simarillion (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
simarillion) wrote2009-05-05 03:49 pm
simarillion) wrote2009-05-05 03:49 pm
FIC: "An Tus Don Stoirm" (1/10)
Author: Simarillion
Archive: Daunting Byron
Pairing: Colin/Orli, (hinted Sean B/Viggo)
Rating: R/Nc-17 (will turn out as the story progresses)
Warning: This story is RPS which means Real Person Slash. It has Homo-erotic content (m/m) and everybody not comfortable with this topic should not read any further.
Summary: The Farrell's, an Irish family living in the States move to Santa Monica. where the father has a new job. There Colin meets a beautiful stranger who becomes his only ray of light.
Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine. They are all their own persons and I don't claim to know anything of their sexual preferences or habits. Also I want to make clear that all of this is invented and not used to make profit.
Notes: This story is an AU and therefore the age and also the professions of the characters have been changed to accommodate the plot. The idea of this story came up when I thought about what to write with an Colin/Orli pairing. Rotschopf asked me on the Archives Tag board when there would be something to read from me. Well, here it is. Unfortunately I couldn't come up with anything in Real World but somehow I thought about this story. I hope that AUs are allowed in this group.
A thousand thanks to Doodle who betaed this for me.
CHAPTER ONE
Colin looked out of the window and watched the landscape pass by blurring into a mixture of greens, browns and blues. They were driving to their new home. Well, rather to what would become their new home, because right now the unknown place they were heading for didn't feel like home at all to Colin. Somehow it was like leaving your safe haven and moving to unknown dangerous territory.
After Colin’s father had stopped playing football, he begun working for an insurance agency and now Eamon had been promoted. This was the reason why the Farrell family had sold their house in Greenleaf and was currently on their way to their new home in Santa Monica. Catherine was exited about moving to the big city but Colin feared the change. He wasn't normally somebody to be afraid of anything. In fact he was known for his recklessness but for some reason this newest development didn’t feel right. He knew something was about to happen. Something bad.
"Oh, come on. Cheer up, Colin! You're all doom and gloom." Catherine hugged her little brother and ruffled his already spiky hair. She knew how he felt about Santa Monica but she had hoped that in the two months they had been preparing to move he would have come to terms with the inevitable. "It's not like somebody has to die or somethin'."
Even if he wanted to, Colin wouldn't have been able to laugh. "Yeah, sure." He kept staring out of the car and ignored his sister's attempts at cheering him up. He didn't feel like it being happy at the moment. The green of the fields and meadows outside slowly turned into the beige of sand and ripe corn. It was high summer and soon they would be harvested.
"Now com on, there has to be something a sixteen-year-old bloke like you likes about Santa Monica!" She let go of him and turned to look out of her own window the girl magazine in her lap forgotten, brooding about her brother's sadness. "I really don't understand why you make all this fuss about it."
"Catherine darling, leave it be, hmm?" Rita turned in her seat to look at her children sitting in the back of the car and smiled at her son. She knew that nothing they would say could change Colin's mind. "I am sure Colin will do well in our new home and he'll feel better in no time at all."
Colin just wished they would stop talking and leave him alone. It was bad enough that he Eamon checking on him every five minutes in the mirror, but he really didn't need his mother getting excited and worked up as well. "Sure, it will be terrific there," Even to his own ears his voice sounded bored and uninterested.
"Colin, please try to at least pretend that you can stand moving." Eamon glared at him through the rear-view mirror, and from the look of it he had been bottling up all his anger and annoyance at his son's behavior. Eyes sparkling dangerously and his hands clenching the steering wheel he looked like a predator ready to attack.
Turning his head away from the window Colin looked into his father's mirrored eyes and sighed. "I'd prefer it if you kept your eyes on the road instead of me. " Frowning he watched his father sending him another death glare before returning his eyes to the road ahead. Colin glanced at his mother and forced himself to smile weakly. "I’m okay mum, really. You don't have to worry about me." Rita smiled encouragingly at him and turned back around until she sat again in her seat returning to reading the newest book by Isabella Allende. Colin stared ahead listlessly and thought about everything he had had to leave behind. It was not only that he missed the familiar house and the neighborhood, he missed his friends.
He had promised Shaun and Craig to invite them for a week once they had got settled in but he wished he hadn't had to leave them in the first place. Colin didn't have a lot of friends. He’d go along with people easily enough but he didn't trust others and there were only two people that had managed to reach him and really befriend him. They were the most precious people in his life beside his family.
Shaun was two years older and would finish school this year. He had lived next door to them and the earliest memory he had of him was a nervous boy standing in front of his sand box asking him if it was true that Colin's father played football. The seven-year old boy stared at him with sparkling emerald eyes as Colin told him about his father's job. Soon after that the golden-haired boy was visiting him again but this time he had a small photo camera with him and asked him shyly if he would be allowed to take a photo of his father. Colin promised him that he could come to his father's next match if Shaun's parents agreed and from then on the two boys had been as good as glued together. Nothing or no-one could separate them.
In the third year of elementary school they got a new pupil. His name was Craig and he had moved to Greenleaf with his family from Fidji in New Zealand. The sepia-haired boy was very shy and soon was the punch bag of his stronger classmates. When Colin found the small boy one day shivering and beaten up sitting under the teacher's table he decided to take him under his wings. Craig had been eternally grateful for Colin's help who in turn had nothing to fear because Shaun was always there to help him out.
Soon the three of them were best friends and caused havoc and mischief whereever they went. They even refused to spend the holidays without the other two so whenever one of them left on a holiday the others would be taken with them.
It had come as quite a shock to all three of them when Colin's father had got promoted and told them that Colin would leave Greenleaf and move to Santa Monica. Craig had cried his eyes out. He looked even more miserable than the day Colin had found him under the teacher's desk all those years ago. Colin had promised to write them, invite them and visit them as often as possible but all three of them knew that these times would be rare. On his last evening in Greenleaf Shaun and Craig had invited him to Craig's and they had spent the evening planning the two other's stay once Colin's family had moved in and unpacked.
This visit was like a light at the end of the tunnel for Colin. He was clinging onto the happiness of meeting friends again and endured silently the happenings around him.
-~o0*0o~-
It was already dark outside when they finally arrived at their house on 2nd street. The air was warm but fresh from the nearby ocean and it was filled with music from the bars and restaurants on the Third Street Promenade.
The Mitsubishi Space Waggon stopped in front of a white house and one after the other the four doors of the car opened and the members of the Farrell family got out. Colin stopped in the driveway and looked at the house warily. He really did not want to go in there. The white building consisted of two floors and a cellar. It had a porch in the front and a terrace in the back. The garden was not as big as the one they had had in Greenleaf but it was big enough for them. There were was a huge palm tree next to two other trees next to the sidewalk and some potted flowers on the porch.
"Wow, dad that looks great." Catherine happily bounded up to the front door and dance around the porch. Her eyes gleaming with joy she laughed excited. "I love it already."
Colin scowled and helped his father heave their luggage out of the trunk while Catherine and Rita inspected the garden at the front and the porch. "Eamon, you have to park the car in the driveway." Colin's mother took the keys out of her pocked and unlocked the door. She opened it and entered after an enthusiastic Catherine who was already running upstairs to search out the most beautiful room for herself.
Eamon rolled his eyes upon hearing his wife's advice about the car and carried the first two suitcases inside. Colin watched his father's bent back and thought about what how he felt now that they had arrived here. He breathed in the salty air and had to admit that living so close to the sea was promising. Still he was unsure about what to expect from their new life here. Still deep in his thoughts he took two other suitcases and dragged them over and into the house.
The stairs of the porch were a little crooked and squeaked lightly when somebody stepped on them but the whole thing was clean and smelled of dried wood. Entering the house he stood in the entrance hall and looked around. There was a staircase ahead, which led to the upper floor. Next to it was a corridor to the back and the living room. On Colin's right was the door to the dining room and on his left was his father's working room. With another long sigh Colin carried the heavy suitcases upstairs to the bedrooms.
Catherine squealed with joy as she danced around her new room and Colin could hear his mother laughing happily, telling his father how much she approved of the house. After taking a look at the nametag on the suitcases, Colin carried on of them to his ecstatic sister and the other on to his parents.
The first room on the right of the staircase was the to be the bedroom of his parents and the room exactly opposite the staircase was Catherine's which only left the one on the left and right next to the bathroom for Colin. Slowly and uncertain he approached the door of it. He pushed down the handle of the door, swung the door open and stepped inside. Turning on the light he scanned the interior of the room and decided that it definitely looked better than he had feared it would be like. The room was spacious with white painted unadorned walls. There was a big window looking out over the garden and you could see glimpses of the beach and the sea from it. The furniture was a little sparse but it had been decided that they would buy new things anyway. Walking around Colin took a closer look at everything and stopped in front of the window to look out.
Checking out the room had captured his attention and so Colin didn’t realised that the noises of his family had died out and there was silence in the house. After staring at the garden for a couple of minutes he turned round only to be confronted with his family standing in the door and looking at him expectantly. He almost laughed out loud upon seeing their nervous faces. "I like the room. Not much furniture yet, but it's quite big and has a great view." Colin swore he heard a collective sigh of relief. He smiled at them and stepped closer. "Let's finish dragging our stuff inside. I want to shower and change my clothes. I feel dirty."
"Oh, no! Mum! I want to be the first in the shower!" Catherine wailed and whined upon hearing her brother's words. "I want to go and check out the beach and the promenade."
Her mother shook her head and turned away walking back to her and her husband's bedroom to start unpacking the suitcases. Colin followed his father downstairs and helped him carry the rest of the luggage inside.
He had promised Catherine to let her shower first if he was allowed to come with her to the beach. He was not really interested in seeing the promenade but couldn't wait to get to the beach. Colin opened the first of three suitcases and put his clothes on bed. In this one were all his shirts and pullovers. Searching for a place to put his clothes he decided to put them on the desk. Laying out the shirts and the pullovers he found his favourite blue 'fishermans excuse shirt' and put it on his bed to wear it later to the beach. The second suitcase had the shoes and the coats and jackets in it, which meant that the third was the one with the trousers and the underwear.
Colin was putting the rest of the clothes on the desk when his sister peeked inside. "Finished. It's your turn." She walked away to her room. "We go in half an hour."
Colin grabbed a pair of bleached jeans, his shirt and boxer shorts and sauntered over to the bathroom. Laying the clean clothes on the floor he stripped out of the dirty ones he was wearing and dropped them in a corner where already Catherines’s clothes were lying and got into the shower. The warm water felt like heaven and Colin started to scrub off the grime and sweat from the long drive. He soaped his body and washed his hair with his sister's coconut shampoo. After ten more minutes under the relaxing and cleansing spray Colin turned it off and stepped out of the shower cubicle. He grabbed a big towel and toweled himself dry, tousling his hair in the process. He dressed and headed for his room where he chose a pair of light blue flip-flops and walked downstairs.
"Finished already?" Rita sat in the living room and rested her feet on a chair. She smiled tiredly at her son. "Your Dad and I are going to go and buy something for dinner. Should we get something for the two of you or would you prefer we give you some money to get something of your own?"
Before Colin even got the chance to respond to his mother's question his sister said, "We'll buy something of our own." She breezed past him in a turquoise summer dress and brown sandals. She pocketed the money and hugged Rita. "Till later mum!"
"Have fun you two!" Rita watched her children leave and sighed tiredly. She sat back on her chair and closed her eyes.
-~o0*0o~-
Catherine had chatted up two tanned blonde beach boys and left Colin on his own almost straight away, not that he minded. It meant that he could do whatever he pleased. He had no money but at least nobody told him what to do.
He walked down the beach away from the noise and the bright lights to a more quiet area. The sand was still warm and very soft, his flip-flops sunk into it and filling with the pale grains. Colin saw out on the water a group of people on their surfboards waiting for the next good wave to come in. Sighing he walked on and thought about what he would do now that he was in a city where everything resolved about surfing and the sea. He knew how to ride a horse but nobody had ever thought him how to ride a wave.
The waves lapping at the shore and the distant sounds of music were very soothing and calming. Colin strolled further down the beach to where no houses could be seen anymore and plopped down on the sand. Closing his eyes he held his breath counting to thirty until his head started to swim and his lungs to burn. Taking a deep breath Colin opened his eyes again and stared at the starry sky above. He wished he could return back to Greenleaf and to Shaun and Craig.
He heard laughing and jumped up as somebody almost stepped onto him. Angry he turned to the person only to stare at him open-mouthed as he came face to face with the most beautiful man he had ever seen. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t a man. In fact he looked to be about the same age as Colin. He had dark brown silky curls framing a dramatic face, all angular cheekbones and olive skin. Equally dark big eyes sparkled in the moonlight and his full lips were curled in a smile.
When Colin had himself enough under control to tear his eyes away from these luscious lips and close his gaping mouth he cleared his throat and looked into the other's eyes. The amusement dancing in them suddenly annoyed Colin and he turned his back to the intruder walking swiftly back to the direction he had come from.
He ignored the laughter behind him and quickened his pace.
Colin almost ran the rest of the way to where he had left his sister. As he had expected Catherine had already left and now he found himself alone on the dark and deserted beach. He turned his back to the sandy dunes and walked up Santa Monica Bvd to 2nd Street.
Crickets chirped and the noise of the cafes and bars of the Third Street Promenade wafted up to his ears. Sighing Colin strolled up to the white house they were now living in and saw that all the lights were off. So his parents weren’t home yet. Cursing under his breath Colin sat down on the stairs of to the porch and waited for his family to come home. He watched the people walking to and from the Promenade and sighed. This could take some time. Catherine was out trying to get acquainted with the local teenager population and his parents were out eating. Unfortunately he was the only one without keys because Catherine had the second one, until they had one cut for him.
Looking to his right Colin held his breath as he spotted him again. Well, he didn’t have to spot him. The gorgeous guy from the beach was walking up to their house, heading for Colin. The lights of the light of the moon and the street lamps and porch lights of the street shimmered softly in the silky hair and gave the olive skin a subtle golden gleam. Nervously Colin dug his fingers into the wooden planks of the stairs, tiny splinters burying in his skin.
Just as Colin thought that the mysterious one would walk up to the porch he passed Colin by and carried on further down the street. Apparently returning home from a long day at the beach. The lean but muscled body moved down to the end of the street and turned right disappearing around the corner and leaving Colin alone, his heart beating fast in his chest.
He could almost feel the tension knotting his muscles as he clenched his teeth together hard. “Geez, get a grip,” Colin reprimanded himself. Rubbing his tired eyes he yawned and let all the tension and the nervousness leave him, his tired and exhausted frame all that was left behind. “Hope that they’ll be here soon.” Leaning against the railing of the stairs he closed the heavy lids of his eyes and drifted off to sleep his last thoughts about the beautiful stranger.
(tbc)
Archive: Daunting Byron
Pairing: Colin/Orli, (hinted Sean B/Viggo)
Rating: R/Nc-17 (will turn out as the story progresses)
Warning: This story is RPS which means Real Person Slash. It has Homo-erotic content (m/m) and everybody not comfortable with this topic should not read any further.
Summary: The Farrell's, an Irish family living in the States move to Santa Monica. where the father has a new job. There Colin meets a beautiful stranger who becomes his only ray of light.
Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine. They are all their own persons and I don't claim to know anything of their sexual preferences or habits. Also I want to make clear that all of this is invented and not used to make profit.
Notes: This story is an AU and therefore the age and also the professions of the characters have been changed to accommodate the plot. The idea of this story came up when I thought about what to write with an Colin/Orli pairing. Rotschopf asked me on the Archives Tag board when there would be something to read from me. Well, here it is. Unfortunately I couldn't come up with anything in Real World but somehow I thought about this story. I hope that AUs are allowed in this group.
A thousand thanks to Doodle who betaed this for me.
CHAPTER ONE
Colin looked out of the window and watched the landscape pass by blurring into a mixture of greens, browns and blues. They were driving to their new home. Well, rather to what would become their new home, because right now the unknown place they were heading for didn't feel like home at all to Colin. Somehow it was like leaving your safe haven and moving to unknown dangerous territory.
After Colin’s father had stopped playing football, he begun working for an insurance agency and now Eamon had been promoted. This was the reason why the Farrell family had sold their house in Greenleaf and was currently on their way to their new home in Santa Monica. Catherine was exited about moving to the big city but Colin feared the change. He wasn't normally somebody to be afraid of anything. In fact he was known for his recklessness but for some reason this newest development didn’t feel right. He knew something was about to happen. Something bad.
"Oh, come on. Cheer up, Colin! You're all doom and gloom." Catherine hugged her little brother and ruffled his already spiky hair. She knew how he felt about Santa Monica but she had hoped that in the two months they had been preparing to move he would have come to terms with the inevitable. "It's not like somebody has to die or somethin'."
Even if he wanted to, Colin wouldn't have been able to laugh. "Yeah, sure." He kept staring out of the car and ignored his sister's attempts at cheering him up. He didn't feel like it being happy at the moment. The green of the fields and meadows outside slowly turned into the beige of sand and ripe corn. It was high summer and soon they would be harvested.
"Now com on, there has to be something a sixteen-year-old bloke like you likes about Santa Monica!" She let go of him and turned to look out of her own window the girl magazine in her lap forgotten, brooding about her brother's sadness. "I really don't understand why you make all this fuss about it."
"Catherine darling, leave it be, hmm?" Rita turned in her seat to look at her children sitting in the back of the car and smiled at her son. She knew that nothing they would say could change Colin's mind. "I am sure Colin will do well in our new home and he'll feel better in no time at all."
Colin just wished they would stop talking and leave him alone. It was bad enough that he Eamon checking on him every five minutes in the mirror, but he really didn't need his mother getting excited and worked up as well. "Sure, it will be terrific there," Even to his own ears his voice sounded bored and uninterested.
"Colin, please try to at least pretend that you can stand moving." Eamon glared at him through the rear-view mirror, and from the look of it he had been bottling up all his anger and annoyance at his son's behavior. Eyes sparkling dangerously and his hands clenching the steering wheel he looked like a predator ready to attack.
Turning his head away from the window Colin looked into his father's mirrored eyes and sighed. "I'd prefer it if you kept your eyes on the road instead of me. " Frowning he watched his father sending him another death glare before returning his eyes to the road ahead. Colin glanced at his mother and forced himself to smile weakly. "I’m okay mum, really. You don't have to worry about me." Rita smiled encouragingly at him and turned back around until she sat again in her seat returning to reading the newest book by Isabella Allende. Colin stared ahead listlessly and thought about everything he had had to leave behind. It was not only that he missed the familiar house and the neighborhood, he missed his friends.
He had promised Shaun and Craig to invite them for a week once they had got settled in but he wished he hadn't had to leave them in the first place. Colin didn't have a lot of friends. He’d go along with people easily enough but he didn't trust others and there were only two people that had managed to reach him and really befriend him. They were the most precious people in his life beside his family.
Shaun was two years older and would finish school this year. He had lived next door to them and the earliest memory he had of him was a nervous boy standing in front of his sand box asking him if it was true that Colin's father played football. The seven-year old boy stared at him with sparkling emerald eyes as Colin told him about his father's job. Soon after that the golden-haired boy was visiting him again but this time he had a small photo camera with him and asked him shyly if he would be allowed to take a photo of his father. Colin promised him that he could come to his father's next match if Shaun's parents agreed and from then on the two boys had been as good as glued together. Nothing or no-one could separate them.
In the third year of elementary school they got a new pupil. His name was Craig and he had moved to Greenleaf with his family from Fidji in New Zealand. The sepia-haired boy was very shy and soon was the punch bag of his stronger classmates. When Colin found the small boy one day shivering and beaten up sitting under the teacher's table he decided to take him under his wings. Craig had been eternally grateful for Colin's help who in turn had nothing to fear because Shaun was always there to help him out.
Soon the three of them were best friends and caused havoc and mischief whereever they went. They even refused to spend the holidays without the other two so whenever one of them left on a holiday the others would be taken with them.
It had come as quite a shock to all three of them when Colin's father had got promoted and told them that Colin would leave Greenleaf and move to Santa Monica. Craig had cried his eyes out. He looked even more miserable than the day Colin had found him under the teacher's desk all those years ago. Colin had promised to write them, invite them and visit them as often as possible but all three of them knew that these times would be rare. On his last evening in Greenleaf Shaun and Craig had invited him to Craig's and they had spent the evening planning the two other's stay once Colin's family had moved in and unpacked.
This visit was like a light at the end of the tunnel for Colin. He was clinging onto the happiness of meeting friends again and endured silently the happenings around him.
-~o0*0o~-
It was already dark outside when they finally arrived at their house on 2nd street. The air was warm but fresh from the nearby ocean and it was filled with music from the bars and restaurants on the Third Street Promenade.
The Mitsubishi Space Waggon stopped in front of a white house and one after the other the four doors of the car opened and the members of the Farrell family got out. Colin stopped in the driveway and looked at the house warily. He really did not want to go in there. The white building consisted of two floors and a cellar. It had a porch in the front and a terrace in the back. The garden was not as big as the one they had had in Greenleaf but it was big enough for them. There were was a huge palm tree next to two other trees next to the sidewalk and some potted flowers on the porch.
"Wow, dad that looks great." Catherine happily bounded up to the front door and dance around the porch. Her eyes gleaming with joy she laughed excited. "I love it already."
Colin scowled and helped his father heave their luggage out of the trunk while Catherine and Rita inspected the garden at the front and the porch. "Eamon, you have to park the car in the driveway." Colin's mother took the keys out of her pocked and unlocked the door. She opened it and entered after an enthusiastic Catherine who was already running upstairs to search out the most beautiful room for herself.
Eamon rolled his eyes upon hearing his wife's advice about the car and carried the first two suitcases inside. Colin watched his father's bent back and thought about what how he felt now that they had arrived here. He breathed in the salty air and had to admit that living so close to the sea was promising. Still he was unsure about what to expect from their new life here. Still deep in his thoughts he took two other suitcases and dragged them over and into the house.
The stairs of the porch were a little crooked and squeaked lightly when somebody stepped on them but the whole thing was clean and smelled of dried wood. Entering the house he stood in the entrance hall and looked around. There was a staircase ahead, which led to the upper floor. Next to it was a corridor to the back and the living room. On Colin's right was the door to the dining room and on his left was his father's working room. With another long sigh Colin carried the heavy suitcases upstairs to the bedrooms.
Catherine squealed with joy as she danced around her new room and Colin could hear his mother laughing happily, telling his father how much she approved of the house. After taking a look at the nametag on the suitcases, Colin carried on of them to his ecstatic sister and the other on to his parents.
The first room on the right of the staircase was the to be the bedroom of his parents and the room exactly opposite the staircase was Catherine's which only left the one on the left and right next to the bathroom for Colin. Slowly and uncertain he approached the door of it. He pushed down the handle of the door, swung the door open and stepped inside. Turning on the light he scanned the interior of the room and decided that it definitely looked better than he had feared it would be like. The room was spacious with white painted unadorned walls. There was a big window looking out over the garden and you could see glimpses of the beach and the sea from it. The furniture was a little sparse but it had been decided that they would buy new things anyway. Walking around Colin took a closer look at everything and stopped in front of the window to look out.
Checking out the room had captured his attention and so Colin didn’t realised that the noises of his family had died out and there was silence in the house. After staring at the garden for a couple of minutes he turned round only to be confronted with his family standing in the door and looking at him expectantly. He almost laughed out loud upon seeing their nervous faces. "I like the room. Not much furniture yet, but it's quite big and has a great view." Colin swore he heard a collective sigh of relief. He smiled at them and stepped closer. "Let's finish dragging our stuff inside. I want to shower and change my clothes. I feel dirty."
"Oh, no! Mum! I want to be the first in the shower!" Catherine wailed and whined upon hearing her brother's words. "I want to go and check out the beach and the promenade."
Her mother shook her head and turned away walking back to her and her husband's bedroom to start unpacking the suitcases. Colin followed his father downstairs and helped him carry the rest of the luggage inside.
He had promised Catherine to let her shower first if he was allowed to come with her to the beach. He was not really interested in seeing the promenade but couldn't wait to get to the beach. Colin opened the first of three suitcases and put his clothes on bed. In this one were all his shirts and pullovers. Searching for a place to put his clothes he decided to put them on the desk. Laying out the shirts and the pullovers he found his favourite blue 'fishermans excuse shirt' and put it on his bed to wear it later to the beach. The second suitcase had the shoes and the coats and jackets in it, which meant that the third was the one with the trousers and the underwear.
Colin was putting the rest of the clothes on the desk when his sister peeked inside. "Finished. It's your turn." She walked away to her room. "We go in half an hour."
Colin grabbed a pair of bleached jeans, his shirt and boxer shorts and sauntered over to the bathroom. Laying the clean clothes on the floor he stripped out of the dirty ones he was wearing and dropped them in a corner where already Catherines’s clothes were lying and got into the shower. The warm water felt like heaven and Colin started to scrub off the grime and sweat from the long drive. He soaped his body and washed his hair with his sister's coconut shampoo. After ten more minutes under the relaxing and cleansing spray Colin turned it off and stepped out of the shower cubicle. He grabbed a big towel and toweled himself dry, tousling his hair in the process. He dressed and headed for his room where he chose a pair of light blue flip-flops and walked downstairs.
"Finished already?" Rita sat in the living room and rested her feet on a chair. She smiled tiredly at her son. "Your Dad and I are going to go and buy something for dinner. Should we get something for the two of you or would you prefer we give you some money to get something of your own?"
Before Colin even got the chance to respond to his mother's question his sister said, "We'll buy something of our own." She breezed past him in a turquoise summer dress and brown sandals. She pocketed the money and hugged Rita. "Till later mum!"
"Have fun you two!" Rita watched her children leave and sighed tiredly. She sat back on her chair and closed her eyes.
-~o0*0o~-
Catherine had chatted up two tanned blonde beach boys and left Colin on his own almost straight away, not that he minded. It meant that he could do whatever he pleased. He had no money but at least nobody told him what to do.
He walked down the beach away from the noise and the bright lights to a more quiet area. The sand was still warm and very soft, his flip-flops sunk into it and filling with the pale grains. Colin saw out on the water a group of people on their surfboards waiting for the next good wave to come in. Sighing he walked on and thought about what he would do now that he was in a city where everything resolved about surfing and the sea. He knew how to ride a horse but nobody had ever thought him how to ride a wave.
The waves lapping at the shore and the distant sounds of music were very soothing and calming. Colin strolled further down the beach to where no houses could be seen anymore and plopped down on the sand. Closing his eyes he held his breath counting to thirty until his head started to swim and his lungs to burn. Taking a deep breath Colin opened his eyes again and stared at the starry sky above. He wished he could return back to Greenleaf and to Shaun and Craig.
He heard laughing and jumped up as somebody almost stepped onto him. Angry he turned to the person only to stare at him open-mouthed as he came face to face with the most beautiful man he had ever seen. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t a man. In fact he looked to be about the same age as Colin. He had dark brown silky curls framing a dramatic face, all angular cheekbones and olive skin. Equally dark big eyes sparkled in the moonlight and his full lips were curled in a smile.
When Colin had himself enough under control to tear his eyes away from these luscious lips and close his gaping mouth he cleared his throat and looked into the other's eyes. The amusement dancing in them suddenly annoyed Colin and he turned his back to the intruder walking swiftly back to the direction he had come from.
He ignored the laughter behind him and quickened his pace.
Colin almost ran the rest of the way to where he had left his sister. As he had expected Catherine had already left and now he found himself alone on the dark and deserted beach. He turned his back to the sandy dunes and walked up Santa Monica Bvd to 2nd Street.
Crickets chirped and the noise of the cafes and bars of the Third Street Promenade wafted up to his ears. Sighing Colin strolled up to the white house they were now living in and saw that all the lights were off. So his parents weren’t home yet. Cursing under his breath Colin sat down on the stairs of to the porch and waited for his family to come home. He watched the people walking to and from the Promenade and sighed. This could take some time. Catherine was out trying to get acquainted with the local teenager population and his parents were out eating. Unfortunately he was the only one without keys because Catherine had the second one, until they had one cut for him.
Looking to his right Colin held his breath as he spotted him again. Well, he didn’t have to spot him. The gorgeous guy from the beach was walking up to their house, heading for Colin. The lights of the light of the moon and the street lamps and porch lights of the street shimmered softly in the silky hair and gave the olive skin a subtle golden gleam. Nervously Colin dug his fingers into the wooden planks of the stairs, tiny splinters burying in his skin.
Just as Colin thought that the mysterious one would walk up to the porch he passed Colin by and carried on further down the street. Apparently returning home from a long day at the beach. The lean but muscled body moved down to the end of the street and turned right disappearing around the corner and leaving Colin alone, his heart beating fast in his chest.
He could almost feel the tension knotting his muscles as he clenched his teeth together hard. “Geez, get a grip,” Colin reprimanded himself. Rubbing his tired eyes he yawned and let all the tension and the nervousness leave him, his tired and exhausted frame all that was left behind. “Hope that they’ll be here soon.” Leaning against the railing of the stairs he closed the heavy lids of his eyes and drifted off to sleep his last thoughts about the beautiful stranger.
(tbc)