"Landlocked" (Out of the Dark, 1998)
Oct. 25th, 2009 05:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
riptide_asylumTitle: Landlocked
Rating: R
Summary: Nick remembers 1998. He hates 1998.
Nick remembers 1998. He hates 1998.
That was the year he and Cody gave up the Riptide and bought a house in Pedro after a real estate seminar Murray talked them into. Six months later, after twenty plus years of...whatever, Nick became convinced Cody was sleeping with a 19-year-old hairdresser's assistant named Tracy.
The thought that Cody was having an affair ate away at Nick until he spent the better part of a month throwing up blood. Everyone told him he looked ten years younger without the weight, and Nick had no idea how to respond.
He just went home each night to the big empty white-walled house on land and waited. When Cody finally did make it home, his eyes were evasive, sliding off every surface and fleeing for the corners. Most of the nights ended in shouting, with Nick curled up in their big bed upstairs wishing there was something left to lose.
At the end of the month, the night Murray married Charlene in front of five matching butter-yellow bridesmaids, Nick fled. He took the Vette and squealed out of the Sheraton parking lot, driving too fast down 5 to King Harbor to sit behind the Mimi while the moon emerged from the clouds, wondering when the fuck everything had gone so wrong.
Forty-five minutes later, Cody dropped heavily onto the sand, bumping Nick's shoulder just like old times. Just like 1974 all over again. Just like everything was right. This time, he'd been crying too, and when he opened his mouth, Nick's jaw dropped at the simple stupidity of it all: Cody wasn't cheating on him with Tracy. Not by a long shot.
He'd been having an affair with the ocean.
Cody was dying trying to live inland, so four, five nights a week he'd been sneaking down to the ocean, sitting out on the beach, breathing it in, just trying to stay alive.
That night they fucked like strangers in the Mimi's cargo hold, then slept on the rocky, windswept beach behind the slip. Nick had held Cody against him, warm and sweet and his, and waited for the sunrise.
And when the morning finally came, Nick gave up the sky.
Rating: R
Summary: Nick remembers 1998. He hates 1998.
Nick remembers 1998. He hates 1998.
That was the year he and Cody gave up the Riptide and bought a house in Pedro after a real estate seminar Murray talked them into. Six months later, after twenty plus years of...whatever, Nick became convinced Cody was sleeping with a 19-year-old hairdresser's assistant named Tracy.
The thought that Cody was having an affair ate away at Nick until he spent the better part of a month throwing up blood. Everyone told him he looked ten years younger without the weight, and Nick had no idea how to respond.
He just went home each night to the big empty white-walled house on land and waited. When Cody finally did make it home, his eyes were evasive, sliding off every surface and fleeing for the corners. Most of the nights ended in shouting, with Nick curled up in their big bed upstairs wishing there was something left to lose.
At the end of the month, the night Murray married Charlene in front of five matching butter-yellow bridesmaids, Nick fled. He took the Vette and squealed out of the Sheraton parking lot, driving too fast down 5 to King Harbor to sit behind the Mimi while the moon emerged from the clouds, wondering when the fuck everything had gone so wrong.
Forty-five minutes later, Cody dropped heavily onto the sand, bumping Nick's shoulder just like old times. Just like 1974 all over again. Just like everything was right. This time, he'd been crying too, and when he opened his mouth, Nick's jaw dropped at the simple stupidity of it all: Cody wasn't cheating on him with Tracy. Not by a long shot.
He'd been having an affair with the ocean.
Cody was dying trying to live inland, so four, five nights a week he'd been sneaking down to the ocean, sitting out on the beach, breathing it in, just trying to stay alive.
That night they fucked like strangers in the Mimi's cargo hold, then slept on the rocky, windswept beach behind the slip. Nick had held Cody against him, warm and sweet and his, and waited for the sunrise.
And when the morning finally came, Nick gave up the sky.
