The Beach, Sunday Afternoon

[hatesparadise]

Seeing as how it was Father's Day and Danny was stuck here, he felt that he'd earned a little time to be, you know, maudlin and the like. Complete with a six pack of Longboards and sitting on the stupid beach.

Hawaii had finally managed to break him.

He settled in on the sand, taking out his phone due to some terrible, deep seated need to make sure Steve wasn't being a completely emotionally stunted idiot thanks to the plethora of family related issues the man had, all to carefully type out a text that he knew wasn't going to go through. And also that it had been closer to Thanksgiving last time he was in the real world, but he was sending it anyway.

You better not have blown yourself up while I've been gone.

It was easier to focus on someone else than to think about this being the first time he wasn't with Grace on this day since she'd been born, okay?

[ooooopen]

Comments

[firstofitskind]

Funny enough, this particular day had Liam also feeling pretty maudlin, albeit for very different reasons.

And what else was there to do when feeling maudlin but come to the beach to brood on it? Except of course he’d somehow end up picking the one stretch of beach on the entire island that was already occupied.

He could, he suppose, turn around and find another spot. There were plenty, after all. Or he could -

Decision made, he stepped closer to where Danny had settled himself.

“Hey.”

[hatesparadise]

Well, so long as neither of them threw their phone into the ocean like giant drama queens, they were pretty safe. Those things cost money, Duke. You can't just throw things into the ocean!

Also! It was littering!

Danny eyed him for a moment before nodding in greeting. "You gonna sit or loom over me handsomely?"

[firstofitskind]

Liam had nothing that dramatic in mind, no. Just some nice, angst-filled introspection.

“You think I’m handsome?” Liam raised an eyebrow, hint of an amused smile springing to his lips despite the brooding.

[hatesparadise]

Ahhh, the perfect thing for a beach.

Danny rolled his eyes because he only knew stupidly attractive people and also he wasn't blind. "Sure. Mostly I think you're a giraffe from this angle, though."

[firstofitskind]

Liam snickered. "Sorry," he offered, sounding not that sorry at all, and folded those giraffe-like limbs until he was sitting next to Danny. "Better?"

[hatesparadise]

Ugh, he was still taller.

"Yeah, my neck thanks you."

[firstofitskind]

You could blame his father for that one!

... The non-human one. Sandoval had been barely taller than Danny himself was.

"Didn't figure you for someone who liked spending time on the beach," Liam commented, picking up a nearby rock and fiddling with it idly.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke had no idea it was Father’s Day. He hadn’t had a dad in nearly thirty years, after all. He was just taking a perfectly ordinary walk on the beach when he happened across Danny.

He grabbed a longboard from the six pack. “Pretty sure moodily checking your phone while staring at the ocean is my thing, not yours.”

[hatesparadise]

Danny sighed, putting his phone away before incriminating text messages could be seen. Because there were drafts of other messages before he settled on the one he'd sent.

"I'm not playing with any deadly weapons, so I think you're safe."

[betterthanaplan]

“What, you think I didn’t get started with sad text messages?” Duke sat down next to him and popped the top off of his beer. “Alright, spill. What’s switched you from cranky to maudlin?”

[hatesparadise]

"They're not sad text messages." They were 'please don't do something stupid when I can't yell at you in person about it' messages. Which were totally different. And also normal.

He sighed again because it was that sort of day, eyeing his mostly abandoned beer, half buried in the sand to keep from spilling.

"It's Father's Day, okay?"

[betterthanaplan]

Duke nodded absently as he sipped his beer. The frowned when the implications of that for Danny clicked. “Oh. And you still can’t contact your kid, huh?”

[hatesparadise]

"What, you think I'd be here if I could?" Danny snapped.

[betterthanaplan]

“Nope,” Duke said, not taking that snap at all personally. “I’m sure you’d be off somewhere making goofy dad jokes and, I don’t know, lecturing her on gun safety or something.”

[firstofitskind]

Liam gave Duke a little smile and a salute in greeting with his beer bottle. Which wouldn't be all that notable except this was like the second time ever Duke would've seen Liam with a drink in his hand. The other being... literally the first time they'd met.

[betterthanaplan]

"Liam," Duke greeted with a nod. "You, uh. Drinking away your Father's Day issues, too?"

Did Liam have some kid somewhere he didn't know about?

[firstofitskind]

No, but he did have an unknown number of half (ish) siblings, because his father was a sociopath who did things like 'use a fertility clinic to get god-knew-how-many women pregnant'.

"Guess you could say that," Liam admitted, with a wry look down at that bottle. Which was still mostly full, honestly. The drinking was slow going.

[betterthanaplan]

Oh hey! They had that in common! Only Duke's half-siblings existed because his dad had been a slut.

(Haven's local sociopath who used a fertility clinic to get god-knew-how-many women pregnant would quite possibly be the first guy Duke would deliberately kill, though!)

"It is a fine tradition," Duke said, holding up the longboard he'd stolen from Danny for a clink. "I mean, I assume. I didn't actually know it was Father's Day until, like, a minute ago."

[firstofitskind]

The fact that Liam's own birthday followed on the heels of Father's Day made it a little harder to forget, for him.

He clinked the bottle together with Duke's obligingly. "Well, if it's tradition..."

[crimson_sister]

Lucille was walking along the beach, taking a break from her piano practice. The owner of the music shop had delivered the instrument yesterday, and her daily practice had turned into hours.

It had been a good way to use the last bit of money from a woman whose dead body was buried in a clay vat in a basement.

She noticed Danny, looking miserable. Lucille had no intention of trying to cheer him up, of course.

"Good afternoon," she greeted him with a tiny smile, her hands wrapped around the handle of her black lace umbrella.

[hatesparadise]

The whole original goth thing was totally making sense after having all of one conversation with her, yes.

"Good afternoon," he replied warily. And suspiciously. And maybe a little resigned. He contained multitudes!

[crimson_sister]

"It's a pleasant day, isn't it?" Lucille said, referring to the weather. "I'm getting used to sea air again."

[hatesparadise]

Danny squinted up at the sky like he was thinking about debating that with her. "You spend a lot of time by the ocean?"

[crimson_sister]

"I've lived most of my life in a house on a moor," Lucille replied. "I consider being on this island as being close to the ocean."

[hatesparadise]

"A moor?" Danny was gonna be stuck on that word, yeah. Just because he'd married an Englishwoman did not mean he was all about that lifestyle.