riptide_asylum (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
riptide_asylum) wrote2010-03-05 12:16 pm
riptide_asylum) wrote2010-03-05 12:16 pm
Entry tags:
"The Girl from Marin" (Out of the Dark, 1999)
Title: The Girl from Marin
Rating: R
Summary: Nick and Cody go boat-shopping, and have to figure out what they're each looking for.
Someone has wallpapered the aft stateroom, and as Nick stares, the fruiting vines on the paper seem to seethe and writhe like snakes, like the ones that dropped from the trees in the heat and stench, all slimy and--
"Hey, Nick! Come up here! Did you see this galley?"
Blinking, Nick reorients, waking from Southeast Asia to find himself in Marin, aboard a ship called the Celestial Treasure, being summoned by his longtime partner to come up there and look at the galley. Which he does.
The Celestial Treasure is a 40ft cruiser anchored in San Rafael, California, a sleepy half-hippy town north of San Francisco with a wharf that barely qualifies for the name; eight slips clinging to the side of the rocky shoreline with only three boats anchored there. The town around them appears to be in some kind of coma, blocky 60s architecture squatting at the base of hills turned brown already in the unseasonably warm spring. Eleven in the morning and it's already eighty-five degrees, the waterfront deserted, as jaded Californians have fled for the safety of their air conditioners, leaving the quaint city streets practically deserted. To Nick, it looks practically perfect. The Celestial Treasure, on the other hand...
"Nick?"
Nick jogs up the stairs to Cody's voice, noting minor imperfections and damages along the way: the railing is loose, the carpet's kinda worn in places and there's a hole the size of a man's fist in the wall. All of which Nick forgets at the sight of Cody's face.
"Isn't this great? Look, the galley's right underneath a big skylight! And look! Marble countertops!"
Nick's hand finds the small of his partner's back like a homing device and Nick takes in the small, cramped kitchenette at one end of the long, amply upholstered salon. Nicki, the real estate agent, watches the two of them with pursed lips. Nick ignores her. "Looks pretty good, Cody. You check out the master stateroom yet?" Nick investigates the small fridge, then tries one of the burners on the gas range. It flares into life with a weak cough and Nick looks over at Nicki, skeptical.
She busies herself with her folder of paperwork. "Sale of the Treasure's part of a divorce proceedings, as I mentioned. Both owners are eager to move on and motivated to sell. However, they did do extensive work on the ship--"
"Boat," Nick and Cody correct her at the same time.
She eyes one, then the other. "Boat," she says slowly, eyebrows unamused.
Cody jogs past the fan-shaped booth dinette and through the salon, headed for the master stateroom at the stern. "You see the couches, Nick? That looks like real leather!"
"You betcha. They've got retractable footrests, too." Nick and Nicki are by no means done eyeballing each other, and she follows him slowly through the salon, lips still thoughtful. Late morning sun filters in through the blinds, striping the white leather couch and matching carpet. Nick looks up at the lights in the ceiling. One's out, and it could be just a light bulb, but it could also be a blown fuse, or something else entirely, something that'll wind up with him buried to his waist in this boat's electrical system, Cody hovering anxiously nearby.
Nicki takes a deep breath and her breasts swell against the thin white shirt she's got on under her blazer. Nick's impressed. It's been a long time since tits like that made him look more than once.
"You know," Nicki says slowly, "the owners bought this boat as their retirement home. They'd been hoping to sail it to Hawaii together, and from there, they'd been planning a trip around the world. It's a vessel set up for long-term occupancy with minimal upkeep."
"That so. Guess one of the owners shouldn't have changed that plan by banging his secretary then, huh? Seems like a helluva waste." Nick's not talking about the boat, and by the drawn lines at the corners of Nicki's mouth, he can tell she regrets telling them as much of the sordid story as she did.
"Nick!"
He breaks her gaze and crosses the salon at a run, clearing the steps down to the master stateroom in a single bound. "Cody?"
"You've gotta see this shower, Nick! It's huge!" At the far end of the stateroom, Cody's hanging out of a doorway, beaming. Over his shoulder, Nick can see the head. It's three times bigger than the Riptide's, and wallpapered in that same damn vine pattern. Nick composes his expression and crosses the room to Cody's side. He slides an arm round Cody's waist, the old familiar thrill at being next to the guy filling him up like a breath of fresh air. His hand slides down to Cody's ass and he steals a quick kiss, earning himself a quick, shy grin.
"Stay focused, will ya?" Cody says softly. He kisses Nick back, light and soft, and the smile's on Nick's face before he can help it.
Pulling Cody close, Nick takes in the bathroom, eyes scanning for things that need fixing. "Hey, you're right. That is a big shower." He nuzzles Cody's ear. "You sure you want all that space, baby?"
Cody flushes, a sight that still makes all the blood rush to Nick's cock. He looks at the queen-sized bed dominating the room and raises his eyebrows. Smiling, Cody puts his hands on Nick's shoulders, leaning in. "All kinds of things you can do with that kind of room, Nick."
That's it. Nicki or no Nicki, the bed's getting tested out, right now.
Cody holds up a finger and Nick resists the urge to nip at it. "First thing's first, Nick. Have you seen the whole thing?"
Nick grins. "Not yet today I haven't."
The finger becomes imperious. "Nick!"
"Okay okay. I still need to check out the engines. Think the boat lady out there will let me take 'em apart?"
Cody drops his hand to Nick's hip, eyes admiring. "How about starting with just the basics, huh, buddy?"
---
"Lowtide."
Cody pulls a face. "Too negative."
"Riptide Two."
Cody's eyes get big and Nick holds up a conciliatory hand. "Forget I even mentioned it." He slides his basket of fries across the table. "King Tide. You know, like King Harbor."
Cody extracts the longest fry he can find from Nick's basket and dips it delicately in a pool of ketchup. "Maybe."
After they escorted Nicki back to her compact imported sedan, it took Nick and Cody exactly seven minutes to decide on the Celestial Treasure, and four of those minutes were spent standing in the parking lot of the Murphy's Point Marina, trying to get directions to a decent place to eat. Now they've been sitting in this booth, eating cold fries on the edge of the ocean, for the last hour, trying to figure out what to call her.
"Neap tide."
Cody finishes the fry and, frowning, reaches for another. "The what?"
Nick shrugs and reaches for the bottle of ketchup. Unscrewing it, he says, "You know, the tide with the least amount of movement. Happens in spring." He replenishes the drying smear on the wax paper between them, hearty glops of thick red sauce in a neat pile.
Cody fishes for another long fry in the basket, then drags it through the new pool. "Too weird."
"Weird?"
The fry gestures briefly before disappearing. "Obscure. Sciency."
Nick rolls his eyes and looks over at the kitchen counter for their waitress. His coffee cup's been dry as a bone now for a good ten minutes. "Well what about you, genius? I don't hear you coming up with any names."
Cody nibbled the fry. "Give me time. We just met her, after all."
"Her?"
Cody sucked the last of the fry into his mouth and Nick shifted on the hard plastic seat, adjusting. "Yup, Nick. All boats are female. Didn't you know that?"
"I hate when you get like this, you know that? You know I hate when you get like this."
Cody evaluated the remaining pile of fries with a serious expression. "Riptide's a girl."
"She is not. He is not. She--he--it--Cody, leave the Riptide out of this. This isn't about the Riptide."
"It's not?" Cody pulls another fry out of the stack. "Coulda fooled me. The whole time you were checking out our new boat I could see you comparing the two."
Nick thumps the ketchup bottle down on the table harder than he intended. "Oh come on, Cody. You can't tell me you think the Celestial--" He waved Cody's burgeoning protest away. "Whatever she is, you can't tell me you think she's in the same league as the Riptide. They're apples and oranges, babe, a whole other lifetime ago."
Cody drops the remainder of the fry on the paper. "Not to me it wasn't, Nick. They're...they're both our homes, Nick, or will be if Nicki picks up her phone, but more than that, they're..."
Cody runs out of words, and Nick slides a hand across the table to him, a rescue. They're ours, he thinks. Our boats. Our nests. They're safe. They're the place I'll keep you warm and well-fed and fucked and happy.
Nick opens his mouth to vocalize these thoughts but their waitress appears at the table, coffeepot in hand. Nick manages to ungrit his teeth long enough to be civil and push his cup over for a refill. He's a good tipper, he reminds himself. Always has been, always will be. He knows he's not at his best all the time these days, what with his ears and not flying and not really having a place that makes Cody truly, deeply, dizzily happy.
And with that thought, everything drops into place.
Nick squeezes Cody's hand. Without another word, rises from the booth, headed for the payphone at the back, next to the restrooms. He dials Nicki's number, the digits still at the forefront of his brain. As it rings, he watches Cody sitting at the table, staring out at the ocean, food forgotten. It rings and rings until finally, voicemail picks up and Nick's leaning against the dingy wall of a seaside diner on the Northern California coast, talking to a machine about what might turn out to be the most important decision of his life.
"Nicki," he says at the beep. "Nick Ryder here. Listen, about the message Cody left earlier...Look, forget whatever he said, all right? Just, forget about it." He pictures their motel room, room 12 at the Horseshoe Motor Lodge, off a too-busy exit off 89. And before that, their room downtown at the Hilton by Stanford, a room that would forever stink of puke and pain in Nick's head. A guy could have a lot of fun in a motel room, maybe, but it sure as hell wasn't home. He takes a deep breath. "We wanna move in this weekend, tonight if we can, so whatever you gotta tell the--her cheating lowlife owner, we'll match his asking price, as long as you can get us the keys, a.s.a.p."
Cody toys with a fry, dangling it between his long, golden fingers without much interest. His gaze keeps returning to the ocean, and the longer Nick watches, the more he wants to toss Cody over his shoulder and march him down to the beach to the water's edge, high tide or no.
"So you get this message, you give me a call, here at the--" Nick looks up at the blackboard behind the counter, "the Whippersnapper, and Cody and I'll be right over to get you that cashier's check, whatever you need, okay? Just..." he hesitates, heart in his throat. "But just so you know, I'm gonna go over that engine from top to bottom, every last gasket, every last rotor, before we hand over the cash. So bring a book. And, uh, call me."
He hangs up and hurries back to Cody, dropping heavily onto the naughahyde seat. Cody looked up, eyes wary, even after all this time. "What was that about, Nick?"
Nick takes his hand across the table. "It was about your boat, baby, and seeing if we can get you in her this afternoon if possible. If not sooner." With a quick look around, Nick brings Cody's hand to his lips, his gaze fixed on Cody's sweet blue eyes.
When no one burns them at the stake, Nick relaxes and lowers Cody's hand to the tabletop. "Eat up," he instructed, "I gotta find a torque wrench, a set of Allen keys and a diesel pump-meter before she calls back."
Brightening, Cody digs into the pile of fries, and Nick reaches for the ketchup, ready to top up the pool.
Rating: R
Summary: Nick and Cody go boat-shopping, and have to figure out what they're each looking for.
Someone has wallpapered the aft stateroom, and as Nick stares, the fruiting vines on the paper seem to seethe and writhe like snakes, like the ones that dropped from the trees in the heat and stench, all slimy and--
"Hey, Nick! Come up here! Did you see this galley?"
Blinking, Nick reorients, waking from Southeast Asia to find himself in Marin, aboard a ship called the Celestial Treasure, being summoned by his longtime partner to come up there and look at the galley. Which he does.
The Celestial Treasure is a 40ft cruiser anchored in San Rafael, California, a sleepy half-hippy town north of San Francisco with a wharf that barely qualifies for the name; eight slips clinging to the side of the rocky shoreline with only three boats anchored there. The town around them appears to be in some kind of coma, blocky 60s architecture squatting at the base of hills turned brown already in the unseasonably warm spring. Eleven in the morning and it's already eighty-five degrees, the waterfront deserted, as jaded Californians have fled for the safety of their air conditioners, leaving the quaint city streets practically deserted. To Nick, it looks practically perfect. The Celestial Treasure, on the other hand...
"Nick?"
Nick jogs up the stairs to Cody's voice, noting minor imperfections and damages along the way: the railing is loose, the carpet's kinda worn in places and there's a hole the size of a man's fist in the wall. All of which Nick forgets at the sight of Cody's face.
"Isn't this great? Look, the galley's right underneath a big skylight! And look! Marble countertops!"
Nick's hand finds the small of his partner's back like a homing device and Nick takes in the small, cramped kitchenette at one end of the long, amply upholstered salon. Nicki, the real estate agent, watches the two of them with pursed lips. Nick ignores her. "Looks pretty good, Cody. You check out the master stateroom yet?" Nick investigates the small fridge, then tries one of the burners on the gas range. It flares into life with a weak cough and Nick looks over at Nicki, skeptical.
She busies herself with her folder of paperwork. "Sale of the Treasure's part of a divorce proceedings, as I mentioned. Both owners are eager to move on and motivated to sell. However, they did do extensive work on the ship--"
"Boat," Nick and Cody correct her at the same time.
She eyes one, then the other. "Boat," she says slowly, eyebrows unamused.
Cody jogs past the fan-shaped booth dinette and through the salon, headed for the master stateroom at the stern. "You see the couches, Nick? That looks like real leather!"
"You betcha. They've got retractable footrests, too." Nick and Nicki are by no means done eyeballing each other, and she follows him slowly through the salon, lips still thoughtful. Late morning sun filters in through the blinds, striping the white leather couch and matching carpet. Nick looks up at the lights in the ceiling. One's out, and it could be just a light bulb, but it could also be a blown fuse, or something else entirely, something that'll wind up with him buried to his waist in this boat's electrical system, Cody hovering anxiously nearby.
Nicki takes a deep breath and her breasts swell against the thin white shirt she's got on under her blazer. Nick's impressed. It's been a long time since tits like that made him look more than once.
"You know," Nicki says slowly, "the owners bought this boat as their retirement home. They'd been hoping to sail it to Hawaii together, and from there, they'd been planning a trip around the world. It's a vessel set up for long-term occupancy with minimal upkeep."
"That so. Guess one of the owners shouldn't have changed that plan by banging his secretary then, huh? Seems like a helluva waste." Nick's not talking about the boat, and by the drawn lines at the corners of Nicki's mouth, he can tell she regrets telling them as much of the sordid story as she did.
"Nick!"
He breaks her gaze and crosses the salon at a run, clearing the steps down to the master stateroom in a single bound. "Cody?"
"You've gotta see this shower, Nick! It's huge!" At the far end of the stateroom, Cody's hanging out of a doorway, beaming. Over his shoulder, Nick can see the head. It's three times bigger than the Riptide's, and wallpapered in that same damn vine pattern. Nick composes his expression and crosses the room to Cody's side. He slides an arm round Cody's waist, the old familiar thrill at being next to the guy filling him up like a breath of fresh air. His hand slides down to Cody's ass and he steals a quick kiss, earning himself a quick, shy grin.
"Stay focused, will ya?" Cody says softly. He kisses Nick back, light and soft, and the smile's on Nick's face before he can help it.
Pulling Cody close, Nick takes in the bathroom, eyes scanning for things that need fixing. "Hey, you're right. That is a big shower." He nuzzles Cody's ear. "You sure you want all that space, baby?"
Cody flushes, a sight that still makes all the blood rush to Nick's cock. He looks at the queen-sized bed dominating the room and raises his eyebrows. Smiling, Cody puts his hands on Nick's shoulders, leaning in. "All kinds of things you can do with that kind of room, Nick."
That's it. Nicki or no Nicki, the bed's getting tested out, right now.
Cody holds up a finger and Nick resists the urge to nip at it. "First thing's first, Nick. Have you seen the whole thing?"
Nick grins. "Not yet today I haven't."
The finger becomes imperious. "Nick!"
"Okay okay. I still need to check out the engines. Think the boat lady out there will let me take 'em apart?"
Cody drops his hand to Nick's hip, eyes admiring. "How about starting with just the basics, huh, buddy?"
---
"Lowtide."
Cody pulls a face. "Too negative."
"Riptide Two."
Cody's eyes get big and Nick holds up a conciliatory hand. "Forget I even mentioned it." He slides his basket of fries across the table. "King Tide. You know, like King Harbor."
Cody extracts the longest fry he can find from Nick's basket and dips it delicately in a pool of ketchup. "Maybe."
After they escorted Nicki back to her compact imported sedan, it took Nick and Cody exactly seven minutes to decide on the Celestial Treasure, and four of those minutes were spent standing in the parking lot of the Murphy's Point Marina, trying to get directions to a decent place to eat. Now they've been sitting in this booth, eating cold fries on the edge of the ocean, for the last hour, trying to figure out what to call her.
"Neap tide."
Cody finishes the fry and, frowning, reaches for another. "The what?"
Nick shrugs and reaches for the bottle of ketchup. Unscrewing it, he says, "You know, the tide with the least amount of movement. Happens in spring." He replenishes the drying smear on the wax paper between them, hearty glops of thick red sauce in a neat pile.
Cody fishes for another long fry in the basket, then drags it through the new pool. "Too weird."
"Weird?"
The fry gestures briefly before disappearing. "Obscure. Sciency."
Nick rolls his eyes and looks over at the kitchen counter for their waitress. His coffee cup's been dry as a bone now for a good ten minutes. "Well what about you, genius? I don't hear you coming up with any names."
Cody nibbled the fry. "Give me time. We just met her, after all."
"Her?"
Cody sucked the last of the fry into his mouth and Nick shifted on the hard plastic seat, adjusting. "Yup, Nick. All boats are female. Didn't you know that?"
"I hate when you get like this, you know that? You know I hate when you get like this."
Cody evaluated the remaining pile of fries with a serious expression. "Riptide's a girl."
"She is not. He is not. She--he--it--Cody, leave the Riptide out of this. This isn't about the Riptide."
"It's not?" Cody pulls another fry out of the stack. "Coulda fooled me. The whole time you were checking out our new boat I could see you comparing the two."
Nick thumps the ketchup bottle down on the table harder than he intended. "Oh come on, Cody. You can't tell me you think the Celestial--" He waved Cody's burgeoning protest away. "Whatever she is, you can't tell me you think she's in the same league as the Riptide. They're apples and oranges, babe, a whole other lifetime ago."
Cody drops the remainder of the fry on the paper. "Not to me it wasn't, Nick. They're...they're both our homes, Nick, or will be if Nicki picks up her phone, but more than that, they're..."
Cody runs out of words, and Nick slides a hand across the table to him, a rescue. They're ours, he thinks. Our boats. Our nests. They're safe. They're the place I'll keep you warm and well-fed and fucked and happy.
Nick opens his mouth to vocalize these thoughts but their waitress appears at the table, coffeepot in hand. Nick manages to ungrit his teeth long enough to be civil and push his cup over for a refill. He's a good tipper, he reminds himself. Always has been, always will be. He knows he's not at his best all the time these days, what with his ears and not flying and not really having a place that makes Cody truly, deeply, dizzily happy.
And with that thought, everything drops into place.
Nick squeezes Cody's hand. Without another word, rises from the booth, headed for the payphone at the back, next to the restrooms. He dials Nicki's number, the digits still at the forefront of his brain. As it rings, he watches Cody sitting at the table, staring out at the ocean, food forgotten. It rings and rings until finally, voicemail picks up and Nick's leaning against the dingy wall of a seaside diner on the Northern California coast, talking to a machine about what might turn out to be the most important decision of his life.
"Nicki," he says at the beep. "Nick Ryder here. Listen, about the message Cody left earlier...Look, forget whatever he said, all right? Just, forget about it." He pictures their motel room, room 12 at the Horseshoe Motor Lodge, off a too-busy exit off 89. And before that, their room downtown at the Hilton by Stanford, a room that would forever stink of puke and pain in Nick's head. A guy could have a lot of fun in a motel room, maybe, but it sure as hell wasn't home. He takes a deep breath. "We wanna move in this weekend, tonight if we can, so whatever you gotta tell the--her cheating lowlife owner, we'll match his asking price, as long as you can get us the keys, a.s.a.p."
Cody toys with a fry, dangling it between his long, golden fingers without much interest. His gaze keeps returning to the ocean, and the longer Nick watches, the more he wants to toss Cody over his shoulder and march him down to the beach to the water's edge, high tide or no.
"So you get this message, you give me a call, here at the--" Nick looks up at the blackboard behind the counter, "the Whippersnapper, and Cody and I'll be right over to get you that cashier's check, whatever you need, okay? Just..." he hesitates, heart in his throat. "But just so you know, I'm gonna go over that engine from top to bottom, every last gasket, every last rotor, before we hand over the cash. So bring a book. And, uh, call me."
He hangs up and hurries back to Cody, dropping heavily onto the naughahyde seat. Cody looked up, eyes wary, even after all this time. "What was that about, Nick?"
Nick takes his hand across the table. "It was about your boat, baby, and seeing if we can get you in her this afternoon if possible. If not sooner." With a quick look around, Nick brings Cody's hand to his lips, his gaze fixed on Cody's sweet blue eyes.
When no one burns them at the stake, Nick relaxes and lowers Cody's hand to the tabletop. "Eat up," he instructed, "I gotta find a torque wrench, a set of Allen keys and a diesel pump-meter before she calls back."
Brightening, Cody digs into the pile of fries, and Nick reaches for the ketchup, ready to top up the pool.