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ellstersmash · 6 months

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the beach house: chapter 1

Marjorie Theodora

Fandom: The Wayhaven Chronicles Pairing: Mason x Theo West Rating: M for Mature (language + beach makeout sesh) Words: 3,169 [Read on Ao3] Unit Bravo take to the beach to recruit some merfolk. Theo talks about difficult feelings with Mason. | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 |

Don't go far.

Like a kid set loose upon a playground, Theo has heard the same warning a dozen times already, and they’ve only been at the beach house for a day. Not even a full one, just half an afternoon and an evening, and Adam and Nate spent the better part of the former describing the social, migratory, hunting, and feeding habits of merfolk in great, horrifying detail. Well, not so horrifying until Theo was helpfully reminded that despite human tartare being no more than a footnote in that part of the lesson, she and her superblood might still be on the menu.

There’s a plan for the merfolks' arrival, of course. Adam wouldn't run an op without a plan. And a backup plan. And another backup, in case the first backup doesn't work. Theo doesn't remember plans D through J, but they exist and that's comforting, even if she will need an on-the-fly refresher course should A through C go south. Hopefully, it all goes well. The group—pod? School? Fuck, she can't remember—will be drawn to the beacon Adam placed, won't be immediately hostile, will never have heard of her, and Nate will charm their fins off and successfully broker a treaty on behalf of the Agency.

Nothing to it.

In the meantime, they wait. And Theo can think of far worse places to kill time than the beach.

Mason had enthusiastically—for him, anyway—volunteered to slather her in sunscreen right up until she'd popped the lid on the bottle. Then he'd made a face like she'd tried to feed him nuclear waste and recoiled. She really couldn't blame him, but it also couldn't be helped, even if it meant he'd probably avoid her the rest of the day. The sun at that point had been high and blazing, and Theo had gotten a hell of a burn once when she was a kid. Could still remember the blisters and the ice baths, her nanny’s scolding as she applied layer after sticky layer of aloe, and crying herself to sleep from the pain. Besides, she was planning to be outside anyway, and couldn't imagine Mason opting in to that. Nate had stepped up instead and, claiming first watch, had joined her and Felix outside.

That was hours ago, though, and she'd only needed to reapply once before the sun dropped low enough to let her guard down.

The very same warmth making the days nearly unbearable leaves nights just the opposite. The air is still comfortable, the sun's heat held captive by a thick layer of clouds that had drifted in as the day stretched on, but an insistent breeze sweeps inland to ruffle through her hair and the loose linen top she'd pulled on after darkness fell. Unwilling to abandon the peace of her surroundings, she steps through the surf. Its waves are calm but relentless, each icy wash across her feet and ankles less sharp than the last as she inches her way toward numbness. She should go inside, or at least stay up on the sand. But there is something addictive about enduring this gentle, harmless sort of pain.

So she walks on, her pace easy and undriven and her hands shoved into the back pockets of her jean shorts, one eye always on her self-established boundary.

It’s a perfect evening, she thinks, or would be if she didn’t have babysitters with night vision watching her every move—or premium-grade supernatural fuel running through her veins to necessitate said babysitters in the first place. Not babysitters, Nate’s voice in her head corrects her. Concerned team members.

But at least it’s Mason’s watch now, and Theo never minds his eyes on her.

During the last watch, Felix had walked alongside her, chattering the whole way. Not that he did much actual walking. Even moving down the beach, he couldn't keep still, dancing around her and darting into the water to scoop up shell fragments and tiny unsuspecting creatures for closer inspection. He had asked hundreds of questions about ocean-adjacent subjects and settled on most of the answers—or moved on without one—before she'd had any opportunity to respond. It’s hard not to have fun with Felix; he’s good company. But his energy is limitless and hers is very much not, and soon enough she'd begun to crave a sliver of quiet

Quiet is not Felix's specialty. It is, however, something Mason does exceptionally well.

It's so dark Theo can't see him from here, though she occasionally catches the faintest orange glow of his cigarette flaring up on the inhale like a toxic little lightning bug. He's parked higher up, near the dunes, most likely glaring at the waves which must be roaring in his ears, but every so often she thinks she can feel his gaze fall on her. It still leaves her breathless, that fluttering in her ribs and the prickle running up her spine as some sixth sense screams in awareness of him.

The draw is impossible to resist for long and she’s held out for a while already. Her bare feet move quicker, then slower again as she works her way through the dry unpacked sand to where Mason sits. He is close enough now that she can just barely sketch his shape: knees up, elbows propped casually atop them and hands folded together.

He scoots over and Theo plops down in the space he just vacated, onto some kind of cloth still warm from his body heat. She leans back on her hands and one lands on something hard and cold: a zipper. It’s a sweatshirt beneath them, unzipped and spread out, a barrier to keep the sand from finding its way under his clothes. And the cigarette’s long gone, tossed away sometime before she reached him. The breeze makes short work of any lingering traces of smoke, though Theo knows it’s still there in the pores of skin and fibers of his clothes.

She’s getting used to it, not that she’ll tell him.

“Is the sunscreen still bad?” she asks.

“Nah. It’s mostly just you. And a lot of salt. With”—He leans over and sniffs. Makes a face just to tease. “Notes of nasty sunscreen shit.”

Theo screws her nose up. “Sounds sexy.”

“It is, on you.”

They sit in silence for a minute or so, Theo’s toes digging under and out of the sand, over and over, slowly warming back up as Mason watches them and the beach and the water. It’s the comfortable kind of silence, one she doesn’t feel the need to fill with whatever she can scrounge up from her reserves. It’s one of her favorite things about him: talking comes easy; not talking does, too.

Theo flinches and gropes for her phone as her ringtone chimes, the dull tones harsh against the contented peace of the moment.

She glances at the name and frowns before answering. “Rebecca.”

“Hello, Marjorie. I trust the mission is proceeding smoothly?”

“Yep.”

“Good, that’s— good. Has there been any sign yet?”

“Nope.”

“I see.” Rebecca’s words are clipped, but she doesn’t sound disappointed so much as uncomfortable. “Well, according to the Agency’s most recent intel, your current position is still our best opportunity for contact. Keep your eyes peeled.”

Theo snorts. “It’s pitch black out here, so my eyes are about as useful peeled as they are gouged out. Bet you meant to call Adam. You know, Adam? Commanding Agent Du Mortain? Leader of this formidable posse?”

Theo can almost hear the heavy sigh Rebecca holds back as she chooses to politely clear her throat instead. “Marjorie, please.”

“No, it’s fine, I can get him for you. He’s probably still studying those, uh”—she snaps her fingers, trying to recall the term she just learned, but it doesn’t help—“those depth map things. He really seems to like them, by the way. Something to keep in mind for his birthday. Does he still celebrate those?”

She shoots an inquiring glance at Mason, who just rolls his eyes.

“I called you intentionally, Marjorie. You are just as much a part of this team as Adam is, and I wanted to—”

“Check in, right. I know. And get in your weekly ‘be safe,’ but the thing is…” Theo knows she should temper her words, knows she’ll regret them as soon as they’re spoken, just like she always does, but then just like they always do they bubble up inside her until she gives in and they get out. “I don’t need you to do that. I don’t want you to do that. I signed up for this, remember? Besides, you can rest assured that my team members are present and accounted for, all keeping a close watch on their squishy little human. I don't need you to play mother, so call Adam for your updates and leave me out of it.”

The regret is instant, but she won’t—can’t—apologize. Theo pulls the phone away from her ear and bites her lip instead, hard enough for it to hurt.

“Of course.” Rebecca's voice is unnaturally calm when it finally drifts through the speaker. “I apologize for bothering you. Goodnight, Marjorie.”

“Fuck.” Theo shoves the phone back in her pocket to keep from chucking it into the sea. Her shoulders have climbed up so far toward her ears she has to mindfully untense them.

Mason doesn’t comment, but Theo’s not optimistic enough to assume that will last.

“Come on,” she says. “Get it over with.”

“Want to tell me why you do that?”

Theo’s hackles rise even though she asked for it. But there’s no judgment in his tone, nor much concern.

“Do what?”

He scoffs. “Hey, if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine by me. I can think of more than a few ways to spend our time that don’t involve talking at all. But don't play stupid, sweetheart. Doesn’t suit you.”

Theo starts brushing off the sand caked onto her now-dry ankles. “Well, you see, it all started when she named me Marjorie Theodora.”

“I’m going to need another smoke.”

“I’m serious! Kids are assholes, M. I tried to go by ‘Maggie’ but that never took. I was ‘Margarine’ until my tits grew in.”

Mason’s gaze drops to the aforementioned body parts. “Looks like you made it out all right.”

“Sure. Showed up to high school with a new nickname and offered to give anyone who refused to use it a personal and immediate introduction to my fist.” Theo grins and points out a scar between the first and second knuckles of her right hand. “Spent a lot of time in detention that first week and spent the second suspended.”

And Rebecca never even mentioned it, but Theo doesn’t say that.

“But it stuck.”

She nods. “It stuck.”

Mason takes her hand and rubs his thumb against the scar. The small smile he wears, so full of pride, tightens into a skeptical purse of his lips. “So you shut her down like that because she picked a bad name?”

“No, that’s— I don’t—” Theo chews on the problem. She’s not ready to spill all over him. But how can she condense her mothers sins, make a couple dozen years’ worth of all the shit stewing in her brain bite-sized and palatable for him?

She could just say she doesn’t want to talk about it. Mason would respect that boundary as well as he does any other. It’s on her lips, but then the moon at last escapes the heavy cloud cover and the silver catches on his face, and he is watching her with such openness that she falters.

Maybe he can take the mess.

“I don’t know,” she says at last, drawing alphabetic furrows in the sand with one finger. “I mean, I get it. I do. Why she wasn’t around, why she kept all this Agency stuff from me. And I know she wants to do better now. I even— Well, I don’t want it to be like this.”

The rest is trickier. The tangled clusterfuck of her mommy issues resists unweaving, but Mason is waiting and so she pokes at it nonetheless.

“Sometimes when she’s talking to me, I feel like I’m a kid again. Hoping for the bare fucking minimum. A note on the fridge, you know? A pop-in at bedtime. But she couldn’t even do that. And stupid me just kept waiting for her to show up. Waiting for her to decide I was important. Waiting to be disappointed. I think about that pathetic little girl waiting around for her mom to decide she mattered, and now Rebecca tries motherhood on like some dress she stashed in the closet and forgot about for twenty years, and I want to hurt her. Like it will even out somehow. Or something, I don’t know.” Tears prick at the corner of her eyes. She groans, exposed and embarrassed, and buries her face in her arms. “So damn juvenile.”

They sit there for another long minute, and Theo’s stomach churns as she wishes for the second time tonight that things said could be unsaid. This is why she doesn’t talk about it. Too easy to overshare. Then Mason’s hand comes to rest between her shoulder blades and she calms under the weight and the warmth of his unexpected comfort.

He hesitates for a moment, then starts to rub soothing circles into her skin. Theo would purr if she could, but settles for a soft hum.

“Makes sense to me,” he says.

“Yeah?” A deep breath fills her lungs with salty air and sweet relief. “Feel free to explain it then, Mr. Therapist Man, because I kind of just feel like an asshole.”

He huffs out a quick laugh. “You’re not an asshole. Well, no more than the rest of us.” More circles, as the waves fill the silence, then: “Maybe she didn’t mean to, but she hurt you—a lot, and for a long time. Hell, I’d be surprised if you didn’t want her to know how that feels.”

Theo chokes back her surprise. Despite the relatively sober mood, she hadn’t truly anticipated an answer from him that didn’t include some version of “let the past lie” or, at the very least, another half-serious innuendo to distract them both.

It helps to be heard. To have permission to be a bit fucked up. It doesn’t justify her pettiness or assuage the guilt she’s become so familiar with, but it does make her feel less monstrous. Theo takes a deep, sharp breath and holds it for a few beats.

“What’s your hourly?” she teases.

“Pretty steep.” His hand dips lower, to the small of her back. With his eyes locked on hers, his fingers skim the bare skin there.

The touch sends a shiver up her spine, and she pouts playfully. “I can’t afford much. But I’ll find some way to pay you for this session, I promise.”

Her hand slides onto Mason’s knee and down the inside of his thigh. She stops just short of his groin to lightly drag her nails at the fabric of his jeans and his long, careful exhale has her biting her lip with anticipation.

“I’m sure we can come to some sort of arrangement,” he says, voice low and husky.

“I certainly hope so.”

Then Theo throws one leg over both of his, straddling his hips. His knees drop to accommodate her, and he feels his way down her waist and hips before palming her ass with a wide grin.

“Good start,” he says.

She bows her head to press a kiss just behind his ear, then tugs on the lobe with her teeth. “Wait'll you see how it ends,” she murmurs. Then she leans forward even more to urge him to lie back.

The breeze blowing inland wreaks havoc on her hair, so she sits back up just to slip the spare band off her wrist and tie it up in a messy bun. It’s not a seductive move—at least, not intentionally—but that doesn’t seem to matter to Mason just now. His fingers dig into her flesh in a deliciously needy way, and he uses the grip to grind their hips together. It throws her off-balance and she secures the last loop just in time to catch herself with a hand beside his head.

“What?” she taunts, and rolls her hips again. Slowly, purposefully, teasing the growing hardness between his legs and savoring that tense, hungry expression on his face. “Can’t do without me for five seconds?”

“Not even one,” he growls. Then he captures her lips like a man starved.

The first time he ever kissed her she felt reborn, as though every other kiss she had ever had or would ever have after no longer counted. Just read-throughs and dress rehearsals, and that was opening night. Makes sense he’d be good at it. She’d have been worried if he wasn’t; his proverbial bedposts are whittled away to toothpicks by now. Yet somehow, every time he kisses her, he outdoes himself.

He’s ruining her for anyone else. It can’t last. He is an addiction and she is terrified of the inevitable withdrawal.

Don’t borrow tomorrow’s worries, Theo.

Doesn’t work any better than it usually does, but Mason’s as good a distraction as always. Even with her on top, in control, he has her losing it. The bitter smoke on his tongue she hates and craves all at once, the noises of approval he leaves in her mouth, the dark look he gives her when she ever-so-briefly breaks away to gasp for air before she needs to taste him more—it’s all too much. And his hands roam everywhere, over and under her clothes, pulling her tight and touching her just for the sheer pleasure of it, scattering hot sparks across her skin wherever they go.

It all drives her wild, but none of it is new: every whispered word an instinct, all their movements muscle memory. Theo hasn't known someone else’s body this well since—

She shoves herself backward, chest heaving for breath, and blinks hard against the thought.

Bobby? Really, dumbass? You want to think about that fucker right now?

“You good?” Mason props himself up on his elbows. Even now, Theo’s eyes are drawn to his mouth.

“Yep,” she says. “Though I’m told sex on the beach is a lot more fun in theory than in practice.”

Mason chuckles and visibly relaxes. “You get some sand in your shorts, sweetheart?” He runs a couple fingers inside the seam of her jeans. “Want me to help you get out of them?”

Thoughts of ancient exes—and anybody else—forgotten, Theo nods and kisses him again. When she finally resurfaces, she climbs to her feet and brushes the sand from her knees, then extends one hand back down for him. No way he needs it but he takes it anyway, and keeps hold of it all the way back to the house.

#ellster writes #twc #the wayhaven chronicles #twc fic #twc mason #mason x detective #theo west #otp: mayo #happy bday agent m 💙 kiss kiss #have a fic i started three years ago

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