Invisible Obstruction - tag Wren

[Sawyer Lynn]

Sawyer looked to the empty pool and smiled. Maybe she could get some practice in before Coach D came in. Stretching her neck out, she headed over to the showers and changed into her dark blue Lycra one piece, taking a quick rinse before heading over to the pool.

The water seemed to have been effected by something as the bouyant dividers bounced lightly against the surface. She frowned slightly before shrugging. Death in swimming pool wasn't glamorous but it was the least bit gruesome...maybe.

She went up to the first spring diveboard and took deep breaths to calm herself down. Just like vault, she thought to herself. But instead of having to stick the landing on mats, it was water. No biggie.

Jumping once, twice and three times to get the proper height, she executed a somewhat perfect half pike into the water.

Not expecting any intrusion, Sawyer almost choked on her sudden intake of water when she hit something pretty solid under water.

Kicking and thrashing her legs to resurface, her panic had brought on one of the more idiotic side effects to her ability; vocal impairment.

She tried screaming but nothing came out. She turned around to see what she hit but nothing seemed to materialise. Not to her eyes anyway.

"What the fuck!" She mouthed.

[Wren O'Hara]

Wren usually tried to swim at unusual times of day so that he would be less likely to run into other people, but sometimes it couldn’t be helped. Today, for example, he and Izzy had met so that she could tutor him in English, and he definitely wasn’t going to turn her down so that he could go swimming. It wasn’t like sharing the pool was that bad, anyway – it was just that he was able to avoid awkward situations when he was alone, that was all.

He emerged from the showers at about 50% opacity, swim cap already on and blue-tinted goggles hung around his neck, resting on his ghostly collarbone. He ditched his towel at the starting block of lane eight; normally he took lane four, but someone else was swimming there, and he didn’t want to annoy them.

Whatever. A pool was a pool, and lane eight was just as good as lane four.

Lane eight was on the far side of the pool, and it was usually the lane that the diving team used for practice, but he didn’t see anybody on the boards at the moment. Feeling resentful, like this swim was taking far more effort than usual, he did his best to push all other thoughts out of his mind while he rolled out his shoulders. He secured his goggles over his eyes and pulled the strap back with his index finger, out of habit. It snapped loudly against his swim cap.

He hopped onto the starting block and bent over double, as though waiting for a signal that wouldn’t come. He uncurled his body suddenly, thrust out his arms, and hit the water at the perfect angle.

His body vanished completely, and he became nothing but a jammer and swim cap suspended in the white foam.

He only used front crawl while he was training, because it was the fastest and the easiest. The laps came quickly this way – in less than a minute, he was at the wall, making his turn. One hundred meters, then one hundred and fifty, then two. A breath every two strokes.

Everything was fine until he made his turn at three hundred and fifty meters; two strokes in, he lifted his head to the side to take a breath, and was met with a sharp blow to the face and another at his back. He flailed uselessly for a moment; the impact had caused him to lose all sense of orientation, and in the mess of limbs and Lycra, he somehow spluttered to the surface and hooked his invisible fingers around the divider rope.

“Christ,” he choked, coughing uncontrollably. His sinuses burned, and his eyes burned, and his back hurt like shit. The offending mouthful of water finally expelled itself from his mouth and nose, and he pulled his goggles down to his neck and looked around for whatever – or, rather, whoever – had hit him.

“Are you—“ he started breathlessly, staring at the furious-looking brunette floating beside him. It occurred to him that she couldn’t see him, and he wiped at his face hurriedly. It didn’t really help – he was still barely there. “Are you okay? Shit, sorry,” he said, huffing out another cough.

This swim was definitely, definitely turning out to be too much effort.

Her mouth was moving, but she wasn’t saying anything; had the impact knocked the wind out of her? He knitted his transparent eyebrows.

“Can you see me at all?” he asked after a moment, feeling the water roll down his face and back into the pool. God, his back was killing him. “Sorry, did I hurt you? I didn’t think there was anyone on the boards.”

[Sawyer Lynn]

When a body suddenly emerged out of nowhere, Sawyer backpaddled and scrambled out of the water. Every movement of hers made it perfectly certain that her nose had indeed been the victim of impact and dots of blood had now dissipated into the water and now currently on the floor she was standing on.

"Are you kidding me!" She tried to yell but no sound came out. Wow, this was not fun. She held her nose up and could definitely hear what the half submerged body was saying but of course she couldn't reply.

She pointed to her nose when he asked if he had hurt her. To be fair though, it hadn't been the boy's fault. Oh what the hell, she was definitely playing the blame game now since he so graciously opened the possibility!

Trying to calm down, she tried again and again to regain her voice but to no avail. "This fucking blows." She mouthed out as she held her head back. She should go to the nurse's office but she was not going to do it alone. Either Invisiboy came with her or she start raining blood in the pool.

[Wren O'Hara]

Wren watched the girl climb out of the pool, and it was only then that he spotted the torrent of blood that was trailing its way from her nose, down her face, into the water, onto the floor…

“Shit,” he said again, hauling himself out of the pool as quickly as he could manage. He scrambled for a towel and practically accosted himself with it; his body began appearing in haphazard streaks of opacity until he was almost completely visible. “I’m so, so sorry. Let me get you a towel or something…”

He squinted around the sidelines for a clean towel, spotted one folded on the nearby bleachers, and made a beeline for it. It unfolded as he grabbed it, and he crumpled it up in his hands, offering it to the girl silently. He was pretty sure he had tried to say something, and based on his lip-reading skills, it had definitely ended in blows.

He winced sympathetically.

“Sorry,” he said again, guiltily. Only then did he realize that his lip was a little fat on one side – he dabbed at it tentatively with a mostly-visible finger. He didn’t come away with much blood, but it was still raw.

“We should go up to the nurse,” he said after a moment, pawing gently at his back, which was probably beginning to sport an impressive bruise that he couldn’t see. “Can you walk okay?”

[Sawyer Lynn]

At the corner of her eye, Sawyer saw the boy scrambling out of the water and letting her know that he was going to get her a towel. It was sort of sweet that he kept on apologising but if he continued doing that, she might end up breaking something.

At one point during the boy's absence, she tasted her own blood through her nose. "Fuck!" She thrust forward and spit out the blood she thankfully didn't swallow.

When the boy returned, Sawyer took the towel and gave the boy an awkward quirk of her lips before putting the towel under her nose. She looked on as he apologised once more and touched his lip. It really did look swollen. What in the hell had she done underwater to him? Well, clearly she needed to apologise too.

His suggestion was responded to with a hand reaching out for him to pull her up. Nodding at his question, she immediately regretted doing so as her head got a little woozy. Blinking away the stars, she tried to get up with the boy's help.

Again, she tried to get her voice back but to no avail. "Nurse's office then." She mouthed under the towel, voiceless. She gripped his hand and walked first.

[Wren O'Hara]

Wren watched her guiltily as she held the towel firm under her nose; she made a face, but he couldn’t tell if it was a smirk, a grimace, or perhaps both. He swallowed hard, knitting his brows together equally awkwardly.

He should have picked lane one instead of lane eight, he chided himself silently. But there was no helping it now – all he could do was try to get them both up to the nurse’s office relatively quickly.

He took her proffered hand and hauled her to her feet with little effort, although the muscles in his back protested where they’d been hit. She swayed a little on her feet, which alarmed him, but she appeared to regain her balance, and from there, she took control of the situation.

Wren wasn’t sure why she wasn’t talking, but he supposed that as long as they got where they were going, it was alright. He allowed her to pull him out of the natatorium and into one of the back hallways without protest. He felt a little weird being out in the open in nothing but his jammer, even though it was probably the single article of clothing he wore most often. It probably would have been weirder if they’d stopped at the locker room, though, he decided, and remained admirably complacent.

“You probably shouldn’t walk too fast,” he mumbled after a few turns, in an attempt to be considerate. He could surely catch her if she fainted, but he didn’t necessarily want to. “I mean… if you want,” he added lamely.

[Sawyer Lynn]

She should have asked if he was okay. That was the standard protocol, right? But no, Sawyer's underdeveloped social graces hindered her from caring about other people than herself.

His suggestion made her slow down. He was right. She could be suffering from a concussion for all she knew and walking fast was not going to help her blood flow decrease.

Pausing for a moment, Sawyer turned and opened her mouth once more and tried a cough at least and heard herself cough which made her grin widely. "I." She said before a triumphant yes escaped her lips. "Fuck it's good to hear my own voice." She rasped finally. "Uh...thanks. Uh...so my nose is bleeding. And your lip looks pretty busted up. We should get checked before we go over pleasantries, yeah?"

Yep. Very good to hear her own voice.

[Wren O'Hara]

The girl slowed down a little, much to Wren’s relief; if he was being honest, he didn’t feel like walking too quickly, either. The shock of the impact had slowly worn off, and a dull, throbbing pain was slowly creeping into his jaw and shoulder.

He’d had worse, of course, but he tried to avoid this sort of thing if he could help it. Then again, at Hammel… well, he was probably lucky that this was all he’d gotten. Of the two of them, she seemed to be the worse for wear.

She coughed, and then proceeded to look incredibly happy about it. Wren blinked at her, uncertain as to whether he should be concerned or amused. He settled for blank, which was his default expression when he had trouble deciding between one or the other. It didn’t last long, because he found himself feeling quite relieved when she finally spoke, and he knitted his eyebrows and clung to her words seriously.

A beat of silence passed between them.

“Yeah,” he agreed. His hand wandered up to the side of his face, which felt hot; with some effort, he nodded for emphasis.

The nurse’s office wasn’t too far away, now, and they moved quickly-but-not-too-quickly through the hallways on their way to the nondescript door. Once they arrived, Wren reached out for the brushed silver handle and held the door open for her.

As it was, Wren hadn’t grown up in a household where he’d been taught to open doors for women in particular. He’d mostly just been taught to hold doors for everyone, and often did, if he was close enough. It was a habit. His mother had always scoffed at his father’s attempts to be gentlemanly, and Wren thought of this now, feeling suddenly awkward.

[Sawyer Lynn]

So the boy was actually quiet, that was something Sawyer was finding out now that she got her voice back. It was most likely due to the fact that she was chatty. It was the likelier reason.

"Yeah? Good." The voice mimic nodded and grabbed his hand once more, pulling him behind here, a lot less rough this time.

When the door was opened for her, Sawyer looked at the other meta weirdly. Well isn't he the polite one. "Thank you kind sir?" Sawyer spoke in a truncated manner, not entirely certain what to do in this situation.

She walked through the door and removed the towel so the nurse could see why they were there. It was only then that Sawyer realised they were both half naked in their swimwear and she was dripping with blood and water from her wet hair.

No wonder the nurse looked so odd.

"I'm not gonna ask exactly what you were attempting in the pool and how unsanitary it would be if you actually succeeded. You, girl, go in to see the doctor and let me look at you, Speedo." She gestured for the boy to come to her as Sawyer put the towel back against her nose, smirking behind the towel when she finally understood what the nurse had insinuated.

"See you on the other side, Invisiboy." Sawyer held her hand up and walked into the doctor's office to get checked.

Once she was done, she went out with a roll of gauze stuck in her nostrils. If the boy had waited, she made no show of acknowledging he was there.

[Wren O'Hara]

It wasn’t something that Wren thought often, but as she thanked him for opening the door – was she confused, or just being sarcastic? He couldn’t tell – he decided that he really would have liked to be invisible.

He bit back an embarrassed grimace and followed her into the nurse’s office, letting the door snap shut behind him.

They stopped in front of the nurse, who studied them critically. Wren felt uncomfortable under her gaze; really, Wren was just beginning to feel uncomfortable in general, and the words that came out of the nurse’s mouth at that moment really didn’t help matters much.

He mouthed wordlessly, fish-like, before snapping his mouth shut so hard that it sent a sharp pain shooting through his already-aching jaw. He resented being called Speedo, but it was nothing compared to the assumption that he and that girl had been…

Wren looked to the girl expectantly, waiting for her to say something now that she’d regained the use of her voice. She only smirked at him, and Wren pursed his lips, turning away from her so that she wouldn’t see his cheeks burning.

Fine. Whatever.

By the time the nurse had finished lecturing him about pool safety and public decency and resting bruised muscles and so forth and so on, the girl had emerged from the doctor’s office with gauze sticking out of her nostrils. She looked ridiculous, Wren thought.

Then again, he was standing in a Speedo and holding an ice pack over his fat lip, so he wasn’t really in any position to judge. He made eye contact with her, then fell in line behind her, so that she could open the door for herself this time.

Once in the hallway, he gave her a sideways look that was ever-so-slightly accusatory.

“You could have told her,” he mumbled, speech slightly inhibited by the compress he was holding. His fingers were turning numb, and where moisture had condensed, his fingertips had disappeared. “Anyway, it’s not broken, right?”

[Sawyer Lynn]

Tilting her head to the side when she realised the boy was still there, Sawyer gave him a sorry-not-so-sorry face before patting his shoulder. "Dude, nothing to tell, man." She shrugged. "It's not a big deal is it? It's not like she's gonna narc on us even if we did...do it." Sawyer couldn't help the smirk on her face right then. It was just too good!

His concern was something that touched Sawyer so she gave him a grin and shook her head. "Nope. You're safe. I ain't gonna sue ya." She responded before noticing the bruise on his back. "Shit...brah...that looks mighty nasty man." She gingerly reached her hand out to touch the discoloured flesh.

"Dude...I'm so sorry, man." She winced.

[Wren O'Hara]

Wren studied her for a moment with a skeptical expression. There were a few beats of silence, during which he apparently struggled internally; after a while, though, the effort became too much and he expelled his breath in a sigh.

He also chuckled a little.

“Yeah, I guess not,” he murmured. Considering all the crazy things that nurse likely saw on a daily basis, she would probably forget she’d even seen them in a few hours’ time. As far as the goings-on at Hammel were concerned, potential pool sex was but a drop in a sea of power malfunctions and pixie-dust inspired orgies.

He nodded his quiet acknowledgement as she confirmed that she was alright; the corners of his lip twitched upward at her phrasing. Now that she could talk, she was apparently doing a lot of it, huh? Well, that was fine with Wren. He liked to listen, anyway. And this girl seemed pretty cool.

Tentative fingertips along the muscles of his back caught his attention, and Wren tilted his head back in an attempt to get a good look at the bruise, to no avail. There was no way he was ever going to be able to see back there without a double mirror, and that was way too much effort.

“Nah, it’s cool,” he said, his voice slightly slurred due to the presence of the icepack and the fact that his lip was now mostly numb. “Nice dive?” he joked after a moment, huffing out a laugh. “I was kind of worried when you couldn’t talk. I thought I’d knocked the wind out of you.”

Another beat of silence.

“We should probably go get our clothes,” he told her, somewhat awkwardly. “I’m Wren, by the way. Are you on the swim team?”

He hadn’t seen the girl around the pool before, but that didn’t mean much. The divers usually practiced separately, and he didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to anything while he was in the water – case in point.

[Sawyer Lynn]

A little relieved that the boy chuckled, Sawyer's smirk softened and she nodded with a grin. "There you go. No big deal!" She exclaimed with both hands gesticulating wildly.

Sniffing lightly, though regretting it immediately because ouch her nose, Sawyer looked at the boy in mock disbelief when he joked about her diving. "Nah man. Side effect." She said before switching her voice to match his. "Vocal mimicry. The surprise just fucked my vocals a bit." She changed to her voice again, sort of relieved that she could still use her abilities. Funnily enough, she actually missed her stupid, lame powers back there.

Being reminded that they were oddly dressed in the middle of the hallway, Sawyer laughed and nodded before walking in the swimming pool's direction.

"Oh hey man. Sawyer." She introduced herself with a small wave. "Uh...yeah. Although I do more diving than swimming. You're lucky I wasn't on the third platform." She joked, mentioning the highest diveboard available.

[Wren O'Hara]

“Oh,” Wren said, a little startled by her use of his own voice. Was that really what he sounded like? He’d never really paid any attention… it was a cool power, though. Way cooler than his, at least, and substantially more useful. “Well, sorry, anyway. That’s pretty cool, by the way,” he said, huffing out a small laugh again. “Uh, I’d tell you what my power is, but it’s probably pretty obvious,” he finished, somewhat lamely.

They started the walk back to the natatorium, moving a little less hurriedly than they had been on their way up. Wren found himself wishing that his Speedo had pockets; he always shoved his hands into his pockets when he walked, and he felt a little weird with them dangling at his side.

“Nice to meet you, Sawyer,” Wren said, kindly. “I tried diving once, but I wasn’t really cut out for the whole ‘graceful’ thing.”

His lip twitched wryly.

“Yeah, for real,” he agreed, biting back a wince at the mere thought. “I might have had to sue you, then,” he said with mock seriousness.

“Not really, though,” he added hurriedly after a beat of silence, just in case she’d thought he would seriously do something like that.

[Sawyer Lynn]

Sawyer looked at the boy with curious eyes and grinned, a little proud of her powers. "I guess." She shrugged, not making a big deal out of it. "What? No it's not obvious." She teased. "Seriously, what the hell, dude? Are you really that shy that you make yourself unknown in the water?" She asked, unwittingly knowing she was half correct.

"Good to meet ya too, bud." Sawyer nodded, not entirely certain that this boy was for real. Politeness was just not something Sawyer was used to. "Graceful?" the voice mimic snorted when she realised that it was actually half of what diving was about. "Nothing to do with grace, man." She tried to justify her sport. "It's got everything to do with precision and power and timing."

The small brunette had always been a power gymnast, thinking rhythmic gymnastics was just a bunch of stupid wedgie-inducing fluff that paled in comparison to power gymnastics. Diving, to her, resembled the most of vault and vault needed more power than anything.

Dropping her mouth in a fake gasp, she punched him playfully on his shoulder when he quicky tried to reassure her of the opposite. It wasn't like she expected him to go through with that threat. They were joking, clearly.

"You think you can still swim with that back? I mean, I'm small but I'm not a lightweight." Sawyer laughed at her own self-depracating joke.