Holiday
Author: bassair
Challenge: Pistachio #26 : Taking a Break, Pineapple #17: Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.
Toppings: Chopped Nuts
Extras: Malt (a birthday prompt: link to comment. Prompt: “Who’re you trying to impress?”).
Title: Holiday
Rating: PG-13
Warning(s): None.
Pairings/Characters: Danni, Alec, Ben, Chris, Devon, Lisa.
AU/Canon: AU - College ‘verse
Beta: skullgirl013
Story: White Scar
Summary: The group take a break.
Author’s Note: If this got any further from my canon... it’d be in Buffy.
“Sunscreen?”
“We are going to the beach, Alec. Tanning!”
“You’re hot enough as it is, Danni. Sunscreen.”
"I resent tha- Wait, no I don’t.”
“Think Devon would appreciate me wearing these?”
“Speedos?”
"It’s clothing!”
“It’s barely anything!”
“Pack it?”
“Pack it.”
*
“This was a good idea,” Danni says, pushing her sunglasses off her face and leaning back a bit, letting the sun shine on her body.
Alec looks round at her from his deck chair, spread out under the sun with the gayest straw hat on his head that Danni has ever seen. “You’re right. It was.”
“Is someone complimenting me?” Lisa asks, taking her earphones out.
“We never compliment you, Lees,” Danni says. “You should know better.”
“Too true!” Lisa laughs.
Alec yawns, leans back and pulls his hat down over his eyes. “Wake me when it’s time to go home.”
Danni laughs, closes her eyes too and lets herself start to drift off to sleep.
*
Having slept for an hour, Danni is now wide awake with nothing to do. So, she’s watching the people in the pool.
There’s one man in particular that she’s watching. He’s a bit older than her, with dark hair and a muscular body, wearing red swimming trunks and goggles. He’s just dived into the deep end, made a girl next to him squeal, laughed and climbed out.
“Any ideas who that is?” Danni asks.
Lisa pulls her earphones out again. “No idea,” she says. “He’s been watching you though.”
“He has?”
Lisa nods. “Yeah. But I can’t blame him. You’re wearing a bikini and sunglasses. You must know how hot that makes you look.”
Danni grins. “I do look hot in this,” she says.
“It’s spring break, Danni,” Lisa says. “You wanna go talk to the random man in the pool? Go do so.”
Another grin and Danni jumps up off the deck chair, depositing her glasses down where she’d just been sitting and offering the sleeping form of Alec a glance as she approaches the pool.
She pauses just long enough to tie her hair up and receive a, “Don't do anything I wouldn’t do!” from Lisa, before jumping in.
The water’s perfect. Warm and wet. The man is back in the pool, so Danni swims towards him, long pushes through the water doing breaststroke. She’s just got to him when someone calls him from the bar nearby and he climbs out.
“Nice timing,” she mutters, with a sigh, climbing out herself.
The straggly bits of her hair are dripping a bit, now and her skin shining with water. She sighs, flicks her wrists to get the surplus water off her hands and wanders over to the bar, hoping for a drink.
She lets her hair back down as she waits for the bartender to pour her a punch, so she doesn’t notice a group crowding around her until it’s too late.
Red plastic cup filled to the brim with startlingly green punch - and she doesn’t want to think about what makes it green - clutched in her hands, Danni turns around and slams straight into someone, spilling the green concoction all over their chest, stomach and... red... swimming... trunks...
“Oh, shit,” she squeaks. She looks up at the man - the man she was stalking in fact - and splutters, “I’m so sorry! I didn’t see you there!”
He laughs, rubs himself down in the vain hope of removing the green stain and says, “It’s okay.”
“I’ll pay for the dry cleaning?” Danni offers, lamely.
“They’re three dollar swimming trunks,” he says. “I can just buy a new pair.”
“I’ll give you three dollars?” Danni goes to get money from her pocket, but then she remembers she’s barely dressed. “Err... I have money...”
“In your other pants?” He grins at her. “It’s fine. I was bored of plain red anyway.”
Danni blushes. “I’m really am really sorry."
“You can make it up to me by telling me your name?” he says, with another grin.
“Danni. Danni Jordan.”
"Ben Fisher.” He keeps grinning at her. “Nice to meet you. You here alone?”
She shakes her head. “No, I’m here with my friends.” She nods across the pool at Alec - still snoozing - Lisa and Chris, who’s now occupying her chair. “He’s wearing my sunglasses,” she says.
“Who is?” Ben says, smiling.
“Just... Chris... Never mind. I should get back.” Danni sighs and looks back at him. “I really am sorry about your trunks,” she offers.
“I know.” He smiles. “Maybe I’ll see you around?”
She smiles back. “I’d like that.”
*
Five minutes later, she evicts Chris from her chair by dripping on him, then settles down in the sun to dry off, allowing her friend to perch on the edge of her seat.
“And?” Lisa says, expectantly.
“His name is Ben. And he looks very Christmassy.” Danni gives her a grin, nicks her sunglasses from Chris’s head, puts them on and closes her eyes. “I do like spring break.”
“I’ve noticed,” Lisa replies. “I’m quite fond of it, myself.”
“Oy, move over, blondie,” Alec’s voice says. Danni opens her eyes and looks across at the brown-tinted version of her friend, who gives her a look and says, “So, who’s the... well, the hunk checking you out?”
Danni looks across the pool. Ben is watching her, drink in his hand. She grins, offers him a little wave and looks at Alec. “His name is Ben. And you’re taken, so keep your mits off him.”
Alec grins. “Can’t I take him for a test run?”
Danni flicks water at him. “Nuh uh.”
Chris sighs. “On that note,” he says, standing up, “I’m going to go get drunk in a corner.”
“What’s up with him?” Danni asks, as he wanders off.
“If you don’t know,” Lisa says, putting her earphones back in, “I’m not going to tell you.”
“I won’t damage the upholstery much,” Alec says, still watching Ben.
“Still no.”
“Damn.” Alec leans back in his seat. “Ah, well. I have Devon anyway.”
“Yes, and lucky for you, I’m not going to tell him about this conversation.”
"Please and thank you.” Alec grins at her.
*
“We shouldn’t be going to bed so early,” Danni says, with a sigh, as she sits down on one of the queens in her and Lisa’s room.
“I know, right? Spring break should have late nights,” Lisa says, as she sits on her own bed and pulls her shirt off.
As if on cue, the door opens at that moment and Chris barges in.
“Chris!” the girls shout in sync. “Privacy!”
Chris rolls his eyes. “If you’re capable of getting undressed in ten seconds, you’re superheroes.” He glances at Lisa, who’s holding her shirt in front of her chest, looking affronted, then turns his attention back to Danni. “There’s a party tonight. Wanna go?”
“Where?”
“It’s a rave.”
“Oh, god, does that mean it’ll be in a sewer or something?” Lisa says, with a grimace.
“Nope,” Chris says, sitting down, Indian-style, on the end of Danni’s bed. “In a cave by the beach.” He grins. “We party ‘til the tide comes in.”
“Are we talking flashing lights and electronic music?” Danni asks, unsure.
“Yep!”
“That counts me out then,” Lisa says. “I’m epileptic.”
“Yeah. If Lisa can’t go, I don’t really think I can...”
“Alec and Devon are going!” Chris exclaims. “Come on, don’t leave me alone with the couple-y people.”
Danni shakes her head. “Nuh uh,” she says. “Not going.”
Chris sighs, grabs her wrist and writes something on it in biro. GPS coordinates. “That’s the cave. If you want to go; that’s where I’ll be.”
Danni nods. “Understood.”
Chris leaves and Lisa finally drops her hands, letting her shirt sit in her lap. “You should go, Dan,” she says, with a smile. “You said the early night is dumb. And I’m really tired anyway, so I wouldn’t have gone.”
“I’d rather hang out with you,” Danni says.
Lisa raises an eyebrow. “Really? Party, dancing, music, lights, people in leather, all the things you like... and you’d rather sit and play rummy with me or something?”
"Yes.”
“Oh, you liar.” Lisa rolls her eyes. “Go on,” she says. “You know you want to.”
“I don’t even know what to wear.” Danni shrugs. “Too much trouble just for a party.”
Lisa climbs under the covers.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to sleep. Then you have nothing to stop you from going.”
“But... but...”
Lisa glowers at her.
“Fine. But for the record...”
“You don’t want to go. Yes. I know. Just... get changed and go already.”
*
Danni rocks up to the cave on her bike an hour later wearing high heeled leather boots, tight black leather pants and a red leather shirt, with dangly tassel bits hanging down over her midriff, which is otherwise bare. The top is practically a bikini at the back, with only a horizontal strap and a tie at the back of her neck.
She leaves her bike chained to a guard rail as she walks down the stairs into the cave, obviously a tourist sight when it’s not being cannibalised by dancing college students.
No one checks her I.D., so she surmises the party is either illegal anyway or she looks over twenty-five. Either way, she walks in unheeded and straight into the dancing crowd.
There’s techno music playing, coloured lights pulsing in time with the beat, and all Danni wants to do is dance, but instead she’s looking for Chris. Somewhere in the throng, is her blonde friend. She just needs to find him.
She pushes between a kissing couple, dodges under a guy holding three drinks and ignores someone’s attempt to paw her ass. Chris is in the middle, alone, looking lost and confused and like he wishes he’d stayed at home like a normal person.
“Chris!” she shouts, over the music.
“Oh thank god you’re here!” he yells back, hugging her.
She hugs him back, then asks, “Good party?”
“Too many people! Music too loud! I ask a girl to dance and she thinks I’m asking for sex! I got told off for offering to pay! All I did was ask if she wanted a drink!”
Danni laughs. “Well, I’m here to protect you now.”
“That’s good,” Chris says. “Would you maybe like to da-”
The music drowns him out, but that doesn’t matter, because Danni’s not listening anyway because the crowd has just parted, revealing Ben, stood looking as lost as Chris.
She walks away from Chris without so much as an apology and goes straight over to Ben. “Someone looks lost and alone,” she says, by way of greeting.
“And someone else looks... wow.” Ben gestures at her attire. “Who’re you trying to impress?”
She grins, cheekily. “Maybe I’m trying to impress you.”
“So, you’re my stalker now, huh?”
“Perhaps.”
“Wanna dance, stalker?”
“Thought you’d never ask,” Danni replies, tongue between her teeth.
He holds his hand out and she accepts, letting him lead her into the dancing masses.
*
“I can’t believe you go to the same college as me,” Danni says, laughing, at four in the morning, sat on the beach next to Ben.
“Creepy coincidence, huh?” Ben grins at her. “Maybe we were destined to meet,” he says, in a spooky voice.
“Maybe we were.” She grins back at him.
“Do you maybe wanna meet up after spring break? We could go out? See a movie?”
“Why, Mister Fisher, are you asking me out on a date?” Danni says.
"What?!” Ben splutters. “No! I mean... no... not if you don’t want me to be... but if you did want me to be... maybe I could be...”
Danni shakes her head. “I’d rather go as friends,” she says. “After spring break, I mean. Be friends.”
He quirks an eyebrow at her. “Are you implying we treat this as a lost weekend?”
She grins at him. “Maybe.”
“I like that idea.” He puts a hand on her neck and presses his lips to hers.
Letting her eyes close, she tilts her face up into the kiss, parts her lips and lets her fingers dance into his hair.
When they pull apart, Danni blinking dazedly, Ben grinning like a goofy idiot, Chris is stood behind them, hands stuffed in his pockets.
“Chris?” Danni says, a little confused.
“I’m going back to the hotel,” he says. “I’ll, uh, see you tomorrow.”
“Okay.” She blinks at him, slowly, as he wanders up the beach away from them.
For a second, she and Ben just watch him go, but then Danni stands up, offers Ben a hand and says, “Lost weekend?”
He smiles at her, takes her hand and says, “Lost weekend,” as she leads him over to her bike.
~Fin~