Chapter Text
The beach was fucking stupid, and Vox didn’t care what anyone else said otherwise.
The sun was a brilliant beam of lazer bright assholery that blinded your eyes and burnt your skin and reduced your phone’s battery to nothing in a snap.
Every scrap of food or drop of drink sold there was overpriced as hell. And if you had the singular brain cell to think, oh no worries, I’ll just bring some shit in a cooler, I’m so smart, surprise motherfucker! The sun strikes again and cooks your hard seltzers to a warm soup before you can even crack open a cold one with the boys.
Speaking of boys. Said boys (or rather, said gender non-confirming boy and girl) are off flirting and fucking some strange six ways to Sunday while Vox was left to “guard their stuff” like he was some kinda suburban soccer mom instead of the might fine piece of ass he was (it’s just, you know, he didn’t feel like exerting the effort with all this god forsaken heat, is all, totally).
And the sand.
THE SAND.
Shit was coarse and rough and got fucking everywhere. In your shoes, your bags, your pockets, your asscrack, your hopes and dreams. Then you schlep back to your overpriced AirBnB, strip down, scour your body under the laughably low-pressure showerhead for every inch of grainy grim, only to lie down in your gritty as fuck bed filled with sand.
So yeah.
Suffice to say, the beach wasn’t Vox’s favorite place.
So with his phone dead and his drinks as warm as piss and his company reduced to zero, there was little left for Vox to do other than wander up and down the shoreline hoping that an especially enterprising tiger shark would put him out of his misery.
Then again, beaching this far up the shore would likely spell certain death for any kind of shark, so, maybe it was for the best that those funky little Chondrichthyes stayed well into the ocean.
And so, as Vox aimlessly strolled, he began to wonder what kind of shark he would rather get attacked by if he were in open water. Sure, he’d rather get attacked by say, an epaulette or a nurse, but it seemed like a cheap shot to say he’d rather get attacked by a chronically non-combative shark. It’s like saying you’d rather get attacked by a house cat than a tiger. Sure, they were both cats, but it’s a cop out. And sure, this was all in the confines of Vox’s own mind; it wasn’t like he was beholden to any kind of honor system, but even so, it-
Vox stopped dead in his tracks.
Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.
Pump the brakes.
Total awooga material. 3 o’clock.
Vox backed up a bit.
There, further up the embankment. So far from the waves that he was nearly in the beach grass sat a tall, dark, handsome beauty in the shade of a red umbrella. Long legs stretched out across a towel and elegantly crossed at the ankle. Dark curls artfully swept across his studious brow. A stare focused intently on a book in his lap. Even from a distance, Vox could tell he was a fine piece, so he wiped away the sweat pouring down his face with his shirt and waltzed up the sand dune to greet him.
Once closer, maybe 5 feet away, Vox could make out some of the finer details of this stranger. Delicate hands cradled the paperback while fine fingers turned the pages. His bare feet were well-shaped with a high arch and long toes and flexed every so often to shake off errant bugs. Vox heard him chuckle once to himself, the sound a smooth timbre that resonated in his ears like a sonorous woodwind.
He wore wine-dark trousers with a wide leg cut and a crisp black short-sleeved button up decorated with Venus flytraps; incongruous, perhaps, for the beach, but Vox somehow had trouble picturing the man in anything remotely more casual. Round glasses sat perched on the curve of his nose, and the red lenses turned his eyes crimson when the man finally looked up from his book at Vox.
His smile was thin and insincere.
Vox raised his hand in what he hoped looked casual. “Hey, what’s up?”
“Oh my,” the man drolled. “Is that what passes for a greeting nowadays?”
His voice.
Fuck his voice.
If his half-hearted chuckle had been a woodwind, then this man’s voice was a full-on symphony of aural delight. Mellifluous as a siren, it was utter ambrosia to the ear, and Vox was desperate to hear something, anything. Just so long as it was coming from those lips.
“Uh, so, what’re you doing?”
The man cocked a brow before wiggling the book in his hand.
“Haha, no, I mean, what’re you reading?”
“You really should say what you mean then.”
Vox swallowed down a sigh. “Okay. Fine. What’re you reading?”
The man held up his book, canting it so Vox could make out the title himself.
“Tender is the Flesh? Huh. Sounds kinky.”
The man lowered his book, an amused glint to his eyes. “Oh, you think so?”
“Hey, I’m not judging. One good thing to come out of BookTok is public acceptance of smut.”
“What’s a BookTok? Is that a local shop?”
“No, it’s like, you know, a section of TikTok for books. Book,” he held out his right hand. “TikTok,” he held out his left, and then slapped them together. “BookTok.”
The man blinked. “What’s a TikTok?”
Vox felt his face scrunch up into something ugly and quickly cleared that expression away. “You know, the app.”
The man narrowed his eyes and hummed doubtfully. “Are you referring to one of those cellular phone applications?”
Fuck he’s lucky he’s so pretty. “Yeah! Exactly that! Actually, if you wanna download it real quick, we can exchange account details and DM each other.”
“Hmm, I’m not sure my device is capable of that.”
“Sure it is! Here, I’ll help. Just take it out, go to the app store, and- the fuck is that?”
The man delicately held up his flip-phone betwixt his thumb and forefinger, as if he was loathe to be touching it at all. Which, considering what an ancient piece of shit it was, Vox was kind of offended on the man’s behalf.
“Dude, you’ve gotta upgrade.”
“I’d rather not. See, I didn’t have a portable phone at all until Charlie, one of my housemates, insisted upon it on the grounds that I’m always ‘who knows where at God knows when’.”
He chuckled dryly as he carelessly tossed his flip-phone back into his tote bag.
“You’re pretty old school, huh.”
“I have been accused as such.” He propped his arm up on his knee and rested his cheek in the cradle of his palm with a sigh. “I simply like what I like.”
Vox flashed a charming grin. “And what else do you like? Bingo? Quilting? Sunday strolls?”
“Hmm, taxidermy is my preferred craft, actually, but I do enjoy a good afternoon walk.”
Okay. Vox is just gonna ignore that first bit. “You maybe wanna take a walk now?”
“Where to?”
“Um, just kinda around, you know? Down the shore? You could tell me more about how much you hate cellphones and, I don’t know, those rock’n’rolling teens who won’t get off your lawn?”
The man fluttered his ridiculously long lashes and splayed a delicate hand across his heart. “Oh, well, you see I would, but I’m afraid I must continue safeguarding my housemates’ personal effects. Terribly important job, you see. I couldn’t possibly abandon it.”
Vox overtly looked up and down the stretch of sand that had nobody within the next 100 yards. “Yeah, no, I get that. Good idea in this rough neighborhood.”
The man’s smile quirked into something lopsided, giving him this adorably boyish charm as he snickered. “Yes, well, there’s also the other matter.”
“The other matter?”
He coyly beckoned Vox closer with his finger, and Vox obeyed; drawn in as helplessly as a fish on a line. He knelt down on the sand, its coarse granules digging into his naked knees, but the bite was easy to ignore under the heady scents of salty sweat and spicy pepper and rich coffee that shrouded this man.
“I must confess,” the man purred softly. “That I am also unspeakably hungover.”
And as his chuckles carried with it the acrid bite of whiskey, Vox couldn’t help but wonder if the flavor also remained across the man’s tongue.
“So, I’m afraid nothing is moving me from this towel short of the rapture.”
Vox smirked devilishly. “Well, what a coincidence, that’s how the last girl described her time with me.”
“Hmm, and no doubt she was of the ilk to also use literally liberally, yes?”
She was, not that Vox was going to admit that.
“Now then, off you go. You’re blocking my light,” said the man so studiously avoiding it.
“What? But I-”
“Go on then, shoo.”
Vox glared at the hand that waved him away like some stray mutt, but he didn’t argue. There wasn’t exactly any thrill to a chase when only one person was moving, after all.
So, Vox stood back up, brushed the sand off his knees, and walked away. He hoped the burning feeling scorching the back of his neck was the lingering stare of that handsome man watching him leave, but a glance back revealed the man’s attention thoroughly on his book and the only thing cooking Vox’s pale skin to a crisp was the blazing sun overhead.
Vox made it back to his spot before Val and Velvette, and collapsed onto the towel in a defeated slump. He cracked open a hard lemonade and suffered through the warm drink that coated his tongue with a saccharine film.
Then he had another.
And another.
A few hours before sunset, Val returned. He looked thoroughly rumpled with the story of his latest conquest on his lips. And maybe twenty minutes later, Velvette, her phone twelve numbers heavier, came back to coerce Vox into taking some pictures of her during the golden hour for her Instagram. While Val detailed his romp in the sand dunes with graphic detail and Velvette explained the “vibes” she wanted Vox to capture with this photo shoot, Vox cracked open another lukewarm hard lemonade and drank, wishing that the taste on his lips was day-old whiskey instead.