Written for #RCReadathon2020 Prompt and Pairing, Please! Challenge. Kris and Ringo are characters from You Out of Nowhere, a book from Romanceclass Flair.
Prompt (that I asked for): Kris and Ringo at the beach, may or may not be during Summer Crush
***
“Kris, wake up.”
“No. Kris, don’t wake up”
“We’re catching the sunrise. You promised”
“Doesn’t sound like me.”
“It’s the first sunrise I get to see where I’m not headed for the office.”
One cheek peeling off the pillow. Lashes unsticking. A bleary eye opening, staring at him through a mess of soft curls.
“That’s too sad and precious,” her voice rasped.
It was sexy, her forcibly woken voice. Her voice was always sexy. But to Ringo this one was special, because it meant she was awake enough to fulfill a sunrise promise with him.
He was crouched in front of their hostel bed so he could level her face. He had been stroking her back the way one would touch a sleeping tiger. Gentle, fleeting touches, fingertips trailing a dance on her nightshirt. Enough to be persistent but not annoying. He wanted a date at dawn, not a kick aimed at his eager face.
Kris shifted and he saw her mouth, pressed together but in this angle looked close to that soft curve it shaped when she was amused at him.
He took it to mean he could approach his tiger, his tita.
Ringo leaned his weight on the bed, dropping his head so his nose carved a line along her neck.
“I know.” He inhaled deeply. “Mmm essential oils.”
A whack on his face. He chuckled.
“Ok I’m up.”
“Hurray.”
Ringo stood back as Kris crawled out of bed, bare feet padding on the wooden slats on the floor. She stripped off her nightshirt on her way to the small bathroom, and Ringo had to swallow an instinctive grunt of desire and pin his hands to his sides to keep himself from grabbing her naked waist and throwing her back to bed.
They could have that meal later, after sunrise and breakfast.
Kris emerged, face damp and shirt thrown over a black bikini. His shirt, the blue one he wore to work, with the crisp collar and long sleeves that went past her wrists.
He walked towards her, sipping her lower lip for the day’s first kiss as he helped her do the buttons. A change in usual procedure but they were chasing a sunrise. He must focus.
Kris was melting against him, hands winding around his nape as she returned his kisses. A soft moan and she drew back from him, heading for the door.
“Sunblock, your sunglasses, keys, water bottle, money for breakfast.” Ringo lifted his hand that was carrying their wet bag, enumerating the contents before she asked. “Did I forget anything?”
“You have spreadsheets for brains. We’re good.”
Kris breezed through the door, Ringo right behind her.
Outside, he took her hand, plodding down the stairs in their flip-flops in the pre-dawn darkness. Their hostel was not beach-side but it was only a street across from the sea. They passed a sari-sari store, yet to open, and the small roadside restaurant Ringo had been eyeing for bagnet over rice. He knew what he would recommend for breakfast later.
“I know the sun isn’t out and that is the point but I did not expect it to be this dark.” Ringo gripped Kris’s hand tighter, tucking her to his side as he looked left and right twice over before they crossed the empty road.
“Probinsya streetlights going for ambient, barely there lighting.”
Kris yawned as they trod on, past a line of hostels and through a side street, and then they were wrapped by the sound of rushing waves, urging them onward.
The beach was even darker, the walk on the sand a challenge with flip-flops so they removed them, feeling the cold grains slide between their toes.
Kris chose a spot in the sand and they sat there, facing the dark horizon, the rumbling sea.
“Cold?” he asked.
“Did you bring a jacket too?”
“Right here.” Ringo edged closer and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her back against his thrumming chest.
Kris sounded a snort-sigh hybrid. “Why are you cute?”
He smiled against her hair. “I have successfully recalibrated you to love me.”
“That you did.”
They settled in silence, only the sea was loud, the waves against waves against shore making scary sounds. Ringo looked up and spotted dots of stars but thought the sky was lightening somehow, slowly, by gradients. He returned his gaze to the rolling sea, waiting for the first spark of sun at the horizon. Kris’s hand squeezed his arm around her. He held her closer.
“Are we supposed to do anything?” he whispered. It seemed like a moment where he should whisper.
He heard her smirk.
“Am I boring you?”
“You can sing out of tune to liven things up.”
She turned her head to glare at him. He kissed the tip of her nose, then the pucker on her lips.
“You’re not supposed to do anything,” she said. “You’re just…here.”
“The way you are here.”
“Yep.”
Kris looked back out at the sky and sea. It was really looking lighter now, like budding morning. Unburdened by anything. A fresh start.
“I like it,” he decided.
“Thought you would.”
He buried his nose in her hair, their hands clasped where she held them. They must have been quiet a while, and there it was. Ringo didn’t spot the first ray of sun, though he had been paying attention. The sunrise just happened. Lazily, at its own time. Drawing streaks of lights and colors as he and Kris watched, the dawn’s avid viewers.
The sky was pink shot with oranges and grays now. Ringo nudged Kris’s ear with the tip of his nose.
“If we stay quiet like this for a bit longer we’ll hear your stomach rumbling. It’s a very specific krokrrrrkk sound, it’s almost musical.”
Her head whipped back to face him, his intended response.
“You, kid—”
“Yes, tita.”
He kissed her, and they kissed, because this was his first sunrise by the beach and because he loved her always.
End
Note:
#RCReadathon2020 Prompt and Pairing, Please! Challenge thread this way and here too for more ficlets of your Romanceclass faves.
Jill-Rhys fic that no one asked for here. Shinta preparing for Jill’s 30th birthday party here.
Expectations vs. Reality
