The Sea Ain't Mine Alone

by C. L. Beaumont

  James tightens his grip on Sydney’s neck as Sydney bites the lobe of his ear. He steels himself to feel that horrifying, familiar uncertainty coil thickly once more in his gut, cutting him off from the sparks of pleasure caused by Sydney’s hand on his cock. But when the feeling doesn’t come, James releases the air in his lungs and moans, wondering if it’s possible to feel light enough to just float up into the open sky.

  He gasps as Sydney’s thumb traces a slow circle around the tip of his penis, painting it in a cool, thin layer of saltwater fizzling against the heat of his skin—seeping between his foreskin and his full, bobbing cock. James reaches down into the water and touches the meeting place of Sydney’s fingertips against his unmistakable, screaming erection, stroking long and slow and firm.

  He groans, sounding shockingly loud in the still silence of the flat sea. The drips of saltwater from Sydney’s pumping forearm crackle in his ears. Echo across the rolling swells.

  James turns his face into Sydney’s chest. “What happens next?”

  He can feel Sydney’s small smirk against his ear, and James presses his hips back against the inside of Sydney’s thighs, biting his lip at the rasp of the board against the skin of his bare buttocks.

  Sydney kisses along his jaw from behind, barely controlling the shaking in his breathing. “Next you’d push just the tip of your finger inside me,” he breathes. “I’d clench around you. Hot and tight and pulling you in—”

  “God . . . yeah . . .”

  “Pulling you deeper. You’d watch your finger disappear inside me.”

  James nearly chokes on the air in his lungs. The thrumming desire building between his tense thighs suddenly shoots up his spine with a crackling heat, spreading down to his toes dangling limp and free in the water.

  Sydney thumbs at the dripping slit of James’ cock beneath the rippling ocean, causing the water to cloud with the small drips of precome leaking from the tip. Sydney breathes in deeply against James’ back, pressing into his spine, then James feels him look down over James’ shoulder at his own hand on James’ cock. Sydney curses under his breath, and James grabs frantically at Sydney’s thighs.

  “Take me in,” James whispers up at the sky. “Take me in you. Syd—”

  “You’d grab my hips so hard it hurt, and you’d push another finger in. You’d feel me stretching around you, sucking you inside so slowly.”

  James’ aching balls swell heavy and hot in his groin at the rumble of Sydney’s words. “Shit, Moore . . .”

  “You’d feel how tight I am.” Sydney’s unsteady voice pants in James’ ear. “How wet and hot. God,” he whines, “it’s been so fucking long.”

  Ah, that’s what does it.

  James’ hand flies down to grip Sydney’s wrist, stilling it on his cock just seconds before his orgasm explodes in a shockwave of shivering heat through his limbs. He laughs under his breath as he tries to get in enough air, and Sydney rests his curls against James’ shoulder, seemingly content to wait. The water flowing against his cock makes it bob obscenely in the current, begging to be stroked.

  “That was a close one,” James mumbles, unable to keep the smile from his lips.

  Sydney hums and licks his shoulder. “Hmm, problem?”

  James winds his fingers through a handful of curls, and he registers, distantly, in a half-dreaming and inappropriate-for-the-moment sort of way, that they feel just like the old, worn cotton of his childhood bedsheets. He realizes that he’s grinning in a way he never has during sex, the centuries ago that he last had it.

  His thumb twitches on Sydney’s smooth wrist. “Can’t finish yet. Need to get to the end of the story.”

  He feels Sydney’s cheek move into a smirk where it’s pressed against the side of his face. Sydney hesitates for a moment, turning his wrist within James’ palm, then reaches forward to trace just his fingertips around the base of James’ cock. He whispers, slowly, as if he’s going to be whispering in James’ ear until the end of time, and as if the ocean herself could hear. “Then I’d beg you for it. Beg you to hold me down and fuck me.”

  James’ entire body prickles, and his erection shoots up into Sydney’s hand. “Yeah . . .”

  “Beg you to take me.” Sydney pumps James’ erection until the water churns.

  “Shit . . .”

  “Pushing into me.”

  “God.”

  “Slapping into me.”

  “God . . .”

  James’ entire consciousness is focused on the tight grip of Sydney’s hand on his cock, which is hot and pulsing and thrusting once more into his fist. The roll of James’ hips rocks their board and shoots tiny waves through the calm water, rippling out from the center point of James’ body resting in the V of Sydney’s thighs. The saltwater rushes in smooth ribbons across his erection in Sydney’s hand, slicking the slow, deep slide of his palm on James’ skin and causing his pubic hairs to push and pull at his groin, leaving trails of shivers.

  Sydney cradles him in his huge palm, then twists hard at the tip. “Beg you to let me have it while you fuck my ass with your fingers.”

  James sighs, his stomach held so tense his muscles have become solid rock. He listens to the dangerously loud splashing of the water filling the whole expanse of the sea. And he thinks how he’s never felt sensation like this before in his life, pumping through his body in thrumming hot pulses the same way the fear had blasted through his bones in the jungle rain. How he’s never even had the guts to think about the words currently pouring from Sydney’s mouth. And he drinks them in with an open mouth and a moaning tongue; drinks them in like a man dying of thirst on dry land, gasping against Sydney’s chest as he lets himself be lost at sea to the sound of Sydney’s voice in his ear—the sweet pressure of Sydney’s hand, the hand which conquered Waimea, caressing James’ erection.

  “Come on,” he breathes, just as Sydney raggedly pants, “Can you see me? Can you see me on my hands and knees with your fingers fucking into my ass?”

  “Look at you . . .”

  “Can you hear how wet it is sliding into me? Hear me panting underneath you?”

  And God, his voice. It’s dangerous and throttling and electric and male. James moans as Sydney bites the lobe of his ear. He can feel Sydney’s own steel erection pressed into the low of his back, slowly thrusting against him for friction, adding to the splashing in the water. James nods, lost, and Sydney groans on a breath behind him.

  “You’d hold your own cock in your hand, wouldn’t you?” Sydney swallows hard and shudders, grasping to James’ body as if he’s going to collapse and sink. “Look down at how thick it is. Think about how you’re gonna shove it inside of me, wouldn’t you? How it’ll stretch me open—”

  “Fuck.” James does look down at Sydney’s huge fingers wrapped around his cock—pale, ghostly fingers through the clear water against flushed red. Looks at Sydney’s thin wrist plunging over and over again into the water as he strokes James slow and deep. James swallows hard over a wild sound in his throat, and Sydney Moore is so effortless, so brimming, so alive, and he wants to be fucked by him—

  “You’d grab your cock and brush it across my hole,” Sydney moans.

  His hand suddenly reaches down below James’ cock to grab roughly at his balls, rolling them in the water between his fingers while the tip of one finger strokes lightly over James’ perineum, sending a burst of tight, crackling heat up through the tip of James’ aching cock.

  James’ cries out, an embarrassingly high sound, and Sydney gasps in his ear.

  “Watch it flutter around you. Watch the tip of your cock drip around the rim of my ass. You’d watch that, wouldn’t you?”

  “God, yeah, Moore . . . look at you . . .”

  Sydney grips him harder, hand flying faster over James’ hard cock, turning the water into a churning rush of foam and spray between James’ legs.

  “You’d push your thick cock inside of me, wouldn’t you?”

  James groans as Sydney’s other hand pinche
s his nipple, and he pushes his chest into the touch of his hand, desperately arching his back.

  Sydney licks a stripe up the side of James’ neck, messy and uncontrolled. “You’d sink into me and feel how fucking tight it is. Watch your cock disappear into me. Listen to me pant for it.”

  “Fuck yes, Moore, God I’d fuck you . . . I’ve wanted—”

  “You’d fuck me, pump your thick cock into me, push inside of me and stretch me open around you—”

  “Shit—”

  “You’d be so heavy—”

  “Sydney fucking Moore.”

  “Can you feel it? Can you feel yourself fucking into my ass? Can you feel me hot and wet around you?”

  “God, you’re touching yourself . . .”

  “Feel your balls slap against me, full and heavy and hanging—”

  “God, take it. Fuck, I’m in you. I’m inside you. Take it—”

  “Fuck me,” Sydney suddenly cries. “Shit, that’s it. That’s it . . .”

  James thrusts into Sydney’s fist, eyes shut tight and watching his own cock sink deeper into Sydney’s body again and again in his mind, disappearing between the curves of his ass to the wet, frantic slap of skin on skin. He grips at a handful of Sydney’s hair with the hand reaching behind to his neck, feels Sydney’s ragged breaths shaking against his cheek. The aching hot steel of Sydney’s cock rutting against his back, thrusting through the waves.

  James burns through his fingertips and summons his deepest voice. He thinks of the way Sydney’s curls had elegantly fanned out into the sand after that first night on the shore. His open, bright face . . .

  He steels himself and licks his dry lips.

  “You’d feel my tags hanging down onto your back, huh?” James growls.

  Sydney yelps. James could sit there for a million years and not be able to come up with a better word than ‘yelps’. The sound of it pours a fat, curling drip of precome from James’ cock into the sea, and Sydney isn’t even sitting up straight anymore, but leaning onto him, leaning against him, as if he’s relying only on the strength of James’ body to keep him afloat in the sea—the Danny Moore.

  His Danny Moore.

  James tries again. “Think about my hands gripping you like a gun. Fucking gripping you like I’m crawling down in the mud. Pounding you like firing off a bullet—”

  “Oh my God—”

  “Or would you want me in uniform? All pressed and clean. No sweat. Just my cock hanging out of my zipper, fucking you down . . .”

  Sydney grunts a frantic curse and works James faster, twisting his wrist at the top of his cock before plunging back down again and again to the base. “God, you’d feel so good,” he moans, like he’s drifting and gone, like he’s being held down with his face pressed into a table, like he’s shaking the whole ground.

  James’ hand joins Sydney’s on his cock, guiding his hand to squeeze harder along his already hard as steel erection, freely leaking into the water and coiled tight. “Fuck, you . . .”

  Sydney collapses against his back, rolling his hips hard against James’ spine. “So fucking good in me. James. Taking me . . .”

  “So tight—”

  “Fucking me until I can’t breathe,” Sydney cries. “Filling me with you. Holding me down and—”

  “Shit, I’m gonna come. I’m gonna . . . Syd . . . Fuck—”

  James gasps hard, gulping down a lungful of air as Sydney’s hand grips his cock harder than ever before and pulls.

  Cool saltwater rushes over his cock in the wake of Sydney’s palm, exploding across his hot and pulsing skin in bursts of cold foam as James groans deep in his chest and finally comes.

  Sydney’s other arm grips him by the chest, pulling James back and close into his body as he plasters himself along James’ skin. His shaking fingertips reach up to trail along James’ neck as James throws his head back towards the sky, groaning out the last waves of his orgasm shattering through his bones. It gushes across the surface of the sea, hurtling out towards the horizon from the point of Sydney’s palm still caressing his loosening balls in the churning water.

  Sydney whispers into his ear like he’s just run a marathon and swum across the entire Pacific Ocean in a row. “I . . . I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  James laughs up at the fully risen sun, his voice raspy and nearly gone. “Well . . .” he clears his throat. “Turns out we both have our . . things.”

  Sydney’s answering hum and chuckle vibrate down his back like warm water. James looks down as the last humming pulses of his orgasm roll through his body in hot waves. He watches Sydney’s hand barely touch his cock in the water, thumb ghosting slowly up his length. The once-crystal water is clouded with his semen, swirling gently in the waves caused from the thrusting rocks of their board.

  James breathes out a deep sigh and collapses back against Sydney, one hand still reaching back to grip a handful of his curls.

  “Shit,” he whispers. It sounds like the tingling wave of muffled silence that had descended on the pristine Vietnam beach right after he fell.

  Sydney’s cock is still pressed thick and hot into his back, but somehow, it only makes James feel even more relaxed and calm. James closes his eyes and hums limply as Sydney’s hands cup palmfuls of the saltwater clouded with James’ release and brings them up to pour it down James’ chest. It cascades in a cool stream over his sensitive nipples and pools in the muscles of his stomach before trailing back into the rippling sea.

  Sydney tucks his arms around James’ waist still submerged beneath the water and rests his cheek on James’ shoulder, utterly still. James tries to slow his breathing, focusing on the rise and fall of Sydney’s chest against his back, and the fizzling waves of release still silently pulsing out from between his thighs and through his muscles. The sun-warmed kiss of the water against his skin.

  Sydney kisses James’ shoulder for a long time, holding his lips just there in the dip of James’ collarbone. Then he whispers into his skin in the newly formed silence. “I really do love you, you know.”

  James smiles with his eyes closed against the piercing sun, his throat tight. “I know,” he whispers.

  James is just about to try and turn around to get his hands on Sydney’s body—to kiss him and sigh into him and feel Sydney utterly fall apart in his safe, stroking hands. But Sydney suddenly slips off the board behind him, back into the water, causing James to jolt up to the surface and scramble on the board for balance.

  He watches, utterly confused, as Sydney’s naked body glides effortlessly through the water over to his board, which had floated a ways away, cutting through the sparkling surface with his cupped palms and causing light, tinkling splashes to echo in James’ ears. Sydney climbs up onto his board with a grunt and paddles back towards James until they’re side by side. Then he straddles his board and perches beside James looking straight out at the horizon, his erection still rising proudly between his legs.

  James watches this silently, tongue caught in his mouth.

  He’s not sure what the hell just happened. A slow fear starts to build at the base of his spine—that he said something wrong, or didn’t say or do enough, or said or did too much. That what had come out of his mouth when Sydney’s hand was on him had taken the fantasy way too far, too fast.

  Sydney sits beside him, somehow godlike and untouchable, pink light dripping down across his bare and glistening skin as his chest rises and falls with his even breathing. James clenches his fist not to reach out and touch him, wanting to bridge the sudden distance that had expanded between them in the seconds between James’ orgasm and Sydney sliding off his board.

  Then Sydney takes a deep breath, licks his lips, and speaks calm and firm, eyes still roaming out over the horizon.

  “You told me, before, that you wanted to get married.”

  It’s the absolute last thing James expected Sydney to open his mouth and say. He reels for a moment, desperately trying to sort the last few days of his life into place like a pu
zzle blown to pieces by the wind. Like he’s still got a lieutenant over his shoulder screaming bullets at him to put the fucking thing back together, missing pieces or no, I said now, soldier!

  And then he’s gripped with an unbearably sharp sadness. Because Sydney can’t still think . . . not after everything, after what they’ve said, that James is still thinking of getting back on a plane, of saying, “peace, man, later” and then finding a pretty girl, getting down on one knee . . .

  And he’s also angry, because after everything he’s done, everything he’s said, Sydney can’t possibly still think . . .

  And James Campbell knows that he was supposed to end up going absolutely mad, or begging for spare cash on the streets, or drinking a gallon of liquor a day, but he surfed, and therefore he didn’t end up doing any of those things, and if Sydney Moore recognizes all that and still thinks James is somehow incapable of commitment, of sticking true to his word, to himself, then . . .

  And James may not have been fully himself for the last three decades but he sure as hell is now, and even the stars saw it, and he came back fully expecting to be turned away on the shore with all his belongings in his hands, knew that Sydney had absolutely every right to say, “Thanks but no thanks, remember you left?”

  But James still came, and he told Sydney he’d never been with a man before, and he said “I love you.”

  James wonders if Sydney didn’t just find some sort of switch for his emotions that first time they met. If he didn’t shoot magic spells at him from across the pier and flip on the invisible switch that had been switched off since James woke up to an empty trailer. Since he saw whipped cream in his own blood.

  And shit, Sydney’s still sitting there, quiet as stone. Waiting.

  James finally kicks into gear a few seconds too late and barely stops himself from stammering in complete incoherence. “Sydney, you can’t be—yeah, I know I said that. I did say that. But that was before. I don’t still . . . I mean, I just told you last night, I’m in this, so you can’t still thi—”