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  It was a funny thing, love. Prone to catching people at the worst possible moments. He knew that he couldn’t afford to fall for anyone, drifters that they both were. Dylan wouldn’t stay here over the winter, either. He’d move on to somewhere that was still warm, find a place for his board and another friend to share moments like this with. Gene would become, he knew, another memory—a fond one, cherished even, but a memory nonetheless. Thinking that always made him feel his stomach drop. He was honestly afraid of Dylan moving on before he’d at least taken the chance to see if they could make it together.

  “I suppose I must have been,” he replied quietly, staring down at his knees so as to avoid looking at Dylan again for the time being. By what seemed like mutual agreement, a silence fell between them while they waited for the rain to ease, which didn’t look at all like it was going to happen soon.

  By the clock on the dashboard, half an hour passed before Dylan spoke up. “I don’t think it’s going away any time soon,” he said wisely, and Gene was inclined to trust his instincts in this, attuned to nature as he always seemed to be.

  “We might as well bunk down for the night, then,” Gene tried to keep the enthusiasm out of his voice at the prospect of sharing the close quarters.

  “Move out of the way so I can fold these seats down,” he instructed. Dylan obeyed without argument, his mouth falling open as the seats were folded down to reveal what was very nearly a full-length bed in the back of the car—Gene had found a foam mattress that fit exactly and folded up easily with the back seat and had grown accustomed to sleeping on it, often having nowhere better to go.

  “So this is where you sleep.” Dylan grinned as though he’d discovered the greatest secret in the universe. “I’d been trying to figure out where you were going off to, but no one seemed to know. S’pose you tend not to invite them back, eh?” He clambered onto the mattress, looking honestly thrilled. Gene understood the feeling—there was something wonderfully comforting and exciting about having what was the equivalent of a childhood fort in the back of your car. He reached into the front to open the window a crack, thankful of the weather shield over the driver’s-side window.

  Trying not to give too much weight to climbing into the same bed as Dylan, Gene ignored the not-entirely-unpleasant way his stomach clenched as he did so. After a little maneuvering to get comfortable, they came to rest beside each other, heads propped up on hands so they could continue to talk.

  “In answer to your earlier question, no. I don’t ever share this bed.” Gene wasn’t sure if that was because it was a private space, or simply because no one would really want him to. He was pleased enough if Dylan drew his own conclusions, though; if he did indeed have a private space, he’d invite Dylan into it, and be happy for him to know that he was doing so.

  “Then I’m honored,” Dylan replied, and then lowered his eyes almost coyly. “Hasn’t been a bad time, all told, has it?” He was biting his lip just softly, and Gene wondered if he realized how gorgeous he was, or if he could truly be ignorant of his own charms.

  “Not bad at all. I’m glad you persuaded me to do it.” Gene smiled honestly at him and found his smile returned with full force.

  “I’m glad I did as well.” Dylan reached out, then dropped his hand halfway between them. “We have a lot of fun together, don’t we? I mean, I s’pose it’s because we’re not like the rest of them. I can’t understand them half the time, and it’s not their accents that’re throwing me off, neither.”

  Gene smiled, fighting to keep a giggle down at Dylan’s petulant tone. “Well, if you will come to a place called Surfer’s Paradise, you can hardly be surprised when you run into surfers, can you? Especially if you turn up with a board of your own and spend most of your life on the beach, making friends with the other people on said beach. You could hardly expect to run into much else.”

  Dylan shrugged. “Ran into you, didn’t I?”

  “That you did. I’m really not like them, am I? Still stick out like a sore thumb, I suspect.” Gene found himself smiling shyly once more.

  “Not in a bad way. They all love you. Think of you as the clever one. Which is what happens when you start quoting things they’ve only ever heard of on the telly. Not that I’m about to start asking about your past or anything, but even without the posh accent, you give yourself away a bit.”

  “Thank you,” Gene replied quietly. “For not asking, I mean. I could use a friend I can get close to without having to worry about that.”

  There was a silence after Dylan nodded, and both men listened to the rain and the rolling thunder coming in from the ocean ahead of them, lightning streaking across the sky in the distance. Gene had heard it was better in the winter. Not quite as warm, but the sun was out more often, and the rain wasn’t so heavy, if it rained at all. Funny that the wet season should be in the summer, though. Despite the open window, the car was still getting warm inside, the humidity out there and the heat of two bodies, even at rest as they were, making the air heavy and drowsy. Gene thought to close his eyes, but at some point he’d ended up staring into Dylan’s. He wondered if that might have been why the air felt so thick now. He blinked and looked away, turning his head to look out of the rear window at the pelting rain.

  Something touched Gene’s hair, and it took him a moment to realize that it was Dylan’s hand. He didn’t dare move his head to look at the other man for fear of startling him out of it, but instead turned all of his other senses toward him, shutting out the sounds and smells of the rain, the heat and weight of the air, and feeling nothing but the gentle pressure of hesitant fingers curling through his salt-stiffened hair, the smell of the sea still clinging to Dylan—as it always did, he supposed—the heat of his breath closer now than it had been. When he concentrated, he could feel that the blond had moved closer to him, almost close enough to touch, but not quite.

  “Look at me, Gene.” The dark rumble of Dylan’s voice rolled over him like the thunder he could barely hear over the pounding in his ears. “Let me see that you want this as much as I do,” he whispered, and Gene would have been powerless to stop himself even if he’d been inclined to disobey the command. He turned his head, and Dylan’s fingers slid through his hair to cradle it from behind, not truly holding him in place, but supporting.

  The first kiss they shared tasted of salt and ozone. The air became too thick to breathe properly after far too short a time, so they retreated to brief kisses, only a handful of seconds long at best, but with each kiss, Gene found he could taste more and more of Dylan. Of the soft, dewy grass he knew back home, and the smoke and fire of the steel works of Dylan’s hometown, but also of a sweetness that took him by surprise. Something that reminded him of this place, of the smell of the rainforests after a storm like the one outside, and of sunscreen and aloe gel and everything else that this strange, foreign land had come to mean to him.

  Too soon, there wasn’t enough air left even for brief kisses, and they both panted harshly, still not touching in more than a few places in deference to the stifling heat. Gene had settled his hand on the soft cotton of the pants that covered Dylan’s hip, and there was still a hand in his hair, teasing some of the stiffness out of it.

  “God, I want you,” Gene panted as he tried to catch his breath, lungs burning with the humid air enfolding them both. “I want you like I’ve never wanted anything before.”

  “Why do you think I invited you out tonight?” Dylan asked softly, still stroking Gene’s hair. “The day we met, when Sarah dragged you along with me—that was only my second day out here. When I heard you speak, I rolled my eyes. Come all the bloody way out here only to meet some bastard I could have found a few dozen miles away? But what I couldn’t get over, while the three of us were at it, was how kind you were.

  “Not just a gentleman to her, but you treated me like you wanted me to be there, even though we didn’t have a lot of contact. I wished, after, that I’d kissed you. Shown you that I was glad you were there, as well as her. You’
ve no idea how happy I was when I realized that you were here on the same sort of holiday I was. That we’d run into each other without me having to come up with excuses.”

  Gene laughed softly. “Do you know, I thought almost exactly the same thing? I regretted not giving you more attention at the time, but then I thought you might not welcome it, and didn’t wish to alienate someone who reminded me of home straight off.”

  “Homesick?” There was palpable sympathy in Dylan’s voice.

  “Not really. I don’t miss it so much as I feel its loss. Tomorrow, I’ll have been gone for two months. In a way it feels like an eternity, but in other ways it’s like the blink of an eye. I know I’m not where I’m from at the moment, but I’m also not sure this isn’t where I belong.” Gene didn’t bother to be surprised that he could say these things out loud to Dylan. It was as natural as breathing, more so, even, considering that drawing breath was still difficult, even with the rain finally beginning to clear the air.

  Dylan hummed softly. “I know what you mean. But then I don’t want to go back, and if I thought there was a way to avoid it, I’d be on it,” he admitted, and then smiled. “I could live in the back of this car with you, you know. I’d be happy here.”

  “I snore,” Gene pointed out reasonably.

  “So do I. I imagine you make a polite little snort here and there and call it snoring, but I’m told I could wake the dead at fifty paces. Lucky I’ve learned to wear anyone I’m sharing a bed with out well enough that it doesn’t wake them, eh?” He grinned impishly, eyes glittering even in the nearly complete dark that had fallen over them since the automatic light had finally turned itself off.

  “Lucky indeed.”

  Gene honestly didn’t mean to react so eagerly to that. Sex wasn’t the only thing on his mind when it came to Dylan—he wanted, as his father might have put it, hearts and flowers—though perhaps seashells and board wax would be more appropriate. But if he was being entirely honest with himself, he wanted sex as well. A great deal of it, in fact.

  Still grinning, Dylan moved in to kiss him again. It was a gentle kiss, slow and easy enough to breathe through, especially now that the temperature outside was finally dropping. Gene felt the hand in his hair move down, along the back of his neck, over his shoulder, and down the side of his body to his hip. Dylan pushed gently, and Gene gave without protest, rolling onto his back even as the gorgeous blond was moving to straddle him. Narrow hips rocked into his own, and though neither man was fully hard, by the feel of things, Gene could see no need to do anything more than move the hand that had been stroking Dylan’s hip earlier up and under his T-shirt to feel along the definite column of his spine, to enjoy the way his strong shoulder muscles shifted under sun-sensitized skin.

  “Want you.” Dylan kissed over his chin, then along his jaw to his ear, still rocking gently. The entire car was moving with them, and Gene was reminded of what it was like to lie on your back in the ocean, letting the waves take you nowhere in particular. That was what it felt like at the moment, like they weren’t going anywhere in particular. He could feel Dylan hard against him, now—a comfortable heat through two thin layers of stretch cotton, and while there was something in him that wanted to curl his fist around him, touch and feel and tug and pull and be the one to bring him off, directly and deliberately, there was also no hurry to do this. Not when he was tracing patterns on his back, enjoying the gentle weight on top of him, reveling in a new sort of warmth spreading through him slowly. Enjoying the simple closeness and comfort of the rhythmic motion, the creaking of the suspension, and the song of the rain outside.

  Soft kisses and soft sighs melted together after a while. Nothing louder than a whisper passed between the two men as they each tasted the sea everywhere their mouths could reach, the perfect tempo they’d fallen into not altering, not even as Gene gasped at the same feeling he got before a big wave swelled—the subtle tug at his belly button as the undercurrent was sucked away from beneath him and the way tension coiled in his arms and legs, readying to ride it out.

  He could feel his orgasm rolling up on him in the distance, blood rushing through his ears like so many tons of water and the same eerie calm that always came over him at this moment, when it came to surfing or sex. The weightless clarity of the last moment before the wave crashed down on him knocked the breath out of his lungs, and he had no choice but to let it roll over him and hang on for dear life as it took him toward the shore all in a rush, tingling down his spine and spilling out of him so forcefully that he felt he had to close his eyes to survive the undeniable pleasure of the impact, only able to let his hips continue to rock gently as he came down from the high.

  He waited for a sign that Dylan was approaching the same moment and watched with awe as the other man shuddered deeply, feeling him jerk his hips against him once out of time and shivering in sympathy, astounded by how beautiful he was and that he’d managed to make him feel the same way. With the same lassitude as had built up to this point, they separated, though only enough not to overheat each other. The air was still cooling, but it couldn’t be said to be anything close to cold, inside or out.

  Though thankful of the distance in terms of overall comfort, Gene quickly found himself missing the contact. He groped for Dylan’s hand as a reminder that this had truly just happened. Talking seemed unnecessary for long minutes, and perhaps forever, had the rain not stopped.

  “Storm’s over,” Dylan observed quietly.

  “The rain seems to be, anyway,” Gene found himself agreeing, and wondering at the same time if he might turn and kiss him again, find a way to repeat what they’d just shared. He was honestly not concerned about what the weather chose to do, except as far as it was interesting to Dylan. But this was an ending, not a beginning, and he knew that treating it as such would make it easier to bear.

  “Shall I take you home, then?” Strange, thinking of a room in a backpackers’ hotel as anyone’s home, but it was the case for so many of the people he knew here.

  Dylan turned his head to face him, looking completely calm and determined in a way that hit Gene as though it was something physical. “I think I could stay here a little longer.” He smiled and moved forward to kiss Gene’s lips. “Long as you can put up with me.”

  “Oh, I think I could put up with you for a very long time.” Gene grinned.

  RULES IS RULES

  Rob Rosen

  It was a gorgeous June day in the city by the bay, the sky a dazzling blue, the sun just hot enough that you could walk the streets in nothing more than a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. And in San Francisco, in the middle of June, that’s really saying something. I mean, hell, goosebumps had taken up permanent residence beneath my skin since May. In other words, I was on my motorcycle in no time flat zooming up Castro Street, the warm breeze washing over me as I headed west, the beach a-callin’.

  Up, up, up I went, then down and up again, hill after crazy fucking hill, my Harley humming beneath me, cock throbbing behind the thin swatch of denim that covered it. I sighed and gave it a nudge. “Down, boy,” I told it, smiling as I rounded the last bend, the top of the Golden Gate Bridge visible above the old white buildings of the Presidio.

  And then I shouted “Fuck!” as I came to a grinding halt inside the nearly empty parking lot. “Fuck!” I repeated, yanking my helmet off as my body suddenly went sub-arctic. “Fucking San Francisco summers.” I slumped down in my seat as I watched the fog fill in all around me, dense and white, cold as an ice chest and thick as pea soup. “Murphy’s Law, one, Jeff’s sunny afternoon, zero.”

  I hopped off my bike and popped open the small pod that held my just-in-case sweatshirt. Sadly, it got a lot of wear. Especially in June in San Francisco. And July. And a good portion of August. Then I walked over to the stairs leading down to Baker Beach. No shock there; stairs were empty. Beach, from what I could see of it, was empty, too. Empty as my head for thinking that I could lay out in June. Or July. Or the better part of August.

 
Still, I was there. “Maybe it’ll burn off,” I said to myself, rubbing my arms as I trudged down. Way down. Zigzagging my way to the fog-enshrouded beach below. And, go figure, it was even colder down there, the fog thicker, denser, and meaner than a Texas Republican. “Or maybe it won’t,” I glumly added. “Until fucking September.”

  I craned my neck left. “Deserted.” Then forward, to the sound of the waves. Not the sight, though—seeing as there wasn’t any—just the sound. Then up at all that fucking white. And then right, north, to what would be the gay beach. Would be, if anyone else was as stupid as I was to be there.

  Into the fog I squinted, and, lo and behold, I could’ve sworn I spotted someone lying out. Or possibly frozen in place. Or maybe it was just a sea lion. Or a human-shaped rock. The only thing I knew for certain was that it wasn’t a Texas Republican. Not in San Francisco, in June or otherwise. And certainly not on the northernmost tip of Baker Beach.

  Still, I trudged through the sand in my sneakers, arms folded tight over my chest, bared legs confused as to why they were bare this early in the season. Them and me both. But there was something up ahead. Something pink. Something not a sea lion or a rock, though in the fog, it was mighty hard to make out exactly what in fact it was.

  That is, not until I got right on up to it. Or him, as was the case.