Simple Pleasures: Annie Leonhart x Reader

Chapter 5: Challenges, Part 1

You realize that you have never really seen Annie in the water. You were used to watching her jog, sure, and were more than familiar with her maneuvering through cities and forests alike with her ODM gear, but swimming? It's an entirely new beast.

Unsurprisingly, she excelled. You shouldn't have expected any less given her marvelous physical capabilities, but she was like a machine the way she swam. At one point, you challenged her to a race along the length of the shoreline of the lake. It wasn't too far, a few hundred feet, maybe. Keeping in mind that you had not seen her swim aside from some wading and gentle splashing, you thought that you could hold your own against her. Obviously, she took her fitness seriously, but your mother was a lifelong swimmer and you have swum with her since you were a child. You thought you could hold your own, or at the very least, could maybe grab her ankle to sabotage her. You weren't racing out of honor, you were racing to win!

She. Kicked. Your. Ass. As soon as the last syllable of "go" left your mouth, she was almost a full twenty feet ahead of you. And by the time you reached the end of the race—unable to grab her ankle since she was never once within your grasp—she was waiting for you with a taunting wave and a smug "What took you so long?" You bet her a kiss that you could beat her in a double or nothing round; as you explained to her, you were simply caught off guard the first time and got off to a slow start. You should have known the result—you knew damn well you weren't just "caught off guard" the first time—but who was the real winner? After all, you just kissed Annie Leonhart.

Humiliating defeat aside, you were seriously impressed. So impressed, that after catching your breath and sunbathing on the shore with her for about an half an hour, you aired out a new idea.

"Hey Annie, I have a question," you say, craning your neck to face her. She was lying stomach down, tanning her back.

She angles her head to look back at you. "What is it?"

"How big do you think the lake is?"

"Not sure. Looks about half a mile or a mile the full length across."

You wait a moment to see if she catches where you're about to go. She does not.

"I never knew you were such a strong swimmer."

"I've been swimming since I was a toddler," she responds, sounding borderline uninterested.

"Do you think..." you begin, trying to rouse her attention.

Staring at you, she raises her eyebrows and gives a slight wobble of the head, waiting for you to finish.

"Do you think you could swim the entire length and back?" you ask. Even you did not know the answer, but if you had to guess, you would say she would make it about half way through the lake before she had to call it quits.

"Easily," Annie said, without missing a beat. She angled her head away from you, going back to her tanning.

"Easily?" you thought to yourself. What the hell is this girl, a barracuda? It was more of a hypothetical question than anything, but something about the way she answered so casually and without thought, as if someone had just asked what she had for breakfast, made you want to see it for yourself. You call bullshit, even with how well she can swim.

You get up from laying on your stomach and stretch. You make your way over to the opposite side of Annie—the direction she is now facing—and drop to your knees, obstructing her view.

"Prove it," you taunt.

She looks up at you, noticing the smug air surrounding you. She gets up, dusting gravel and sand off of her belly and legs.