i'm excited to present this beach/lifeguard AU for reverb 2017! my artist partner guacamoletrash on tumblr is the sweetest and best avocado and it was a pleasure to work with them! please go check out their art and playlist for this project and smother them in love, they deserve it! shoutout to professor-maka and lunar-resonance for betaing, and to soundofez and the-brightest-fell for the support!
warnings: smut, vague mentions of drowning, language
Undeniable by redphlox
They're standing on the beach. Maka wishes she could paint them in the moment: two dark brushstrokes against the infinite, smoldering horizon.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah," he hums, squinting against the sun and looking sort of amazed. "Is that how you smile?"
Mind going blank with the serenity of the moment, Maka tilts her head. The dying light turns him into a half-silhouette with translucent hair. Sunsets glaze everything they touch with gilded beauty and he's no exception - he's impossibly nice to look at during this time of day, when the world holds its breath before sighing out darkness.
"That's something you're going to have to find out by yourself," she finally responds, cheeks tingling.
"Okay," he says, nonchalant, "I have all summer." Shaking hands makes their shy friendship official. His palm is soft, his fingertips calloused, and his grip firm, protective.
"I'm Maka," she offers. "What's your name?"
"That's something you're gonna have to find out for yourself, Miss Lifeguard."
By the way his grin makes her nervous, she knows this is a challenge she can't turn down. She's drawn to him the way magnets slide toward one another when they're within the right distance, steadily, fervidly.
The collision will be glorious.
"Deal," she agrees, wondering if he's worrying his bottom lip because he can still feel her mouth over his.
She can only hope.
After all, summer has begun, and so has something else.