Room 1 [late Tuesday afternoon]

[pasunereveuse]

Celia had stopped to get coffee for herself and Eleanor on the way home from work, and had been perhaps a touch creative in her order -- there was more caramel and whipped cream in both drinks than actual coffee, but she didn't much care. The day was dreary enough to warrant both a hot drink and a treat

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[nobloodymessiah]

Eleanor lifted her cup and brought it to her lips with a frown. "It's not too cold," she decided, having missed that her friend had warmed both magically. "Though it is odd in this weather to have coffee take a chill so abruptly. You'd expect that in January, not July."

[pasunereveuse]

"Something is wrong with this house," Celia said definitively, crossing her arms around herself. "First the television, now this. Not to mention the things I've heard about happening to other people."

She made a face, flopping dramatically onto her bed. "It's enough to make me miss the dorms."

[nobloodymessiah]

"What things have been happening with other people?" Eleanor asked, taking another sip from her coffee. There was rather more caramel and whipped cream than coffee, but she wasn't one to critique free coffee from a friend. "Are there more animal transformations? That was beginning to seem like an epidemic."

[pasunereveuse]

"No, thank heaven, since I've no desire to wake up as a chipmunk or something." Celia probably shouldn't take that sort of thing for granted. "People keep talking on the radio about wailing and cold spots and -- you know, if I believed in ghosts, I'd think there were ghosts in this house."

But she didn't believe in ghosts, even if cold spots kept appearing.

"It's just odd, is all."

[nobloodymessiah]

"There might be a logical explanation," Eleanor said. "Plenty of people in Rapture thought they saw ghosts, but it was mostly bleed from absorbed memories. Cold spots can be caused by improper air circulation. As for the oddities ... perhaps one or two unusual things happened, and now people are seeing them only because they expect to."

[pasunereveuse]

"Psychosomatic hallucinations? Expectation breeding ideas?" Celia suggested. "That sounds more probable than ghosts, to me."

Said the magic-using girl whose father would turn himself incorporeal in a couple years.

"I hadn't expected my first modern summer to be spent in a drafty mansion out of my own time, though," she said with a wry little smile. "It seems so incongruous -- the sunshine and everyone's good moods contrasted with the dreariness of our surroundings."

[nobloodymessiah]

"It does seem strange to spend summer shivering," Eleanor agreed. "Perhaps we've been cooped up in these rooms for too long. There's sunshine; let's go out and enjoy it. We ought to be laying on the beach, working on our tans."

Eleanor was the sort of ghostly pale you'd expect from someone who reached age 16 without ever seeing sunlight. A little color really couldn't hurt, though who could say that she wouldn't just burn clear through.

[pasunereveuse]

"You can work on your tan," Celia replied with a bright smile. "I seem to be amassing a very unladylike collection of freckles. My father will be horrified."

Note how upset she seemed about that.

"I don't know if I could wear my bathing suit here, anyway. I think I nearly killed Ichabod the other day when I told him I owned one. I could lay out in a dress, or something, maybe."

[nobloodymessiah]

"I think you're taking the process in entirely the wrong direction," Eleanor said mischievously. "If he nearly died at the sound of you in a bathing suit, then clearly, what he needs is to see you in one."

Oh, apparently it was her turn to be the shameless enabler. Celia wouldn't mind, she was sure of it.

[pasunereveuse]

"I'm not sure I'm ready for anyone to see me in that again," Celia said, looking horrified as she turned bright red. "Least of all -- it's bad enough people have seen my legs."

The horror.

"It'd be one thing if it was for a reason," she added. "Like if I was...I don't know, somehow helping someone with my lack of clothing. If it was for a purpose. Then I could at least claim nobility, rather than vanity."

[nobloodymessiah]

"Sunbathing is a purpose," Eleanor insisted. "So is not falling ill of heatstroke. Perhaps I could arrange to swim out too far, develop a cramp, and be in desperate need of a daring rescue."

One that would require her dear friend to strip down to a bathing suit, obviously.

[pasunereveuse]

"I would just levitate you out of the water, silly," Celia replied, shaking her head...and then the point actually hit her. "But, wait, no, in your way I need to be wearing my swimwear under my clothes, and that makes no sense."

Pause.

"Otherwise I'd end up in my corset and bloomers, and I almost think that's worse." Because at least her swimsuit didn't emphasize anything.

[nobloodymessiah]

"You realize what this means," Eleanor said easily. "You'll need to have your swimwear on under your clothes, whenever we're at the beach. In case of levitation-related emergencies."

It didn't matter that that didn't make sense. Enabling didn't have to.

"How are you getting on with Ichabod?" she asked. "He fills out those clothes of his rather well."

On him, old-fashioned looked dashing.

[pasunereveuse]

Celia tended to agree, if the way she almost immediately blushed was any indication. "Great," she said, twirling a curl that had fallen loose around a finger. "He's...wonderful. He taught me to ride a horse this weekend. That's why I had to borrow your jeans."

She slanted a look at Eleanor, blushing harder, and added, "We shared a saddle. It was very...intimate."

By her standards, anyway.

[nobloodymessiah]

"It sounds intimate," Eleanor grinned. "Pressed in close together as the horse sways and falls? Did you have your arms wrapped tightly around his chest? Did he smell of leather and spice?"

What? As if Celia hadn't noticed.

"You could always keep the jeans," she added. "How did he react, to seeing you wear them?"

They did such wonderful things to the hips.

[pasunereveuse]

"I sat in front of him, so no, no...arms, like that," Celia said, grinning and covering her face partly with her hand as she twirled her hair, somewhere between embarrassed and thrilled. Something about talking about this made her horrifically inarticulate. "It was just...Eleanor, I've never been so close to anyone. I could feel him breathe."

She rolled over, pressing her face into her pillow dramatically, before turning her head to the side enough to add, "And he didn't mention the jeans, because he's a gentleman. They weren't too tight, were they? You saw me before I left on Sunday."