#prince's house is located at 700 meadow lane. in case you were wondering

[nothingunrealistic]

more bold mini fic taylor philip prompts with 9

9. things you said when i was crying

Swimming in the ocean off Southampton, with Prince’s beach house dominating the horizon, is transporting, almost surreal, until the first faceful of salt water. At that point, it’s not too different from swimming at any other beach.

The third wave to break in Philip’s face finally spurs him to return to dry land and save himself from salt poisoning. He swims, then wades, to shore. The sandpipers scurrying through the surf scatter at his approach; it’s more attention than anyone else on the beach is paying him. Wendy’s sitting right on the sand, staring at the horizon and letting the ocean wash up around her legs. Scooter and Wags are trying desperately to match Sacker’s skill in skipping stones on the waves. Tuk and Rian are tossing a Frisbee with Winston and entreating him to let them bury him neck-deep in the sand. Peach is rubbing sunscreen into Kristy’s back. Victor is hitting on the hired lifeguard. Prince is tending a dozen burgers on a portable grill while Andy lounges on a nearby blanket.

Philip passes them all by, heading to the pop-up cabana just this side of the fence around the dunes. In its shade sit an army of coolers, provided by Prince’s endless but currently unseen retinue, and Taylor, in a chair they must have dragged down from the pool deck or convinced someone else to drag for them. Maybe Ben, who’s hovering at their shoulder and interrupts his own conversation with them to say “Hi, Philip.”

“Hey, Ben. Taylor.” Philip rifles through the coolers — they really should be labeled — until the water bottles turn up. He selects one, sips, swishes, and spits out that first mouthful, as discreetly as he can manage, to clear away the taste of salt. Ben and Taylor don’t seem to notice, embroiled in their hushed but animated discussion of… something. He’d guess it’s about the book in Taylor’s hands, but the title is indecipherable from this angle, even when he seats himself on a cooler, and the cover photo of an orange cat and a man with a gun explains nothing. 

Taylor turns away from Ben to cast a critical eye on him and the cooler. “Not sure that’s rated as furniture.”

“I’ll replace it if it breaks.” Philip shifts his weight. Feels sturdy enough. It’ll do fine. “This take you back to those company trips to Miami?”

“Somewhat. More sedate. Fewer palm trees.”

“Definitely more sedate,” Ben says. “There was one year — most of us were staying in the Four Seasons, but Axe invited us to his house in Indian Creek for brunch on the waterfront. We’d just started eating when the seagulls came. Hundreds of them, pecking us, stealing the food off our plates and out of our hands…” He shudders. “It was Hitchcockian.”

“Was this before I joined?” Taylor asks. “I’d remember something like that.”

“No, you went on that trip, but you were still downtown that morning. You said you were following up on a connection from the night before, in that club we all went to? Doing the power breakfast thing?”

“Yes. Networking. I do remember that.”

Ben nods, obviously relieved to have it right, and heads off toward the game of Frisbee. Poor guy has no idea what conversation he’ll get pulled into there. Philip looks over at Taylor. “Networking, huh?”

“Of course. It was a business trip,” Taylor says, very evenly. He almost believes them.

“So we know how Ben remembers the not-so-good old days.” They can decide whether to take the implied bait of what about you?

Taylor sets down the book and folds their hands. “Axe had a house out here. Down the road a few miles. Bought it in 2015 and made some waves.”

“Rings a bell.” He’d been at Stanford at the time, but the headline in the Post had made it coast to coast: BEACH BUM!

“He convened a war room there once, to handle a muni-bond deal that went bad. During the afternoon, we adjourned to his piece of the beach. Someone found a football to toss around. It ended up in my hands. And my first throw must have surprised Axe, because it hit him in the face.”

Philip laughs. “How’d he take that?”

“Once he was sure he wasn’t bleeding, he complimented my spiral.”

That sentence sounds like it should keep going, but stops short. Taylor produces a pair of sunglasses from somewhere and puts them on, despite the ample shade of the cabana, and appears to be suddenly very interested in the still-expanding Frisbee game, which now includes Sacker. Only a quiet sniff and ragged exhale suggest that Philip might be wise to make himself scarce.

He doesn’t know — not in full, not for certain, not beyond the details gleaned from office gossip and that book of Wendy’s — what exactly went down between Taylor and Axe in their yearslong history, and he figures he never will. What he does know is that when they mention Axe at all, they paint him as more myth than man, preternaturally skilled in bending people, institutions, and events to his liking, even beyond what your average decabillionaire can pull off. Usually, the only part of the picture that changes is how much Taylor bent under his influence. It’s strange to hear them talk about him like they might any other former colleague. Like, maybe, someone they miss. It can only be stranger for them.

“My dad’s from Georgia,” Philip says. “Most of his family still lives down there. When I was growing up, we’d go visit them every year or two. Usually at Easter or Thanksgiving, to get the most out of trading New York weather for Brunswick.” 

“The Golden Isles.”

“Yeah. Once every trip, we’d go to Barbara Jean’s for lunch. All of us took up four or five tables pushed together. Beach was maybe five minutes away, so we’d head there afterwards, and take the bread left over from the table to feed the seagulls.”

“That’s not recommended,” Taylor says, though with no bite. It’s an observation, rather than a demand that he drop everything and repent for feeding wild animals.

“They’d catch scraps in the air if we threw them high enough. They’re agile birds.”

“Sure.”

“So when some other interns at the AI Lab went to the beach one summer, I brought a bag of stale sandwich bread, torn into pieces.” Philip takes a mostly-unneeded drink to let that image hang in the air longer. “It was an hour’s drive. The water was cold. And the seagulls just watched me throw that bread and pecked the crumbs off the sand.”

“Disappointing.”

“To say the least.”

“And is this where I share my own treasured memories of childhood beach trips?”

“No, this is where I tell you the moral of the story. You can’t repeat the past. Don’t let nostalgia fool you.”

Taylor doesn’t move a muscle, but he’d swear that behind those sunglasses, they’re looking sidelong at him.

“I see,” they say. “Thank you.”

(send me a ship and a prompt and i’ll write a mini fic)