take a sad song and make it better [liam]

The California breeze sent a shiver up Oliver's spine as he made his way to the beach, turning back in the direction of the house, in the direction of Liam.

It wasn't that it was cold— he'd been dealing with far worse cooped up in London working on the album for the last few months— this was a different kind of cold. The chill rolled right off the back of the waves as they crashed into the sand before receding back into the ocean, sweeping across the otherwise uninhabited beach. Ollie ran a hand through the tufts of hair that fell victim to the breeze as he found the man following.

The party, for all intents, and purposes had been a success. At least as far as Oliver could tell, he was still new to that sort of thing. If the sounds above them were any indication, though, the guests showed no signs of slowing down, with or without their esteemed host.

In the midst of new faces, and all of the booze, and all of the conversations (not to forget the vials of potions) somewhere in the night they had lost each other. Ollie couldn't blame him. He had people to entertain, and did he ever love to entertain. There wasn't an exact moment he could pinpoint, but there was a shift in demeanor. Liam wasn't dancing, he wasn't even smiling, and Ollie knew they needed to get out of there, if even for just a breath.

"It feels like the edge of the world..." His thought was spoken aloud, as usual. Oliver stared into the abyss of the ocean, studying the moon and stars as they played across the lapse of water. It was a strange thing to be on the coast. Back home for him even, felt nothing like it. "What, not coming in?" He grinned back at Liam before taking a dive into a wave, not bothering to take off any articles of clothing.

@Liam Thompson

Liam steadied himself with a hand on Ollie’s back as he missed a step on the way down, stumbling drunkenly in the dark. “Sorry,” he mumbled. An hour ago he might have collapsed into giggles, but the potion had well and truly worn off by now, and left his mood far soberer than it had been to start. Better-brewed Elixir to Induce Euphoria didn’t have so sharp a drop-off, and lasted longer too. But he couldn’t begrudge the friend who’d given it to him. Not everyone had rockstar money.

The beach was accessible by a steep staircase along the side of the cliff—or apparition, but Liam wasn’t in the mood to risk ending his birthday a leg short. Ollie led him down, hand in hand. In the dark, pre-dawn cove he unlaced his boots with a tap of his wand, and then stabbed it into the damp sand where he’d kicked them off. Nowhere to keep that, once he’d undressed the rest of the way. Liam could see the lights in the house up above, and hear the faint pulsing of the bass. From there they’d just be blurry shadows at the bottom of the cliff. He tossed off his already-unbuttoned shirt, clumsily pulled his legs back through his trousers and underwear. He’d had a crown, for a while, but he thought it was in the pool upstairs.

Ollie didn’t seem as bothered about getting his clothes wet. “C’mon, not as if anyone can see,” said Liam. “Unless they’ve brought binoculars. But I s’pose they’d deserve it then, the perverts.” The thought that there were strangers out there who’d put in effort to get a look at him hadn’t ever bothered Liam. Frankly the opposite. He wondered what future-heartthrob Ollie thought, or would think, once he got in that position. Liam figured it was different when you were already handsome.

And good lord, he was, wasn’t he? Knee-deep in the moonlit Pacific, wind-ruffled and spellbound. It’s like the edge of the world.

“Should I be worried about how much you seem to like that?” Liam called to Ollie after he resurfaced. “Don’t go jumping off, mate.”

An hour ago, he figured he’d have said something completely different.

It wasn't as if anyone could see? It took Ollie a moment to realize what was meant— one glance to Liam (who was already half-naked), and another at himself with his velvet pants soaked in color, did the trick. He shrugged, grinning. What else were drying potions for, anyway? Besides, clothes in the ocean seemed to add to the ambiance. The California of it all. "Give em' a show, then," He chirped. Any other night, Liam might just have, too.

The sea was colder than he imagined, much more than he preferred, but it was refreshing. Once he resurfaced, the breeze brought him back to life again. Now that he thought about it, the whole night had been a series of losing and finding himself again and again.

One moment he was somewhere and the next another entirely.

"Don't we all?" Oliver called over the sound of the crashing waves, standing to push the saltwater from his face, the flattened waves of hair from his forehead. He studied Liam with his new eyes and he could tell something still wasn't quite right. It was hard to pinpoint exactly (his clouded mind surely wasn't helping) but something told him he wouldn't like the answer to his own rhetorical question now.

He swiftly changed the subject. "Water's getting cooold," Teasingly he sang. It was cold enough, to begin with, but he preferred to not be in there alone for too much longer. It would be easier to gauge Liam's headspace when they were at least within speaking distance.

Mockingly, Liam sank into a sweeping bow. It felt good—Ollie wasn’t going to let him sulk, or maybe just his presence at all was enough. Merlin’s sake—what had he wanted all those other people here for? He’d been asking himself that since he got his feet in the sand, since he got somewhere with breathing room. The self-doubt was settling in his chest more every minute.

“There’s your next hit single,” replied Liam as he stuck a foot in the waves. It was cold enough he could tell he’d need to get in and stay in. Slowly, he waded up to his thighs and sunk into the water, rolling over onto his back to look up at the sky.

He lay there in the pleasant push and pull of the waves for a little while.

“I’m too old for this, aren’t I?” he asked eventually. Liam waved a hand up toward the house. The logic of asking his twenty-two-year-old lover was laughable, but Ollie was the only one here, and the only one he trusted not to make fun of him. “I don’t even know half these people, my mates all think I’m a shithead. I’m twenty-eight now.” It didn’t sound old, or even feel it—but it felt like it should. “Maybe I ought to just pack it in and grow up.”

Oliver made his way beyond the break where the waves were crashing to the sweet spot into the sea just that bit further. It was the space where the currents swelled and dipped, creating a soft and lofty curve of molecules. It was calm, easy to move with. He glanced back to make sure that Liam had in fact followed suit, grinning to himself once confirmed.

For a moment, all he could hear was the sound the waves crashing to the shore, though now more distant than before even though it really wasn't that far off. Even the whipping of the wind that was strong back onshore had dissipated. It was a different world out there, Ollie decided to himself as he watched Liam turn onto his back to float. His green eyes followed to the blackened sky, now filled with sparkling lights.

Had he ever seen so many stars?

At the other man's question, Oliver paused, watching the side of his face from the surface of the water where he had submerged himself to. "Where's the fun in that?" He teased, before turning serious again. He had fashioned himself a bit of an old soul, really. Growing up had been all that he ever wanted to do for as long as he could remember. He idolized those who he had deemed as the real adults. They had their lives together.

"Who thinks you're a shithead?" Oliver asked, following his attention to the party that now felt impossibly far away. Maybe he was just being protective. "Twenty-eight, you're practically on your death bed..." He gave a little splash before pausing again. He hoped that his joke didn't make it seem like his initial question was rhetoric— it was just he didn't feel comfortable leaving it hanging there.

When Ollie replied Liam felt childish at once, but in a different way—a whingy, spoiled brat more than an immature teenager. Mum, nobody likes me! Did he really have an idea what any of his friends thought of him? Did it even matter if he did? There was a lot of criticism he could shrug off, he’d always been able to shrug off. Why should he care any more about the imagined distaste of his friends than the very real distaste of any number of others?

“I dunno, Sam does,” he said. It was the closest one to verifiable he had. “Kate.” He snorted softly. As if he’d ever expected the day Kate’s opinion would matter to him. When he believed in himself Liam could weather anything, but about this, right now… He worried she’d always been right.

Liam turned his head to look at Ollie, waves lapping at his cheek. Even in the midst of this stupid identity crisis he couldn’t help but smile. “I was having fun,” he said. “I remember I was, but fuck, I don’t know why.” Why would he have wanted to do anything but this?

“Just got to stop taking shit potions, I guess,” He ran his fingers through his hair under the water. “Sorry ‘bout all this. I’ll be normal in a bit.”

He listened intently over the sound of the sea that Liam's voice was weaved into. Green eyes narrowed as he studied him, trying to gauge how he was feeling. What it meant. Sam, Liam said, and Kate (no surprise there) were the perpetrators. Those two seemed to have a lot of bad blood for people that were otherwise kind individuals. Or so Ollie thought, at least. That subject wasn't one that he felt he had any merit to jump into, nor did he want to.

It was much more comfortable floating on the surface, away from all of that.

"That's alright," Oliver mirrored the grin and touched a hand without thinking to the side of Liam's cheek.

"Shouldn't matter what other people think, anyway," He let out a dreamy breath of air, briefly dipping under the crash of a wave to resurface and push the hair from his forehead. "You told me that once, you know," He grinned. "I understand though, those are your friends—" He spoke too soon. "—well, Sam," His mind wandered to the man he'd only met tonight. He seemed kind, politely unaware of a lot of things, perhaps.

He contemplated sticking up for Kate then, but decided this wasn't the time. Liam's mind had long been made up on that front.

Besides, there was a nagging feeling in the back of his mind that reminded him that there were dynamics about this group that he would never know.

"Normal?" He nearly laughed at the idea. "Who wants to be normal?" Clearly, the potions hadn't worn off as quickly with him. "I didn't even have a chance to give you your present..." He lamented suddenly, fingers dancing over the surface of the ocean before touching his shoulder. It was a Joni Mitchell record— nothing too extravagant, but he'd hoped that they might play it together, sit and watch the ocean.

Liam laughed aloud, caught off-guard by the irony of it all. “I did tell you that, didn’t I?” He gazed up at Ollie, enchanted—this had always been something he liked about meeting a certain type of fan, the kind who’d remind him of things he’d said or done. There was nothing sweeter than being remembered. “Sorry if I made it look easy,” he said. Ollie pulled his hand back and Liam moved with it, lifting his head out of the water and floating himself upright.

They drifted back and forward on the same wave, four feet apart. “’Least I’ve made it past twenty-seven,” said Liam as he scraped wet curls from his cheeks. “S’pose that’s an achievement.”

He smiled at Ollie’s opinion—useless, but guided by his own shit choice of words. “I think could do with it, right now,” he said. Normal for himself, he’d meant. Confident in his abnormality, reveling in it—none of this navel-gazing needy bullshit. “What, you want to have to keep telling me how great I am forever?” Not that Liam would have minded.

Ollie mentioned a present. Liam chuckled. “That’s just a come-on, isn’t it?” he asked. “Bit of a cliché, for a poet like yourself.”

Not that he’d have minded that either, of course.

Even now, Ollie listened to Liam just as he had that first night. His first night in California, when he'd reassured that the first big failure wasn't the end of the world in this industry. Liam had an air of confidence about him, some kind of impenetrable assurance, that was impossible to ignore. Even in a moment such as this when that seemed so far away, it lingered.

Was it all in his head, Oliver wondered? The cocktail of potions and booze in his system had a mind of their own. Yet, here they were, floating without a care in the world.

Liam seemed to waver in his thoughts, much like the current around them. An achievement, he said, to have made it this far. Oliver let out a breath of air, slow and stifled by the ocean, as his heart picked up the pace. Those kinds of thoughts sent him down a spiral that he couldn't indulge in, not now, not with Liam. It was probably whatever it was in his system wearing off, but Ollie felt like he could cry at the thought of not having met him.

The conversation shifted, though. "It's not!" He half-heartedly splashed in Liam's direction before drifting closer to drape an arm over his torso that was still afloat. "It's a Joni record— the very one you've been missing," Oliver planted his feet in the silt-like sand, resting his head atop his ribs, tilted to face the underside of his chin. He could never keep a secret, anyway. Blue was the last of her's that Liam had been after, so he'd been scouring the muggle shops for it for weeks.

Liam splashed back, then with an impulsive rush of energy he heaved Ollie over his shoulder and threw them both at the water. They came up laughing. His spirits were coming back now, for sure—he just hoped Ollie took the comedown a little easier.

He licked the salt from his lips and sank back into the water again. It turned out there was in fact a present, aside from Ollie’s presence himself. “No kidding?” replied Liam. He rested a fond hand on Ollie’s shoulder as they leaned together, Ollie’s head on his chest. “I’d say we should go get it, but—there are all these fucking people in my house.” Parties shouldn’t ever end, what in the hell had he been thinking?

What an odd thing for him to think, he thought.
 
“Never would have imagined myself here,” said Liam vaguely as he looked back up at the sky. “This kinda man.” Naked moonlit romantic hiding from a party who could have teared up from the tenderness of being given a vintage lady record. “Y’know?” He didn’t think Ollie knew. He didn’t think Ollie had ever wanted to be something different than he was—much less spent fifteen years in the attempt to be. Liam admired that more than he could say.

“I love you, Ol,” he said, which felt sort of close.

He couldn’t bring himself to look at Ollie as he said it, and just kept looking up as he smoothed wet tendrils of hair behind the other man’s ear. His fingertips drifted down to tickle Ollie’s stubbly jaw. “Do still hope there was a bit of a come-on in there, though.”

For a few moments, the sound of their laughter was all that Ollie could hear. Over the ocean, over the wind, over the distant sounds of the party. He could still hear it ringing in his ears when he rested atop Liam's torso,  pushing the salt water from his face with the hand that wasn't wrapped around him.

"No kidding," He confirmed with some sense of nobility in his tone. So he'd done well. It was the same feeling as when someone opened a gift— the kind that he had really put some thought into— few things were so gratifying. Ollie had the grand illusion that he might surprise Liam with it that night, but the universe had other plans. He didn't imagine Joni Mitchell's music would have gone over well with those who were left up at the house.

Green eyes flicked up to said house, then back to Liam. He studied the way that his jaw moved, the way that his words aligned with each movement on his skin. Oliver opened his mouth to speak, to say that he wasn't sure that he knew that feeling, but the other man spoke seemingly out of impulse before he could.

Love was such a strange, beautiful thing. In some way, Ollie imagined it was the goal of every single thing that he did. That was how it was for all artists right? Fulfilling that insatiable need to be adored. He grinned, touching a hand to the side of Liam's face, affectionately pushing the water from his eyebrow without a second thought. This wasn't a movie, he knew he didn't have to say it back— Liam already knew.

"Now who's the poet?" He pulled himself closer to his face, propelled by a lofty wave, with a tease. "I'm very happy I met you, you know," Ollie ignored the bit about a come-on. That was inevitable.

He held his breath, but he wasn’t sure what he was hoping to hear. This was new to him. Not the words, not really, though he thought they meant a lot less to him than other people. Liam was liberal with I-love-yous. He thought he might have said it that first night, even, gin-drunk and giggling as Ollie hit one of Celine Dion’s high notes. But this one was different. This one he was trying to be a normal person in love, and the thought made him as nervous as it made him proud.

Ollie never repeated it to him, and while somewhere inside Liam was disappointed, more of him was thankful. They weren’t going to have fake conversations, play out those romantic scripts he’d always disliked. Once had been enough. Now they knew where they were.

Liam scrunched his eyebrows, grimacing fondly at the touch. He caught Ollie’s hand in his and kissed the palm. “Sounds like you’ve got a low bar for poetry, ‘s what it sounds like,” he said. He laughed softly and folded Ollie’s fingers down, kissing the knuckles. “’Course you’re glad you met me,” he said. “Even if it’s just for the beach. Wouldn’t hold that against you.”

“Might shrivel up if we stay in too long, though,” he admitted. “Maybe I ought to go back up and send everyone home.” He stood, wringing out his hair and shaking it back into position. “Think I should put on trousers first, or no?” They looked up at the party, and Liam draped his arm over Ollie’s broad shoulders. Another wave rolled against his back.

“Or,” he said after a moment, “we could just stay down here.”

Oliver watched— another lofty wave pulling him up to the moon, the sinking feeling as he came back down— he took particular interest in what Liam's mouth felt like on the inside of his palm, then the back of his knuckles. How had that been more romantic every other place on his skin that he had kissed before? "Maybe so," He tried to shrug but the current had something else in mind and he pushed the fresh wave from his face, saltwater seeping into his eyes and lips. He would have scoffed at the joke, otherwise.

At the mention of shriveling up, Ollie studied his free hand just above the surface. He'd heard somewhere that it was an effect of something evolutionary— to do with the ability to grip onto surfaces underwater— and he was momentarily lost in the thought, fascinated. Ollie hummed a quiet sound of thought as he ventured a gaze up to the house that was still alit, the soft sound of the party only just reaching them.

"It does sound like they are still enjoying themselves..." Oliver explained with a grin. Why go back up there now, anyway? It was so much nicer down here, with his feet planted firmly on the ground. Even if it was the silt-like sand of the ocean that felt like it was creeping away from him with every movement.

As they waded closer to shore the waves broke around them, one over at their shoulders as they looked up the cliff. Ollie ducked under, pulling Liam with him. "We'll sleep on the beach," He declared with a laugh that reverberated off the coast once he emerged. He was only half-kidding. "You know I love you," He was still laughing as he said it, but he hoped that it was clear.

fin

“If you want to wake up with sand in your teeth that’s your decision, then,” said Liam. “And I reckon can hardly leave you down here alone.” He brought his hand up through Ollie’s wet hair in an affectionate ruffle.  Partway through, though, he paused when Ollie spoke. Liam wanted to spit back something blasé to this too, but instead he felt tight-chested and speechless. He dragged Ollie closer with a strangled laugh and pressed a kiss to the back of his neck, the quickest part he could reach.

They waded together through the smallest of the waves. Liam pulled his wand out of the sand and drew it up his body to dry himself off, then, brow quirked, turned it on Ollie with the offer. There was something kind of sexy about being the target of someone else’s wandwork. He’d always thought so, anyway. There were other things he had to do with his wand, though: Liam led the trudge to the back of the cove, the flat, dry stretch before the rocks started to rise, and there he swept his wand over the sand to conjure a wide blanket. “Should do,” he said before tossing his things down and flopping back.

He brushed sand off his feet before he squirmed back into his underwear, and sat up to slide his arms back into his shirt. His trousers had been too tight to bother. Liam might have expected to be undressing Ollie tonight instead. But the breeze was chilly over the moonlit beach, and to Liam right now it felt like they had all the time in the world. They could be drunk and in love tomorrow.

After a last second of consideration Liam sent a little knot of of blue flame to burn on the nearby sand. He rolled over onto his stomach with his feet to the fire and rested his head on crossed arms. Ollie lay beside him. Liam grinned sleepily.

“Maybe you can tell me you love me some more,” he murmured. “’S my birthday, after all.”

(out)