[Fanfic, 100% Orange Juice] Beach Party pt. II

Genre: Slice of Life

Words: 5134

B/D: Hoo, boy. This story has had me roadblocked for a whole two months. Weighing in at over 5k words and around 10 previous drafts (most of which were 1k or 2k words in their own rights), the saddest thing is that I'm still not especially happy with this. Oh well. I'll take a break from this storyline for a while to do some style exercises and shorter stuff.

There is a softness at the edges of her smile, the hint of words lingering unsaid upon her lips; when they embrace, her hair has the smell of the sea. For a long moment, the rest of the world fades into the background; there is only warmth, colour, the sounds of seagulls over the ocean. It has been too long, Nath thinks, since they last saw each other. She breathes deeply, and feels the gnawing pangs of loneliness recede like a wave.

“Oh, my. Should we leave you two alone?” Hime’s voice is wry, teasing, but kind as well. She has a smile of her own, small and secretive, as she watches the two old soldiers’ reunion. “It’s good to see you, Nath. You’re looking very well.”

She doesn’t know quite what to say to that, and it feels rude to talk to somebody else while there’s a hug in progress, so she just nods. She does look well; she spent some time this morning in front of the mirror, an hour of nervous grooming and poring over her wardrobe. She chose a button-up shirt with an open collar, a pair of tan pants rolled at the knee. Such a lot of thought for something so simple. She thinks – she hopes – that she looks casual and elegant, only a pair of sandals away from an island vacation. But the sleeves feel baggy around the wrists of her prosthetics, which are too small and thin for her frame. It irks her, and she almost left her arms in the umbrella stand because of it, but she’s willing to sacrifice her small vanities for the chance to give her friend a better hug.

After a few seconds more, Sora sighs and steps back, absent-mindedly brushes the creases from her top. They almost match – she’s wearing a white vest top, a brown skirt with a red stripe print near the hem. With her shield capacitor hanging from her neck like a talisman, she looks more at home in this tropical place than even Nath does. She turns and glances at the women behind her, looking for Sham.

“Aren’t you going to introduce yourself?” she asks. From anybody else, it might sound like an accusation; from her, it’s an invitation.

The girl steps forward, and Nath runs her eyes over her as she does. A somewhat rounded figure, a pleasing kind of suppleness. Shapely legs shown off with a skirt and pantyhose. She certainly isn’t bad looking, Nath thinks, but she’s oddly dressed for weather like this – as cute as her cat hoodie is, she must be boiling wearing it. Then Nath’s eyes find her face, the long scar and the burn running down it, and understands. There is a kind of heat the body never forgets; next to that, even the roaring sun must feel inconsequential.

“H… hey there. I’m Sham. You must be Nath, right…? It’s, um, nice to meet you.”

Nath raises a hand in greeting, but she doesn’t miss the shock on Hime’s face, or the way that Sora’s eyebrows furrow.

“Are you alright, Sham? It seems unlike you to be nervous. You didn’t even pose when you introduced yourself. I have it from a reliable source that posing increases your star power,” Hime says, putting a comforting hand on the girl’s sleeve.

Sham’s face is embarrassed, but her eyes are inscrutable. “Well, ahaha… She’s like my senior, right? In age, and with Sora… So I guess I’m a little…”

“Nath won’t bite,” Sora says warmly. “Not even Roger bites, and he’s Nath’s cat.”

There’s a moment of dead air before Suguri steps in, her voice cool but quietly insistent. “She’s probably tired from the flight. She did say she doesn’t fly around as much as she used to. Maybe we should go inside.”

“Ah… Yes. Sorry. I’m not good at the whole ‘host’ thing,” Nath says, accepting the hint for what it is. “Let’s get inside. It should be a lot cooler.”

With Nath at the point of their quintet, they make their way into the house. The place has come a long way from what it was; for a moment, Nath is almost sad they never got to see it while it was in disrepair, and cannot appreciate the progress as she does. The floorboards are polished, and the walls are pristine; she’s installed a coffee table in the centre of the living room, and furnished it with a tiny potted cactus, a folded newspaper, and an array of cushions to orbit the ensemble. She even made the mistake of buying a novelty clock that looks like a cat, complete with a tail for a pendulum; her fondest desire is to launch the damn thing into the ocean, because she cannot stand its interminable ticking. She had thought that being able to hear the passage of time would spur her on to be more productive, but mostly it just annoys her when she’s trying to sleep.

There’s snacks and bottled water in the fridge. I’ve set up some bedrooms on the left,” she says, snapping off her directions with brisk authority. “I had some problems getting beds in, so we’ve got a double, two singles, and a sleeping bag. We can draw straws for who has to use the sleeping bag–”

“Oh. Because it’s the most desirable bed, right?” Sora chimes in wistfully. “I wondered if I’d get it automatically, but I can do democracy.”

“Oh… I forgot that you were a sleeping bag fanatic,” she replies, a little uncertainly. “Well… I’m sure the others won’t complain if I let you have it without drawing straws. That just leaves the problem of the double bed.”

This time, Hime pipes up. “Oh, I think Suguri and I will take that, if nobody else minds. We’re quite used to sharing a bed, and truth be told, I’m so used to sleeping with her that I’m not sure I could get to sleep without her.”

Sham gasps, perhaps a little theatrically, and looks at Hime with renewed wonder. “Awawawa… You mean in the adult way?”

“Ohoho. I shall leave that up to your imagination.”

“She means no,” Suguri replies flatly.

“And definitely not in my bed, thank you. I’m the one who has to clean those sheets,” Nath grumbles.

Hime laughs, with a sound like a tinkling bell. The conversation adjourns as they scatter to make themselves at home. Suguri disappears into the bedrooms to set out their luggage, and to build a wall of pillows on Nath’s double-bed; Hime casts her eyes around the room, almost marvelling at the sight of furniture that matches; Sham throws herself down on a cushion; Sora wanders over to the fridge.

“Is all of this okay to eat?” she asks, pulling the door open.

“Yes. Help yourself. There’s ice cream in the top compartment.”

To her great surprise, Sora does not immediately rummage around for ice cream, but instead brings out a large platter full of cocktail sausages and cheese cubes that have been threaded onto skewers, and puts it on the kitchen counter.

“Sham,” she says. “I need your help with this.”

Sighing, the idol gets to her feet and trots to the counter. “Sure, sure.”

For the next few minutes, all Nath can do is watch in growing bemusement as Sora takes a skewer, picks off the cocktail sausage, tosses it into her mouth and passes the skewer to Sham, who eats the cheese cube and sets the skewer aside. There’s no wasted motion, not a single skipped beat; they go through each action as efficiently as robots on an assembly line, repeating until they’ve demolished the entire platter. Nath gives Hime an aside glance, only to find her looking just as baffled as Nath feels.

“Did they… uh… practice this?” she asks quietly.

“No, I don’t believe so. I think this is just… them, I’m afraid. It’s quite impressive, though. They’re very co-ordinated.”

“You aren’t wrong. It’s also impressive that they finished the whole platter. It was meant to feed five people.”

Sham freezes, before snapping her head around so quickly that it’s a surprise there’s no audible crack. “W-waitwaitwait! You’re telling me I just ate five people’s worth of cheese cubes?!”

Nath shrugs. “Looks like it.”

“Ahhhhhhhh! All those calories…”

“Don’t worry, Sham,” Sora says, tugging at her elbow. “We vanquished the party platter, so it’s worth it. You can look good no matter what you eat.”

“I know that. Even if I gain a little weight, I’d still be the same adoracute me, right? But my producer’s going to be real mad if I gain a dress size and then we have to get a whole new batch of tour outfits made up…” Sham moans, before casting her gaze about until it lands on Hime. “Why didn’t you stop me?”

“Well, I didn’t think you would finish the whole thing. No matter how you look at it, that’s rather a lot of cubes of cheese, you know? More to the point, why didn’t you stop you?”

“I just got in the zone, you know? Don’t you ever get that, where you just hit your flow state and then suddenly a couple weeks have gone by while you were on autopilot?”

“Well, perhaps in the past,” Hime replies, stroking her chin. “But not lately. Suguri and Sora are too entertaining for me to switch my brain off.”

“I’m in the same boat, but with different people,” Nath remarks. “Suguri’s enough of a responsible adult to relax around, but zoning out with Sora or Hime in the room strikes me as a bad idea.”

Sora looks from one to the other, apparently blissfully unaware that she’s the one they’ve unanimously named as an agent of chaos terrorising their lives. “I never zone out,” she declares. “I’m always alert and on the ball.”

“Except when you’re asleep,” Hime points out, “which, historically, has been the case for maybe 99.99 percent of your lifespan. After all, you’ve been awake for roughly a year, but you were awake for ten thousand, correct?”

“I was awake all the time before I was asleep as well, so actually it’s more like 99.80 percent,” Sora sniffs. “And it doesn’t count, anyway. I’m alert in my dreams, no matter what they’re about.”

For a moment Nath wonders what kind of dreams Sora might have, but quickly dismisses the question. She’s sure that the answer will be fascinating, but also confusing on a deep, deep level that she doesn’t want to contemplate at this moment in time. Instead, she sits back and listens to Hime and Sora quibble about what mathematical percentage of Sora’s life she’s been asleep – Sora remains staunch at 99.80 percent, but Hime is pushing for 99.87 percent on the grounds that she spends a third of every waking day asleep anyway. Meanwhile, Sham is mournfully examining the skewers she set aside, trying to work out the exact number of cheese cubes she’s consumed. There’s something pitiable about her expression. Mathematics is great and powerful, but it isn’t making any of them any happier.

“...Hey. It’s none of my business, but I wouldn’t worry about it. You’ll work it off tomorrow when we hit the beach,” Nath says, only a little awkwardly. She’s conscious that Sham is somebody she should talk to, but so far, they’ve barely exchanged a single word. “Are you feeling any better?”

“Ah… Yeah! Yeah, I’m good. Sorry I’ve been so quiet. Normally I can give anybody a run for their money in the cheerful department, but everything’s happening so fast, you know? It’s like, I’ve only just started getting re-acquainted with Sora, but she’s already inviting me to parties with other ten thousand year old war veterans. That’s super crazy, right? I mean, we’ve got so much to talk about, but I don’t even know where to start,” Sham says. The line at which she passed from ‘talking excitedly’ to ‘babbling’ is hard to pinpoint, but it definitely went by somewhere in the middle. “How did Sora find you?”

“Met me on the street not long after she woke up. She was buying spoons. I thought I’d say hello and then let her just live her life, but she stole my nose and never gave it back, so here I am.”

“That’s, um, wow.” Sham’s expression was very far away from being ‘wow’ and much closer to being ‘are you serious’, but it was the truth. A somewhat truncated version of the truth, but the truth nonetheless.

“What about you?”

“She just turned up at one of my concerts and almost beat up a security guard. Then we hugged and cried a lot. It was a good time!”

Nath smiles. It’s amazing how a quiet, serious girl like Sora can become an erratic lunatic simply by removing a little context from her exploits. “You said you were an idol?”

“Uh-huh. I don’t have a huge fanbase because I take career breaks, and sometimes I have to pretend I died and then I’m a different person, but I’ve made it my mission to encourage peace and love with the loudest voice I can! What do you do?”

She takes a moment to muse over the question. “Hard to say. I used to explore all the post-war ruins for technology, so I guess maybe I was an archaeologist for a while?”

“She was a wandering gourmet as well,” Sora adds helpfully. “Now she has a cat.”

“I wasn’t a ‘wandering gourmet’. I just have good taste in ice cream. And since when is owning a cat an occupation?”

“You can’t just get a cat on a whim. They’re a big responsibility.”

“Just like you, then,” she replies dryly. “How is the cat, anyway?”

“Oh, he’s fine. We dropped him off at a cattery before we left. I can’t believe that’s the first time I’ve seen him – such a charming, roguish young fellow,” Hime says indulgently. “By the by, did you really name him ‘Nath’s Cat’? That was what Sora booked him under when we dropped him off.”

“I haven’t named him anything, because he’s not my cat. He’s just a stray that lets himself in through the balcony window and licks my eyebrows when I’m trying to sleep.”

“Yes, that’s what we would normally call a ‘pet’. Having actually met him, I really must side with Sora on this – you should give him a name.”

“Oh! I know. It can be a reward,” Sora says, as if struck by a sudden bolt of inspiration. “If I win the swimsuit contest, you have to give him a name.”

“You’re entering a swimsuit contest?” Nath asks, only to be drowned out by Sham asking the same question at the same time but at a very different volume. A volume that, a month ago, might have done some serious structural damage to the house.

Hime titters. “Oh, my. You both got so excited by the idea. How very straightforward of you. But I believe she means the contest to buy the best swimsuit, not who looks the best with one on.”

“Don’t lump us together like that,” Nath replies, scowling. She turns her gaze to Sora. “Anyway, you had a contest?”

“Mm. I took them out with me to buy your swimsuit, but Hime wanted to make it a contest. So we all got you one, and you have to tell us whose is the best.”

Nath’s heart sinks. Sham is an unknown variable, but she’s sure at least that Hime is going to use the ‘contest’ as pretext for pranks of a questionable nature. But she can’t say no outright, since they spent money on it. “Fine. But I’ve got some ground rules. First,” and this is where she’d start ticking things off on her fingers if she had had them long enough for that to be habitual, “I’m not trying on anything if I don’t like it. It doesn’t matter how much you whine about it, or who’s doing the whining.” She’s pleased to see to smile begin to slip from Hime’s face. It feels as though she’s dodged a bullet, but in her experience, bullets come in packs, and she has a few more to divert before she’s done. “Second, if you’re going to make me pick a winner, then no complaining about who I pick. The winner is the winner, and it doesn’t matter how biased I am.” This earns her a pout from Sham; only Sora, who has the same impassive expression as usual, seems unaffected. “Lastly, I don’t negotiate with terrorists, so I’m not budging on any of the rules, and I reserve the right to make new ones if they’re necessary.”

“No budging? Not even for a girl who’s cooked you breakfast and laughs at your jokes?” Hime asks, fluttering her eyelashes. “Not even for Big Sis Sora, who’s taken such good care of your cat? Not even for the guest of honour, Auntie Sham?”

Sham’s face drains of all colour, like a timelapse art video played in reverse. “A-auntie?! I’m not that old!” she says, balling her fists in the sleeves of her hoodie and flailing her arms.

Hime’s smile returns, as merciless as ever. “Well, you are the second oldest person in this room, and probably on Earth.” She raises her shoulders in a non-commital shrug, opens her palms in supplication. “Ah, but that’s not a bad thing. It just means you’re a mature woman with a lot of life experience.”

“Ignore her,” Sora says gently, tugging on Sham’s sleeve. “She’s too young to know any better.” She turns and looks at Hime with baleful eyes. “Respect your elders.” Hime’s mouth opens to retort, an “Or what?” already on her lips, but she wisely closes it again. ‘Or what?’ is not a question you ever ask Sora, because she will have an answer and it will involve lasers. Certain things are better left unsaid, especially to ex-soldiers with a less less-than-civilian attitude to discipline.

“Well, if I’m honest, Suguri is probably the only one out of all of you that I’d call a responsible adult. Speaking of… she’s been awhile.” Nath frowns. The house is a decent size, but it’s only got one floor. Hardly big enough to get lost in, even if you did have Suguri’s apparently infamous inability to navigate.

“Ah… if I had to guess, she may have gone to sleep. We had to get her up very early in the morning to make all the travel arrangements, you see.” She purses her lips. “I did give her extra hugs as fuel, but I suppose even that can’t beat her circadian rhythm.”

Nath rolls her eyes. “Try coffee next time.”

“Yes, well. I’ll go and see if she’s asleep, and pick up the swimsuits. I shan’t be a moment.”

She trots off, leaving the three to themselves. Almost immediately, the silence thickens. With Hime gone, the count is two very quiet people to a lone, lively Sham; she simply can’t uphold a conversation for very long in the face of so much stillness. She wanders over to the coffee table and sinks down on a cushion to wait. To her very great surprise, Nath sits stiffly on the cushion next to hers.

“So.” Nath’s voice is slow, almost a drawl, as if she’s somehow apprehensive. “I hear you’re into robots. Old or new tech?”

A flame of passion bursts into life inside her heart, and the words begin to tumble easily from her mouth. “Old, of course! Not that I don’t like new tech, but nowadays robots all seem really sleek and fragile, right?! But robots are meant to be big and chunky. That’s their charm point! I really want something I can just smack with a wrench or a chair or something and know it’ll be fine, you know?” She punches her palm and lets the sound ring out through the living room. “And it’s super fun to maintain them, too! You get your pliers and your toothbrush and your industrial sander and you just go to town. Buff the dents out, try to scoop the glitter out of the vents, throw on a new coat of paint… you can just get immersed in it and turn your brain off. It’s a bit like making one of those model aeroplanes, right?”

“…Right,” Nath agrees. She’s never made a model aeroplane before, and honestly has no intention to do so. They seem… fiddly. She’s going to have to embrace a whole world full of fiddly things sooner or later, but that’s a journey she’s going to take one step at a time. “I don’t suppose you know anything about N-83 connector ports?”

“N-83s…? I think I use the old N-80s for my babies back home. But putting that aside, that’s a super specific question! Could it be that you’re a robot fan as well?!”

It isn’t Nath that answers, but Sora. “Mm. I think her prosthetics count as robotic.” She throws down a cushion between them and slots herself onto it so they’re shoulder to shoulder to shoulder, with her in the middle. “I think she should get the one with boosters in so she can do rocket punches.”

“I don’t need rocket punches. Tell you what – if I need something punched at long range, I’ll tell you and you can do it for me,” Nath says gently, ruffling Sora’s hair. She turns to Sham. “I don’t know too much about robots, but N-83s are the connector ports in my arms. They have some incompatibilities with modern tech, so I’ve been looking for documentation so I can get prosthetics to match them. These ones are a good attempt, but… the impulse transmission is slow, so the movement’s a bit stiff.”

“Aw… but that stiff, clunky movement is so cute, don’t you think? I mean, I guess I could take a look at the connectors for you, and lend you a spare N-80 in case you can figure anything out from that. One of my babies might have to go without an arm, but it’ll be fine.”

“I’ve gone without two for a very long time. It’s not as bad as it seems – sometimes, I prefer not having them.” She pauses. “Well… There are some things they’re good for.” Like feeling sand run between your fingers, or the heft of a wine bottle as you picked it up. Like being able to use tools, quickly and easily, to make a dilapidated house into something better. And, of course –

“Like hugging,” Sora says seriously.

“Like hugging,” she agrees.

The discussion is broken up when Hime trots back into the room, with an apology for taking as long as she did. Sora and Sham’s cases, she maintains, are an absolute disaster area. Nath shakes her head in disbelief; whatever Sham’s case might be like, she’s sure that Sora packed hers exactly the same way as they taught her in the army – quickly, orderly, ready to go at a moment’s notice. The more likely explanation is that the blonde guardian took a moment to enjoy her partner’s sleeping face, and the moment stretched into minutes without her realising.

“Well, whatever the case may be,” Hime says, adeptly turning the conversation back to the matter at hand, “I’m quite excited for this. We kept our choices secret from each other as well, so I’m in the dark as to what Sham and Sora picked. It ought it be quite educational.” She puts the three bags on the coffee table, so Nath can more easily glare at them. “Mine is the one in the silver wrapping, Sora’s is in the green, and I believe Sham’s is the sky blue.”

She looks the bags over for a second more, before reaching for the silver one. She wants the bad news first. Without nothing that approaches ceremony, she opens the bag and extracts the swimsuit within.

To her surprise, it isn’t awful. If she’s honest, she was expecting something more… dramatic. Something like two strands of neon-red dental floss and some tiddlywinks counters levels of dramatic. But, while calling Hime’s offering low-cut would be an understatement, it still vaguely fits into the category of functional clothing items. The bottom half, though, is definitely a thong, and Nath has no patience for thongs. They get wedged into places, which is a major negative if you don’t have fingers to dig them out with. It’s also pink, which is very much not Nath’s colour. It’s a fine colour, but it’s not hers.

“So?” Hime asks.

She thinks for a moment. It’s not something she would wear, but it’s not bad enough that she has to be undiplomatic about it. “…It’s a little daring, don’t you think?”

“Well, yes. You strike me as a woman with little to fear,” Hime says, with a wry smile. “To be entirely honest with you, I would be a little reluctant to wear something like that myself. Perhaps I would consider it, if I had the right audience, and she asked particularly nicely.” Her eyes flicker, half-deliberately, towards the room where Suguri is sleeping. “At any rate, I thought Sham or Sora would pick you out something modest. So I decided to get you something to help catch the attention of that ‘special somebody’, and help you keep it there.” She stops just short of implying who the ‘special somebody’ might be. Nath sighs.

“Well… I suppose I can give you a four out of ten. For effort.”

“How very charitable.”

With Hime’s offering out of the way, she begins to relax a little. Maybe she was judging the spacefaring guardian a little too harshly, anyway, but she was definitely the one person who might take a swimsuit contest into weird places in the name of fun. With a newfound sense of security, she reaches for Sham’s bag.

For a second, she doesn’t quite understand what she withdraws from it. It’s not really beachwear – more of a navy blue leotard. It’s only when she sees ‘Class 7a’ printed on the chest that she realises what she’s holding, and drops it as if it were a live snake.

“Is this a school swimsuit?” she asks Sham, with furrowed brows.

“Of course!” Sham declares, her voice booming, an excited smile plastered across her face. “When I thought about it, I realised it was the only possible option! What else can give you the maximum possible coverage while still being titillating? What’s easy to wear and easy to clean, with no chance of an on-stage wardrobe malfunction? What lets you show off your long legs but still emphasises the bust?! It’s an idol’s secret weapon! And with a body like yours, it’s gonna be nothing less than dynamite! There’s no person on Earth who isn’t in your strike zone! The entire beach is going to be drooling for you!”

“It’s a private beach,” Nath says, dryly. “You four are going to be the only other people there.”

“Even so! Using my years of experience, I’ve bravely selected the optimum swimsuit tailored for you! And the best thing is, it even works if you’re lacking self-confidence! In fact, if you’re embarrassed, it only makes your moe points go up!” Sham declares, and for a moment looks like she’s going to mount the coffee table to deliver even more rousing oratory. “This… is the essence of swimwear!”

“The problem is that I’m not fourteen. I’m not even fourteen hundred. This is a three out of ten, and if the speech wasn’t so passionate, the score would have been even worse.” She turns to Sora, looks at her with imploring eyes. “Please tell me you got me something normal. Please.”

Sora, feeling the gaze of all three women on her, tilts her head. “Muuu. I feel bad about it, since Hime and Sham were so creative. But I couldn’t figure out what to get you,” she says quietly. “…So I just got you the same one as mine.”

With hands that would probably have trembled had they been made of flesh and bone, Nath snatches up Sora’s bag and quickly opens it. What she finds makes her heart soar – a two-piece swimsuit with a modest cut, in a shade of powder blue that’s perhaps still a little too cutesy for her tastes, but perfectly serviceable. There’s a sarong folded neatly in the bottom of the bag, just in case she wants to cover up a little more. Even the hook for the bikini top is in the front, so she doesn’t have to fiddle about behind her back with her clumsy prosthetic fingers. It’s perfect, or about as close as she can expect without subjecting herself to a trip to the lingerie department. Sora gazes at her with big green eyes, waiting patiently for her judgement.

“I’ll name the cat when we get home,” she says, and Sora and Hime erupt in a quiet cheer. “I was getting a little scared that I’d have nothing to wear, but I should have known I could count on you.”

“Oh, but of course. Despite her attitude, Sora is our dependable big sister, after all,” Hime says, giggling. “Although I do think the judge was very biased indeed.”

“I made rule two for a reason.”

The only one who doesn’t seem happy is Sham, whose frown looks almost comical on her face. “Gumumu… Even with all my years of swimsuit experience… Even though I deployed the Idol’s Secret Weapon… I still came in last… Muuu… Any way you look at it, such a plain swimsuit is a waste on somebody with such formidable measurements…”

“It’s because you didn’t use the secret ingredient,” Sora explains sagely. “Love.”

“That’s for food. As talented as Sham might be, I rather doubt she baked Nath a swimsuit. Although I’m sure a shortbread bikini would be a revolutionary prospect, I don’t think it would be particularly water-resistant.”

“That’s because shortbread is weird. It’s a biscuit but it pretends to be bread. You can’t trust it.”

As the debate about what the best biscuit bikini would be moves into full swing, Nath leans back and smiles. This is the liveliest this house has been in centuries. She feels as though having friends here does more for these walls than all the decorating and plastering she did before they arrived.

Eventually, the conversation cools, and Hime motions for bedtime. As she slips beneath the sheets and hears Sora’s breath begin to get slower and snufflier as she drops off, she finds herself looking forward to tomorrow – to having fun on the beach, and then showing her friends the soldier’s memorial that she built. It isn’t long before she feels like she’s drifting off herself.

In the darkness, Sham’s eyes snap open. But Nath isn’t awake to see them.

A/N: Well, that's that, for now. I took so long over this that the OJ beach party came out before mine did...