FIC (Supernatural): The Princes of Seagull Beach
Title: The Princes of Seagull Beach
Author: blue_fjords
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Teen AU Misha/Jensen
Word count: 2,700
Disclaimer: This is completely made up and is, in fact, an AU. So even MORE made up! I do not know these peeps and no disrespect is intended to them.
Warnings: I would say none! (Though this is an RPF. So there's that.)
A/N: This is a missing scene from You & Me, Kings of the Summer Realm and takes place towards the end of that story and after The Dukes of Earl and does in fact fill a square on my schmoop_bingo card for GIFT GIVING. You don't need to have read those to read this, but you should know this is a teen AU, so the events of this story take place in spring of 1992. Or thereabouts. And Misha's car is the Babe Magnet.
Jensen was fully immersed in a vivid dream featuring a game of pool with Misha, played at the now-defunct Rocker Roller Rinker during Disco Night, the stakes being a foot-long messy sandwich. The dream started to take a turn, as his dreams were doing more and more lately, when Misha decided the only way they could end the game was if they both knocked the purple ball in together by hitting the red ball. His body wrapped snuggly around Jensen’s back and his slightly larger hands covered Jensen’s as they gripped the cue stick. Jensen woke up with a dry mouth and an embarrassing wetness in his sheets.
“Shit,” he mumbled hoarsely.
A scuffling noise from outside his window had him hurriedly pushing his top sheet off the bed and rolling over to cover the damp spread on the bottom sheet. It was sticky and uncomfortable, but at least Misha didn’t notice it when he tumbled through the window and stretched out on the bed next to Jensen.
“So!” he whispered loudly. “Guess what time it is!”
Jensen shifted a bit, the mattress creaking, and risked a glance down at his shorts. They were dark blue and hid a multitude of secrets. “Uh … time to interrupt my dreams?”
Misha sniffed at the air. “It smells like sex in here. Who were you dreaming of? That Cindy girl? Whats-her-face-Adrianne?”He must have read something in Jensen’s eyes, because he waved his hand in front of his face. “Never mind. It’s five minutes past midnight.”
He gave Jensen an expectant look. Jensen looked back at him, bewildered. His heart was still racing from the sex remark.
“It’s officially your birthday now, Jen!” Misha exclaimed. “Come on. It’s a little over five hours to Galveston. Let’s go.” He rolled out of the bed and offered his hand. “We can beat the sun!”
Jensen stared at the hand. “My parents would kill me.”
“Uh uh.” Misha pulled a slightly crumpled piece of paper out of his back pocket. “I wrote a note. Besides, it’s Saturday now. The weekly day of freedom.”
Jensen snatched it away and read it slowly, his lips moving, before he snorted and climbed out of bed, heading to his desk. “Dude. First, this is practically unreadable, and secondly, there are no purple people eaters in Texas.”
“How do you know? And you’ll note that I said I saved you from the purple people eaters. I should get a medal.” Misha came up and stood behind him in an echo of his dream as he crossed out phrases and scribbled his own note beneath Misha’s. “Your writing’s illegible,” Misha grumbled.
Jensen frowned at the paper.
“That means ‘unreadable.’ Now that you’re fourteen, you have to talk like an adult.”
“Shut up, jerk.” Jensen elbowed Misha in the gut.
“You wound me to the quick. You ready yet?”
Jensen tossed the note onto his pillow and pulled his comforter up over his bed, leaving the top sheet in a heap on the floor. “Lemme get dressed.”
He turned his back on Misha and slid off his sleeping shorts. It’d be even weirder if he asked Misha to look away. He hurriedly pulled on a pair of long, baggy shorts and threw a t-shirt over his head. Misha-from-the-North might be used to the cold, but a Texan night in early spring still had a bit of a chill, in his opinion. Definite t-shirt weather.
“If that whole football thing doesn’t work out for you, you should think about modeling,” Misha remarked from where he sat straddling the window ledge. Jensen froze.
“No way.”
“Why not? I bet models are rich. No more ramen noodles!”
“I don’t eat ramen noodles now,” Jensen mumbled. He sometimes forgot that his family had more money than Misha’s. Misha had a car, and that made him rich in Jensen’s book. “Dude, models wear makeup.” He bent and checked under his bed for his sneakers.
“Nice ass, Jen. You could be an ass model. Your ass on a huge billboard in downtown Dallas … selling Doritos.”
Jensen’s face was flaming by the time he spied his Air Jordan’s. They were last year’s model, but still his pride and joy. He sat his ass on the floor to pull them on. “Why would an ass sell chips?”
Misha shrugged. “The tagline would be ‘Just because you eat a shitload of Doritos doesn’t mean you can’t have a scrawny ass.’”
Jensen burst out laughing, quickly stifling it and glancing at the door. No light appeared from underneath it. “Okay, let’s jet.”
Jensen followed Misha out his window and waited for him to cross the limb and make it to the tree. He secretly was a little scared of heights, and it was very dark, which made it much worse. But he was fourteen now. Technically. He took a deep breath and inched slowly across the limb to Misha. They slithered to the ground and walked, shoulders brushing, down the road to Misha’s house and the Babe Magnet.
Jensen felt his jaw drop when he saw the Magnet. The backseat was overflowing with balloons. Misha grinned at him. “Happy Birthday! And just for you, I didn’t buy the pink Barbie balloons. Even though they were sparkling.”
“Thanks, man,” he said, and lightly punched Misha in the shoulder.
“Careful sliding in,” Misha cautioned him. “There’s a box on the floor you don’t want to squash.”
Jensen hoisted himself up through the window of the passenger seat while Misha crossed the front of the car and got into the driver’s seat. Jensen picked up the box from the footwell and sniffed it.
“Brownies?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
“Yeah, and I made them myself. The mix was a little boring, so I dumped in some maraschino cherries and some of my mom’s vodka.” Misha backed out of the driveway and drove slowly down their street. Jensen winced as they passed his house. His parents would do more than kill him if they knew he was eating vodka brownies with Misha instead of sleeping snug in his bed.
“Um … what do they taste like?”
“Only one way to find out!”
Jensen opened the lid and surveyed the brownies. A smile began to blossom across his face. He was driving down the highway at almost 1:00 in the morning in a car full of balloons with a box of vodka brownies on his lap and his best friend beside him. Damn, he was so cool. He took a big bite of one of the brownies.
“Idunowffastka,” he said. Misha quirked an eyebrow at him, and he could still do that so much better than Jensen. He swallowed and tried again. “I don’t know if I can taste the vodka.”
“Vodka doesn’t really taste like anything,” Misha replied, and of course he would know. “It should enhance the flavor of everything else.”
“Oh.” Jensen looked at his brownie. It was exceptionally moist - maybe from the vodka - and a big maraschino was threatening to fall out. He caught it with his tongue. It crunched sweetly in his mouth. “They taste really good.”
Jensen finished his first one, and then ate another for good measure. He was getting really sleepy, but he didn’t want to abandon Misha to a five hour drive with no company.
“You checking out on me?” Misha asked as Jensen’s eyelids drooped.
“No!” Jensen jerked upright. It was really, really dark out, and he couldn’t see anything out the windows to help distract him and keep him awake. Desperate times called for desperate measures. He reached forward and flicked the radio on. The sounds of Motown filled the car. Misha smiled and tapped out the beat on the steering wheel. Jensen watched him through lidded eyes, smooshed down in his seat with his head propped up on the partly open window, the wind ruffling his hair. It smelled like nighttime and dust and cattle.
“I used to have a cow,” he said suddenly, and Misha gave him a curious look. “Um. At the Friendly Times Farm. All the kids in Youth Group adopted a farm animal there. For charity.” Geez. Why was he thinking of this now? How much vodka had Misha put in those brownies?
“And …?” Misha prompted.
“And nothing. She died. She was a cow.” He shrugged his shoulders and sat up a bit straighter. He’d cried, too.
“I had a pet lizard once. My little brother stepped on it and it died.” Misha said after a minute.
“That’s …”
“Gross,” Misha supplied. “Guts were splatted across the sidewalk. I made him scrape them up and flush them down the toilet. RIP, Lizzie.”
“Bessie died of old age,” Jensen said. “She was … actually, she was kind of mean. She kicked. She was really ugly, too.”
Misha gave him a knowing look. “But I bet you used to read her poetry, huh?”
“Shut up.”
“She’d flick her tail, and you knew it was love.”
“Asshole.” He stared straight out the window. It reeked of manure outside. That must have brought on his wave of nostalgia.
“Hey.” Misha waited until Jensen turned his head and looked at him. “Lizzie used to curl around my finger, and she was great at scaring my sister.”
“Bessie once took a dump on my youth group leader’s shoe. He always said my name wrong.”
Misha nodded gravely. “She was a good cow.”
“Yeah.” Jensen smiled. “I want another brownie.”
He ate two more while Misha sang along softly to a song about a love potion. Jensen licked his fingers carefully. His head was starting to feel … a little floaty. He hoped it was the vodka, and not the lack of sleep. Or maybe it was the sleep, and he was developing an awesome tolerance to alcohol that would come in handy for the rest of his life.
He watched Misha’s mouth as he sang, the pale pink color of his lips, the drop of spit that glistened on his bottom lip. How Misha’s mouth was so very expressive with its curves and dips and smiles. He wondered what would happen if he were to lean forward and kiss that mouth. He gave himself a shake, and squirmed deeper into his seat. Guess he wasn’t going to develop that awesome tolerance to alcohol after all.
Misha glanced over at him. “It is okay if you doze off, you know.”
“I’m cool.” Jensen yawned. “Hey, so, since when did you become a baker, anyway?”
Misha talked for the next four hours, on topics ranging from his little sister’s EZ-Bake oven (“except we got it at a yard sale, and there was some kind of growth in it; the cupcakes were nasty”) to this roadside attraction his family had stopped at in Idaho once (“the bathrooms were outhouses, and the shit was piled so high you couldn’t even squat over the hole”) to the first porno he’d ever seen (“honestly, I couldn’t tell what was going on - way too close up, and there wasn’t any sound - though in my defense, I was six”). Jensen felt a warm glow settle in his chest as the night went on. Misha didn’t talk to other people the way he talked to him. Jensen had seen him around kids from the high school, and Misha kept to himself mainly. Whenever he made his little jokes, the other kids were too stupid to get them. But not Jensen. It was almost like they had a secret language sometimes.
His eyes felt sandy and he was laughing at every other word out of Misha’s mouth by the time the sky turned to light gray and signs began to point the way to Galveston Island.
“Breakfast, then beach?” Misha asked, and Jensen nodded happily. He gripped a balloon from the backseat and twisted it. A loud farting sound erupted between his hands and Misha laughed.
They drove across the bridge and passed several boutique restaurants and smaller shacks that weren’t open for the season yet. Misha pulled into the parking lot of a Denny’s. He had to help pull Jensen out the window. They were both laughing as they staggered into the restaurant, muscles waking up after the long car ride.
Jensen felt at least twenty-one when he slid into the booth across from Misha. This was the first restaurant they’d gone to together with a “No shirt, no shoes, no service” sign, never mind that it was just a Denny’s. Misha even drank coffee, but Jensen had to draw the line somewhere. They each got the special, bacon and eggs for half price. The waitress eyed them suspiciously, but smiled and refilled his orange juice when Jensen gave her his most innocent smile and told her it was his birthday.
The island was just coming to life when they left the Denny’s and headed to the southern tip. Misha parked on the shoulder as the beach lot wasn’t open yet. They left their shoes in the Magnet with the balloons and grabbed a horse blanket from the trunk. The sand felt cool and dry beneath their feet, lying in wait for the sun to come paint it in heat and shades of gold. Misha spread the blanket on a dune and they lay on their backs, looking towards the Gulf of Mexico and the horizon.
The sun crept slowly upward. Jensen hadn’t realized he’d been shivering until he stopped. The sun felt amazing, and he sat up, closing his eyes and turning his face into its heat. When he opened his eyes, Misha was staring at him.
“What’s up, doc?” Jensen asked, and Misha shook his head.
“The sky,” he said with a slight smile. “You having a good birthday?”
“It’s … pretty damn awesome,” Jensen said, earning another laugh from Misha.
“Cool beans,” Misha replied. They watched seagulls wheel in the sky for a few minutes, and Jensen’s eyelids were getting heavy again, when Misha suddenly broke the silence. “We should do this again. You know. Some day.”
“Yeah,” Jensen agreed. “This is fun.”
“Just you and me,” Misha said, and Jensen’s heart thudded a bit in his chest.
“Okay. Yeah. This is our place. This beach right here.”
Misha nodded solemnly. “Let’s make a pact.”
“How - ” Jensen started to ask, but stopped, wide-eyed, as Misha drew a Swiss army knife from his pocket. Misha flipped open the blade and Jensen swallowed, his eyes darting to Misha’s face. Misha was watching him very seriously again. Jensen nodded. “Yeah.”
Misha drew the blade lightly across the palm of his hand and a red dotted line appeared. He held the knife out to Jensen. Jensen wiped his sweaty hands on his shorts and took it. It didn’t really hurt and any twinges of pain disappeared under the force of the smile Misha gave him as he mashed their palms together.
“Swear. This … Seagull Beach … is Misha and Jensen’s place,” Misha said, his voice barely above a whisper.
“I swear,” Jensen said quietly. “And … and I promise we’ll always be friends.” He held his breath.
“That’s a good one.” Misha nodded, and Jensen let out a shaky breath. “We’ll always be friends.”
Jensen felt a shiver run up his arm from their joined hands and he let go with an embarrassed little laugh. Misha put the knife away. Jensen pulled off his t-shirt and stretched back out on the blanket. It was scratchy against his naked back, but he barely felt it. The sun warmed his face and stomach and calves and Misha was a whole other kind of heat on his left side. His eyelids drooped again, but he didn’t fight against the urge to sleep this time and moved his head until he was kind of, sort of, but not really, resting it on Misha’s shoulder. It would be the cheesiest thing in the world to admit, but Misha’s vow, the entire trip really, was the best present he’d ever received.
The sun rose higher in the sky, seagulls cawed loudly, waves lapped gently at the shore, and two boys with identical scars dozed side-by-side, secure in the conviction of the young that this moment would last forever.
Author: blue_fjords
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Teen AU Misha/Jensen
Word count: 2,700
Disclaimer: This is completely made up and is, in fact, an AU. So even MORE made up! I do not know these peeps and no disrespect is intended to them.
Warnings: I would say none! (Though this is an RPF. So there's that.)
A/N: This is a missing scene from You & Me, Kings of the Summer Realm and takes place towards the end of that story and after The Dukes of Earl and does in fact fill a square on my schmoop_bingo card for GIFT GIVING. You don't need to have read those to read this, but you should know this is a teen AU, so the events of this story take place in spring of 1992. Or thereabouts. And Misha's car is the Babe Magnet.
Jensen was fully immersed in a vivid dream featuring a game of pool with Misha, played at the now-defunct Rocker Roller Rinker during Disco Night, the stakes being a foot-long messy sandwich. The dream started to take a turn, as his dreams were doing more and more lately, when Misha decided the only way they could end the game was if they both knocked the purple ball in together by hitting the red ball. His body wrapped snuggly around Jensen’s back and his slightly larger hands covered Jensen’s as they gripped the cue stick. Jensen woke up with a dry mouth and an embarrassing wetness in his sheets.
“Shit,” he mumbled hoarsely.
A scuffling noise from outside his window had him hurriedly pushing his top sheet off the bed and rolling over to cover the damp spread on the bottom sheet. It was sticky and uncomfortable, but at least Misha didn’t notice it when he tumbled through the window and stretched out on the bed next to Jensen.
“So!” he whispered loudly. “Guess what time it is!”
Jensen shifted a bit, the mattress creaking, and risked a glance down at his shorts. They were dark blue and hid a multitude of secrets. “Uh … time to interrupt my dreams?”
Misha sniffed at the air. “It smells like sex in here. Who were you dreaming of? That Cindy girl? Whats-her-face-Adrianne?”He must have read something in Jensen’s eyes, because he waved his hand in front of his face. “Never mind. It’s five minutes past midnight.”
He gave Jensen an expectant look. Jensen looked back at him, bewildered. His heart was still racing from the sex remark.
“It’s officially your birthday now, Jen!” Misha exclaimed. “Come on. It’s a little over five hours to Galveston. Let’s go.” He rolled out of the bed and offered his hand. “We can beat the sun!”
Jensen stared at the hand. “My parents would kill me.”
“Uh uh.” Misha pulled a slightly crumpled piece of paper out of his back pocket. “I wrote a note. Besides, it’s Saturday now. The weekly day of freedom.”
Jensen snatched it away and read it slowly, his lips moving, before he snorted and climbed out of bed, heading to his desk. “Dude. First, this is practically unreadable, and secondly, there are no purple people eaters in Texas.”
“How do you know? And you’ll note that I said I saved you from the purple people eaters. I should get a medal.” Misha came up and stood behind him in an echo of his dream as he crossed out phrases and scribbled his own note beneath Misha’s. “Your writing’s illegible,” Misha grumbled.
Jensen frowned at the paper.
“That means ‘unreadable.’ Now that you’re fourteen, you have to talk like an adult.”
“Shut up, jerk.” Jensen elbowed Misha in the gut.
“You wound me to the quick. You ready yet?”
Jensen tossed the note onto his pillow and pulled his comforter up over his bed, leaving the top sheet in a heap on the floor. “Lemme get dressed.”
He turned his back on Misha and slid off his sleeping shorts. It’d be even weirder if he asked Misha to look away. He hurriedly pulled on a pair of long, baggy shorts and threw a t-shirt over his head. Misha-from-the-North might be used to the cold, but a Texan night in early spring still had a bit of a chill, in his opinion. Definite t-shirt weather.
“If that whole football thing doesn’t work out for you, you should think about modeling,” Misha remarked from where he sat straddling the window ledge. Jensen froze.
“No way.”
“Why not? I bet models are rich. No more ramen noodles!”
“I don’t eat ramen noodles now,” Jensen mumbled. He sometimes forgot that his family had more money than Misha’s. Misha had a car, and that made him rich in Jensen’s book. “Dude, models wear makeup.” He bent and checked under his bed for his sneakers.
“Nice ass, Jen. You could be an ass model. Your ass on a huge billboard in downtown Dallas … selling Doritos.”
Jensen’s face was flaming by the time he spied his Air Jordan’s. They were last year’s model, but still his pride and joy. He sat his ass on the floor to pull them on. “Why would an ass sell chips?”
Misha shrugged. “The tagline would be ‘Just because you eat a shitload of Doritos doesn’t mean you can’t have a scrawny ass.’”
Jensen burst out laughing, quickly stifling it and glancing at the door. No light appeared from underneath it. “Okay, let’s jet.”
Jensen followed Misha out his window and waited for him to cross the limb and make it to the tree. He secretly was a little scared of heights, and it was very dark, which made it much worse. But he was fourteen now. Technically. He took a deep breath and inched slowly across the limb to Misha. They slithered to the ground and walked, shoulders brushing, down the road to Misha’s house and the Babe Magnet.
Jensen felt his jaw drop when he saw the Magnet. The backseat was overflowing with balloons. Misha grinned at him. “Happy Birthday! And just for you, I didn’t buy the pink Barbie balloons. Even though they were sparkling.”
“Thanks, man,” he said, and lightly punched Misha in the shoulder.
“Careful sliding in,” Misha cautioned him. “There’s a box on the floor you don’t want to squash.”
Jensen hoisted himself up through the window of the passenger seat while Misha crossed the front of the car and got into the driver’s seat. Jensen picked up the box from the footwell and sniffed it.
“Brownies?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
“Yeah, and I made them myself. The mix was a little boring, so I dumped in some maraschino cherries and some of my mom’s vodka.” Misha backed out of the driveway and drove slowly down their street. Jensen winced as they passed his house. His parents would do more than kill him if they knew he was eating vodka brownies with Misha instead of sleeping snug in his bed.
“Um … what do they taste like?”
“Only one way to find out!”
Jensen opened the lid and surveyed the brownies. A smile began to blossom across his face. He was driving down the highway at almost 1:00 in the morning in a car full of balloons with a box of vodka brownies on his lap and his best friend beside him. Damn, he was so cool. He took a big bite of one of the brownies.
“Idunowffastka,” he said. Misha quirked an eyebrow at him, and he could still do that so much better than Jensen. He swallowed and tried again. “I don’t know if I can taste the vodka.”
“Vodka doesn’t really taste like anything,” Misha replied, and of course he would know. “It should enhance the flavor of everything else.”
“Oh.” Jensen looked at his brownie. It was exceptionally moist - maybe from the vodka - and a big maraschino was threatening to fall out. He caught it with his tongue. It crunched sweetly in his mouth. “They taste really good.”
Jensen finished his first one, and then ate another for good measure. He was getting really sleepy, but he didn’t want to abandon Misha to a five hour drive with no company.
“You checking out on me?” Misha asked as Jensen’s eyelids drooped.
“No!” Jensen jerked upright. It was really, really dark out, and he couldn’t see anything out the windows to help distract him and keep him awake. Desperate times called for desperate measures. He reached forward and flicked the radio on. The sounds of Motown filled the car. Misha smiled and tapped out the beat on the steering wheel. Jensen watched him through lidded eyes, smooshed down in his seat with his head propped up on the partly open window, the wind ruffling his hair. It smelled like nighttime and dust and cattle.
“I used to have a cow,” he said suddenly, and Misha gave him a curious look. “Um. At the Friendly Times Farm. All the kids in Youth Group adopted a farm animal there. For charity.” Geez. Why was he thinking of this now? How much vodka had Misha put in those brownies?
“And …?” Misha prompted.
“And nothing. She died. She was a cow.” He shrugged his shoulders and sat up a bit straighter. He’d cried, too.
“I had a pet lizard once. My little brother stepped on it and it died.” Misha said after a minute.
“That’s …”
“Gross,” Misha supplied. “Guts were splatted across the sidewalk. I made him scrape them up and flush them down the toilet. RIP, Lizzie.”
“Bessie died of old age,” Jensen said. “She was … actually, she was kind of mean. She kicked. She was really ugly, too.”
Misha gave him a knowing look. “But I bet you used to read her poetry, huh?”
“Shut up.”
“She’d flick her tail, and you knew it was love.”
“Asshole.” He stared straight out the window. It reeked of manure outside. That must have brought on his wave of nostalgia.
“Hey.” Misha waited until Jensen turned his head and looked at him. “Lizzie used to curl around my finger, and she was great at scaring my sister.”
“Bessie once took a dump on my youth group leader’s shoe. He always said my name wrong.”
Misha nodded gravely. “She was a good cow.”
“Yeah.” Jensen smiled. “I want another brownie.”
He ate two more while Misha sang along softly to a song about a love potion. Jensen licked his fingers carefully. His head was starting to feel … a little floaty. He hoped it was the vodka, and not the lack of sleep. Or maybe it was the sleep, and he was developing an awesome tolerance to alcohol that would come in handy for the rest of his life.
He watched Misha’s mouth as he sang, the pale pink color of his lips, the drop of spit that glistened on his bottom lip. How Misha’s mouth was so very expressive with its curves and dips and smiles. He wondered what would happen if he were to lean forward and kiss that mouth. He gave himself a shake, and squirmed deeper into his seat. Guess he wasn’t going to develop that awesome tolerance to alcohol after all.
Misha glanced over at him. “It is okay if you doze off, you know.”
“I’m cool.” Jensen yawned. “Hey, so, since when did you become a baker, anyway?”
Misha talked for the next four hours, on topics ranging from his little sister’s EZ-Bake oven (“except we got it at a yard sale, and there was some kind of growth in it; the cupcakes were nasty”) to this roadside attraction his family had stopped at in Idaho once (“the bathrooms were outhouses, and the shit was piled so high you couldn’t even squat over the hole”) to the first porno he’d ever seen (“honestly, I couldn’t tell what was going on - way too close up, and there wasn’t any sound - though in my defense, I was six”). Jensen felt a warm glow settle in his chest as the night went on. Misha didn’t talk to other people the way he talked to him. Jensen had seen him around kids from the high school, and Misha kept to himself mainly. Whenever he made his little jokes, the other kids were too stupid to get them. But not Jensen. It was almost like they had a secret language sometimes.
His eyes felt sandy and he was laughing at every other word out of Misha’s mouth by the time the sky turned to light gray and signs began to point the way to Galveston Island.
“Breakfast, then beach?” Misha asked, and Jensen nodded happily. He gripped a balloon from the backseat and twisted it. A loud farting sound erupted between his hands and Misha laughed.
They drove across the bridge and passed several boutique restaurants and smaller shacks that weren’t open for the season yet. Misha pulled into the parking lot of a Denny’s. He had to help pull Jensen out the window. They were both laughing as they staggered into the restaurant, muscles waking up after the long car ride.
Jensen felt at least twenty-one when he slid into the booth across from Misha. This was the first restaurant they’d gone to together with a “No shirt, no shoes, no service” sign, never mind that it was just a Denny’s. Misha even drank coffee, but Jensen had to draw the line somewhere. They each got the special, bacon and eggs for half price. The waitress eyed them suspiciously, but smiled and refilled his orange juice when Jensen gave her his most innocent smile and told her it was his birthday.
The island was just coming to life when they left the Denny’s and headed to the southern tip. Misha parked on the shoulder as the beach lot wasn’t open yet. They left their shoes in the Magnet with the balloons and grabbed a horse blanket from the trunk. The sand felt cool and dry beneath their feet, lying in wait for the sun to come paint it in heat and shades of gold. Misha spread the blanket on a dune and they lay on their backs, looking towards the Gulf of Mexico and the horizon.
The sun crept slowly upward. Jensen hadn’t realized he’d been shivering until he stopped. The sun felt amazing, and he sat up, closing his eyes and turning his face into its heat. When he opened his eyes, Misha was staring at him.
“What’s up, doc?” Jensen asked, and Misha shook his head.
“The sky,” he said with a slight smile. “You having a good birthday?”
“It’s … pretty damn awesome,” Jensen said, earning another laugh from Misha.
“Cool beans,” Misha replied. They watched seagulls wheel in the sky for a few minutes, and Jensen’s eyelids were getting heavy again, when Misha suddenly broke the silence. “We should do this again. You know. Some day.”
“Yeah,” Jensen agreed. “This is fun.”
“Just you and me,” Misha said, and Jensen’s heart thudded a bit in his chest.
“Okay. Yeah. This is our place. This beach right here.”
Misha nodded solemnly. “Let’s make a pact.”
“How - ” Jensen started to ask, but stopped, wide-eyed, as Misha drew a Swiss army knife from his pocket. Misha flipped open the blade and Jensen swallowed, his eyes darting to Misha’s face. Misha was watching him very seriously again. Jensen nodded. “Yeah.”
Misha drew the blade lightly across the palm of his hand and a red dotted line appeared. He held the knife out to Jensen. Jensen wiped his sweaty hands on his shorts and took it. It didn’t really hurt and any twinges of pain disappeared under the force of the smile Misha gave him as he mashed their palms together.
“Swear. This … Seagull Beach … is Misha and Jensen’s place,” Misha said, his voice barely above a whisper.
“I swear,” Jensen said quietly. “And … and I promise we’ll always be friends.” He held his breath.
“That’s a good one.” Misha nodded, and Jensen let out a shaky breath. “We’ll always be friends.”
Jensen felt a shiver run up his arm from their joined hands and he let go with an embarrassed little laugh. Misha put the knife away. Jensen pulled off his t-shirt and stretched back out on the blanket. It was scratchy against his naked back, but he barely felt it. The sun warmed his face and stomach and calves and Misha was a whole other kind of heat on his left side. His eyelids drooped again, but he didn’t fight against the urge to sleep this time and moved his head until he was kind of, sort of, but not really, resting it on Misha’s shoulder. It would be the cheesiest thing in the world to admit, but Misha’s vow, the entire trip really, was the best present he’d ever received.
The sun rose higher in the sky, seagulls cawed loudly, waves lapped gently at the shore, and two boys with identical scars dozed side-by-side, secure in the conviction of the young that this moment would last forever.