(AN: Written once again for the fabulous rktikfox, the Sasha to my Milla, for her birthday. Enjoy!)

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Things were different that summer.

For one, Morceau Oleander had retired. Sasha didn't really know if it counted as "retirement" if one was sort of coerced into it after a bout of hostile takeover and thirty-five years of lunacy of an entirely different sort. He merely decided he would let Morry call it what he wanted if it meant letting the man retain a little bit of his dignity. God only knew that the man had had very little to begin with as it was. Surprisingly, his replacement was just as ridiculous, as he was only eleven. Sasha began to wonder if child labor laws came into play when things pertained to psychic summer camps, but Milla repeatedly assured him that Razputin was a volunteer, and if you weren't getting paid then it absolutely did not count. He didn't think that sounded terribly fair - especially considering the preposterousness of working such a horrifying job for free - but he supposed if everything was legally okay, he wasn't going to fight it. And the fact of the matter was that despite the fact that some of the campers were older than he was, Razputin was an incredibly competent agent. (If not a tad unorthodox.)

The thing that perhaps upset Sasha Nein's summertime Camp Whispering Rock routine the most, however, was that for the second-to-last weekend of the camp session, Milla - of course it was Milla, it was always Milla - had scheduled everyone a beach trip.

She assured him it counted as the beach, even though it was a lake and not the ocean. They were just too deep in the mountains to make the ocean worthwhile, she reasoned. It was so much easier, she said, just to hop on over to Lake Pons, because look at how much bigger than Lake Oblongata it was, even though they were sometimes considered "sister" lakes, and feel how much warmer the water was, and Sasha, "Aren't you ever going to come out from under that horrible thing?"

The "horrible thing" in question was a large black umbrella, driven into the sand of the lakeshore. Underneath of the umbrella Sasha had strategically positioned his cooler, his beach bag, and his navy-and-silver deck chair, onto which he was reclining with a book. Even under the unmoving shade he'd applied heavy sunblock, including a layer of zinc oxide to the bridge of his nose, just underneath his thick sunglasses.

"Milla, I see no reason to move from my current position," he informed her, trying to focus on his novel.

"Darling, I can think of plenty of reasons," she argued, stepping closer. Standing over him, blocking even more of the sun with her curvaceous silhouette, she was almost imposing - or would have been, were it not for the ensemble she was wearing, a lavender string bikini with bright fuchsia trim that matched her flip-flops and the frames of her overlarge bug-eye shades. "The sun, the cool lakewater, the game of levitating beach volleyball I've been trying to get started over there..."

"Skin cancer, silt, and an excuse to show my ineptitude at even psychic contact sports. I believe I will pass."

Milla pouted. "At the very least I could use some assistance in coaxing Razputin into the water."

"If anyone manages that, it will be his girlfriend," said Sasha calmly, gesturing with his left arm while making sure that it did not leave his radius of shade. A few yards down the shore, Lili Zanotto sat in a bright orange and yellow tankini, floating a few inches above the surface of the lake with what Sasha could only assume were very incriminating photographs of Raz dangling just out of the boy's reach. Raz, meanwhile, stood just close enough to the edge of the lake that the softly lapping water wouldn't reach his toes, obviously struggling internally between his fear of water and his fear of Lili.

"I suppose you have a point, darling," Milla conceded. She sighed a little, huffing a few strands of hair away from her face. "But are you sure you don't want to go swimming just a little?"

"I'm quite positive. You enjoy the beach your way, Milla, and I will enjoy it my way."

Milla opened her mouth as if she were going to say something, but her face soon twisted into an expression of mild surprise and she rethought her next words. "If I want to keep enjoying the beach my way, I'm going to need some more sunscreen! It only takes a little bit of over-tanning to throw off my delicate complexion, don't you know. Would you mind helping me a little bit, just on my back?"

Milla turned around so that her back was to Sasha and knelt down a little, putting the bare expanse of her back and shoulderblades well within his reach - were he bold enough to extend his arms out into the sunlight from underneath the sanctuary of his black beach umbrella. In the sparkling afternoon sunlight her skin seemed a warmer, richer bronze than usual, and Sasha caught himself staring a little too deeply into the slim stretch of brown.

Realizing he was about to drop his book, he quickly forced himself back to reality, clearing his throat. "Why - why don't you get someone else to do it? I'm almost at the end of this chapter."

"Who else is there?" she asked. "I'm not about to interrupt what's going on with Razputin and Lili, and if you think I'm letting Ford Cruller get his hands anywhere near me in a bikini - "

"Angela should be back from the lakehouse bathroom any minute now," Sasha said, indicating the spot up the path where their mousy psychic arts-and-crafts instructor had disappeared to some moments earlier. He kept his nose firmly in the pages of his book, refusing to look at Milla and her bare back any longer. "I'm sure she could assist you."

"But Sasha, darling, can't you just - "

"Or, logically, you could apply it psychically without assistance. Your mind can reach the awkward space on your back that your arms cannot."

"Oh, never mind," Milla said, sounding mildly irritated. "I will just never understand why you always tag along to everything but go so far out of your way to not have any fun. This is just like every other event we've planned all summer." And she stalked back over to her own beach towel, already opening up the sunscreen with her mind and arcing a thick swath of it over her shoulder, taking care not to get any in her hair. Finally allowing himself another look, Sasha peeked up from the novel to watch her retreating form; but it wasn't her body he was paying the most attention to, but her words. The more he thought about it, the more this beach outing was just like all the other things they'd planned.

In late June, there had been a cookout, for the entire staff and for the children who were celebrating their last year at Whispering Rock before graduating up to the year-round Psychonauts Academy. Milla had planned a bunch of ridiculous things on the main field, including - what else? - a live band. Since it had long been proven that Ford was in reality a terrible cook, Sasha had been manning the grill almost the entire night, but after a while Milla had come over and made an extremely persistent attempt to coax Sasha to dance with her. At the time, of course, he had most likely had multiple excuses as to why he didn't dance, just like now: the band was not playing a type of music he particularly enjoyed, and anyway, he was in charge of cooking the food, and he didn't want to risk another char-broiled disaster like last year's cookout (although that one had been one hundred percent Morry's fault). But now that he thought about it, Sasha didn't really understand why he had turned down a dance invitation from the woman who was easily the life of the entire function. Even some of the fourteen-year-old boys had been looking on at her in bright-eyed teenage infatuation.

Then there was the Fourth of July picnic. Sasha, a native of Germany, felt little warmth for the obnoxiously American holiday, but Milla had always insisted that since they were on American soil, they should do something to commemorate. All of senior staff from the Rocky Mountain Psychonautical Headquarters was there, including Truman Zanotto and his charming daughter. A friend of Milla's, a pyrokinetics specialist named Leo, had offered to bring up and light off some rather extravagant fireworks. But bright flashing lights usually gave Sasha a headache, so despite Milla's numerous pleas that he stay, "because someone needs to take us some fabulous photographs to commemorate this!" he had turned in early. Thinking back, Sasha didn't understand why she had been so insistent that he take the photos, especially when Lili was shaping up to be quite the little psychic journalist. She had just kept looking at him, with eyes flickering red and blue and silver in the firework glare, and asking him in a genuinely pleading voice. A voice she could have directed at anyone, but chose to direct at Sasha.

Maybe, Sasha began to think, Milla actually wanted him to do these things...not because Milla wanted them to get done, but because she wanted Sasha to do them. She wanted Sasha to dance with her at parties. She wanted Sasha to give her something to remember the fireworks.

She wanted Sasha to climb out of the (actually quite trashy) novel he was reading and just put some goddamn sunscreen on her back.

Sasha suddenly felt quite embarrassed. She'd probably been just that obvious the entire time, and he'd only just now picked up on it - he, Sasha Nein, who was supposed to be the analytical brain of this troupe of crazies. He slid the novel into the bag at his right and looked sidelong off to the left, where Milla lay sprawled on her stomach on an oversized scarlet-red beach towel, head propped on her folded arms and a large bottle of some fruity drink well within her reach. She looked as though she'd managed to apply the sunscreen herself. Whose stupid idea had that been, Sasha wondered suddenly? Why had he even suggested that in the first place, when he could have been...when his hands could have been...

He shot a glance toward Lili and Razputin, making sure they were still occupied with the photographs and the lakeshore. Angela, mysteriously, had still not returned from the bathroom, and it looked as though Ford had fallen asleep drifting a few feet out in a large polka-dotted inner tube. Satisfied that no one was watching, Sasha slowly and cautiously rose from his deck chair.

And the umbrella rose with him.

Sun-shield floating psychically between him and the raging ball of cancer-inducing gas in the sky, Sasha took the dozen or so blazing hot steps across the sand to get to Milla, making sure that no part of his body - even the parts covered by his bottle-green swim trunks and similarly-hued baggy T-shirt - saw sunlight. He halted a couple of paces from Milla, just close enough that a little bit of the huge umbrella's shade fell across her face.

When she noticed it she rolled over a bit to look at him, enormous sunglasses obscuring her eyes and making her expression unreadable. Sasha gulped a little.

"Do you...still need help applying your sunblock?"

Slowly, Milla pushed the shades back from her face, up onto her forehead where they held back a bit of her hair, and smiled.

"That would be wonderful."

Sasha crouched down next to her, settling the umbrella back in the sand overtop of him and levitating the bottle of lotion from Milla's large, hibiscus-print canvas beach bag. He squeezed out a bit into his palm and slowly, hesitantly, ever-so-slightly pressed his hand into the small of Milla's back. After the initial contact, it became remarkably easier.

"It's...very hot, out here," he said, stilted. "Even in the mountains."

"Mmm, yes," said Milla, a smile in her voice.

"It's absolutely impossible to enjoy with this outrageous sun blaring all over the place," he continued. "This place would be far more hospitable in the evening, after the sun has begun to set already."

"You know, I bet you're right."

"But...it doesn't seem as though Razputin is enjoying it at all. For different reasons." His hands spread higher up, across her shoulderblades, slow, hesitant, but firmer. "And Lili is only here for Razputin. Ford seems to have spent all the time in the lake he needs for one summer - and Angela - "

"If you were interested in coming back later in the day, sometime..." Milla interrupted, "just you and me, Sasha...that would be fine."

"Very well then. If you insist."

Things were very different that summer.