pool--the big one: being that there were two, it was worth noting which--and, feeling that he had likely noticed her too, smiled coyly. “You certainly know how to pick a venue,” she commented casually, her gaze averted from him, although the dark lenses masked her direction. “Does that water feel as good as it looks?"
12Neeka CampbellDon't look too hard; you might strain yourself244Neeka Campbell05
Would symptoms of that include loss of speech?
by Charlie B-F-R
Neeka walked straight past him and began taking off clothes. So far this was going well. As what was under the outer layer was revealed, Charlie’s eyes nearly popped out of his head and he upgraded it to going very well. Neeka’s body might have been a slightly more caricatured shape in his fantasies but this definitely won points for being actually really happening. Not that he wanted it to happen on a regular basis. This was a one time thing, to get it out of his system and get him back onto blokes, the way it should have been.
Neeka noticed him, and he hurriedly tried not to look like he was staring at her but he wasn’t convinced he pulled it off as he wasn’t sure he remembered how to arrange his facial features into anything that wasn’t just dumfounded ogling. She purred a cool line about the water looking nice. If this had been a play, he was sure he would have come up with something equally smooth and sexy, like ‘why don’t you come and find out,’ or maybe, if he was feeling daring, ‘probably not as good as you would.’ Charlie however, had not had a lot of blood flowing to his brain since Neeka walked in, and had little room for thoughts other than that bikini and the fact that it, and the body that it barely wrapped around, were here in the room with him. He had never been in a room with a girl wearing as few clothes as this before.He did not feel remotely sexy, suave or cool. Not leaping out of the pool and attempting some kind of groping rugby tackle was occupying a lot of his limited capacity for thought, along with keeping his mouth from hanging open. Putting a sentence, any coherent sentence, together was the next priority. There wasn’t really room to make it playful.
“Um, yeah it’s pretty nice,” he managed, in a slightly strangled tone. “Come join me?” he managed, though it sounded much more like he was pleading than he would have liked.
13Charlie B-F-RWould symptoms of that include loss of speech?252Charlie B-F-R05
After giving up on making many friends at Sonora after several years of incidental aloofness, Neeka had somewhat made it a priority to pay as little attention to her peers as possible. She didn’t participate in school gossip and in fact did her best to not overhear conversations that wouldn’t help her grades. She had resided herself to relative solitude, and while she sometimes held conversation with classmates or her roommates, she would not have considered anyone a real “friend”.
Because of this aloofness, the Pecari knew next to nothing of reputations (beyond the most apparent “I’m-a-pureblood-so-I’m-pretty-stuffy” presentations). Therefore, she could report no knowledge of Charlie’s experience with girls--or with anyone else, for that matter, as a reputation she did not know about might have otherwise led her to wonder. That being said, what was happening around her indicated that Charlie had very little flirting history, or maybe he just hadn’t seen the same crappy teen romances she had. Neeka had intentionally set up a cool invitation, cueing a response of, Join me and find out or something of the like.
He still managed to ask her to join him. She would give that to his credit, even if his intonation was less than ideal. As an answer, she stood silently, a confident smirk playing on her lips, and dove into the water. With her youth YCMA days returning to muscle memory, she slipped through the water seamlessly, as if the water had known she was coming and parted just enough to allow her entrance. Had she gone to a Muggle school, Neeka could have easily been a member of a swim team, given the number of mornings she had spent in community pools. Uncle Lukas had thought it would be good for her, and, being in a state bordering a lake, apparently it was a given to learn.
She resurfaced not far from him, flipping wet hair out of her face in best impersonation of the Little Mermaid. While considerably less smooth for frizzy African-American hair than perfect cartoon mermaid hair, Neeka felt she did fairly well. “Ooh, you were right,” she grinned. “It’s very nice in here.”