i feel the salty waves come in; i feel them crash against my skin

[majorhellstrom]

Hellstrom's growing restless; there's no denying that. The rain didn't help that. After spending the large portion of the first day of it inside, he found he couldn't do it any longer, and as a result spent most of the rest of what he supposed was rain season soaked to the bone. Now that it's clear, the time he spends wandering has gone back to

Comments

[goingtodorking]

Karen is not going in the water. She's building a sandcastle today, concentrating deeply. Shadow taught her to build sandcastles...Rollie helped, but they sort of argued about how to do it best and Karen likes to do it her own way. Today, she's working with sea-shells.

She watchesh im come out of the ocean, squinting up at him.

"How're you with sandcastles?"

[majorhellstrom]

As she squints up at him, he squints down, rubbing water from his eyes with one hand.

"Not bad," he says mildly, looking over what she's already built. He wouldn't be lying if he said he didn't remember the last time he ever built a sandcastle; he didn't take to such activities even as a child, and going to beaches wasn't exactly a common occurrence for him. The banks of the river running through Heidelberg would never quite compare.

"Why?"

[goingtodorking]

"Because you're here and you can help."

She looks at him for a long moment and then realisation dawns across her little face. She pusshes her blond curls back out of her face with sandy fingers.

"You helped me last time."

[majorhellstrom]

These, really, are perfectly good reasons.

When Karen mentions his having helped before, he manages a quick smile, pleased at the fact that he's been recognized. (It's small things like that he tends to take pleasure in; they're few and far between but still there.)

"I did," he confesses, moving to sit down.

"If only briefly."

[defected]

That he managed to break a sweat at all is both surprising and, if he truly thinks about it, not really. Unpredictable thought the weather has been of late, the humidity has remained a constant, a thick layer of moisture in the air that makes it almost difficult to breath at times. He shouldn't expect any mercy trying to jog through it.

But the sun is out (barely) for what feels like the first time in weeks, and Bryce seizes his chance to get out without second thought.

"'Afternoon," he calls, with an automatic nod at the other man. He runs a hand through his sweat-drenched hair, his shirt shed long ago and draped around his neck. "How's the water? Freezing or below, I'm guessing?"

[majorhellstrom]

"Something like that," Hellstrom agrees, raising a hand to shield his eyes. Bryce's is not a face he recognizes, but he offers up a smile anyway. There's little use in being rude, most of the time. He won't deny that he isn't always on the best of behavior, but at least he knows when to draw the line.

"I'd suggest a dip. It's a pleasant contrast from the humidity."

[defected]

"That's not a bad idea," Bryce agrees, casting a glance at the shore. Compared to recent weeks, the ocean is calm as can be expected; calm as anyone could hope for. Not for the first time today, Bryce feels a tinge of - of something he can't quite place, of feeling strangely placated by something so simple as a bout of cooperative weather.

"Was that a German accent I heard?" He asks, in no small part relieved that he can still recognize it.

[majorhellstrom]

Grasping his shirt by the shoulders, he gives it a sharp snap before folding it up and dropping it back to the sand. He doesn't intend to leave the beach just yet.

He glances up when the other man mentions his accent, his teeth flashing in a quick smile.

"Yes, German," he confirms with a nod. It has faded even more since he arrived on the island. What gives him away more than his accent is the strained quality with which he speaks, as if English simply felt too foreign on his tongue for him to swallow.

"I've never quite been able to get rid of it."

[realnicetrip]

Harry was so, so glad that the rain had stopped at last. He'd not been much fun to be with over the past few weeks, with all that excess energy and no way to get rid of it. It still hadn't warmed up but he was just pleased to be able to go outside without immediately being soaked, and he had a lot to catch up on.

He strolled down to the beach in shirt and shorts, barefoot, with a towel slung around his neck, half a cigarette dangling from his mouth. It looked cold out there, but he didn't mind that; it made the cup of coffee afterwards taste all the better.

He paused, waiting to finish his cigarette, and saw someone else surface and get out of the water.

"Afternoon," he said, nodding in the man's direction. "How's the water?"

[majorhellstrom]

"Afternoon," came the response. "Cold. But in no bad sense of the word." Brushing his hair from his face, Hellstrom glanced over, a thin-lipped but still polite smile settling on his features. It's a little odd, really. The last time he went swimming was in a pool with a swastika painted on the bottom.

"Planning on going in?"

[realnicetrip]

"No, I'm just carrying this towel for show," Harry said lightly, giving the man a quick look up and down. He'd seen him around, not talked to him much. He couldn't place the accent; it'd faded, but it had a hint of middle European to him. That could mean all kinds of places.

"I usually swim every day here, but the rain kinda got in the way of that. I don't mind if it's cold. Just as long as it's not trying to drown me, I'm good."

[majorhellstrom]

"I doubt the water ever intends to make an active effort to drown anyone," Hellstrom remarked, mouth caught between a smile and a smirk. The other man was familiar in the way a person became when you passed them often enough in the street, not necessarily familiar enough to always say hello or ask after their health, but familiar enough that their face was recognizable.

"For the most part, at least."

[patriotqueen]

The beach had never before smelled as good as during the rainy season. Sand, wet with rain water, bare feet fresh as they tread the harsh but malleable surface. Now it was all back to sand and sun and colonial tans. Guy almost missed the rain.

It was most uncharacteristic of him, but when a woman like Vanessa Bell asks one to 'be a dear and walk the dogs', one sighed and complied. As dogs went they weren't too bad. And he would take them back to her, hopefully still wet and wanting to shake off the water inside her hut. One could hope.

The dogs faithfully followed some distance behind him, and he hadn't once looked back, when he met the German, Dieter.

"The rain didn't wet you enough?" He remarked with a smile.

[majorhellstrom]

"Not quite," Dieter replied, Guy's smile mirrored on his face. Running a hand back through his hair in some attempt to make it acceptable, he cocked head head to an angle, looking first at Guy and then at the dogs.

"I didn't know you kept dogs," he added, tone of voice suggesting that he didn't think it entirely characteristic.

[patriotqueen]

"They're not mine," Guy replied, though it seemed to be unnecessary to do so. The dogs ran to the water, then back again to the sand, then back to the water and back to the sand in a wholly pointless game. "Keats and Pitti, they belong to Vanessa Bell, she asked me to walk them." He took a cigarette and lit it with the remaining end of the one he was smoking. "Thought I might as well."

[majorhellstrom]

"Kind of you."

His eyes fix on the cigarette for a moment (he hasn't smoked since running out of his own cigarettes), but his gaze doesn't linger long enough to warrant any real question. The almost loudness in his head incurred by their sudden absence from his diet is almost welcome.

"How have you been?"

[otherbeds]

As someone else who also had nothing to do but wander around, Tooru too often found himself at the beach. This being an island, it shouldn't be that surprising. He's managed to find an itchy wool sweater to go over the clothes he'd arrived in and is actually quite comfortable, but can't imagine actually swimming.

Yet, there that someone is, so Tooru stands by one of the entrances to a path from the Compound and watches idly until the man gets out of the water. His eye gives Hellstrom a professional once-over and then goes back to staring out to sea. Taking the initiative in a conversation with a stranger wasn't his forté unless it was within the specific confines of hooking a client. Even when he is supposed to be practising his English.

[majorhellstrom]

The sensation of being watched is one that Hellatrom is familiar with. (More often he's on the giving end than the receiving, but this is no matter.) He registers Tooru's presence before he reaches the shore. When the other man doesn't speak up, he lets the silence stretch for a few moments more before saying anything at all. (His frame is lean but well-built, a product of years spent in the war machine.)

"Here just for the view?"

It's up to Tooru how he takes the question. Hellstrom, as a rule, is fond of ambiguous questions, and of mildly uncomfortable ones more so.

[otherbeds]

As it stands, that is the most comfortable thing he could have said. It puts Tooru automatically into flirt mode, though he is always wary of hitting on a straight guy. You never knew.

"The view is nice," he replies in his heavily-accented English, equally ambiguous but smiling in a way that makes it less so. Before Hellstrom had spoken he had genuinely not been interested in him at all, but while Tooru could just brush him off and leave something made him stay. This island was forcing him out of his shell. Not enough people to hide in.

[majorhellstrom]

The accent is something Hellstrom notices almost immediately, easily able to place it to country if not to region. Curious; he's yet to meet any other Japanese people on the island.

"At least the rain has finally ended," he says, his statement not really connected to the ones that came before. "Makes it easier to get around."