Notes: Written for Lilyleia78 for Fandom Stocking 2013.
Tori wakes up to the sun peaking through their poorly thatched roof, and she blinks in the early morning. She shifts, tosses Hunter's arm off her, and grudgingly gets out of bed.
Raising her arms up over her head in a stretch, she goes to the door and pulls it open, stepping out onto their porch. She'd slept in her swimsuit- since they were in a couple of joined sleeping bags anyway, she hadn't bothered to change into any pajamas, and while Hunter had no problem sleeping naked in a shack with a door that barely locked (he had put a brick against the door and said "We're ninja's, it'll be fine"), she wasn't quite so comfortable yet.
Cozy beachfront cottage, the ad had said. Rustic, reasonable, utilities included. Tori scoffs, pulling her hair up into a pony tail and walking down the rickety wooden stairs to her van, where her surf board is still leaned up against the side.
They'd lived worse places, she figures. And on the bright side, at least their little section of beach is deserted from tourists and kids.
She grabs her board and goes to take on the early morning ocean.
By the time she comes back in from the waves, Hunter is up and working at the little gas camping stove they have. He's got a bunch of eggs in one pan, some bacon in the other, and Tori comes in and closes the door behind her.
"Can't cook without light," Hunter tells her.
"Can't change with the door open," Tori rebuts, and she can practically feel Hunter roll his eyes.
She snakes out of her bathing suit and rummages through their shared duffle bag for her pretty teal sundress Dustin bought her for her birthday, and while she's standing there in the buff Hunter whistles.
"Are you ever going to stop doing that?" Tori wonders, shirking the dress on over her head.
"Are you ever going to stop being so beautiful?" Hunter retorts, and Tori laughs and leans over to kiss the top of his head before she opens the door to let the light back in.
She lays down on the bed, on what is basically a mattress with their sleeping bags thrown over it, and watches him cook on the camping grill.
"We can't stay here all summer," Tori tells him seriously.
Hunter looks over his shoulder at her, frowning. "Why not?"
"Hunter," Tori says, giving him a look, "It's a shack. It's falling apart, there's no kitchen, the bed is too small, and oh, yeah, there's no shower."
Hunter scoffs at her. "The ocean is our shower!" He teases, but when Tori doesn't laugh he wiggles his head a little. "Okay, it's a little rough around the edges," he continues, and Tori snorts, "But, it's not that bad for what we paid for it. We can make do with the smaller bed, it's good for cuddling!"
"You snoring right in my ear is not cuddling," Tori tells him as he hands her a plate of eggs.
"And what do we really need a kitchen for? We've got a hot plate, and there are restaurants and beach food places all around here for miles. We can get ice for the cooler and keep drinks in there," Hunter continues, pulling the bacon off the grill and onto another plate. "I'll throw the tarp over the roof and staple it down," he says, pointing up at the clearly visible cracks in the roof, "And that way we'll at least be safe from the rain. Besides, the point was to have a summer to ourselves, away from everyone else for a change, remember? At least we're alone here."
"Mmmm," Tori hums as she chews, "Just us and the spiders."
Hunter grins. "Gives me more of a chance to be your dashing hero!"
Tori swats at his arm. "You squeal like a girl when you see a coach roach!"
Hunter laughs and shoves a piece of bacon at her, and together they eat off of shared plates with their hands.
"We'll have to go back into town to pick up a few basic supplies," Tori tells him when they finish eating and Hunter set's the plates aside, "I cannot go the entire summer without a soap, or toilet paper."
Hunter licks his fingers off from the food, and then he says, "Later," and pushes her back onto the too-small bed, his kisses tasting like bacon and salt water.
When they get into town Tori turns her cell phone on for a while to call her parents and let them know they got there safe. She doesn't say much about the cabin or the conditions, but lets them know they're going to try and stay and they'll call if they have trouble. She texts Shane and Dustin to tell them the same, and Dustin texts back, Have good sex on the beach!
Tori laughs and shows the text to Hunter, who grins and calls Dustin a "Good bro."
They get some non-perishable groceries and snacks, some bottled waters and sodas, and some basic essentials. Hand soap, toilet paper, plates, plastic forks and knives… by the time they're done, the van is loaded up with provisions.
They have lunch at the seaside crab shack before heading back to their cabin.
They wanted a summer away from the academies, they'd agreed. One before they got too old or decided to have kids and couldn't get away. They wanted to do something with just the two of them, since their entire relationship had basically been around the rest of their team. She can't remember going more than 24 hours alone with Hunter in the two years they've dated, and while it's never been a problem for them, they thought they should try it a different way at least once.
More than that, it looked like Tori was going to accept Sensei Watanabe's offer to become deputy headmistress of the Wind Academy, which put her in line to become Headmistress when Sensei Watanabe retired. They both knew that if and when that happened, Tori wouldn't be leaving the Academies again. Even if Hunter decided to go a different way, she'd made her life there, and while nothing was ever set in stone, Tori felt like it was the place she was destined to be.
They couldn't afford to go abroad, and that was okay, because Tori had always been more of a homebody sort of girl. They'd looked at going cross country, but neither of them had wanted to do that kind of long term traveling. A secluded cabin on the beach had seemed like a good compromise; lots of time for surfing and relaxing, basking in the sun and the sea, and enough seclusion to make afternoon sex a regular part of the routine.
They were in more of a fixer upper situation than she'd thought, but then, Tori thinks, watching Hunter climb around on that roof with a staple gun and the blue tarp, the really good things in life weren't always the simple, easy ones.
She spends the afternoon getting the inside of the house in shape. She puts the soap and the toilet paper in the right places, finds a place to store the cooler where the sun will never so much as graze it, fills it with ice and water and soda, and then she takes a rag and wipes the dust out of inconvenient places. The window shutters are falling apart, so she gets out her glue, and takes the bucket of sea shells she and Hunter collected last night in the moon light and glues them on where the holes are. It won't look spectacular from the outside, but as far as she's concerned it's a vast improvement for the inside.
She shakes out the sleeping bags they'd brought and then tucks one around the crummy mattress like a sheet. She takes out a soft, plush blanket they picked up in town and tosses it over it, and then throws the other sleeping bag back on top. It'll do. At least they have decent pillows.
She's sweeping the dirt off the crummy wooden floor when Hunter finishes on the roof and comes inside.
"See?" He says, laying down the staple gun and grabbing a soda, "It's much better already!"
"It's still a shack," Tori says, putting the broom down, "And we're going to get splinters from this floor. But it'll do, I suppose."
They do yoga together on the beach at sunset, and then sit and watch the stars come out.
She's lying in bed around midnight, listening to the waves in her dreams, when she hears Hunter rummaging around in their makeshift kitchen. She squints open one eye, and then the other, and lifts her head slightly.
He's got the flashlight in his mouth, and he's going through the bags of food.
"What are you looking for?" Tori wonders, and Hunter seems to startle a little.
"Didn't mean to wake you," he whispers apologetically, and she waves him off, propping herself up with an elbow. "Wanted a snack. Can't decide what I want."
Tori yawns, takes in a little stretch, and says, "What are your options?"
"Chips," Hunter says, making a small rustling sound, "Gummy worms, maybe break into that bag of marshmallows."
Oh, Tori thinks, marshmallows. They'd gotten the ingredients for s'mores, at Hunter's insistence, and while Tori had laughed and shook her head at the time, they sounded delicious now. "S'more's sound really, really good," she admits from her spot in bed.
Hunter seems to perk up. "Yeah?" He asks, wiggling the bag of marshmallows at her.
Tori grins, grabs her flashlight from her side of the bed and sits up. "You go start a camp fire," she tells him, snatching the bag of marshmallows out of his hand, "I'll get the stuff."
Hunter does this little thing with his feet like he's really excited, and then pulls on some shorts before opening the door to their cabin and jogging outside.
She grabs out the skewers and the graham crackers, the chocolate and some water bottles, and follows him out.
Hunter builds them a small fire on the beach, and they laugh and roast marshmallows and eat s'mores until four in the morning.
Hunter turns their midnight s'more pit into an actual fire pit the next day while she surfs. He digs it out, finds giant rocks to put around it, and fills it with wood.
By the time Tori comes back from surfing, he's cooking them lunch on it. They eat grilled banana's and smoked lunch meat on bagels, and as they sit in their lawn chairs around their new fire pit in front of their rented summer shack, Tori is starting to think this might work out okay after all.
She hasn't surfed this many days in a row in ages. Her body is starting to feel it, and her bulky calves are sore by the end of the first week.
"We're getting old," Hunter tells her from his spot in the shade while she waxes her surf board. "I mean it, I nearly fell off that roof putting that tarp on, you're sore from surfing, it's amazing we haven't broken any hips yet."
Tori grins. "Careful," she warns, "You'll jinx it old man."
"I was talking to Shane last week," Hunter continues lamenting his lost young, "And we used to run with our students when we'd make them run laps, you know? To stay in shape, and to prove we were on the same side, unlike the Sensei's who taught us. Now? Now we're both having trouble keeping up with the kids we're teaching!"
"Hunter," Tori scolds, "You're barely thirty. You're not ancient. Your body is capable of different things at different point in your life; next year you could run a marathon."
"Just you wait four years, when you hit thirty," Hunter tells her, and Tori throws her waxing stone at him.
Sunday, they stay in bed the entire day, "Because we can", Hunter insists.
They finally get to exploring the rest of the beach they're on. About a mile to the left is a public beach, full of life and bistros and food trucks. The stop at a bakery and devour a too sweet cinnamon roll together, and then they walk along the paved path above the sand, holding hands and watching kids roller blade and skate board.
The next day they go to the right, and they don't get very far before the beach abruptly ends, to be replaced by some cliffs and hills. They hike up a little ways and find a pretty nice view, and Hunter resolved to have a picnic there at some point.
Tori laughs, accuses him of trying to impress her, and he slings an arm around her shoulders and says, "Gotta keep up appearances," in a very cocky way, and she laughs and leans into the embrace.
They cuddle on their cliffs for a long time, their feet dangling off the edge.
She's reading a novel, which is altogether in itself strange. She can't remember the last time she was able to sit and read like this, and it's nice to just relax in the cool of the evening.
The gas lamp they've hung by the bed is burning bright, and she lays there in bed reading, and gets about halfway through her book before Hunter comes back from running.
He takes the soap and goes to wash off in the waves, comes back and dries himself off on the porch. It's a good thing they're both such beach-bodies, or they'd probably really be missing the lack of a shower or tub right about now. Tori did discover a public one down at the beach, where she can at least go when she needs to wash her hair.
She'd done that earlier in the day, and Hunter seems to notice. He sits down on the bed by her and absently runs a hand through her newly soft long hair.
"What are you doing?" Tori asks, because the feeling of fingers in her hair is the best feeling in the world, and it puts her instantly to sleep.
"Playing with your hair," Hunter tells her mischievously, like he knows exactly what he's doing to her.
He probably does. There had been a stressed out night or two where she'd asked him to brush her hair to help her fall asleep. "Why?" She wonders.
Hunter shrugs. "Cause you like it."
"I like it when I'm tired," Tori says, yawning at the end of the sentence, and then she bats his hands away half-heartedly. "Stop it!"
Hunter chuckles, drops his fingers and shrugs. "Well, if you don't like it…"
"I didn't say that," Tori frowns, wondering what he game is. "I'm reading."
"Okay," Hunter says, and he lays down and folds his hands across his stomach and hums innocently.
It takes Tori about three minutes to close her book and set it aside. Hunter smiles, though his eyes are closed, and Tori lets out a long suffering sigh as she curls up next to him on the bed, his arm snaking under her to get at her hair again. She puts her head down on his chest and lets him mess with her hair, listening to his heartbeat. Her eyes lull closed in the silence.
"This is better than reading," Hunter whispers, and Tori lets out a little gurgle of a sound, because her lips are so relaxed it's hard to form words.
Hunter kisses the top of her head as she drifts off.
Hunter is terrible at surfing. Out of all her friends, the only person who'd ever taken a real liking to it was Cam, and he preferred the wave pool to the real ocean.
He comes down to watch her on the beach some days, but refuses to come out with her on her spare board.
"It's boring," he says, but Tori doesn't take offence to that. It can be boring, sometimes, but she tends to use the words tranquil and peaceful to describe it. Besides, Hunter's just saying it because he'll look like a fool falling off the board again and again.
"I'm surprised you didn't find a beachside shack a little closer to a motocross track," Tori teases, and Hunter shrugs.
"Unlike surfing, motocross isn't any fun unless you have people's butts to kick," he says, and Tori laughs as she takes her board back out into the waves.
It storms like crazy for about a week in the middle of summer. They spend it holed up in their cabin, the brick in front of the door to keep it closed from the wind, little bowls and cups catching leaks that get through the tarp. One night it gets so bad they can't even keep the lamp lit, and they throw towels over the window shutters and staple them down just try and keep them closed.
They sit on their bed, Tori's back against Hunter's chest, wrapped up in the sleeping bags and shivering.
"We should tell stories about warm things," Hunter says, rubbing her arms and then wrapping his back around her under the blanket, "To make us feel warmer."
"That is not going to work," Tori says, laughing.
"It will work," Hunter says, "It's psychology. Think about hot sauce!"
"I don't like hot sauce!" She objects, and Hunter rolls his eyes.
"Okay, think about sitting by a warm fire, drinking hot chocolate," he tries instead.
Tori closes her eyes, tries to picture the fire. "Nope, just making me want to set this place on fire," she jokes, and Hunter pinches her arm playfully. She squeals, squirming away from him and tickling his feet under the covers.
Hunter pulls his feet up and tucks them under him. "Alright, you've asked for it," he says, but before he can get to her Tori dives under the sleeping bag and scoots to the end of the bed, where she turns and holds her hands up, waiting for him to dive in after her.
He does, and he tackles her, but she grabs one of his hands and managed to keep him from tickling her. He knows every spot she's even the slightest bit ticklish, and she doesn't know why she starts these, because she's far more ticklish than he is. His feet are one of his only weak spots.
She likes a challenge, she thinks. She likes having seven targets while he has only one, and still occasionally being able to win.
Today is not one of those times, and Hunter pins her down under the covers and tickles her until she cries mercy.
She eventually kisses him to make him stop, laughing through their lips, and Hunter pulls away, his eyes narrowed. "That's cheating," he tells her, "And you know it."
"Oh, well," Tori says loudly, making a show of pushing him away, "If you'd rather I not kiss you-"
Hunter cuts her off with another kiss.
The last week gets their too quickly. For all their complaining when they'd arrived, they'd made a nice routine in their crummy cabin this summer, and even when Hunter takes the tarp off of it, she still thinks they've made a lot of good improvements.
The van is mostly packed up, save for the cooler, the flash lights, and their duffle bag of clothes.
The last night, they lay on the too small bed, cuddled up, Hunter absently stroking her arm, and Tori playing with the fray in his t-shirt.
"Let's just stay here," she says quietly, making Hunter's head turn, "Let's just not go back to the real world.
"Okay," he says easily, not at all concerned with their outside obligations, "If you really think you can live the rest of your life without a shower."
Tori grins, sighs at him. "If that isn't a reality check, I don't know what is."
She stands at the edge of the water, letting it curl up and over her toes. She squishes them in the wet sand and watches the glinting waves roll out.
"Hey," Hunter shouts from behind her, "You ready?"
Tori turns to see him holding up the keys, which he then tosses to her, and she catches them with ninja reflexes.
For a split second, she thinks about turning back around and tossing them into the ocean so they can't leave, but then Hunter holds out his hand to her, and she finds herself walking forward to take it. She leans into him as he presses a kiss to her forehead, and then they get in the van together and drive off, leaving their summer in the water behind them.