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When Shi Qingxuan booked a week-long trip at a newly renovated beachside villa, she had one objective in mind: force He Xuan to stay out in the sun until his complexion no longer resembled bleached tissue paper, and torment his sense of public decency by bouncing around in flimsy little ensembles that covered the absolute bare minimum to be considered swimwear.
Alright. She had two objectives in mind. But they weren’t mutually exclusive endeavors, ergo, one objective.
Something she failed to take into account while meticulously outlining their vacation plans: the fact that the monsoon season didn’t always know it was supposed to be over.
Balmy breezes and hours spent lounging beneath the late summer sun, sipping fruity cocktails, making lovestruck com-hither-and-fuck-me eyes at each other (okay, only she would be doing that; He Xuan would stare at her with all the romantic inclination of a dead fish, but hey, she was super into that), falling asleep in each other’s arms to the lullaby of low tide kissing the shoreline? Oh, what a dream it would have been!
Unfortunately, the storm forecast to rampage and rage throughout the duration of their trip has no intentions of allowing those dreams to blossom into a beautiful reality.
The way she sees it, there are two ways to handle this dilemma.
Option one: ignore the inclement weather and stick to her guns. She didn’t slave away creating the perfect itinerary for unexpected rain to piss it all away. They could still visit the boardwalk, still ride the ferry back to the mainland for a day of windowshopping and dodging tourist traps, still walk hand in hand down the shore, still chase each other into crests of glittering waves. They’re here on a lover’s retreat, god’s sake! The whole point of a lover’s retreat is to be fun and flirty and sexy together. So what if the boardwalk would remain closed and the ferry moored until the storm passes? They could still romp about in the rain-lashed shallows. The looming threat of death via errant lightning strike might even provide a certain avant-garde quality to the whole ordeal.
This option would almost certainly end in one or both of their corpses washing ashore. If the lightning didn’t take them out, then the riptide would. Admittedly, Shi Qingxuan relishes the melodramatic (and entirely avoidable, but it’s already raining on her parade, so just let her have this, please and thank you) tragedy of their deaths in this hypothetical scenario. Two young lovers, drunk on love and lust and probably a not insubstantial amount of rum, taken too soon by the vicious tides. Oh, the humanity!
Except He Xuan has described what the bodies of drowning victims are like to her in excruciating detail, and while said details don’t bear repeating, Shi Qingxuan can say this much: none of it entailed fun or flirty or sexy.
And so as it turns out, option one isn’t an option so much as an increasingly morbid series of thought exercises.
This leads her to option two, which she has tried quite valiantly to adopt over the past two days: kiss her perfect itinerary goodbye and make do with alternatives. After all, being cooped up with fuckall to do doesn’t have to translate to abject misery.
The rental listing boasted of sleek, state-of-the-art appliances that would afford them the conveniences and comforts of modern life while surrounded by the aesthetic, fully renovated simplicity of eras past. A full home entertainment set, complete with a complementary selection of movies and TV dramas should the wifi go out, sat high on the list of highlights. Want to stay away from screens? No problem! The study-turned-hobby-room hosts a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf crammed full of thematically appropriate literature. Namely: tropey romances and tepid smut without much in the way of plot, though these genres tend to overlap, as Shi Qingxuan quickly discovered during her brief perusal of them. Supposedly there’s a chest of board and card games as well, though where it could have possibly gone between the last renter’s stay and their own romantic getaway is anyone’s best guess.
As far as potential alternatives go, the possibilities are… not endless, but not sum total zero, either. Or it would be not sum total zero if it weren’t for He Xuan’s complete and total disinterest in all of them. He Xuan? Lazing about and watching TV sunrise to sunset? Perish the thought! No, if he’s going to park his ass on the couch all day, it will be with a book in hand, and it won’t be a smutty romance novel or a romantic smut novel or any other variation thereof. It will be a proper novel, thick enough to use as a melee weapon should the circumstances call for it, with a plot that refuses to adhere to the banality of genre labels, thank you very much. And if there was something Shi Qingxuan learned early on in their relationship, it was that nothing short of the apocalypse could drag He Xuan from the realm of highbrow fiction back to the real world. Apocalypse or food.
Or the sight of his drop dead gorgeous girlfriend flaunting her curves in a bikini a size or two too small. Yeah, that ought to do it. Then they could really put the ‘fuck’ into ‘fuckall to do’.
It wouldn’t make for the vacation she envisioned, but it would be a warmly welcomed change from the past two days of atmospherically enhanced brooding. Seriously, she can’t take much more of it. Brooding is He Xuan’s thing, not hers.
She’s perfectly within eyeshot of the living room when she comes flouncing downstairs at 10:30 AM on the dot, affording He Xuan plenty of time to get his reading in. Freshly showered and rejuvenated, hair meticulously finger-coiled and then blow-dried to achieve a wind-tussled effect, bikini top struggling to contain her breasts in any meaningful capacity, pink gloss accentuating naturally pouty lips, just a touch of mascara, gauzy slip of a coverup that leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination: everything about her screams ‘Can’t make waves having fun under the sun? Come make waves in bed with me instead!'
Something to that effect. She’s more concerned with the actual seduction than being clever about it in her own head.
Pausing at the foot of the staircase for effect, she pushes her sunglasses– heart shaped with pink tinted lenses, cute and flirtatious and downright precious, just like her! –further up her nose. And waits. Listens to the rain drum against the windowpanes (today it’s pit-a-pat-a-pit, yesterday it was patter-smatter-patter). Notices the half-empty mug placed on the end table closest to the mountain of throw pillows propping up He Xuan’s head, the scent of a stale brew drifting from the open-concept kitchen. Wonders first if he intentionally set the mug beside one of the life preserver themed coasters rather than on top of it, then wonders why that even matters. Finally, she clears her throat.
He Xuan spares her a half-second glance before returning to his book. “Morning,” he grunts, voice gravelly from disuse.
What a ladykiller her dear A-Xuan is. It’s a bonafide miracle she isn’t beating back wannabe homewreckers left and right at this very moment.
“I think you’ll find it’s going to be a very good morning,” she purrs, hips swaying with devastating allure as she crosses the thick oriental rug stretching the span of the living room and comes to a stop an arm’s length away from He Xuan’s lounging form.
He arches an eyebrow about a quarter of a fraction of a centimeter. “Am I.”
The smile that adorns her lips would have emperors and empresses alike on their knees before her.
“Does this look like anything but a good time to you, XuanXuan?” She punctuates her exaggerated enunciation of the rarely-used pet name by leaning down and tapping the pad of her pointer finger against his lips once, twice, before standing back to her full height. She cocks a hip for extra measure.
That gets his attention. She can’t help but worry her lower lip between her teeth as he drinks her in, no doubt stunned to silence by how ravishing she looks. No doubt realizing he must have her now. Who needs the bedroom when there’s a perfectly good couch to put to use? Any second now he’ll toss aside that stupid book, grab her by the hips and guide her down onto his lap or, better yet, pull her in until her pelvis is level with his lips, start kissing across the expanse of skin just beneath her navel, hook his fingers through the flimsy strings keeping her covered–
“Why do you have sunglasses on?”
Her smile strains. Patience, Qingxuan. Patience. Good things come to those who wait.
“Because we’re on an island vacation.”
“We’re inside. And it’s raining.”
“Is it really?” Shi Qingxuan slides the rim of her heart-shaped sunglasses down, peering over them the most put-upon expression of shock she can manage. “Rain or no rain, when one leisures by the seaside, one must wear cute sunglasses. It’s the principle of the matter. That’s like, beach vacation rules 101.”
“Mmh,” He Xuan hums, his way of saying Whatever you say babe, I don’t have a dog in this fight in not so many words. And sans the ‘babe’. Hell would freeze over before he ever used that pet name on her.
Having made his point, he promptly returns to reading.
Whoever said there are five stages of grief clearly hadn’t met Shi Qingxuan before. Five stages her big, beautiful, highly coveted, scantily-clad ass. Let the records show she tried, well and truly, to make the best of this absolute travesty. Forget denial, anger, bargaining, or depression. She will accept defeat with dignity and grace. No need for condolences. She knew she would be fighting a losing battle the moment the skies opened up and began their week-long tantrum. Ego death may now commence.
With acceptance comes great clarity. There is, and has always been, a secret third option: abandon all hope, get herself piss drunk, and mope.
Ignoring the chill lapping at the soles of her feet (no, she will don neither sock nor slipper, because when one vacations seaside one must spend as much time prancing about barefoot as they possibly can; principle of the matter and all that), Shi Qingxuan abandons her fruitless seduction endeavors and makes a beeline for kitchen. More specifically, she makes a beeline for the liquor cabinet.
She tosses the cabinet doors open wide and, after taking a moment to assess the robust stock of alcohol provided courtesy of herself, makes her selection with a great deal more clanking and clattering than strictly necessary. Again: principle of the matter. Everyone within hearing range is supposed to know when you’re concocting the leanest, meanest Mai Tai this town has ever seen when you’ve taken to day drinking on your beachside paradise vacation, and not in the fun or flirty or sexy way.
It has nothing to do with the fact that her soured mood demands itself be made known. Nothing at all.
To say she cuts and juices the first hapless lime she sees with gusto would be a severe understatement. She guts it. Pulverizes it for every spare drop of juice it’s worth. Doesn’t bother with tossing the eviscerated remains, just lets it sit there and mope along with her. She’ll fret over the sticky mess later. Or she won’t. Hard to say when she’s too concerned with calculating how many Mai Tais it will take to convince her that no, actually, option one is a stupendous idea, the best she’s ever had, and actually she shouldn’t just swim in the middle of a raging monsoon, she should go skinny dipping.
Remember: your corpse will be all puffy and mushy and supremely fucking gross. Is that how you want to be remembered? Puffy and mushy and supremely fucking gross? I think not.
Whatever. It’s not like she’s really going to throw the door open, get a running start, and swandive over the waterside pagoda’s safety railing and into the churning sea, no matter how her facetious fantasies may beg to differ. She only wants to feel sorry for herself. It’s rather difficult to do that when common sense tells her there’s not anything worth throwing a pity party over. So it won’t stop raining. So her partner saw her bangin’ hot bod in a too-small bikini and had all the reaction of a wet cardboard box. So what? It’s not like the power’s out. Not like she’s here all alone. Not like it’s the end of the world.
Then again, maybe it is, considering He Xuan has abandoned his book and has instead taken to hovering on the left side of the island, adjacent to the lime rind all but begging to be put out of its misery. Unlike her, He Xuan shows it mercy. He sweeps it into the trashcan positioned just beneath the lip of the black marble counter (black marble in a seaside villa, whos bright idea was that?) and deposits her menagerie of mixology dishes into the sink.
Seconds tick by, neither saying a word. Shi Qingxuan swirls her Mai Tai, appreciating the melodic rhythm of the ice cubes tinkling against the side of the glass. Not something a functioning alcoholic would think, mind you. Just someone whose only hope of rescue from boredom and disappointment is the bottom of the bottle.
He Xuan opens his mouth. Before he can say anything, Shi Qingxuan cuts him off.
“I know, alright? I know I’m being a miserable brat about something that literally nothing can be done about, but I wanted this to be nice for us. Not just nice, I wanted it to be fun and flirty and sexy. Do you know how many times I’ve thought that exact phrase? Fun and flirty and sexy? Those words don’t even sound real anymore.” She gulps down a generous mouthful of Mai Tai and fights back a grimace. Whatever she made, it’s not a Mai Tai. She sets it aside with a dull clink. “There’s nothing fun and sexy about me being pouty and huffy all day, or you fusing yourself to the couch and reading dumb lit fic for like, nine hours straight. See what I mean? That’s totally a miserable brat thing to say. I’m sorry. I’m sure your book isn’t dumb.”
“I wasn’t going to say any of that.” A pause. He’s an awful liar, and she’s told him so many times over. “But– hm. My book isn’t what I was expecting it to be.”
Shi Qingxuan blinks down at her mutant Mai Tai, then up at him. In all the years she’s known him, the only times He Xuan has ever given so much as a hint as to his thoughts on a current read are when he’s finished or when he’s about to officially classify it as a waste of time. He’s not even halfway through that cinderblock of a book. Which can only mean one thing.
“That bad, huh?”
He Xuan lets his head list to the left a little, shoulders raising in his trademark you said it, not me manner.
Coiling a stray curl around her finger, Shi Qingxuan purses her lips in mockery of deep thought. “A big empty house all to ourselves, nothing worthwile to entertain us, a fearsome storm outside… Whatever will we do?”
She thinks for one glorious, golden moment that this time he’s finally on the same page as her: he steps closer, one hand ghosting across the small of her back, the other toying with the paper-thin strap of her nigh-transparent coverup. Then he asks, low and husky, “Want to take a nap with me?”
Well. Can’t win them all, can you?
“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve got a whole lot of nothing I could be doing otherwise,” she muses, pretending she doesn’t notice him plucking the cup of disappointment from her hand, his fingers closing ‘round her wrist, dancing along her pulse. “But since you asked nicely, I suppose I can fit it into my very busy schedule.”
And wouldn’t you know it? It ends up being the best nap of her entire adult life, buried beneath layers of blankets and curled, skin to skin, against He Xuan’s chest.