(Untitled)

[floozyfacade]

It's only a few weeks into the school term and, if Olive were sensible, she'd be studying. Today's a light day, meaning she has plenty of time to do so, if she just buckles down, and it's not like she isn't a focused, disciplined student when she wants to be. Even without these grades contributing to the college applications she won't be writing

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[noonelaughed]

Chris doesn't know what the fuck it is with people an the bookshelf and the magazines or whatever, but this is the second time in less than a month that he's come across someone on the beach reading one. Last time, it was Eduardo, now it's Olive.

Now he's got to wonder if that's what the two of them get up to when they're hanging about, just like... sitting round, reading magazines or whatever.

Still, he plops down on the sand next to Olive anyway, leaning over to get a look at what she's going on about before he says anything.

"No, no, I've done that one," he says.

[floozyfacade]

Olive glances up, eyes wide and expression torn between delight and horror. "Really," she says, and it doesn't come out the question she meant it to be. She's not entirely surprised, after all. Somehow Chris seems likelier to be able to check off half the tips on a Cosmo list than two-thirds of the girls she knows, which has nothing at all to do with the source. "Some of these are terrifying. 'Place your feet on his chest with your legs crossed to create an extrasnug grip' - wh-just, I don't - am, am I supposed to become a pretzel? Are guys turned on by pretzels?"

[noonelaughed]

"Not generally, no," Chris replies, mouth twisting into a frown for a moment. He shrugs. Though, there's probably someone somewhere who gets off on them and has like loads of them about the house and in the cupboards. That's not really what Olive's asking about, though.

"It really just depends on what someone does while they're all pretzely.

[floozyfacade]

Pulling a face, Olive shakes her head. "It's really kind of disturbing that's not something that can just be ruled out," she muses. "But different strokes, I guess. But yeah, I mean, not that a little contortion as a rule is... a bad thing, but I can't imagine that would be, you know, comfortable with the whole..." She wriggles her arms around in front of her, attempting to demonstrate without actually trying to shift into the described position. It just seems like a bad idea in a bikini, really.

[notaparker]

It actually feels good to have a pretty full courseload again. Between that, lab work and squeezing in deliberately irregularly scheduled sessions of the all-new hit series James Barnes Presents: Exhaustion, it's fairly full-on.

Not enough to make me wish there were more of me, though. There will never be a time when that happens. I am completely content to be just the one me.

Because it's not like I'm so busy I can't find time to go swimming, which is what I'm just coming back from. Partly it's because it's a pretty ocean and it should be enjoyed, and partly in the vain hope that some extra conditioning will make it feel less like Barnes is trying to murder me.

Those people in his class don't know how good they have it. They have other students to take some of his attention

[floozyfacade]

"'Place one hand at the base of his shaft, and twist the tip with the other,'" Olive reads aloud, and though she tries at first for an overly sensual voice to mock the source material, she winds up shuddering as she finishes. "'Like you're opening a jar.' A jar. I don't think the people who write these things understand how much force I use to open jars. Or else they just hate men and they're deliberately trying to land them in the hospital, because that - I mean, that cannot be healthy. Or pleasurable in any manner."

Granted, there are a few scattered tips that make her wonder how much exactly she knows and has yet to learn, but mostly she's starting to suspect these people wrote these with dirty refrigerator poetry magnets.

[notaparker]

I wince and suppress the urge to cross my legs about halfway through the motion, and I don't even have the relevant parts, except in some weird memory-state I try not to think about.

"Tears about sums it up," I say, now consciously not looking at said magazine, because: "Wow, they just out and say it, don't they. Was that even shrink-wrapped?"

[floozyfacade]

Olive shakes her head vigorously, legs swinging over her and weight on her elbows as she flips it shut to show Jessica the cover: 99 Sex Moves: Sweet and Slow, Quick and Dirty, and Everything in Between.

"I guess I shouldn't be surprised," she says, "and that's just, you know, the one article, there are others that are, um... highly instructive. I'm guessing at least half in what not to do. Ever. Unless you hate him. Or yourself. But I wasn't actually expecting that, that's - it's not actually the most explicit." She's not going to read those to Jessica. Not aloud and in public. She's pretty free and open, but there are limits.

[pointzerothree]

"What can only end in tears?" Eduardo asks as he approaches, having had a similar idea and heading instinctively in Olive's direction when he sees her out on the beach, just in time to catch the end of what she says. He doesn't, however, wait for a response before he takes a seat at her side and glances at the magazine, and then he wishes he hadn't, cringing at the words he sees on the page. Why she would be reading something like this, he doesn't have the first idea; he's just glad he knows her well enough by now to be about ninety-nine point nine percent certain that she'd never try anything like this. He got more than enough of those supposedly useful magazine tips when he was with Christy. "Yeah, no, okay, that's - I don't think there were actually any tears, but it was a pretty close call."

[floozyfacade]

Olive sets the magazine down abruptly, brow raising as she looks up at him for where she's lying on her stomach. While she's perfectly aware he's slept with other girls before her, there's a vast difference between knowing that - and she's certainly never minded his having more experience, except out of jealousy before they got together - and having some kind of an idea of what exactly that involved. There are things she just doesn't need to hear about. She really has to hope he's talking about a different tip, one of the big boldly printed ones, because this one sounds especially painful, but given that his last girlfriend was a lunatic, she's not holding her breath.

"Well," she says. "I'm glad you survived that intact, that sounds... Wow. Was setting your bed on fire not enough?"

[pointzerothree]

"Not even remotely," Eduardo says, entirely serious as he shakes his head. Really, that one particular trick - and who the fuck ever thought it would be a good idea, he doesn't know and doesn't want to - doesn't even begin to cover what things were like with Christy, and while he suspects that a good deal more of her favored tactics might also make this list, he has no intention of going into any further detail about what she liked to do. There's no point, for one, when she isn't here and it would be irrelevant even if she were, but more than that, he wouldn't want Olive to have to think about him like that. He can't help it that Christy was psychotic, though, and anyway, the sex was pretty great for a while, before she got increasingly crazy. "I don't know who writes these things, but they've got to be completely insane, too."

[floozyfacade]

It doesn't even remotely surprise her she hit the nail right on the head, guessing which of the girls in his past tried that. Christy's the only one Olive really knows about. She gets the impression she's the only one there's much to know about. And that she was completely fucking insane. She could take a lot of comfort in that, how favorably she must compare, if she were less secure in their relationship. Mostly it's just kind of annoying to think of him with someone like that.

"I don't know, number thirty doesn't sound so off," she jokes, reaching out to pat the sand next to her for him to sit. "'Anytime he does something you like, dig your nails into his back. It lets him know you love it.'" She's pretty sure they came up with about ten things that made sense and scattered them through the rest to make them look reasonable, but if that was the idea, they failed.

[1struleiscardio]

It's kind of like knowing twins - I know she's not Wichita, I can tell she's not Wichita just from looking at her but...for a moment? It's really hard not to get distracted by how. Which is just embarrassing. So I'm already blushing when I wonder closer and...realise what she's reading.

"I really don't want to know, do I?"

[floozyfacade]

About the only times Olive really feels weird about wearing a two-piece bathing suit, even a relatively modest one, is when she runs into Columbus. Or Mark, but that's much rarer, since even now that they're on better terms, they don't spend a whole lot of private time together. Paired with her choice of reading material, it's a little embarrassing, even though there's no reason to be bothered. It's just one of the few things in her life she makes a real effort not to analyze, and then she worries that that effort in itself is a bad thing, so she has to try not to pick that apart, too.

"You really don't," she answers, wincing slightly, half-closing the magazine as she gestures for him to join her. "There are some things you just don't need to hear. Or read. Ever."

[1struleiscardio]

She's my friend and, bikini or not, I drop down to sit beside her. The heels of my sneakers dig into the sand. I'm actually wearing shorts today and my fingers hang against bare shins.

"I think Wichita knows enough about...everything to have me covered."

[floozyfacade]

Olive lets go of the magazine to lift her hands briefly to her ears, then lets them drop because she feels incredibly childish doing that for even a second. She has no problem with the topic of sex itself and she's hardly a prude; it was an open subject in her house, sometimes unfortunately. Actually, hearing it from Wichita probably wouldn't even faze her much. It's hearing about Wichita that's weird.

"I keep having to remind myself we have different bodies," she says through slightly grit teeth, feeling absurd for that, too, but she sees no reason not to be honest about it. "It confuses my brain. Yeah, no, I'm - I'm sure she does. And that you don't want her following these instructions, because you probably want all your, you know... equipment intact."

[widowskiss]

Natalia is not at all averse to using her skills for minor evils. The sight of Olive giggling over a magazine proves too great a temptation to resist, and Natalia reads over her shoulder for sometime before making her presence known, turning her head in time with Olive's as they survey the images in unwitting tandem.

"You'd be surprised."

[floozyfacade]

"Holy shit," Olive exclaims, rolling up into a sitting position and instinctively pulling the magazine over her chest, like the cover's actually any kind of an improvement over the article she's been reading. "You surprised me. You - were you reading it? That is - wow, God, you're a ninja."

[widowskiss]

"Skimming," chirps Natalia, seating herself next to Olive in the sand. "I'm thankful they included pictures for some of these, I'm not sure I'd recognize a ..." She leans over to check the too glossy image. "An arc de triomph based on the description alone."

[floozyfacade]

"Oh, yeah," Olive says, nodding, "it's... very thoughtful of them. However detailed the description may be." She was pretty sure things like that were supposed to come wrapped in brown paper or something like that, but who is she to criticize an open expression of sexuality? It's just the details that alarm her in places. "Maybe it's just me, but some of these seem like they should only be tried by experienced contortionists."