Alex Mercer (alexmercer) wrote in chances_rpg, @ 2024-04-18 22:10:00 |
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Entry tags: | julieandthephantoms: alex mercer, teen wolf: stiles stilinski |
Who: Alex and Stiles
What: Talking on the Beach
When: During Spring Break
Where: Bermuda!
Warnings: None
Status: Completed via GDocs
Dinner and movies the night before had admittedly been an invite he’d made to Alex without thinking about the others showing up. Not that he’d excluded them from his plans intentionally. The fact that they’d had other stuff happening had just been a happy coincidence that meant he didn’t have to feel too bad. Not that he really had. But he should have, maybe. He was probably overthinking it. It was just that he’d gotten used to spending so many afternoons (and evenings and nights) at Alex’s, or vice versa, that he’d sort of been missing it. So far, he’d made a point of ignoring any deeper thought into the why behind that. But that was a bit hard when you were on a holiday and didn’t have essays to write or endless episodes of Cutthroat Kitchen or Brooklyn 99 to watch.
After a morning spent shopping, he and Reggie had spent the afternoon surfing with Al again, Stiles with varying (read: low) levels of success. It was clear he was never going to conquer staying on the board as well as Reggie seemed to manage, but he was fine with that. Being any good at sports had never been something he was all that concerned with. The whole lacrosse thing had started because it was what Scott wanted.
Now he was pretty happy to just collapse on his towel on the sand and lie in the sun for a while. He’d taken the time to pull a t-shirt back on with his board shorts, Luke’s back the day prior being a cautionary tale against falling asleep in the sun. But once he was lying down with his newly purchased cap pulled forward to shade his face, it didn’t take long for his eyes to grow heavy. He could feel sleep pulling at him even as his thoughts strayed back to Alex singing that song for what was probably the thousandth time that day.
It wasn't like Alex was totally glued to Stiles' side the whole time, obviously. He'd done some sight seeing around the island, tried a few food places no one else had really been interested in, found some souvenirs for the friends who couldn't make it, etc. For now, though, he'd volunteered for bag watching duties while most of the group went off to do their own beach thing. A small price to pay for a chill time, especially when a vendor passed close enough to grab a fruity drink.
A fruity drink he nearly spilled all over himself after nearly tripping over air when he saw Stiles had returned to their little towel enclave. Seeing him lying in the sun—
Golden wasn't the right word for the way his skin lit up under the bright tropical sun. Porcelain seemed wrong, too. Stiles was to strong for that; Alex knew that with absolute certainty. Pearl, then. Yeah, pearl. Precious. Hardened over time into something beautiful.
He swallowed roughly and mentally shook his head at himself.
Yet he couldn't help but notice the dark spray of lashes along the tops of Stiles' cheeks, nor could he fully ignore the very slight upturn of his nose. Not that this was the first time he'd noticed that feature, but it was very much the first time he'd been conscious of the urge to kiss the tip of it.
His drink nearly slipped out of his hand entirely. Alex gripped it tight just to keep his hand from shaking even as he lowered himself quietly on to his own towel, trying not to wake his friend.
The one he was resolutely no longer staring at anymore. He focused instead on the ocean stretching out in front of them.
At first, Stiles thought he was dreaming, hearing the distant sound of waves, then feeling that unmistakable sensation of someone close by. Unusually, it wasn’t an unsettling feeling for once. There was no accompanying feeling of wrong about it. And that was generally an instinct he trusted. Eyes blinking open, it took him a second to remember he actually was on a beach. Right, spring break. He wasn’t back in his room, he was on the beach.
And the person he’d become aware of was Alex.
He absolutely did not stare. It was just that ever since he’d mentioned his long hair, Stiles was even more conscious of how much he really liked it. He was refusing to acknowledge any thoughts regarding the fact of his friend sitting there shirtless right now.
Clearing his throat a bit awkwardly as he sat up, he took the hat off long enough to push back still damp hair off his forehead. “Hey, man. Had enough sightseeing for one day?”
Of course, Alex hadn't meant to wake Stiles up from his nap. Guy never seemed to get enough sleep as it was. He'd have been more than content to just sit in relative silence if it meant his friend getting a moment's peace. The stab of guilt at pulling him from it (probably? could've been anything, but his presence seemed the most likely source) was just a flicker, fortunately.
He smiled over at Stiles and offered his drink for him to try first. "This much beauty? Gotta take it in small doses, or I get all overwhelmed and stuff. How was surfing?"
Stiles accepted the offered drink to try. “It is pretty awesome,” he agreed. Everything about this place was beautiful. Honestly, new surroundings in general felt like exactly what he’d needed after the last however many crappy months. But to get to be somewhere like this was pretty incredible.
It had taken a little while, first after what had gone down with…everyone that had shown up, and then Scott being gone. But between a bit of time spent in Alex’s - the whole band’s - company, and now this place, Stiles was feeling a bit more capable of pushing aside the persistent cloud of sorrow that had been hanging over his head since Lydia left. He knew he was laughing more, and he was definitely sleeping better. And that was something he was crediting almost entirely to the person sitting beside him. Not that he was going to admit that part out loud. He’d have to get over his preference for falling asleep beside him at some point.
Handing the drink back to Alex, he leaned back on his elbows, eyes on the water. In the afternoon sun it looked like it was covered in hundreds of little lights. He didn’t think he’d ever seen anything like it. “Surfing was exhausting,” he laughed. “I don’t know how Reggie makes it look so easy. Some kind of witchcraft going on there.”
Not for the first time, Alex found himself a little dazed. Just one smile, and the butterflies in permanent residence in his stomach started moshing like crazy. He probably watched Stiles for a beat too long before taking a drink of the fruity concoction he'd gotten. Not too sweet and really refreshing—and really not what Alex was thinking about at the moment. He chuckled and looked out toward the waves, wondering if he'd spot his other bestie, but not really trying very hard. The guy was practically half-dolphin when he got out in the water.
"Y'know what? I was totally about to say we didn't have magic where I came from, but then I forgot ghost magic was totally a thing, so I wouldn't put it past Reggie to have some wizard in him. And I swear I mean that in the nicest way possible. Not in the gross Caleb way, of course." Alex felt his shoulders tense up as just the mention. He breathed in. Breathed out. "But! We're not talking about that jerk. Not when we're this close to paradise."
Stiles didn’t miss that lingering look, and he made himself look away before he got caught staring in turn. “Ghost magic definitely makes that a possibility. For all the weird crap we dealt with back home, ghosts were not one of them. But I wouldn’t put it past Beacon Hills High to be home to a few ghost lacrosse players or something.” He liked that thought, actually. Ghosts more like Alex, Luke and Reggie than anything sinister.
It was a good thing Alex said they weren’t talking about Caleb, because Stiles didn’t miss the way he’d tensed up at the name, and a part of him really did want to know more. That curious part of his brain that never really took a break. But he respected the desire to not want to linger on a particular subject all too well.
“Close to?” He teased instead, the humor clear in his eyes. “What’s missing for you to call this paradise?”
Alex's mouth went dry.
He had to take another couple of conspicuous gulps before he could begin to answer. It gave him the opportunity not to stick his foot in his mouth. Instead, he copped out. "Ludwig Classic Maple Pro Beat 3-piece shell pack in vintage pink oyster. What can I say? I'm a man of simple, yet expensive taste. What about you? What's your idea of paradise?"
Stiles quirked a curious brow at that. “That’s a - drum kit?” He guessed, he assumed reasonably. He really didn’t know all that much about instruments in general, let alone what counted as expensive drums. The pink part wasn’t a surprise, pink was Alex’s color of choice, after all.
The question being turned back on him was a little harder, though. “A thing, or a place? Because Kitty came pretty close with my PS5, can’t lie.” He was absolutely joking, but he did love that thing. He could talk at great length (to the right person) about how far gaming had come in the years since his time. “I don’t know. This is pretty good? I mean, I’ve got no complaints right now.”
"It is," Alex affirmed with a dreamy sigh, although he thought the question might have been a little on the rhetorical side. Seemed safer to lust after a drum kit than…
NO.
No lusting.
Lusting was not a thing he did.
Alex wasn't sure he knew how to lust.
Lord, what he wouldn't give to get the word "lust" out of his head right then.
This was normally where he would've bumped Stiles' shoulder with his own, but they were currently on unequal levels. Instead, he shoved lightly at his arm and snorted a small giggle. "Next time we'll drag some cables out here and a big screen so you can play all the crazy video games you want. But, anyway, yeah. This place is pretty freaking great. Thanks for coming up with it. It's like… It's like our senior trip or something."
The little shove was a familiar enough action at this point, as was the accompanying feeling that came hand in hand with any physical contact from Alex. God, he really needed to get over this - whatever this was. He was being ridiculous. He did manage a laugh, though. “Hey, even I have some boundaries. Video games have no place here. This is perfect as is.”
He couldn’t stop the smile at the thanks. “I can’t take all the credit. Peter came up with the location. I was just looking for a change of scenery. Hard to believe because I hid it really well, but I was in a bit of a funk for a while there.” Sarcasm, thy name is Stiles Stilinski. He had no idea how else to even broach a more serious subject.
He looked back over at Alex again. “You’re the one who deserves thanks. For helping pull me out of that. I guess a senior trip will have to do. Doesn’t seem like a fair trade, though.”
A single glance over was all it took for Alex to catch sight again of the temporary henna tattoo on Stiles' arm. "Yeah," he murmured, "perfect."
The sun. The beach. His friends. Stiles.
(Especially Stiles.)
He pulled his thoughts away, but his hand stayed where it landed, and his thumb started tracing the upper edge. Alex couldn't have said he was acutely aware of what he was doing, but he had to admit it felt nice. Comforting.
The acerbic tone wasn't lost on him; he'd always been adept at knowing or figuring out people's moods. Empathetic, a therapist had called him that a few years back, but it wasn't something Alex thought about all that much. He chewed on his lip for just a second or two, swallowing the urge to dismiss the gratitude outright. At this point, there really wasn't anything he wouldn’t do for the guy sitting next to him, although he couldn't have called the exact moment when that became true.
It simply was.
"It's not about trade." He smiled, meaning it—both the sentiment and the feeling behind it. "If it was, we'd be caught in this back and forth for the rest of our lives. But I'll pick up something fun for Peter and surprise him with it when we get back. Is it wrong that I wish we could slow down time? So 'get back' was more like two weeks away instead of, like, a couple of days?"
Stiles looked down at Alex’s hand, trying not to become completely entranced by the action, before dragging his eyes back up to his face. “I know it isn’t,” he finally answered after it felt like the moment had drawn out too long. “But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t know how much you’ve done. All of the time we’ve spent together. That song. Even the chess set, Alex. I just want to make sure you know. That’s all.”
He didn’t feel it was too much to be saying that, not right now, in this moment.
A moment that he’d like to hold onto a lot longer, too. “It’s not wrong. I wouldn’t mind if we could stop time for a while. This works pretty well for me.”
Alex smiled and pressed his thumb against where he just now realized he'd had his hand for far too long. All the things Stiles listed seemed like the least he could have done after the last couple of months his friend had been through. But dismissing it out of hand was the wrong move too. So he just smiled, big, warm, and supportive, then he lay back on his towel and squinted up into the stretch of bright blue sky.
Still, his gaze drifted to Stiles once more, the pull somehow gravitational by this point. He already missed the feeling of warm skin under his fingers—which was not a direction he could let his mind go. Alex shut his eyes for a moment, just breathing in and out. "Perfect," he murmured, echoing their earlier sentiment again. A little louder, he hazarded, "Hey, um, wanna do another movie night? Last night was really great, and I finally feel like I'm getting a nice movie-cation to go with my vacation."
Stiles had to tell himself to stop overthinking every little thing Alex did. The band were all big with the affection, you couldn’t miss that. This was no different. He was just getting himself all caught up in his own feelings, which were confused enough as it was, and reading into things that weren’t there. Of course, ignoring them was easier said than done in the face of smiles like that.
He looked back out over the water as Alex lay back, pretending he didn’t already miss the feel of his thumb brushing over his arm. The closer the sun got to the horizon, the more incredible it looked shining over the water. Anyone looking at this would say it was perfect. Stiles told himself he was just missing Lydia, or something. Even as he had the thought he knew he was lying to himself. Yeah, he missed her, but those emotions were completely separate.
When Alex spoke again he looked back over at him, hiding his surprise at the question. He’d been toying with the idea of bringing it up himself, and he was enough of a coward to be grateful Alex had asked first. “Yeah, for sure. It’s a nice way to wind down after all this hard work,” he joked of their current complete lack of activity.
Chuckling, Alex knocked his knuckle into the side of Stiles' hand, then brought it up to lay against his own stomach. He wasn't tired, but keeping his eyes shut was easier than the way they kept drinking his friend in whenever he looked for more than a second or two. "Hey, paradise life is hard, okay? First of all, those waves aren't just gonna surf themselves. And naps? Man, they are relentless. The untold apex predator of all vacations. When the gang gets back, we'll offload their stuff and figure out food and movies. Sound good?"
Stiles laughed at that, though it was a quiet sound. With his hand now held resting on Alex there was a mantra running on repeat through his mind to keep his usually fidgeting fingers still, not wanting him to think he wanted him to not have done that and let go. With his free hand he tipped his hat forward as he looked away, shading his eyes from the sun again. “They might be relentless, but they’re the best.” He was pretty sure he could handle one right now. Which didn’t answer Alex’s question. “Works for me.”
"Awesome." Alex grinned up at the profile he could just barely see from this angle. He couldn't think too hard about what he'd just done. They'd wound up like this countless times in the last weeks, just maybe not while Alex was missing a shirt. Nope, not at all focusing on… No. Nothing. Nada. Nyet. (Yelena taught him that one, but he didn't know how to spell it in actual Russian.)
Just the haze of the sun sinking slowly and the companionship of the guy next to him while the rest of his friends were off having their own fun on the island: those were the important things.