The Sea Ain't Mine Alone

by Beaumont, C. L.

  James freezes, terrified that if he moves, Sydney will snatch his hand back. He feels himself growing impossibly thicker and heavier in Sydney’s palm. Before he can look down at the sight of Sydney’s fingers caressing the thick bulge in his shorts, Sydney’s lips are on his, in a touch so light and soft it brings an embarrassing tightness to James’ throat. James holds his breath. Sydney kisses him there as his hand strokes, just once, along James’ erection, sending vibrating sparks through his thighs, so powerful James nearly throws himself off and sideways into the clear sand.

  But he doesn’t, and Sydney traces the wet spot around the crown of James’ cock with his fingertip, then he slips his hand to James’ back, back beneath the waistband, and he grips hard at James’ ass, pulling James close against every inch of his body. He wraps his leg around James’ calf.

  James pauses, just for a second, with his nose alongside Sydney’s, trying to summon the same level of courage he had when he stepped off that dinghy into the silent jungle. He looks down into Sydney’s face, expecting to see eyes dark with desire, heavy-lidded and sharp and piercing with need.

  But Sydney’s clear blue eyes are blown wide, glossy and wavering as they rove across James’ face. He looks uncertain as they lie still, James’ body covering his. He looks young.

  To his surprise, Sydney’s eyes suddenly banish James’ unease away. James looks down at him, licks his lips, and gives an almost imperceptible nod. Something in Sydney’s eyes grows impossibly warm, softening the edges of his pupils. He nods back.

  Then James reaches down and takes hold of his own bare cock in his palm, groaning at the pressure from his fingers. He strokes himself, still heavy and hard from before, as Sydney’s palm slowly kneads and grabs at his ass. James is ridiculously close as he quietly thrusts into his fist, closer when his pearled nipple brushes across Sydney’s chest, closer as Sydney’s long fingertips barely ghost into the crease of his ass, brushing unashamedly over James’ hole.

  James drips onto his fingers, clenches his stomach with a wild moan, stares down into little droplets of ocean. He flies his hand over his cock, twisting hard at the tip, and then he’s coming, free and open under the moonlit sky.

  James groans as he falls apart into an exploding bliss, burying his face in the mess of Sydney’s curls. His orgasm pulses hot and thick through his limbs, pooling into his shorts. He distantly registers Sydney’s arm brushing against his side, feels for a shocking second as Sydney pumps his own erection up against James’ softening cock, then a breathless cry leaves Sydney’s throat. The body beneath him jerks, then tenses. James pulls his own hand away and collapses on him just as hot cum seeps into the front of Sydney’s shorts.

  James goes to push himself off and roll to Sydney’s side, hating the reluctance that sits like lead in his chest, then gasps in surprise when Sydney’s hand grips his jaw. Sydney crashes their lips together, panting a wet and heavy kiss against his mouth. James kisses him back deeply, feeling limp and heavy in his skin, and Sydney’s hands gently stroke up and down his sweat soaked back. He grazes his lips against Sydney’s one last time, licking his own spit off the skin, before pulling away.

  Sydney’s head falls back limp onto the top of the blanket, spreading his curls out into the sand. His eyes are half-lidded and blazing, chest heaving, irises glittering silver in the light from the stars. Lips red and full.

  It’s painfully intimate, lying chest to chest, thigh to thigh, with a mess of wet and cooling fabric trapped between them. Sydney is lightly rubbing just the tip of his thumb across James’ side, as if he’s hesitant for James to even feel that he’s touching him there.

  James bites his lip as he realizes that this was simultaneously the most tame and the most erotic sex he’s ever had in his life.

  And he feels deep down that he should be bothered by that—that and a million other things that just happened. He should be above coming in his shorts having sex in his thirties on an open beach, rocking against each other like two teens trapped in a backseat. And at the same time he is so far, far below the man who just watched him masturbate in his arms—who just kissed and held him as he came. And he survived a war, took a bullet, and his heart is pounding harder now than it had after he crawled on his belly to check who he’d just killed on the jungle floor.

  Something burns in him at those thoughts. Without thinking too much about it, James leans down and kisses Sydney’s forehead, the same way Sydney had done to him just that morning by the Jeep. Something flashes through Sydney’s eyes when James pulls away, something mournful and sad, but it’s gone before James can even process it, replaced by an easy calm.

  James hesitates, waiting for Sydney to speak, but when he doesn’t, James scoots to the side and falls limp onto the blanket, still pressed against Sydney’s side. Sydney reaches over and pulls across one edge of the blanket to cover their skin from the cool sea breeze. He pauses with his arm holding the blanket hovering over James’ side, looking at him with a small frown, and James swallows over the rush of emotion as he nods okay for Sydney to drape across his shoulders with his arm. James scoots closer, places his ear right just against the thrum of Sydney’s heartbeat.

  It feels like they’ve done this a thousand times. There’s a wobbling flutter in James’ throat at how perfectly his cheek rests against the top of Sydney’s chest. How his leg slots just so along Sydney’s warm thighs. How the softness of Sydney’s cock inside his shorts pressed against his own skin feels warm instead of iron hot, making him want to lean into it, not flinch away.

  Sydney turns and presses his nose into James’ hair as James places his hand on Sydney’s forearm, and they lie in each other’s arms, breathing in time to the hush of the waves. They listen to the breeze rustle the shells hanging off the eaves of the house, bathed in golden light from the lamps through the windows.

  James eyes are actually drooping shut when Sydney reaches up to hold James’ face once more, thumb resting at the corner of his mouth.

  “You have another early day tomorrow,” he casually says, his voice cocooned in the warm, close air between them. “Should get some sleep.”

  James hums. He wants to ask Sydney if he doesn’t also think it’s wildly unbelievable that they just had sex and haven’t needed to say a single word about it. Then Sydney chuckles softly into his scalp, and reaches down to quickly grab James’ ass with playful fingers, and James realizes Sydney’s actually wondering the same exact thing.

  It’s fucking unreal. Like hovering in the air moments after leaping off a cliff, wondering if the soft, cool water will really catch him. Wondering if he really did just jump. Knowing Sydney Moore is there.

  James finally shifts to stretch his legs and mumbles “ok” into Sydney’s skin, and they sit up and pull off the blanket in easy silence. James stands on sore thighs and calves and marvels that the ache in his shoulder is actually gone, even after holding himself up over Sydney for so long in the sand.

  He catches Sydney shooting him a small smirk as he folds up the blanket, shaking the sand from its edges.

  “I didn’t just suggest giving you a massage so I could have sex with you,” Sydney says.

  James huffs and rolls his eyes, even as the rawness of the words flash through him with a tight knot. “Yeah, right, Mr. ‘I know fucking everything and I’m going to remind you about it every five minutes’.”

  Sydney laughs, and James almost gapes at how easily the sound of it falls from Sydney’s mouth. James can’t even begin to imagine what Danny Moore would look like laughing—standing tall on a beach with his sunglasses on and his arms crossed and his lips in a permanent straight line. And here is Sydney Moore, all loose-limbed and calm, looking over at James with a quiet warmth James can feel tingling across his skin.

  James follows him as he starts to walk back up to the house, oddly aware of how many inches are between them. Their bare feet sink into the soft, cool sand, arms brushing as they walk. James is just starting to wonder who the hell is going to have to break
the ice and ask whether he’s still sleeping on the couch, when suddenly it grips him that he absolutely cannot leave that beach, cannot wake up and surf in the Billabong Finals tomorrow without doing something first which he’d never, ever thought he needed to do before.

  He stops and turns to Sydney. His mouth is dry and numb. “Do you still have it?”

  Sydney frowns in confusion, then follows James’ line of sight down to his own pocket. He nods slowly in understanding, reaching inside to pull out the bullet casing he’d kept in there during the competition. He twirls it once in his fingers before holding it out to James on a steady palm. James stares at it a moment, then takes it with equally steady fingers. He walks calmly back to the shoreline, knowing Sydney will follow.

  James stops just when his toes reach the calm, lapping froth, and he lifts his chin as the cool wind rustles through his hair. It whispers raised shivers across his bare chest and arms, pearling his nipples. He holds the bullet in his hand and looks down at it in the moonlight glow.

  The earth freezes. He looks at it, and he tries to think of a pair of lifeless black eyes on the floor of the jungle, or the look on Keith Hartman’s face when he’d screamed at him to run, or the way the beach had transformed itself in his final conscious moments to a Long Beach pier with a gigantic whipped-cream topped milkshake waiting at its end. Waiting for him as he collapsed down into the blood-soaked foam.

  He stares at the metal in his palm and tries to think of the memories it always invokes. The ones that soothe his exploding heartbeat when he wakes up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, and remind him that there must be some godforsaken reason he survived, and whisper in his ear that he should put off walking out into the sea for one more day. Just one more day. And one more. That first wet handshake from a grinning Rob Depaul.

  But all James can see now reflected with the emerging stars in the gleaming metal is the brilliant smile that had swept across Sydney’s face right at the moment James had emerged victorious from his Wild Card heat. Sees the color of Sydney’s half-lidded eyes as he’d let his head fall back gently into the sand just minutes ago.

  James rubs his thumb once along the metal, saying goodbye.

  Then he curls it into his fist, reaches back with his arm, and hurls it with all his might out over the vast moonlit sea. He watches it soar and glint in the air, reflecting the light of the stars, and he sucks in a breath as it plunks down into the water with barely a sound at all.

  A single tear, still hovering at the back of his eye from earlier in the night, falls slowly down his cheek, and he lets it. He can feel Sydney’s body heat radiating from where he stands a few feet behind him in the shallows.

  James stands still and waits for his body to erupt with panic now that it’s gone—that he’ll never again feel the smooth metal he’d been tightly gripping the moment Rob had walked up to him in the sand and asked if he surfed.

  Instead he feels utterly, incomprehensibly calm. He closes his eyes and sees the massive waves he’s going to surf across tomorrow in his mind, and he hears Sydney’s steady, even breathing at his back, and he lets out a breath he’s been holding in for over two years.

  Sydney walks forward to stand at his side, and they gaze out over the water, letting the foam pool around their shins.

  “The hippies’ll be all over your ass if they find out some fish choked on that,” Sydney says, stone-faced.

  James turns to look at Sydney—standing there, nonchalantly staring out to sea like absolutely nothing has happened since they first laid the blanket down onto the sand—then he bursts out laughing. A weightless, giddy, exhausted happiness flows smoothly through every vein in his body. Sydney looks at him out of the corner of his eye and quirks his lips in an answering chuckle.

  James shakes his head and turns to walk back up to the house without responding. Sydney jogs to catch up, and James steals a glance at Sydney’s moonlit profile just as Sydney quickly looks away.

  James suddenly knows, without a hint of doubt, that they’re currently walking back to the same room—the same bed and the same sheets. That he’ll wake up tomorrow morning on the day he surfs in Day 2 of the Billabong Pipeline Masters with Sydney Moore by his side, sleepy and warm.

  He takes a deep breath, stops himself just in time from looking side to side on the deserted beach, then steps closer to Sydney and wraps an arm around his waist. His chest tightens when Sydney immediately reaches out and pulls him close by the shoulders.

  Just when they reach the sagging front steps, Sydney tightens his grip, not letting James step away. James is just about to turn to him to ask what’s going on when he feels soft lips pressed into his hair. They hesitate for a moment, hovering above his scalp, then kiss him again.

  And James swallows over an unexpected wave of hot gratefulness when Sydney whispers into his hair, “You surfed like hell, James Campbell.”

  15

  James flutters awake behind his eyelids, fighting against the bleary pull back to a heavy sleep. He stretches his tongue in his mouth and drowsily wonders how much longer he’s got until his alarm will go off to wake up and go surfing with Rob before work. His ears fixate on the rolling sound of the distant ocean, waves cutting through fresh dawn air and pouring their pools of cool froth over the virgin sand. It sounds closer than it usually does—more steady and consuming and insistent. James takes a deep breath in and smells the hint of salt in the air, carried on a bed of blooming flowers.

  His apartment never smells like flowers.

  He sucks in a breath and flicks open his eyes, trying to focus their vision on the plain white ceiling above him while his heart kicks in. It pumps blood through his body, which feels sore and sated in a way he never usually feels after even the longest day of work.

  The angle of the ceiling is wrong, and the diagonal slants through the air—just the barest hints of light—are pouring in from the wrong sides. He can’t hear the early morning commuters making their way down Hermosa Avenue at twice the speed limit, or the dull, insistent way the gas pipe of his apartment building constantly hisses and squeaks. His confusion mixes thickly with the usual aching dread of another full day spent at work, and he lies almost petulantly on his back, waiting for the alarm, slowly stretching his sleepy lungs with air.

  When the alarm doesn’t come after a few minutes, James wakes up enough to turn his head to look over at his bedside clock. He freezes.

  James doesn’t see his bedside clock. Instead he sees a sleeping face just inches from his own, a vivid dusting of freckles in the pale, grey air, half-covered by a wild mop of frizzy curls.

  The memory of the last few days crashes down on him with the slapping force of a crisp, thick wave. He stares dumbfounded at Sydney’s sleeping form beside him, stretched out on his stomach with one arm curled up over his head and the other one lying gently in the small space between their bodies, tattoo rising and falling with the pulse of his breathing, sheet bunched in a tangle around his waist.

  James stares at him, and he takes in a deep breath of salty flowers and sleep-soft skin, and a shocked, tentative smile curls at the corners of his mouth. Tingling relief courses through his body. He doesn’t have to crawl out of the water and throw on a hard hat and go to work today. He doesn’t have to spend the entire day waiting to go home to an empty apartment.

  He’s in Hawaii. He’s going to surf in the Billabong. He isn’t even nervous. The reigning champion is gently sleeping next to him, face relaxed and easy like he already knows James is there, even in his dreams. James feels like he just won the goddamn lottery and solved world peace and found eternal life all at once.

  James scoots his face closer on their shared pillow, close enough to feel the soft puff of Sydney’s breaths on the tip of his nose. He basks for a moment in the quiet unbelievability of it all. That little more than two weeks ago, Danny Moore was just a terrifying, barely real legend stepping up next to him in the sand. And here James is watching the rise and fall of his bare back as he sleeps. In hi
s home, in his room, in his bed. Free and welcome to breathe his same air, and know the most intimate touch of his skin, and wait with bated breath for his unguarded eyes to finally flicker open and land on him.

  His chest is awash with a thick wave of conflicting emotion—protectiveness over this trust that’s been placed so willingly into his palms, leftover embarrassment from the beach the night before, and a raw, pleading whisper in the back of his mind to get up, get out, go back to his real life and the real world and leave hazy Oahu fantasies far behind. Leave the surfing and the trophies and the soft linen sheets to Sydney—to Danny.

  And he will have to do just that in about thirty short hours from now, won’t he?

  But Sydney had held him as he wept, had wiped the tears from his cheeks with his thumb without pity, without asking for anything, and had offered his bare skin to him in full view of the sea and stars.

  James rests in the moment for a minute longer, then quietly reaches out to touch Sydney’s hand with the barest brush, just to feel his warmth and prove to himself he isn’t asleep back in Los Angeles. He traces one of Sydney’s knuckles with his thumb as he muses that this is the first time he’s ever woken up next to someone and not had his first thoughts be “where are my pants, what was her name, and how am I going to get home?” He feels Sydney’s living, breathing warmth on the pads of his fingers, and then he closes his heavy eyes as he relives the rest of the night before.

  How they’d slid their arms off one another once they set foot in the quiet house, and Sydney had calmly handed him a towel and an extra pair of boxers and nodded at the shower. How James had only just covered his salt-dry hair in shampoo when the shower curtain had eked open, and Sydney had stepped inside, slowly and one careful foot at a time.

  They’d stared at each other, neither one looking down past their eyes, James furiously blinking away stinging soap, and then Sydney had taken a breath, raised his chin, and wordlessly turned James around by the shoulders so that he could wash the soap from his hair, like it was something he did every evening without thought. James had held his breath, holding still as Sydney washed the salt and sand from every inch of his skin, and Sydney started to ramble in a smooth and steady voice that mixed with the splash of the shower spray all he knew about James’ competition tomorrow—the competitors and their weaknesses and his predictions for the weather and the swells.