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It’s one beautiful afternoon in a long string of beautiful afternoons in Malibu, and Feferi is taking her fiancé out to lunch. Her treat, she says - though it’s almost always her treat, her gold AmEx on the silver tray. This time, she’s wearing the white linen peasant dress, the porcelain scallop-shell necklace, the dark sunglasses, and the sea breeze catches her hair just-so as she raises her phone to take a picture of herself, smiling her widest smile, the ocean in the background, the white-painted deck.
It’s a beautiful afternoon.
But Eridan is a malcontent. And he hates the beach.
“I don’t like the look a’ any of this,” he comments, after a few minutes of scanning the menu with his mouth pressed in a flat, obstinate line.
“Why not?” Feferi asks. She sets her phone down for now, and extends her free hand to tangle with his wrist, fingers teasing the clasp of his gold wristwatch. “You love seafood. You love bouillabaisse.”
“Really.”
Feferi sighs. If she smooths her thumb over his greenish veins, she can almost feel his pulse. The skin there is vulnerable, and butter-soft. She can smell the faint, fresh scent of the body creme she gave him for his birthday, layered with the sea-salt tang of the ocean lapping underneath them.
“Quit holding out on me, Eridan. My clam.” He’s still studying the menu, feigning total concentration. She trails one manicured finger up his forearm, then back down again. “Tell me what’s really got your gills all twisted up.”
He snorts, indignant. “My fuckin’ gills. What does that even mean?” He glances at her over the top of the menu. “Really, Fef.”
The waiter comes by to take their order: he is dismissed, immediately, by Eridan, who shakes his head and casts him a withering look. He avoids talking to wait staff at all costs; he loves to be rude, repugnantly so.
Feferi always tips one hundred percent or more.
The waiter understands, and turns away. He has sun-bleached hair, a golden California tan. Feferi bets he surfs down at Malibu Point in the mornings. She bets he works here in the afternoons to save up money for board wax, or whatever.
She twirls a lock of hair around her finger, and watches him go.
“What?” Eridan demands to know. His menu has been discarded on the table, and he is looking at her with narrowed eyes.
(And Eridan is gorgeous, objectively, but god if he doesn’t exude ugliness sometimes.)
Feferi flashes him a smile, all teeth. “He was cute, don’t you think?”
“I guess.” Eridan has his cheek in his hand, elbow on the pristine tablecloth, gazing off into the distance where surfer-boy is taking someone’s order on the other side of the deck. “Why don’t you go get his number? Ask him to ignore the ring on your finger when you’re feelin’ up his fuckin’ gills.”
“Eridan,” she chides him.
(And Eridan is in love with her, objectively, but Feferi has seen it still. The way his cool gaze lingers too long on men at the beach, at the pool; the way he snaps it away when she casts him one of her knowing looks, her silent approval.)
(She loves the thought of it.)
(And Eridan wants to.)
(He just doesn’t know that he wants to.)
He’s still staring at her with little comprehension, so she adds, “I didn’t mean for me.”
Eridan’s expression clears from suspicion to bland disinterest at that. He taps his blunt, also manicured fingernails against his lower lip.
“For who, then?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Feferi says brightly. “Anybody!”
“Yeah.” After a moment of consideration, Eridan shrugs one shoulder and concedes, “I guess for anybody.”
And Feferi smiles at him, with the patience of a saint.
It’s a beautiful day, the sun beating down hot and unrelenting from a clear blue sky, and the waiter is approaching again. Feferi pushes her sunglasses up in her hair, better to address him. She will order a crisp white wine, a chardonnay; she’ll get the bottle. For herself, the albacore. For Eridan, bouillabaisse.
