"Hah - no you don't," he said, matter of factly, smirking. "Smarmy grins and superior, haughty sniffing isn't laughing." He tilted his head. "Watch it, though. I might start laughing at you. ...More."

He leaned on the edge of the pool, eyebrow raised as she started to speak, and then dove underwater. He wasn't quite able to stand in this deep of water - even if his head was fully over the waterline his body kept wanting to float, so he used to his arms to secure himself to the edge of the pool as he watched her swim around.

He blinked when she popped back up, blinking again when she deposited his glasses on his face wordlessly, not really sure how to respond - and trying to stop, and failing to stop, the automatic blush that spread across his face. He pulled the glasses off in an effort to look anywhere else, inspecting the bend.

Her words made him look back to her - his eyes landing somewhere other than the bracelet before he quickly snapped his gaze to it. This didn't help the blush. "Um. Pre-" he started to say, and then the echo of a slammed door boomed across the pool. He jumped (dropping his glasses into the water again) and whipped around, but whoever it was wasn't visible, or was gone.

He looked at Aileen, one eyebrow raised and his smile embarrassed. "If that was Cyhirae, I'm taking tomorrow off," he said with slight humor, catching his glasses as they drifted towards the bottom again.

Aileen gave Tapendra a funny look. He'd been acting especially awkward since she'd emerged from the water and set his glasses back on his nose, and she was just about to make one of her faulty assumptions when the door to the rooftop slammed. Aileen jumped too, then narrowed her eyes at the disturbance.

"Lovely," she murmured under her breath as Tapendra made a joking comment about Cyhirae. Knowing her luck, he was right, and if Cyhirae hadn't seen them, then another student had. A student who would take the 'two professors swimming in a pool!' scene and run with it in the most vexing way possible.

Aileen drifted over to the edge of the pool and pulled herself out of the water, suddenly annoyed that her blouse and trousers stuck to her skin, and that she'd have to do laundry tonight to get the chlorine out.

"No you're not," she informed him darkly over her shoulder. "You're sticking around. While I take the week off and avoid the students in general. And pools."

She found her belongings by the deck chairs, but it would take a few minutes to dry her clothes using magic, and she didn't want to fuss with it right now. With her back to the pool, Aileen stripped down to her swimsuit, a slight stiffness to her movements. Wrapping her towel around her shoulders, she finally glanced at the water to see if Tapendra had decided to make an escape as well.

Tapendra gave her a Look, his eyes narrowed, as she stiffened up and got out of the pool. He was nice enough - or was it 'feeling awkward enough' - to look away when she stripped her clothes off, but he frowned at her when she was done.

She's gotten angry again, suddenly. Aileen was odd. One moment she was angry, one moment she was laughing, and then...well, tender was the best word for it - and now she was back to being angry and bitter and snippy again, like a door had opened and then been slammed shut again.

He vastly preferring the laughing and the - well, the not being angry.

He crossed his arms, frown turning slightly quizzical. "That would just make it worse, wouldn't it?" he asked, with his head tilted slightly. "Avoiding them. Then they're really think something...happened. Which it didn't," The emphasis wasn't necessary, but for some reason he tacked it on with out thinking about it.

With a sigh, he cleared his throat. "You're, uh, going? I thought you came up here to swim," he said. "I can leave instead. If you'd rather - if you'd prefer that."

Aileen had expected, perhaps preferred, Tapendra to snipe back so she could continue to be annoyed and not have to think too much about it. When he seemed befuddled, like the crup sometimes looked when she scolded the creature for chewing on her shoes, she let out a sigh. No, nothing had happened. No, she wasn't really planning on avoiding the students. And no, she wasn't mad at him for once.
 
Aileen simply did not like being the subject of gossip, be it from silly students or anyone else, especially when Tapendra was involved. Getting along with him at Hogwarts was one thing. Getting along with him here, after he'd pushed her into a pool and she hadn't minded, was too strange.
 
"No, I'm going," she insisted when he offered to leave instead.
 
Aileen slung her bag over her shoulder, draped her wet clothes over her arm, and took a few steps away from the deck chairs, then paused by the pool edge, looking at him. "You can stay," she said stiffly. "I'm going in to wash these," she lifted up her arm.

A sorry excuse, but she lingered there, waiting to see if that would wipe some of the bafflement off his face.