So, I'm in the middle of setting up my returned computer and I know it's a lot later than I normally do these things. This almost didn't happen today at all for two reasons:
1) I was going to post this on Canada day to be funny
2) if it weren't for Caroline and me sending things to her, this would have been lost forever. So, let's all raise a toast to Caroline for being amazing.
I haven't put Microsoft Word back on this computer yet and I'm still a little too sick to care much for editing so if the formating is screwy, forgive me.
Content warnings: none?
Don't forget that you can find me on tumblr: we - are - all - of - legend - now and that my ao3 account is wearealloflegendnow (even though I haven't posted there yet)!
~TLL~
Jake practically danced out the door, shoving Haley into the car.
"Do we have everything?" Jonathan asked.
"Yes," Jake said emphatically.
Susan, in the passenger seat, just laughed. "Jake, it's the beach. It's not going anywhere."
"Everyone is already there," Jake informed her. "We are behind."
"Oh, yes, everybody," Jonathan said, teasing, but Jake didn't even care because they were on the move.
Jake sent out a snapchat of the fact that he was on the move and immediately got one back from Trixie, who showed her sunning her legs on a gigantic beach towel while Spud, who was in front of her digging himself into a large hole.
Jake: Are we burying him?
Trixie: Not yet
Jake quickly closed out of his conversation with Trixie when he got a message from Rose.
Rose: You're on your way!
Jake: I'll be there soon!
Rose: Good. I need someone to put sunscreen on my back.
She followed that up with several winking emojis and Jake tried not to groan aloud, hating the fact that he was trapped in a car with his family, who was singing road trip songs even though they weren't really on a road trip. It wasn't like it took hours to get to the beach. When they arrived, Jake jumped out, immediately spotting the large blue beach umbrella that Rose's mother, Melinda, took with her seemingly every time she went outside in the summer. To his great annoyance, he couldn't just rush off, but he had to help Jonathan drag over the large cooler filled with drinks and their assigned share of food. Haley got to run off, dashing toward her friend who had also decided to join them at the beach today.
Finally, the cooler was in place, his mother was setting up their beach chairs and towels, and Jake had greeted all the appropriate people. He sidestepped down the beach where his friends had set themselves up away from the prying eyes of their parents. There was Trixie, absently flicking sand back into Spud's incredibly deep hole with her toes and, across from her on their matching hot pink beach towels, sat Rose and her twin Emma. Like Trixie, Emma was already in her bathing suit and stretched out in the sun. Rose was still wearing her cut off shorts and deep blue v-neck.
"You made it!" Spud cried, his head appearing around the rim of his hole.
"I'm barely late! The dads haven't even started the BBQ," Jake cried. "It's not really fourth of July until I'm eating a burger!"
"That's not very patriotic of you, Jake," Rose said.
"Whatever," Jake said, going to sit next to her on her towel. "I've lived here my whole life."
"You're not going to ask how I'm patriotic today?"
"Blech!" Emma cried, crawling from her towel onto the safety of Trixie's. "Flirting already? It's been two seconds!"
Two seconds too long, in Jake's opinion, as he looked into Rose's eyes. Any time not spent flirting with her, looking at her, kissing her, was wasted time. Not that Gramps would agree but Gramps had no place on this beach, on the fourth of July.
"Why are you so patriotic today?" Jake answered and then he realized his mistake when Rose quirked her eyebrow. "I mean how."
Rose stood from the towel and Jake leant back on his elbows, intending on letting his gaze go from her long legs to her hips to her chest to her face but then Rose pulled off her shirt and Jake's eyes were immediately pulled to the little American flag printed bikini top. She flicked her shirt at him, like she knew what she was thinking. She probably did. Jake didn't make much of a secret about what he thought of her. Rose shimmied her cut off shorts down her legs and Jake's eyes were drawn to the matching bikini bottoms and the delicate looking string ties that clung to Rose's hips.
"Well, I think this is the first time I've cared about the American flag," Jake murmured.
"I need someone to rub sunscreen on my back," Rose continued. "I don't want to be burnt in any hard to reach places."
Jake fought his groan down as she sat down in front of him. Why were they on a public beach? Why weren't their friends and family on this beach while they were alone at his house? Rose glanced over her shoulder and handed Jake the sunscreen bottle. He had his answer in her eyes: because she liked to tease him. Well, two could play at that game. He took his time massaging the sunscreen into every inch of her skin, even taking breaks to talk to his friends as he went. The second he was finished, Emma stood.
"Time for swimming," she announced. "If you two are quite done."
"Well, if we go swimming it'll just need to be reapplied," Rose said.
Jake jumped to his feet. "Come on, let's go swimming."
Emma and Rose scampered toward the water while Trixie stayed behind with Jake to haul Spud out of the hole.
"Man, what are you doing down there?" Jake asked.
"Diggin'," Spud said and he shrugged his shoulders.
"Why?" Trixie asked.
"To see how big it is by the time we leave."
"I thank God every day that I don't understand you, Spud," Trixie said. "Come on."
Spud willingly followed them down the beach, across the rocky part, and to the water's edge. Emma and Rose had already waded in, the waves lapping at their hips.
"Come on," Rose called, splashing the water in Jake's direction, even though it had no chance of reaching him. "It feels great!"
Jake took one long leap into the water toward her, realizing his mistake a second too late. Even in July, the waters of the Atlantic were never going to be truly warm and Jake felt the goosebumps break out over his skin. Rose bubbled up with laughter and Jake was not going to take that. He got his feet into the cold, wet sand to get some kind of grip under him and propelled himself forward.
"Jake, no!" Rose squealed, but it was too late.
With a crash and the tangle of their legs, both of them were submerged. Jake opened his eyes to see her hair making a halo around her head. She was looking back at him and Jake reached out, grabbing her wrist and pulling her into him, kissing her underwater, even though it didn't even really work and they had to help each other up to the surface, both of them coughing up seawater and trying to laugh at the same time. Rose's arms encircled Jake's shoulders and he kept them both afloat.
"That was mean," Rose accused.
"Was it?" Jake asked. "Spud, Trixie, and Emma are still trying to wade in and you had me come flying at you!"
"Oh, like you wouldn't have done it anyway," Rose scoffed. "You love me."
"You know that I do." Jake tilted his face closer to hers. "I'm just saying, a cold shock like that, my balls are all the way inside of my body."
Rose screeched a laugh and Jake saw her hands twitch, like she was going to splash him again. Jake acted quickly, covering her mouth with a kiss, and her hands came up to rest on her chest.
"God, get a room!" Trixie shouted.
"We're in the ocean!" Rose yelled back.
"I mean, there is the mermaid palace but you can't breathe down there," Jake joked.
"Don't help her unless you want me to stop kissing you," Rose threatened.
Well, Jake didn't want that to happen.
Jake went to kiss Rose again but their friends had other ideas. Trixie and Emma tackled he and Rose, sending them flying under the water. Like he was part fish, Spud was already under the water, his hand poised to grab Jake's ankle. He yanked on Jake and Jake felt like he went flying through the water. When Spud finally let him surface, they were several feet away from the girls.
"This is a friend hang out session, not a Jake and Rose make out session," Spud said before Jake had even recovered his breath. "Come on, man, stop being one of those couples."
But, Jake didn't want to stop being one of those couples. He liked to make fun of those couples when he wasn't in one of them but when he was with Rose, he understood how you could get so wrapped up in a person that the outside world stopped existing.
"You get to the fireworks," Jake said. "After that – no promises."
"I'll take what I can get," Spud said. Then, he waved his arms at Trixie and Emma. "ALL CLEAR!"
With a battle cry of annoyance, Rose sent a sweep of ocean spray over Trixie's and Emma's head. They shrieked and went to splash her back but Rose disappeared under the water. Jake immediately used his dragon tail to send a wall of water of Spud, moving away from the shore to meet Rose when she broke the surface of the water. They were on the same side when it came to the water battle, although Trixie quickly turned traitor on her teammates, targeting Spud more than anyone else. It was almost sad when Haley started screaming from shore that the food was almost done and they had better get their butts back in.
Emma was the first to lead the charge for food but Rose wasn't far behind her. They crested the waves, tying their damp hair back into braids in identical movements. It always made Jake laugh when they accidentally synched and he followed them up the beach, rushing to get ahead of Rose so that he could wrap her in her towel before she had to do it herself.
"Thanks," she said, winking at him.
They trudged back to where they had left their parents set up with the BBQs. Haley was already halfway through a hamburger that was dripping mustard all the way down her forearms. Jake made a face and angled his chair away from her before hurrying to get plates made up for he and Rose before the good parts of the food had disappeared. He grabbed a bag of chips between his teeth and balanced the two paper plates as he walked across the sand, carefully not to trip over Spud's outstretched legs. He put Rose's plate in her lap and then angled himself away from Emma's arm, trying to take the chips from him.
"You have to share those," she said.
"I don't have to do anything," Jake told her. "You told me I couldn't kiss my own girlfriend."
"That was a group effort!" Emma retorted.
Stubbornly, Jake kept the chips away from her until Emma eventually gave up and went to get her own. When the food was gone, Jake felt like it was time for a nap. They rotated away from their parents again, Spud immediately grabbing his shovel and diving back into his hole. Jake picked up the sunscreen bottle, plopping Rose down on his towel. Trixie made a disgusted noise at the two of them, popping her sunglasses on so that she didn't have to bear witness to anything. They wasted their afternoon mostly sunning on the towels, although Jake and Rose went back down to the water a few times, walking through the waves and feeling eyes on them the whole time.
"It's not like all we do is make out," Jake complained.
"It is one of our favourite past times," Rose said.
"Don't tell me you're on their side!"
"If it was, like, Spud and Trixie you'd get so sick of it."
"If Spud and Trixie ever made out in front of me, I would never stop throwing up," Jake said flatly.
Jake thought that he had been looking forward to when the sky would darken and the fourth of July fireworks would light the sky along the beach. That was until he realized that the slight chill of the night meant that it was time for the bathing suits to disappear and for clothes to get pulled back on. Jake stared at Rose's loose-fitting tee, desperately missing the bikini but not wanting to say it when his friends could overhear it. The breeze from the water started to cool and Rose shivered, snuggling into Jake's side.
"Time for the bonfire," she announced.
Jake recruited Spud, dragging him out of the deep hole that was sure to collapse in on him at any second now. They fetched the wood that had been carefully stacked by the parents' and Haley's camping spot and starting organizing it in the firepit that Carl had created. When everything looked good, Jake checked the surrounding area, bent down, and launched a fireball into the middle. The wood went up like it was covered in gasoline and Jake fell backward, worried about his eyebrows. He heard Trixie laughing at him but decided to ignore her, helping to locate their beach towels and blankets over to the fire. He put his jacket around Rose's shoulders before he sat down with her, pulling her between his legs, her back inclining to his chest. Jake kissed the top of her head without thinking, glad that either no one noticed or they decided that it didn't count as breaking their rules.
The sky was nearly completely dark.
"They'll have to start any second," Jonathan said.
No sooner had the words left his mouth when the first sizzle sounded over the water, culminating in a boom of red and blue sparks in the sky. Jake watched the first ones start to dissipate, listening to his mother ooh and ahh like she did every year. When the second round lit up the sky, he felt Rose's head move against his chest and Jake tilted his head down, meeting her lips.
Jake was sure the fireworks were beautiful but nothing was more beautiful than this moment with Rose.