Chapter Text
Aqua laid back across her towel, its deep purple fabric soft against her tender skin, stretched out in the heavy sunlight like a contented cat. The sun here was so very different from the sun back home.
The sun of the Land of Departure was comfortable, always warm but never scorching. Some days were warmer than others, yes, but never hot, not really. Not like here, where the cerulean water foamed white on the border between land and sea, where the sun caressed her porcelain skin like fingers. She sighed, rolling onto her stomach and nestling her head into the cool, dark hollow made by her arms.
In the distance she could hear splashing sounds, laughter and shouting, and in that moment she truly felt contentment. Their lives were so busy, full of lessons and training and Keyblades, and she wouldn’t give up a moment of it for all the munny in the world, but there was something uniquely pleasant about getting to be like this, just the three of them, getting to hear the two most important people in her life laugh and enjoy being together.
“Aqua!” Ven called from the surf, stirring her from her contemplation. “C’mon, get in the water!”
She sat up and squinted, her eyes adjusted to the dark of her arms, just in time to see Terra scoop him up from behind and throw him deeper into the water, Ven whooping with joy until the moment he hit the water and vanished below its surface. Aqua hid her laughter behind a delicate hand before standing on her towel, peeling her cover up away from her skin to reveal a modest two-piece suit colored in blacks and whites before tucking it into her bag.
“Come put more sunscreen on,” she called to the two boys, both of whom seemed eager to continue their water wrestling, “and we’ll talk.”
Ven rolled his eyes but bounded toward the shore, Terra wading more calmly behind him. Aqua would not forget the time she’d decided to be lax about sunscreen and Ven had come home crisped to a fine, tender red from shoulders to waist, nor the week after where Ven would whine at the slightest touch and shiver whenever he was left alone. She scooped the sunscreen up from the sand and shook her azure hair out of her face, gesturing to Ven. He made a face but spread his arms obediently, allowing Aqua to cover his back with sunscreen. Once his back was thoroughly covered, he held his hands out so she could pour more of the liquid into his hands.
“And make sure you get everywhere this time,” she said, her eyes sparking playfully. He stuck his tongue out and started on his shoulders and chest while she turned to Terra. He seemed a little flush from the sun, and while he never burned while she or Ven did, he would still go home tender and grouchy if she didn’t force him to put sunscreen on too. Terra, as if sensing his fate, sighed heavily and turned away, exposing the expanse of his back to her. Aqua forced herself to not think about what she was doing as she poured more of the sunscreen into her palms. The bottle found a resting place in the sand as she started to gently rub the cream into the muscles of his back, trying to not notice the strength beneath her fingers, the way they flexed as he moved.
There was something about touching him like this, in broad daylight, that felt different than when it was just the two of them in a sparsely-lit room. She swallowed back the lump in her throat, hoping neither of them noticed anything different about her, really hoping Terra couldn’t sense the racing of her pulse as she moved her fingers down his spine to his lower back, trying to ignore the low hum in his throat when she pressed into the muscle there.
“All done,” Aqua said, clearing her throat after to rid herself of the odd rasp. He turned to her, and was he smirking, just a little bit? Aqua shook her head to clear it; when she looked again, there was only the same small smile he reserved just for her, soft and innocent and one of her favorite expressions on his face. He held his hands out, and she scrambled to find the bottle, pressing it into his hands.
“Your turn,” he said, and Aqua must’ve been imagining the way his voice lowered as he popped the cap open. “Turn around.”
Aqua did, running her hands through her hair to make sure it was pulled up off of her neck, grateful again that she had cut her hair short like this. The sand beneath them shifted as he stepped close, and there was a moment before he pressed his warm hands to her shoulders, gently massaging the cream into her skin. Aqua sighed, letting her head hang forward. His hands were lovely and calloused and warm like the sun before but in a whole different way at the same time as he worked the sunscreen in, slipping fingers under the straps of her suit and causing her to giggle a little. From behind her, he laughed, moving his hands down to get her lower back and turning her giggles into quiet near purrs of pleasure.
“Done,” he whispered into her ear, making her jump and spin around only to see him laughing and giving her that big puppy smile she loved so much. There was a moment where she tried to look stern before she, too, dissolved into laughter.
“Are you guys done yet?” Ven whined from halfway down the beach, already bouncing around in the wet sand where the water lapped. Aqua grinned at Terra and grabbed the sunscreen from the sand where he’d dropped it, quickly covering the rest of her body.
What was a little bit of tenderness compared to the grins on the faces of both her boys? She’d be fine. So she grabbed Terra, who had barely managed to finish covering himself in sunscreen, by the hand and dragged him down the beach to the water, grinning and laughing like it might be their last day in the universe.