Stagnant tides

by Usagissue_S

Summary:

Grief [ɡriːf]

'An instance or cause of intense sorrow'

*
The first time he sees the creature, it's in the bay in the winter, when the wind is biting his skin and the whole world is grey.

Logic says he should stay away. His heart has other opinions.

*

Mourning is complicated, and Satoru never claimed to be the type to pick the easy path.

Notes:

Hi!
I hope you can find enjoyment in this fic. I had a lot of fun writing it, and I'm very happy to share it with you all :)

Go forth and like, hopefully.

The first time he sees the creature, it’s in the bay in the Winter.

 

The wailing draws his attention first. A guttural, broken thing that parallels in his mind the noises cattle make when their calves are torn from their sides. Such a jagged thing that it arrests him in his tracks, making him stand still for a moment, just listening.

 

The air is lukewarm, the wind carrying over notes from more sunkissed lands. Not enough to trade woolen jumpers out for linen shirts, however. The chill within his body was minute up until now, but that cry forces its way through his skin and right down to his bones, making him colder.

 

He should not look; he’s already running late for school. He never has had good attendance though, and since spring, it’s only gotten worse. 

 

Curiosity has always been his longest courtier, and he is following the sound before his head’s really registered it. He soon finds himself balancing on rocks, feet twisting and ankles snapping every which way to prevent collapsing and impaling himself on the rocks.

 

This part of the beach is a lovely thing once you’ve fought tooth and nail to reach its sands. Seldom ever try; the risk of injury is too high.

 

But Satoru knows it like the lines of his palms by now. Knows where it wants you to touch, place your limbs. Knows when it’s okay to let your blood deafen your ears and when it’s necessary to halt and let them clear. One slip of the foot and the waves will have you by surprise. They’re harsh like that.

 

He finds the noise wedged between Wolf and Erik. They had been nice boys, prone to mischief. Mischief led them right here and shoved them down onto the rocks. They only found the bodies because the ravens began to swarm in the dozens.

 

The water had been deep red, rumour whispered, when the search party arrived. The water is red now, as someone else is brought to agony, poked through like a pincushion.

 

He cannot recognise their face, too much of it turned into the sand. 

 

They are trapped, pale arms flailing around. They warble and whine, in pain and begging for release as they thrash against the rocks, but Satoru is much more focused on what’s occurring below.

 

Because where legs should be, there is a tail.  

 

Dark coloured and oozing, because this is where the hands of nature have grabbed and dug in nails. Sometimes his mother guts fish in the kitchen. The sight is eerily similar.

 

Every time the man–no, the creature– lets out a hoarse, ululating warble, something cold drips down his spine. 

 

It is panicking, he realises. It is suffering, calling for something to help and he is watching perversely. Shame comes over him, and he is sloshing into the crimson water before he can even think it through.

 

It laps at his shins and the cold is so sharp it stabs like a knife, and he nearly eats sand twice in an attempt to grab its tail because it's thrashing so hard. 

 

“Still!” he yells, hoping it understands. It doesn’t, because it only gets wilder, recoiling away from his touch. Its jerky movements shove the rock deeper into its tail, blood spurting, and its fingers spasm from the hurt, its stomach tensing. 

 

Satoru hisses, flinching as it splashes up water. It hits his cheek, nose, the corner of his lip. His tongue darts out and he tastes metal.

 

There is no point in trying to reassure. It does not comprehend the words he speaks. His only option is to be quick and pray it does not lunge for his throat with those sharp nails when he does what he does.

 

Inhaling deeply, the rush of blood in his ears mixing with the roar of the ocean, he grips the sides of its tail hard, feeling the muscle beneath the wet slick scales tense. 

 

He prays to the gods, and pulls with his entire might.

 

It does not take kindly to his actions. It shrieks, piercing and shrill, and arches so tightly Satoru half expects it to snap in half.

 

“I am sorry,” he gasps, because the tail is heavy, deadweight in his hands. There is sweat on the back of his neck as he lugs it up and up and up, and the creature has gone limp, the only sign of life the jittering rise and fall of its pale chest. 

 

“I am sorry, but it is the only way,” he apologises, slipping his hand further beneath, leaning down closer to get a better grasp. With closer inspection, he can see its tail is blue, like the sky when the sun’s glow is still lingering at night. The contrast makes the creature's skin look almost white.

 

Even if he can set it free, it’ll still probably die. The water is crimson and it’s leaked buckets of blood, without a doubt. Still, he tries. Still, he feels giddy as the jagged rock jutting through tissue shrinks and shrinks till it slips out and leaves only a gaping, pulsing, open wound behind. 

 

Satoru sighs in relief, lowering the tail down next to its accoster, the gelid water biting his fingertips. 

 

He is a fool to pause then. The second he lets go, it lunges. Nails scrape the sides of his neck, and he cries out, falling backwards as he shuffles away. It doesn’t follow, all its energy having clearly gone into that one attempt.

 

Something trickles down his neck. He ghosts his fingertips across it, feeling his own throat bob. 

 

He can see its face now.  Gaze upon its red-rimmed eyes and sharp cheekbones and the inky black hair that sticks to the sides of its face and shoulders and wraps round its neck like the scarves he often forgets to wear in winter. He studies the translucentness of its skin, fascinated. The shake in its arm as it keeps itself upright speaks for the distress it's gone through.

 

It is otherworldly to look upon. Pretty, in a strange but recognisable way. He wets his lips, all his effort having turned them chapped.

 

“Most would say thank you,” he finally gets out, stumbling to his feet. It only stares up at him, eying him nervously. It probably can’t even understand him. His heart is pounding, his waterlogged pants beginning to stick to his skin uncomfortably. 

 

Row seventeen, three from the end. The willow tree shades it in the warm seasons, the snow avoids it in the cold. There is moss he’s supposed to pick out of it, but he’s lost his carving knife. The creature doesn’t blink, keeps staring at him with black irises and–

 

“Do not come so close to the shore next time. There’s no saying the next person will be as kind as I am.”

 

He does not wait for a response. He flees with his tail between his legs, and does not look back.

 

***

 

For as long as men have taken to the seas, they’ve conjured up fantastical tales of what lies within its depths. Consequently, merfolk are far from a foreign concept to his ears.

 

There is no consistency to their nature. Some cultures view them as a blessing. An apology for the bending bones and the loose teeth and the self-devouring stomachs when out at sea. Others whisper more thrilling tales when the world becomes murky and the rain lashes against windows. Of hands that’ll drag you down into depths you can’t comprehend. Nails to peel back skin and taste beneath. 

 

He never spent much time on those sorts of tales, positive or negative. All of it was filed as old wives tales in his head. None of it was relevant to their town, after all.

 

Because the wives' tales might have their roots in truth, but none of their roots ever sat in the soil of his quaint little village.

 

***

 

He returns to the rocks the following day.

 

It hurts to swallow. His mother hadn’t been very happy with the sight of his scraped neck. It’s far from the most egregious injury she’s ever bandaged, and her anger felt tenfold the necessary. 

 

He voiced no complaint though, as she tutted and fussed and lathered a pungent smelling ointment onto his neck as he squirmed, before she wrapped a bandage around it so tightly you’d have thought she was trying to choke him.

 

It’s not a very trustworthy place for an injury. Not for him as it all currently stands.

 

He doesn’t find the creature by the rocks when he makes it there.

 

The only evidence of yesterday’s endeavor is the pink tinged water and the color burgundy draped across the tip of that jagged, protruding rock.

 

He feels disappointed seeing it, and he scolds himself for it.

 

***

 

A handful of weeks later, he is out on open waters. A handful of weeks later, he sees the creature for the second time.

 

The days are getting warmer, the cold months becoming a memory. Under the burning sun, he takes a boat out to sea. Sweat tickles the back of his neck, pooling at the base of his spine. 

 

The old girl’s never done so many journeys in her life. She’s accustomed to last minute ventures, her oars splitting through the water at breakneck speeds to escape hands desperate to punish her unruly users.

 

These past weeks, Satoru’s had her on the waves nearly every day for hours at a time, zig zagging back and forth across the sea. He’s got buckets of unwanted free time now, and if he spends them all surrounded by prying, worrying eyes, he’ll go loopy.

 

His breathing is sharp puffs as he rows. The water in his bottle laying under the bench that keeps rolling into his heels is lukewarm at best. Above, the seagulls squawk, circling so frequently he finds himself growing dizzy. He has to stop and rest eventually, and chooses that moment to stare up at the sky, sipping on his far from pleasant beverage.

 

A violent lurch of the boat is what forces his break to an abrupt conclusion. He wipes water off of his chin, keeping perfectly still. Plenty of ocean creatures get curious. Once is nothing to panic about.

 

But it, of course, comes again. 

 

Harsher, enough to send him sliding down the bench. He swallows saliva, peering over the side of the boat. A shadow grows beneath the surface, expanding at such speeds his brain cannot keep up with it.

 

And then, of course, something breaches the surface. Inky black and shiny under the sun, and when it shifts he inhales sharply because–

 

“It is you again,” he whispers.

 

Cautious and slow, it slinks closer, not blinking once, not even when water runs directly into his eyes.

 

“I didn’t think you’d live. That wound was pretty nasty. Did it heal okay?”

 

The creature lifts its head and tilts it, confused. Satoru scratches the back of his neck, embarrassment coiling in his stomach. Of course it cannot answer him. What are the chances something from the seabed understands human tongues?

 

“I’m guessing it did then, otherwise you wouldn’t be swimming about. I don’t know what you were doing, but whatever action led you there, don’t do it again, alright? I meant it when I said the next person might not be as kind as I was,” he says, despite his revelation. He hopes his tone is at least understood. 

 

But as Satoru stares at the creature and it stares back, he knows it wasn’t. 

 

It is uncanny how little it needs to blink. How sharp those cheekbones are, how piercing those eyes are despite the fact they’re so narrow set. 

 

He startles only slightly when it suddenly grabs the edge of the boat. It sways as he leans on it, inspecting the vessel with a face of fascination. When he looks up at Satoru through his lashes, long and clumped together from seawater, the intensity makes saliva gather in his throat, that telltale sign of nausea rearing its head.

 

He digs his nails into his thighs, trying to ground himself.

 

It reaches out with spindly fingers, as if it wants to grab him. His hand flinches towards his neck automatically; he has no interest in gaining another injury.

 

Instead, it reaches up to his chest, splaying its palm against where his heart rests. It smiles, making a noise that vibrates through its entire form; Satoru feels it against his own skin.

 

He blinks stupidly, realizing it is making the same sound over and over. 

 

“Is that–are you thanking me?” he says, watching the corners of its eyes crinkle as it makes that odd, churning sound again. It is like when the radio cannot find signal, only if you simultaneously submerged said radio deep underwater.

 

“Oh,” he says dumbly. “Well it was nothing, really. Any decent person would’ve helped.”

 

It looks at him quizzically, finally pulling away. There’s an ache to his chest where its palm sat. He realises all too late that it’s going to leave. His lips have only just parted when it dips back below the surface, leaving barely a ripple in its wake. 

 

He stares at the water, waiting for its return.

 

It doesn’t, of course. 

 

He sighs, picks up the oars, and keeps on rowing.

 

***

 

“Seventy kilograms, Satoru. Not ninety.”

 

Old Mrs Yama’s voice cuts through his daydreaming, causing him to knock the container of power he’s meant to be measuring right onto the hardwood floors. A cloud of the aquamarine coloured power explodes upwards, knocking him square in the face and forcing him to cough.

 

When his hands have waved the majority of it away, he cracks open his eyes, squinting. Her expression is one far from amusement, and he grimaces apologetically.

 

Why she tolerates him, he hasn’t the faintest clue. He had a steady job, is the thing. It was much more suited to his infernal personality. Good with the customers, he was praised for being. Especially the women. His face made up for his shitty attitude, he was told once. It was meant to be an insult, a chip on his shoulder. He took it with a beaming smile, and only spat in the customer’s drink as comeuppance.

 

He considered it a masterclass of composure in the moment. He still does. He’s done far worse for far less.

 

But he turned in his notice there in the spring, and no one tried to cling to him. He still needed a job though; there’s no universe in which his mother lets him sit in her house and devour all her food and not bring in a steady income as payment.

 

But all the jobs available made him sick, half the places too familiar to his heart, the other’s housing frequently nosying faces he had no interest in dealing with.

 

Old Yama runs a shop half a foot away from the woods. The lights are never on and half the building’s constructed around an oak tree that reaches so high into the clouds peering up at it strikes you with vertigo.

 

Trinkets are what she’s meant to sell. Folktales incarnated is a more befitting terminology. 

 

He walked in on a Saturday night, so drunk the world was spinning, and begged her to fix it all. Then he misplaced his feet, collapsed into her shelves of ceramic figures, and smashed them all to pieces. 

 

He weeped into his sliced palms like a forlorn child, his own salty tears flaring up the wounds.

 

He woke up on her sofa with a splitting headache and mummified palms. He left her house with strict orders to work off his debts and a lilac, unlabelled bottle cream for his hands.

 

He paid that debt off nearly two weeks ago, proudly announced by Yama as he was sweeping the floors. And for the past two weeks, he’s kept turning up, and she hasn’t shooed him out. It’s probably reassuring to everyone that she hasn’t. Can’t do himself too much harm with her beady eyes following him, after all.

 

“Sorry,” he mutters, crouching down to start scooping powder up into his hands.

 

“You’re distracted today. Did something happen?”

 

“Not really. I just…found something. Nothing important,” he says, not looking up. Lying to her of all people is certainly a choice; the weird and the mystical are right up her alley. But a part of him doesn’t want to show his hand yet. Wants his mercreature to be just for him, regardless of if it makes another appearance or not.

 

“It can’t be unimportant if it’s lurking on your mind,” she quips, and he snorts, funnelling powder back into the container.

 

“It’s not lurking. It was just interesting to see, that’s all. surprising. Took me a little off guard, but I’ll get over it. ”

 

“Yes, I’m sure you will. You do, after all, have a fantastic track record of pulling that off.”

 

When she laughs, it’s a cackle that sends the birds nestled on the roof flying, their departing footsteps a harsh bumble above his head.

 

That humour is a reason he’s stayed. She’s the only one who won’t tread on eggshells around him. He stares down, frowning.

 

There is dust lingering on him now, ghosting his clothes and tickling his nose. The sound of a pestle in a mortar rings out, her scratchy humming pursuing. The sun beams in through the tinted windows, casting everything in a blueish hue. It’s hot. Not the short of heat that boils, but that causes minute fatigue.

 

He doesn’t answer her. Just goes back to weighing.

 

***

 

In the evening, as the sun is setting and he’s trekking home, he spontaneously decides to make one last visit to the rocks.

 

Right where the water’s now clear, there sits a shell, white as snow and flecked with cobalt. 

 

He pockets it, heart in his ears.

 

***

 

The third time he sees it, he is, for once, doing what he’s meant to be doing.

 

A storm’s been ravishing the land for half a dozen days. It’s battered roofs and pelted down fat droplets of rain, the wind rattling windowpanes and the thunder so loud in its presence it feels like it's shaking the foundations.

 

It came quickly, with little warning. He was drenched head to toe when he threw open the front door and barreled inside, dripping water like a dog.

 

Staying inside is a gladly fulfilled expectation. He spends most of it with his nose buried in books, devouring all he can about merfolk and their relations. Consistency is far from present. Every description wars against each other. Every sketch tells a different story. 

 

It puts him in a bad mood. Nothing provides the answer to the question he most wants fulfilled.

 

The scent of petrichor permeates the air when the storm finally departs. Seagulls shriek and the creatures hesitantly crawl out from their hiding places. The sky is a dull gray and the ground squelches unpleasantly underneath his feet as he treks his way down to the beach involuntarily.

 

Little Amanai never came back from school, the day the storm hit. Her mother ran around like a headless chicken all of this morning when it was finally deemed safe to vacate homes, begging with a snotty nose and teary eyes for someone to tell her her little girl took refuge with them.

 

Well, no one could tell her what she wanted, and now they are searching.

 

She is dead, realistically.  Another gone in too short of an amount of time. It makes him grimace to think about it, but they all know it. Unless she crawled down into a fox den and took refuge there, the chances she found somewhere sturdy enough to hide out in that could survive the gale force winds that overturned three boats in the harbour, the poor thing is a goner. 

 

It is only a matter of finding the body.

 

Doing so is a tedious task. They trek along the sand, hoping to catch a glimpse of a limb somewhere or another. It’s a morbid idea, picturing a little hand or foot peeking out of dull grains, but there's not much else they can do; no one brought a shovel with them.

 

The world has taken on a new colour, a new fashion trend brought in by the storm. Everything is lifeless, from sky to sand. Wind whips at his cheeks, forcing red into the apples of them. Walking is easier than usual; the water has turned the sand hard like concrete. 

 

They decide to spit up eventually, concluding more can be achieved that way. A handful of them head back along the ground just covered, aiming to cover the north end of the beach. Out of his lot, only he decides to trek to the horizon point. The rest decide to start digging up ground already covered, dampening their knees and getting dirt beneath their fingernails to do so.

 

Like this, he finds his mercreature again. 

 

Hears him first, when everyone else is a pinprick on the skyline and he is so far along his feet are beginning to ache. He hears an unsettling wailing sound that makes his stomach twist and his heart thump, and he knows, strangely, that it’s his creature.

 

There, in the water, he sees it. The eyes watching him and the top of a skull. When it sees he is looking, it does not break his gaze.

 

For a moment, there is only staring. Piercing blue meets onyx; two unwavering gazes.

 

And then it dips back into the water's depths, resurfacing quickly further along the waterline. He stands and watches it dip between the two locations, realisation crawling up and over him.

 

It wants me to follow, he thinks. That’s the only conclusion that seems logical.

 

Is doing so smart? He has no idea of its intentions. 

 

And yet he glances behind himself anyways, feeling a gargantuan sense of relief when he sees no one is around. Eyes back to the water, and its head is still bobbing above the surface.

 

He takes cautious steps, and when they are almost aligned it vanishes again, appearing further away once more.

 

Yes, following is what it wants, and Satoru is happy to oblige.

 

It feels like a game of chase. Albeit rather slow and languid, but a chase nonetheless. It calls out to him now and again, breaking the silence with warbles and chirps, as if it’s checking he’s still following.

 

He has no idea how it can tell he is; he isn’t answering.

 

He follows it until the gentle slope of the land becomes sharper, harsher. The rolling hills become taller, soft grass melting into jagged rockfaces.

 

He hasn’t been this far down from the town since spring. Started the walk at sunrise, finished it at sunset. His hand had been rope burned at the end from the handle of the rickety picnic basket he’d been carrying, stuffed to the brim with all of their favourite treats.

 

One last trip, they said, while it was still possible. The whole day it took, and it still didn’t feel like enough time.

 

His creature stops moving when they reach white cliff faces. He stops too, glancing around, trying to spot anything particularly eye-catching. He finds nothing.

 

“You just wanted me to walk with you?” he yells over the wind, and it shrills back, yanking its arm out of the water to point past his head.

 

He follows, eyes finding a narrow slit in the rock face. It looks hardly big enough for a child to squeeze through. 

 

“You want me to go in there?” he says, incredulous. It just stares, and he groans. 

 

Stupidity has never been a consort of his, and yet today it flashes its pearly teeth and his knees go weak. He is crawling through the tiny space like a fool as quick as anything, cursing as his knees get scraped along the rocky floor.

 

The blessing, at least, is it’s a short tunnel, and he is out and onto the other side quickly. 

 

Standing up, brushing himself off, he glances around, drinking in his surroundings.

 

He is in a cavern, standing on the rocks that form a ring around the water in the middle. It looks deep enough to reach his hips, he notes as he balances precariously on the slippery rocks. His mercreature appears then, a hulking shadow in the depths of the pool.

 

A tunnel, he theorises. That’s the only way it could’ve made it in.

 

Sunlight finds its way in through a gap in the roof somewhere, reflecting fractal patterns down onto the water. Patterns that crawl across the merman’s face when it finally surfaces, indenting the water's surface with no ripples, miraculously.

 

And it is a lovely place, really, but—

 

“What have you brought me here for? Not to eat me, I hope,” he pokes, treading cautiously. The mercreature looks at him funny.

 

It slinks through the water, over to the far end of the cavern where the rocks slope down like a ramp into the water.

 

It pulls itself up, lounging across like some sort of lady in a painting. Like this, Satoru can see its tail in full. Large, like the type of thing a whale has. Its hair sticks to its neck and forehead, and water droplets run down its bare chest.

 

A male, surely. The bottom half might be fish, but the top half is all human. Or at least it seems to be human. It makes a gesture with its head, a clear call over, and he goes like a dog on a leash.

 

When he gets near, it flicks its tail, clearly drawing attention to the wound. 

 

“It really did heal well,” he mutters in wonder, wandering over. At his words, it preens, perhaps understanding his tone. Who it’s proud of for the miracle of nature, he’s not sure.

 

“Can I touch?” he asks, sitting next to it. 

 

It doesn’t answer, but it doesn’t try to bite his fingers off when he touches its tail, running his fingers over the scales. There’s a significantly lighter patch where the wound was, the skin bumpier to touch. It flinches a little when he ghosts his fingertips over it, and he shoots it an apologetic look.

 

“Bet it wasn’t fun to swim back here with that hole in you, was it? I’m assuming you came here. This is your home, right?”

 

He moves his hand away, but the merman grabs it. Their hands are roughly the same size, but the merman’s are paler. More delicate. More spindly.

 

The merman presses their palms together, and Satoru watches with amusement as it frowns. There are little thin sets of skin between its fingers, absent on Satoru’s. Webbed. Its confusion at such a minute difference is a little endearing to watch.

 

His eyes flutter around the cavern. There’s moss on the walls entwined with plants and trinkets scattered about across the floor. He spots a hairbrush and a wind chime with half the wooden top snapped off.

 

“Do you have a name?” he questions, feeling the other trace between the gaps of his fingers. 

 

“I can’t just keep calling you the mercreature, or the merman. That’s sort of rude. My name is Satoru,” he says, pointing at himself. He repeats the action until the thing stops tilting its head at him in curiosity and starts jabbing him in the chest, trying its best to shape its mouth in the right way to say his name. 

 

Its nails are sharp and it tickles a little, but he smiles anyways when it smiles too, clearly understanding what he’s trying to convey.

 

It looks at him for a long second, before it points at itself and opens its mouth and lets out a long string of churning warbling noises. They stare at each other, before Satoru coughs.

 

There’s no universe in which his mouth will contort to make those sounds. He hums, thinking.

 

“That’s a lovely name, I’m sure, but it’s a little hard for me to say. Can I give you another, just for ease's sake? I’ll give you another. How about…” he muses, thinking up names in his head. He stares at the creature–merman–and debates.

 

People look like their names, they say. His merman has a unique face, a beauty to it impossible to miss. A straight nose and sharp eyes that make his stomach swirl in a painfully familiar way. Cupid bow lips tinged red, uncanny against the ivory skin.

 

The Brothers Grimm wrote of mercreatures. Of that Little Mermaid and her love for the land.

 

But she didn’t look like this. He thinks if she did, that prince would’ve run a mile. He wonders if all merfolk look like this. Beautiful, in the way that makes you look twice over your shoulder.

 

He knows the name he wants to use. The only one that’s right.

 

“Suguru. Can you be Suguru?”

 

It looks at him funny, the tilt to its head much like a stray dog. It tries the word out on its tongue, making a knot of it that results in something more akin to a hissing screech coming out. He leans forward, resting his hand against its chest, just like it did to him the other day.

 

“Suguru,” he repeats. “You’re Suguru.”

 

It makes the same screeching sound again, but that’s alright. It’s clearly intelligent. It’ll pick up soon enough what Satoru is telling it.

 

“It’s nice to see you again, Suguru,” he says, smiling. 

 

Suguru smiles back, and his heart flutters.

 

***

 

She is behind a sand dune in the end.

 

He doesn’t spend long in the cave. Too long of a vanishing and the search party will turn their eyes to him. Suguru doesn’t seem content with his departure, but he makes a promise to return the following day, as if he can comprehend it. He prays his shitty little mimes conveyed the message to some degree of effectiveness.

 

She’s lying on her back, blood seeping into the sand beneath her head from a gash in the side of it. Her skin is white as paper, her dark locks matted and crusted with seawater.

 

Her arms rest across her chest, oddly enough, like she had been arranged. It makes his eye twitch.

 

“Who’s going to get her?” he finally speaks, standing with the others in a circle around the body, like they are vultures and not men. Nanami, a classmate of his, sighs with the weight of the world. He does not poke holes in Satoru’s uninterested demeanour.  It would be hypocritical too. 

 

Death has come too close to the pair of them for it to make them shiver anymore.

 

“I’ll go,” he says, and Satoru watches him carry the corpse away, the girl's hand hanging limply. Her little seashell bracelet glitters with water. His gaze narrows, watching Nanami get smaller on the horizon, mouth a tidge dry from exhaustion.

 

It’s an awfully familiar sight.

 

***

 

If anyone else in town suddenly began disappearing for great accumulations of time, it would be noted. 

 

The village is small, the number of inhabitants countable without the risk of losing count. There is only one school, and almost everyone of workable age has more than one job, not enough hands to man all the necessities of civilization.

 

So the town is small and very little goes unmeddled in, unless, of course, it’s to do with him. He has always been a trouble causer, the boy who cried wolf. It is easier to watch and let him run wild than to try and reign him in.

 

And too, since spring, they have left him to his own devices because they do not quite know what else to do with him. They’d survey him twenty four seven if they could, he knows, but no one quite has the tact to manage that, so instead they simply stare from afar. 

 

They trust Yama to hold the reins on him, and assume that all the moments they cannot locate him, he is there with her.

 

And as long as he comes home at the end of the day, that is good enough. That is all they need him to do, after all. 

 

So he has very little worry at suddenly devoting large amounts of his time to that cavern.

 

Suguru is there everyday. He supposes it’s natural; it is his home. Or Satoru assumes it to be his home. At the very least, it’s somewhere he frequents. 

 

Each time he slips in through that crack, Suguru splashes his tail and coos loudly, the sound echoing off of every surface, making an odious choir. He probably has better things to be doing than listening to Satoru’s futile attempts at communication, yet he never pushes him to leave.

 

Most days, there is something waiting for him on that ramp.

 

Suguru watches him approach from the far end of the pool, like a predator stalking its prey. It was unnerving the first time he did it. It took Satoru all the courage in the world to approach. As friendly as Suguru seems to be, he is still from the unknown.

 

He doesn’t hold much weight to the wives' tales, but not much is still some.

 

But all that sat upon salt coated stone was a shell, twirled in shape and lilac in colour. When he picked it up, Suguru had flown at him, silent in his movement as he sliced through the water, and chirped like a chorus of parakees as Satoru studied it intently.

 

Shells are his favourite thing to present. Colourful pieces polished smooth by the ocean, whatever used to live in their crevices having long since vacated. Sometimes he leaves pearls, inconsistent in shape and size but never anything but shiny.

 

He slips them onto a string he strips from a pair of old fraying pants, tying a loop after each one to not lose them. He puts all his gifts in the wooden chest beneath his bed he puts his out of season clothes in. 

 

He folds the fabric around the shells carefully, like a surgeon prodding organs, doing his best to ensure they don’t get smashed to smithereens. He lays the pearls between folded shirts, right next to the picture he can’t bear to look at anymore.

 

He brings gifts too, of course. Things no one will notice are gone. 

 

The ceramic wolf that collects dust behind stacked books on the mantlepiece. The spoon with the uncomfortable handle from the kitchen drawer. The biology textbooks he hasn’t used since he couldn't reach his doorhandle.

 

On one occasion, he even swipes a plant from Yama’s workshop. A crossbreed that looks just as unnatural as his merman from the depths. 

 

Suguru takes them all with intrepid fascination, studying the ornaments and flipping through the books with damp fingers, dripping fat droplets of water onto the pages from his hair where he’s bent over them.

 

It is a strange thing he is doing, trying to make a friend out of something as unknown as the waves it emerges from. He knows why he’s doing it. He’s just not sure why Suguru is letting him do it.

 

He is not going to stop though, not as long as Suguru seemingly finds him interesting enough to be around.

 

He’d be an idiot not to.

 

***

 

The baker’s is a place that smells of melting sugar and cinnamon. The scent always sticks to his clothes for days once he’s been inside. He used to frequent it on the regular, a mandatory stop after a gruelling day of education.

 

He cut that habit out a while back, like so many things in his life.

 

Presently, he fiddles with the bracelet on his wrist, waiting for Marina to come back with his order. It’s another gift from Suguru, rounded pieces of coloured glass strung together to form a bracelet. 

 

He hears the bell above the door chime, and it pulls his attention unwillingly. He really wishes it hadn’t, because–

 

“Satoru. Surprised to see you here.”

 

He winces, thumbing the string harder.

 

“Shoko. Nice to see you.”

 

That’s a lie. Nice is the furthest thing from what this is. She looks the same as always, deadpan expression etched onto her features and an unlit cigarette dangling from her lips. They used to harass her about that, how she was going to have rotting lungs before she even hit thirty. Probably be dead at fifty, whilst they lived long to be old and gray.

 

Oh, the irony.

 

She walks over, standing next to him. Not the way she used to though. No, you could fit a lifetime between them now. Once, their shoulders would brush. 

 

“The usual?” she asks, and he just nods, letting the silence continue on.

 

He’s been very unfair to her. It’s not her fault. He’s not the only one who lost, he knows that. No one saw it coming, but it did come and he’s the only one still in pieces over it. Everyone else got their tears out, had their period of mourning, and moved on. Only he’s got his feet glued to the floor, unable to depart.

 

He wonders how long they’ll let him keep on wallowing in his misery. How long until the concern turns to frustration. Till the whispers turn to shouts telling him to get his head back in the game.

 

Maria picks then to return, and he couldn’t be more grateful.

 

She has a paper bag in hand, the ends rolled over and secured with a strip of sticky tape, done so in such a way only years of accumulated expertise can result in. She smiles at him as she places it onto the countertop, no nefarious intentions hidden behind her crooked teeth.

 

She looks elated in truth, like she’s trying not to bounce on the heels of her toes. It’s amusing. She used to throw profanities at him like they were spare change. At both of them. It’s whiplash worthy watching her look so eager to see him.

 

“Got any plans for today?” she asks, gaze fluttering between them as she stamps the numbers into the till. He watches it climb up, the coins in his side pocket a heavy weight. He knows what the price will be, and so does she. Always the same order, always the same price.

 

“Yeah,” he responds. “Going down to the beach. Make the most of the sun, you know?” 

 

There’s a picnic basket in the pantry at home he needs to collect. He hopes Suguru likes what he’s packed inside.

 

“Ah, I wish I could do that. It looks lovely outside. Unfortunately, I’ve gotta be here all day. Hope you both have a good time though!”

 

Ah. She thinks–

 

“We’re not–”

 

“I’m not going with Satoru. I’ve got things to be doing with Utahime,” Shoko says, beating him to it. Her tone is just as hollow as ever, and he’s grateful for it, because it softens the blow of the awkward way Maria halts for a second too long, eyes widening.

 

“Ah,” she clears her throat. “Well, you could combine plans? I know you all used to hang out at the beach in summer. The more the merrier–”

 

“I don’t think Satoru would like that, but thanks for offering.”

 

He wants to crawl into a hole and die. Marina shuts up quickly, after murmuring out a price with red tinted cheeks. He all but slams the coins down onto the countertop, heartbeat loud like thunder. He snatches his bag, a wobbly smile and an inaudible thank you on his lips.

 

He flies out of there with rapid pace, not waiting to digest the words thrown after him as he leaves.

 

The more the merrier.

 

He knows that. He’s had the experience first hand, the memories of laughter and scrunched up eyes to protect from water blossoming in the back of his head. The sand clinging to his skin registering like a phantom limb.

 

He has the photos from such days tucked away under his bed in a box collecting dust. They used to hang on his walls proudly. 

 

But they don’t anymore, the same way he doesn’t hang out with his friends anymore. 

 

Like a compass pointing north, the culprit is always spring.

 

***

 

Satoru finds Suguru lounging on the rocks, right beneath the gap in the ceiling that rains down sunlight.

 

He reminds him of a cat stretched out in the sunrays coming through a window. His skin looks pink tinged even from here, his eyes closed shut in a serene mimic of slumber.

 

He sets down the picnic basket, the sound alerting Suguru, who smiles and chirps at Satoru when he cracks his eyes open, rolling over onto his back, going belly up. When he eyes the basket, he makes the warbling sound Satoru’s grown to recognise as curiosity.

 

“I brought food for a picnic. Do you have picnics under the sea?” he asks, sitting down cross legged.

 

Suguru flips open the lid, more invested in the contents than trying to answer a question he probably doesn’t even comprehend. His eyes light up at the contents, putting down the anxiety Satoru didn’t even know he was feeling.

 

He tried to be diverse, but his sweet tooth took victory. There’s a few fruits in there. Apples and a pear and a bunch of grapes he swiped from the fruit bowl.

 

Alongside it, a chocolate bar he’s barely made a dent in, the flavour dragging up too many painful memories. A victoria sponge in its whole, a packet of jelly sweets, the cinnamon bun from Maria, still wrapped in its bag.

 

“It’s food,” he explains, like it’s not obvious. “Sweet things mainly. Sorry if you don’t like that sort of stuff; I was just guessing.”

 

He scratches the back of his head, watching Suguru dig his nails into the cake and stuff a whole chunk into his mouth.

 

Crumbs stick to his lips, and Satoru gets to watch all his emotions flicker across his face. His tail flicks, making a slapping noise against the ground. When he’s chewed and swallowed, he looks to the sky, clearly assessing. 

 

Satoru chews on his nail, eager for his assessment.

 

It comes back positive, because he takes another chunk, wolfing it down with the same intensity.

 

“Good, isn’t it?” he chuckles, watching him devour the cake. He doesn’t mind it, even if his stomach calls out for that sweet goodness longingly. He has his own treat to taste.

 

It’s exactly as he remembered on his tongue. Sweet and soft and slightly spiced. He feels a wave of guilt chewing it, but when he looks back at Suguru, resolutely clawing his way through the sponge piece by piece, jam and melting whipped cream sticking to his fingertips, embedding beneath his nails, it evaporates pretty quickly.

 

It brings back memories. Memories of afternoons splayed out on checkered blankets. Of red lips tinting themselves more crimson with each strawberry devoured whilst he coated his own in sugar granules. 

 

Of fighting off the birds desperate for a piece, giggling like schoolchildren with every protesting squawk they give when a pebble sized stone was hurled at them.

 

When Suguru is done, he licks his lips and fingers clean and stares at Satoru until he is finished too, not blinking once. He wonders if it burns to stare for that long.

 

And when he is done, Suguru leans forward and wipes the sugar from his lips, proceeding to lick off his own fingers like it’ll transfer the taste. His fingertip is like ice when it brushes, making him shiver. The sight of that tongue dragging along it makes Satoru’s heart twitch irregularly.

 

It’s another positive assessment, and the chirp he emits is a sufficient distraction from his thumping chest.

 

***

 

They spend the rest of the afternoon sunbathing, wriggling around in circles to follow the sunrays coming in through the roof. 

 

They lay with their hands ghosting, fingertips brushing now and again with a wiggle born from the desire to reach more comfort. Everytime, it makes him have to swallow. He doesn’t know if it’s intentional, and he doesn’t care. Neither of them move to break the pattern and that’s all that matters.

 

Everytime they brush, it makes his heart do something it hasn’t done in months.

 

He quite likes it.

 

He goes home with peeling shoulders and pink skin, a fatigue over his body that can only be attributed to sunburn, and a smile he can’t swipe off his face.

 

***

 

Suguru likes the books he brings, strangely.

 

He likes lying on the ramp, tail submerged in the water being caressed by the waves. His eyes are always wide in amazement as he flicks through the pages, nose glued to them, water trickling down and dripping onto the pages from his face, leaving crinkled spots in their wake.

 

Sometimes, he gets so entranced he forgets Satoru is there, jumping visibly when he breaks hours of silence with his hoarse, unused voice.

 

He can’t read them, but the pictures hold all his attention. Consequently, his favourite are the fashion magazines Satoru swipes off of the coffee table.

 

He’s most fascinated by the jewellery pages. With the models and the gemstones embedded in their ears and the glittering decor looped around their necks.

 

“Earrings,” he points out to him the first time he gives that chirp of questioning. When Suguru looks puzzled, he touches his own lobe, repeating the word till Suguru copies, touching his own ear.

 

“Exactly,” he nods, beaming. “Earrings. You like them? We can get you some if you’d like. We’d have to pierce your ears though. Pierce,” he doubles down, leaning across and pinching the other’s lobe.

 

He jolts, looking at satoru’s fingers with a look of distrust and skepticism. He sighs. They’re making chips at that brick wall, but it’s tedious progress. 

 

Suguru’s come to understand some simple words, like ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ and even his own name. He’s still far from being able to understand Satoru’s language though.

 

“Maybe I can find clip-ons,” he says, flopping backwards, letting Suguru continue ogling the magazine. He thinks he still has small ones from the costume party of two summers past.

 

But also…

 

He bites his lip. Suguru trusts him, clearly. Lets him bring him food he has no way of determining the safety of. Trusts him to be here in his home and not tell anyone about it. Trusts him enough to fall asleep next to him, face all serene in slumber, cheek squished from using his arm as a pillow.

 

And if he can trust him with all that, surely he can trust him to put real earrings on him, surely?

 

He still has those gauges after all, tucked away tightly at the back of his nightstand drawer, and who else should have them but Suguru?

 

***

 

They have a sermon for Amanai come the following weekend.

 

It feels late in his eyes, but delays tend to happen when half the church roof gets blown off. There’s still a hole in it too, exposing the sky through the whole service. 

 

Satoru is there out of politeness, sitting in the back row at the end of the bench. His mother has rigid posture. He slouches.

 

He spends most of the speech in his own head, deeply aware of the needle in his breast pocket and the gauges nestled next to it.

 

The sun burns his head when they funnel outside, the coffin bearers slow as molasses upfront. Somewhere, Amanai’s mother is weeping up a storm. It makes him uncomfortable. Makes him squirm, want to run. He hates crying.

 

 He digs his thumbnail into the palm of his hand, watching dirt get splattered onto the coffin.

 

“Value life as it is,” the pastor says over the sounds of dirt going splat. That fat little old man with his receding hairline tosses his hands to the sky, like it’ll get Amanai up there any quicker. 

 

“Feel the loss, but don’t let it consume.”

 

Satoru rolls his eyes. Easy for him to say. He never took a lover, never had any children, has seldom any friends. It’s easy to preach about the correct way to mourn when you’ve never had to do it yourself.

 

***

 

Suguru throws a hissy fit over the earrings for a good half hour. Hides in the water and screeches every time Satoru tries to inch closer. Understandable. All he sees is Satoru waving a sharp object at him.

 

“For the earrings,” he tries for the umpteenth time, but Suguru isn’t having any of it. He bares his teeth and makes a rumbly, protesting noise, face scrunching up wildly. Satoru sighs, falling back on his haunches.

 

Suguru responds best to demonstrations, he’s discovered. He bites his lip, looking down at the needle. Then he takes a deep breath, putting the most reassuring smile onto his face.

 

“If this doesn’t make you understand, I’m giving up.”

 

And then, quick as a flash, he takes hold of his own ear and jams the needle through his lobe in one fell swoop. 

 

Pain flares immediately, and he hears Suguru make an awful wailing sound, water being chucked in all directions following next. He yanks his eyes open–even though he hadn’t realised he’d shut them– and makes a noise when he feels dampness touch his cheeks.

 

Suguru looks frantic, his eyes burning holes between his throbbing, bleeding ear and the needle in his hand.

 

“Relax,” he says softly, taking hold of pale wrists and setting his cheeks free. He fumbles around in his pocket, pulling out a singular gauge. 

 

“I’m just showing you what I mean, okay?”

 

It hurts less somehow, to force the little circle into the fresh wound. Suguru growls the whole time, but doesn’t intervene. When Satoru is sure it's secured and won’t fall out, he makes little jazz hands, grinning ear to damaged ear.

 

“Voila! This is all I wanted to do. Make you look like the pictures you like so much. Will you let me do yours now, or did that just solidify your refusal?”

He gestures at his own ear, then Suguru’s. His merman looks apprehensive, but it’s seemingly solved by the giant grin Satoru won’t let fall off his face despite his cheeks beginning to ache. 

 

Suguru taps his hand, making a sound Satoru takes as acceptance. 

 

His nails dig crescents into Satoru’s thigh throughout the process. His hair drips water onto his suitpants. His face crunches up all cutely when the needle pierces, tailfins smacking the ground. 

 

When it’s done though, Suguru crawls to the water and admires his reflection on its surface, cooing at his own appearance. He touches his own lobe, also sticky with blood, and then leans back over and touches Satoru’s, making a warbling sound.

 

“Matching,” he says, and the smile he gets is worth the pain in his ear. Worth the three day infection he gets in it as a consequence too. He probably should’ve sterilized that needle or something.

 

He still doesn’t take the gauge out though, even when his earlobe looks like a balloon. The glee on Suguru’s face every time he sees them matching is worth all the pain in the world.

 

***

 

Satoru sits at the kitchen table, tongue out the corner of his mouth, fiddling with a knife as he tries to dig chunks of dried paint out of a paintbrush.

 

Suguru likes crafts, if his abundance of self made necklaces means anything; he’s got a feeling that favoured hand will cast its shadow over this pass time too. 

 

Today, he wants to try painting. Problem is, he never cleaned the brushes off the last time he used them, and now everything is crusted and virtually unusable. His mother is humming whilst preparing lunch; it’s fish. The knife slices through the belly of the thing, revealing a hunk of guts that she removes with expertise. 

It smells foul, and he wrinkles his nose up at it.

 

 

“You’ve been spending quite a bit of time by the beach, I’ve heard,” she says passively, right as he knicks the corner of his finger. Blood beads up quickly, and he sticks his finger in his mouth to put a stop to it as he hastily goes to grab a plaster. There’s a failed note of concern lingering beneath her words, and he wants to snort.

 

They’ve never been a pair for heartfelt conversations. She’s a pillar to fall on when things get tough, but her hands have always been calloused. Better suited for fixing than holding, forcing back together than comforting. He’s never minded it. It’s just how they are.

 

He wishes she’d stop trying to change the rhythm they naturally fall into. Everyone wants things to go back to normal, and her doing this isn’t inching them any closer. If anything, it keeps the wound yanked open.

 

“Yeah. The weather’s been nice,” he responds, finding a plaster in a dust filled drawer. The stick is weak, forcing him to squish it down with his thumb to get it to stay. 

 

“Well don’t spend too long there,” she sighs, already abandoning her attempt at affection. 

 

Good, he thinks. It’s off-putting for her to partake in such an act. He turns then, watching her back as she fillets the fish. The sound of the butcher’s knife connecting with the chopping board is rhythmic.

 

He wonders if Suguru eats fish, or if that’s some sort of cannibalistic taboo. 

 

“The sea is a lovely thing,” she finally carries on, “ but she’s got a habit of taking and not giving back.”

 

The sea brought a storm once, and the storm brought rain. The rain carried sickness, and the sickness carried death. Death had a shovel and dug dug dug, and the ground took a body and a face he loved.

 

***

 

Suguru is on the rocks when he wanders in, nestled between an assortment of them, a book held high above his face. It’s upside down, and that tells enough of a story on its own. 

 

He’s brought nothing with him, having abandoned the painting on the basis that cement is softer than those brushes are.

 

Suguru makes no movement even as Satoru is flopping down next to him. Once, he’d have jumped, or at the very least have gone tense with noticing. Now, he accepts Satoru’s presence with ease.

 

But when he finally does redirect his attention, he doesn’t spare a single glance to the fresh fruit and sweet delicacies and trinkets Satoru’s producing from his bag, scattering them across the floor. No, he leaves those completely untouched. Instead, he swipes out like a flash of lightning and grabs Satoru’s hand, squeezing his injured finger with enough intensity that it cuts his breathing clean short.

 

“Suguru!” he gasps, trying to pull his hand away. It’s futile; his grip is iron. 

 

“Suguru, mate, that hurts,” he says, wincing as the other digs his finger into the plaster. He makes a little noise, sharp eyes flickering to and fro between finger and face. His pupils look huge right now, his eyes glowing faintly. He’s noticed they do that. Turn to slits too when the light is intense.

 

“I cut myself,” he supplies. That, at least, he should be able to understand with his accumulated vocabulary. Suguru pinches the end between his fingers and pulls it back, exposing the whitened skin and slightly weeping wound.

 

“The plaster keeps it safe. It stops it from getting infected or something. You must have something similar, surely?”

 

Suguru makes a frustrated sound, mouth pulling into a scowl. Satoru’s brow furrows. He’s guessing that’s a no then. He watches Suguru lean in closer, not blinking once, and then he licks right over the cut and Satoru shrieks, yanking his hand back and fumbling backwards.

 

“No!” he yelps, heart thudding. “No, we don’t lick injuries, Suguru! What the fuck?”

 

But Suguru isn’t having it. He hisses, throwing all his weight at Satoru and he is many things, but strong enough to fight off the weight of a creature half man half gargantuan fish isn’t one of them.

 

Stuck beneath a ton, he can only gasp for air, flailing about to try and dodge the hands grabbing at him.

 

Maybe this was the plan the entire time. Maybe Suguru was just toying with him, letting him hang around. Playing some strange little cat and mouse game before he devours his prey. How was he meant to know this was the plan though? All the others had been dead, he’s the only one that washed up living–

 

An unfortunate timed head turn, and nails gash across his face, scraping his cheek and tearing the side of his lip. He loses his hands, arms pinned either side of his head, and he can’t move his legs because there’s a whale of a tail crushing them.

 

He’s going to die, isn’t he? Eaten by a sea creature because he couldn’t grieve like a normal person. Couldn’t just accept it and move on like everyone else, like their friends and his parents and the whole fucking town who acted like the event was a dust bunny, easy to brush under the rug–

 

Suguru darts down and he squeezes his eyes shut, holding his breath.

 

But no teeth sink into his neck and no sharp nails pierce his chest. No, instead lips touch his cheek, wet and cold, before a tongue licks across, lapping at the newborn cut next to his mouth before their faces smash together so roughly teeth clack.

 

And then Suguru pulls back up, beaming, and he just stares. He– what the fuck–

 

“Did you just kiss me?” he blurts out, and Suguru wiggles, chirping. His brain is short circuiting. Suguru kissed him. He didn’t–

 

Is this some bizarre merfolk thing, or does it mean the same thing? Does he understand what it means, when he puts their mouths together like that?

 

Outside, the clouds must shift, because sunlight bursts in through the ceiling, putting a halo of light around Suguru’s head. It dusts the top of his head in gold, makes Satoru have to squint slightly as he looks up.

 

His heartbeat is in his ears still when Suguru leans back down and does it again. He makes a startled noise into Suguru’s mouth. He’s no elegant kisser, but still, his feet curl in their shoes. His lips are plush, so close to something he knows but not quite reaching it. No matter. He can colour in the gaps.

 

He pushes Suguru back gently, drinking in his confused eyes and parted lips in the process. He sets his hand free from a newly weakened hold and cups his cheek, the skin cold beneath his fingers.

 

He studies his face, looking for any sort of…well, he doesn’t know. Something to tell him if this is what he thinks it is, or if it's some cultural thing he can’t wrap his head around.

 

But either way, it’s a kiss. Suguru kissed him, and he swallows a hefty lump in his throat. A kiss is a kiss, and it’s been so long since–he’s fucked missed–

 

“Not like that, Sugu. Like this,” he proclaims, and guides their lips back together, slower and more precise. He’s got no issue with letting Satoru take the reins, tail slapping against the floor every time Satoru pushes the limits, like unashamedly pushing his tongue into his mouth.

 

His heart slams harder against his chest, warmth pooling in his stomach.

 

He’s not kissed anyone in months. He forgot how addictive it was, how easily it is to get dragged down into something more sinful. He can feel his cock swelling in his pants quick as anything, the sensation aggravated when Suguru makes a noise that can only be considered a mewl when he shifts his hand to tangle in his sundried hair, cradling his skull.

 

Pathetic, but he’s been untouched for months and he’s only a man. 

 

A man on the top, fish on the bottom. A narrow waist that melts into a dark blue tail, the blend seamless. He knows jack shit about fish anatomy. When he pulls back, needing air, he studies Suguru’s face, nibbling on his own lip.

 

His cheeks are flushed from all of Satoru’s attention, and when he rests his hand against his pectoral, he can feel his heartbeat under his palm, quick and alert, the rhythm just like he hoped it would be. He slides his hand down, watching intently in case his touch isn’t welcomed. But Suguru lets him trail his fingers across his collarbone, back down to brush a rosy nipple, down and down till he’s touching that place where skin merges into scales.

 

Suguru copies him, stopping right at the waistband of his pants, looking at Satoru with wide, curious eyes, like he’s waiting to be told what to do next. 

 

And when time melts for too long and Satoru is moveless, Suguru tugs at the drawstring of it, enough force to loosen it. He groans, nodding his head rapidly, grabbing the merman’s hand and shoving it hard against his crotch. 

 

The other makes a noise of befuddledment, but doesn’t attempt to remove his hand. Just lets Satoru grind up into it, eyes falling shut. 

 

Human enough. Similar enough. He’s missed that hand and he’s missed that mouth but more than anything, he’s missed that look of pleasure when being buried to the hilt.

 

Hastily, he yanks his pants down just enough to let his hard cock spring free. Suguru blinks, looking at him like he’s never seen a cock before. Surely the difference can’t be that obscene, right?

 

“You have one too, don’t you?” he says breathlessly, inhaling sharply as Suguru gently curls his hand around his length. Christ, those pale fingers and blackened nails look haunting against the red flushed length of his cock. It shouldn’t make him harder.

 

It does.

 

“You’re a male, I think, so you should have one. You should have a cock too, right?”

 

Silence follows his words, and then Suguru is letting go and leaning back, and Satoru is scrabbling up to his elbows, watching as the mercreature rearranges himself till he’s laying in a pose of mimicry.

 

He brings his fingers down, below where his tail and torso are fused, and fiddles around, a look of intensity on his face until he finds what he’s looking for. 

 

Still hard, Satoru scrambles closer, and loses all sense when he sees what he’s being shown.

 

Because there, nestled between scales, is a slit. A slit that spreads pink when Suguru puts his fingers against it and pushes outwards.

 

Satoru swallows, his hard cock bobbing.

 

“You have a cunt?” he says, like Suguru will answer. He does, in a way. Coos, face flushed beautifully pink, all the way to the ears half covered by black locks. White noise fuzzes between his ears.

 

A cunt. Not expected, but not disliked. He slept with girls, before they ever drew attention to what was going on between them. He knocks Suguru’s hand out the way, taking over the job of keeping that cunt spread open. 

 

“Can I?” he asks, moving before permission is given. He slides his fingers inside, gasping at the wet slick that hugs his fingers. Heaven is not sufficient enough of a word to describe it. Suguru shivers, head falling back. His hair spreads every which way, his lips rosy.

 

Satoru fucks his fingers in, spreading them apart quickly and harshly, feeling the other’s tail slap about by his legs. The look on his face makes him hungry, saliva pooling in his mouth.

 

He wants more. That cunt is a temptation and he wants to feel it wrapped around his cock, now. Suguru would let him take more. Suguru will let him take more, he knows it.

 

He shifts quickly, tugging his pants off with such haste he gets his foot stuck in a leg briefly. When he is bare from the waist down, he throws his legs either side of that narrow waist, lining himself up so his cockhead nudges against that narrow slit. 

 

The wives tales never mentioned this bit. Too graphic for bedtime stories, he imagines.

 

Because the sailors hungry for human touch no doubt didn’t stop at presses of lips and wandering hands. The sea wouldn’t judge them for this, not when she sent the temptation. 

 

She won’t judge him now either, surely, because she sent this. She gave him back. What did she think he would do, looking into the eyes of the one that took his heart once again, when he was so sure he’d never see that face again?

 

His heart stood no chance from falling. 

 

But as he pushes in, groaning, he wonders maybe if they also never tried inscribing the sensations because they knew no words would ever be satisfactory enough to describe this sensation. 

 

Hot and wet and tight, a cunt that sucks him deep, the pressure making his eyes roll back. The sight of his crotch flush against those dark blue scales is dizzying.

 

It feels like slotting puzzle pieces together. Like coming home with weary bones.

 

Underneath him, Suguru arches, sharp nails finding Satoru’s thigh. There’s a sharp sting as they burrow into his skin. They’ll leave red welts, but he doesn’t care.

 

He keeps his rhythm slow and languid when he’s finally gathered himself enough to move, and he does so like waves on a calm day. He wants to savour this. Close his eyes for a second and lose himself in the feeling of tightness dragging along his length.

 

Every press of his hips pulls a groan out of his lips, husky and wanting. Suguru pants beneath him, staring right into his eyes, just as unblinking as always. 

 

“You’re doing good,” he gasps out, slanting forward and down to lick across his lips. They have a metallic tinge, his own blood lingering on them. 

 

“So well, Suguru. So good of you to do this for me. Be here with me. Don’t ever go, okay?” 

 

They’re not even kissing. Just ghosting their lips together, but it’s getting him desperate either way. He can hear the water sloshing behind him, his back starting to ache dully from being hunched over so awkwardly.

 

That cunt pulsates around him, tight as sin and he knows he’s going to come embarrassingly quickly. 

 

The consequences of months with only his hand’s assistance for company.

 

It’s an ill prepared location. The ground digs into his knees, stones imprinting themselves against his skin. He’s not going to stop though. Not whilst Suguru is moaning so prettily, lips open in pleasure, brow furrowed.

 

And he’s undulating his hips up in time with Satoru’s thrusts, trying to pull his cock in deeper. Greedy little thing.

 

When they lock eyes, the sight of those usually black depths lit up with pleasure throws him over the edge. He spills with a silent cry, no time to warn Suguru as his hips stutter.

 

When it passes, he stares down, panting, chest heaving.

 

“Sorry,” he says, slipping out, cock soft and coated in his own spend. He’s not even sure if the other came. He rolls off and over, knees aching. Suguru looks at him, trailing a hand over his face, making odd little noises he hopes are out of happiness.

 

He takes the initiative to pull him close, and Suguru nestles his head into the slope of where shoulder blends into neck, clinging to him like a limpet. His hair tickles Satoru’s neck, his half naked state making him feel a little uncomfortable as the rocks dig into his exposed form.

 

He just fucked a mercreature. Badly, albeit, but he did, and the mercreature is purring into his neck, tickling his skin with his loose hair and rosy lips. He buries his nose against the other’s scalp, smelling salt and strangely, metal.

 

Above, the birds squawk, sounding more like they’re screaming than anything else.

 

It feels, oddly enough, as he stares up at the ceiling, listening to them call, ogling the blue sky through the skylight with unblinking eyes, like he’s just taken a step he can’t come back from.

 

***

 

“Was it bad?”

 

He is brave. He gets nervous and frightened, sometimes, like most people do, but he’s always been good at pushing past that. Nature or nurture, it is just who he is. But right now, there is a lump in his throat and dragging silence and he is as tense as iron.

 

When a thumb brushes under his cheek, the muscles flex and his lungs rise and he breathes in steadily, focusing on the finger tracing over the shell of his ear. Barely a graze, full of tenderness. He screws his eyes shut. 

 

“Not in the slightest. It was good, Satoru. So good.”

 

When bravery finds him, he opens his eyes, staring down. Warm eyes look up at him. The face below him is ruby cheeked and full of love. Ethereal looking, if he’s allowed to be dramatic about it all. He feels strange and wobbly under that gaze. 

 

“I mean it, really. And if you don’t think so, well, we have more chances. It’s not like this is a one time thing. Right?”

 

“No,” he says breathlessly, and it sounds pathetic and needy and any other day he’d go up in flames about it but not today, not in this moment.

 

“Never. You’re mine now, you can’t get away.”

 

Laughter gets a brief chance to ring out before he’s stealing a kiss from the lips it escapes from.

 

***

 

In the morning, he blinks sleep out of his eyes, dissociating, his hair a bird's nest as he faces his own sleep riddled reflection, a toothbrush layered with a blob of paste dangling in his limp hand as cold water runs from the sink tap.

 

 There is no cut on his lip and no scratches on his cheeks. 

 

He tries not to dwell too hard on that discovery. The brief second he does dedicate to it makes his stomach tight.

 

***

“You are being very weird,” Satoru says, lips pulling down into a frown.

 

Suguru is floating in the water, eyes closed, still like death has caught him. Satoru sits in his boat, more than weary of their situation. All the trees have put on their autumn clothes, vibrant and ombre in their shading. Soon winter will creep back around, and everything will be kissed frozen again.

 

Being out here is the first oddity. All the times he’s suggested venturing out of the cavern, miming it out to trek over the language barrier, Suguru has always responded by puffing up like a feral cat, slinking down into the water and squishing himself against the pool wall, glaring daggers.

 

So when Satoru trundled his way into the cavern this morning, and Suguru had been chirping, practically vibrating in circles and darting in and out of his tunnel, it left him befuddled, to say the least.

 

He was confused when he realised Suguru wanted them to leave the cavern.

 

“Are you sure?” he’d questioned, tugging his scarf tighter around his neck. Suguru had only warbled, looping around at frantic speeds, disappearing and reappearing from that channel below the waves.

 

And Satoru had sighed out a reluctant alright, dipping back out of the very entrance he just came from.

 

He was befuddled when he made it out and could hear Suguru yelling, a tiny blot on the horizon line, waving and shrieking like a drowning man.

 

He wouldn’t come closer no matter how much Satoru pleaded, and he knows he could hear him; he’s established he’s got a freakish sense of hearing on multiple occasions. So Satoru had no choice but to walk the mile to where his boat sits behind a handful of rocks and row out to meet his apparently possessed merman.

 

And now he is floating aimlessly whilst Suguru floats like the fish do when dead. 

 

“Are you having some weird animal crisis due to the seasonal change?” he pokes, picking at a loose piece of skin next to his nail.

 

Suguru doesn’t say a thing, but he does flick his tail, coating Satoru’s cheek with droplets of water. He frowns, gazing down at him.

 

He looks no different. Then again, he never does. Always, his appearance is incorrigible, like a photograph brought to life. The only real difference is he looks like he’s glowing. Satoru read in a book once that that tends to happen when you start having sex on the regular.

 

The other cracks an eye open then, purple a thin ring around a wide mirror of black, and before Satoru can react, he’s plunging beneath the waves surface, sending tidal waves out that rock the boat dangerously. He yells, clinging onto the sides.

 

“What the fuck? Suguru!” he shrieks, watching the water’s surface ripple. There is no reply and he huffs, trying to settle his pounding heart as he waits for Suguru to come back up.

 

Only he never does.

 

The sky bleeds from blue to persimmon to violets and fusicas and finally black. His leg jumps, vibrating frantically, his nails half a pick away from a bloody stump.

 

Maybe this is inevitable. He is a creature and man rolled into one. Perhaps, much like how the birds must fly south and the bears must bury deep into the ground to slumber, Suguru must go batshit when the seasons roll on.

 

When the breeze picks up in a way that has his teeth shattering, he knows he must return to land, even if every part of his form screams at him not to.

 

Sleep cannot truly find him, and yet each time it gets near, he swears he can hear wailing on the wind.

 

***

 

Suguru is in the cavern the next morning.

 

He gives no explanation for whatever yesterday’s ordeal was, but Satoru never expected to get one. He’s not convinced a handful of words and hand gestures would explain it to him sufficiently anyways.

 

He just kisses his forehead and asks him to not do it again. His answer is Suguru tugging him down to the ground, forcing him to lay on the rocks so he can nuzzle up close, pressing them together so tightly it’s like he wants them to become whole.

 

Satoru tosses his arms around him on autopilot and holds him tight. 

 

Suguru doesn't hug him back, and when he squeezes his icy cold form tighter, he pretends he can’t smell metal in the air, nor see the stripe of red at the corner of his mouth when he kisses his lips.

 

They taste metallic, and he ignores it.

 

***

 

The thing about ignorance though, is that no matter how much you try to make it your friend, it’ll stab you in the back eventually. It’s the nature of things. Turn a blind eye to all, and you’ll miss the bolder tumbling down the hill till it squishes you flat.

 

***

 

Suguru brings him a gift in the morning.

 

 A half eaten dead fish, its organs still leaking out the side of its fat little body. Its face looks shocked, like it hadn’t seen the teeth coming for its side. It probably hadn’t; Suguru is as silent as death when he wants to be.

 

He takes it with a queasy stomach, doing his best to not show his discomfort as its guts drip juices onto his hands.

 

“Thank you,” he says, trying not to heave when Suguru turns his back on him, chippering on about something or another in that pointed, serpentine tongue of his.

 

What a gift. A carcass to put next to the critters skull, and the fingerbone, and the three teeth that still had blood on them. The gifts have been getting weirder as of late, and he’s chalking it up to the weather dipping in temperature for his own mental health.

 

He doesn’t want to know where he’s getting them. The ocean is vast and unforgiving. The chances he’s just collecting shit from the bottom of the ocean is high, right?

 

He stares into its beady, lifeless little eyes and prays that’s the case. It’s distracting to be fucking something that still has blood on its teeth and thinking about what it might’ve done to get it there.

 

In the afternoon, he treks to Yama’s house,  the fish sitting in his satchel wrapped up in kelp. The last thing he needs is it staining his bag with juices. Organ juices in his satchel. A sickening concept. The stench it’s inevitably going to leave will be bad enough.

 

Once again he is distracted, and once again Yama calls him out on it. This time though, she makes no joke at his expense. Instead, she stares him down with her intense eyes, enough to make him want to cower.

 

Some days, she’s the perfect image of a befuddled, eccentric old woman. Others, she’s exactly as he knows her to be. He didn’t stumble over her doorstep that night begging by accident, after all. He knew the rumors just like everyone else. The whispers of witchcraft, of a deal with the beyond.

 

“Whatever it is you’re doing,” she says, “keep your eyes open.”

 

It takes talent to say so much with so little, and she is an extraordinary woman.

 

He tries to keep his head on for the rest of the afternoon. He’s not sure he succeeds.

 

The sky is salmon and violet blended when he departs, the sun half tucked down below the horizon line. He hums to himself as he walks,  the melody something he’s stolen off of Suguru. It sounds odd coming from his throat; his vocal chords can’t contort in the necessary ways to make it sound authentic. 

 

He likes it more when Suguru sings it to him, playing with his hair, but it’s tolerable coming from his own mouth. Its relaxing properties are still somewhat effective.

 

He walks towards the town square, a breeze in the air. He is in his head for the majority of the walk, thoughts consumed by Suguru as per usual.

 

What if he really does need to migrate for the winter? Is Satoru hindering his nature? Or maybe walls he didn’t know were standing are finally dropping, revealing sides of Suguru he didn’t predict existed.

 

Either way, he hopes the macabre gifts come to a standstill; he is running out of places to hide them.

 

After a while, the outline of the square begins to fade into view. The closer he gets, the more his eyes squint, trying to force a blurry image into stagnance.

 

There is something stuck upright in the gap in the tiled floor where the mayflower pole juts out in spring. There are no festivities upcoming. 

 

He keeps walking, intrepid. But when it finally becomes defined, he’s brought to a standstill, his eyes widening to a comical size.

 

There, held hostage against a wooden pole, is a creature.

 

Its skin is as white as paper, and it has dark hair and a face he recognises in an awful way. There’s a hole in its stomach and the blood on its body is browning with age. The floor surrounding it is littered with objects: Squashed fruit, stones, miscellaneous bits and bobs.

 

It. He knows what that is. He knows well, because he spent his whole morning in the company of one. The whole morning, and dozens of others.

 

Bile rises up in his esophagus and he’s barely able to react before he’s heaving up liquid onto the floor. His ears ring. He feels flushed.There is no one else around, and his hands shake as he forces himself to look back at it, composure lost to the wind. 

 

The mermaid’s hand hangs limply, nothing on her wrist yet a shadow that tells all. His skin crawls, because he knows what should sit there. He’s seen this girl before. His throat squeezes.

 

“It bit one of the fisherlads,” a voice breaks into his head, and when he snaps his head around to find the source he sees Shoko, cigarette dangling from her fingertips. He’d question when she arrived, if he wasn’t trying so hard to keep his stomach down; It feels like his guts want to spill out, all red and garish and ugly.

 

For once, she looks visibly shaken. There’s a tenseness to her shoulders that seldom ever exists, and her legs have a tremble to them. It’s completely understandable. They watched this merfolk get buried only a handful of weeks ago. Or its human replica, at least.

 

“It took a chunk out of his arm. It looks real nasty, I won’t lie. They said there was another with it, but they missed it. It swam away too fast for them to get comeuppance."

 

“It looks like her,” he whispers, and Shoko shrugs.

 

“Yes, but so did the last one, remember?”

 

Oh, how he knows. But the one she’s picturing isn’t the one he’s recalling. 

 

***

 

“What do you do when I’m not around?”

 

It’s as hot as anything, the heatwave a surprise guests. His shoulders are peeling, skin blushing pink; this is why you wear a shirt when the sun is on a vengeance streak. Suguru glances up at him, momentarily pausing where he’s making some decorative thing out of seaweed and kelp.

 

“Like, when I’m not here with you. When I’m at home,” Satoru continues, making a roof shape with his hands. He then points at himself, then Suguru, pauses, and then points at his hand, “what is it that you do?”

 

Suguru keeps perfectly still, for such a length of time Satoru thinks he has no idea what he’s trying to say.

 

But then he shrugs, and makes a clutching motion with his fists. Satoru tilts his head, confused.

 

“You grab things?” he copies, and Suguru beams. He just blinks, and then flops back onto the rocks. 

 

“That makes sense. Explains how you always have so many gifts, doesn’t it? It must be great to have the whole ocean at your fingertips. I’ll leave this town one day, I swear on it. I refuse to spend my whole life somewhere so painfully stagnant.”

 

He turns his head then, looking back at Suguru. He’s disassembled his sculpture, face agitated as he rearranges the kept and seaweed into piles, evidently intending to start from scratch. He throws Satoru a fleeting glance, a confirmation he’s still listening. 

 

“If I leave here, will you know how to find me?”

 

Suguru makes a tiny noise, hair shielding his face as he slants forward, the ridges of his spine pressing up against his skin. Satoru catches his lip between his teeth, thinking.

 

He’s asked this question before, shaped a little differently. He remembers the answer he got too, in crystal clear clarity.

 

“Of course I would. But do you really think I’d let you go and not follow?”

 

He’d gotten giddy at that response, emotions mercurial. 

 

Too bad he never got to see the inside of those sweet words. Suguru went first in the end, and Suguru left him all alone. 

 

***

 

He doesn’t see Suguru for days.

 

The cavern lays dormant, no sign of life materialising in the pool no matter how long he sits beside it for. 

 

Each day, he leaves a fresh picnic basket stocked to the brim on the ramp, and every next day it’s still there, utterly untouched. There is an unforgiving weight in his chest each time he collects it, cord in his stomach knotted tight.

 

The light stops shining in through the skylight, the weather beginning to shift into the colder seasons, the clouds returning from the vacation the crystal blue skies ushered in. It feels mocking. 

 

Three from the end, beneath the willow tree. He thinks of Amanai, fresh in the dirt. He thinks of Amanai impaled on a spike. 

 

Hunting together, is what Shoko said. 

 

Were they friends? All the days he’s spent with Suguru, he never mentioned friends, and Satoru never got an inkling that anything waited on him like Satoru did.

 

But that’s stupid, obviously. He existed before that day on the beach, when Satoru saved him. A living, breathing thing that evidently seeks out companionship, he must’ve had friends before Satoru.

 

Must’ve.

 

Is he mourning right now? Wallowing in depths Satoru can’t reach for a little girl who already fucking died? Does he have that seashell bracelet clutched in his palms, wails flooding from his mouth?

 

The same face, no mistake about it. One with legs and one without, and the one spat out by the ocean only came when the one nurtured by land sank deep into soil.

 

A coincidence, or something more? A one off, he’d say it’s an eerie coincidence, but the thing is–

 

***

 

The last time this happened, he missed the procession too. 

 

Didn’t see the way they dragged it through town, still half writhing. Didn’t see the way jaws unhinged, letting out animalistic screams for it to be slaughtered. Didn’t see the blade slice its neck, nor the speed at which the wood was stacked and lit.

 

He missed all of that, but he didn’t miss the burning.

 

He too crowded around the skyhigh blaze with marshmallows on a stick, his skin prickling from the heat of it all. He chewed soft gelatin till his lips were sticky, watching the fire climb higher and higher as people danced and cheered for the demise of whatever it was.

 

He never saw its face, but the whispers carried the horror far. Everyone knew by the time the fire was cold what had been reduced to ash. 

 

Some abomination the sea spat out, half man half creature, wearing the face of a beloved member of the community lost too soon.

 

The night is fragmented–a consequence of the copious amounts of wine he consumed at the party in the woods that succeeded the whole event– but he remembers one thing clear as day.

 

Nanami sat on a tree stump, face expressionless, eyes haunted. 

 

For half a moment, seeing that, he felt guilty for his celebrations. But Suguru had dragged him out of his trance with a hand on his arm and a promise of watching two classmates go all fight club on each other. 

 

Haibara in the ground, and Haibara buried beneath a flame. 

 

No explanation, no answers. Just the knowledge from everyone that it was, and the confusion about it all.

 

***

 

Yama’s basement carries the scent of old, mold ridden paper and stale air. Only the dim, flickering ceiling light battles off the darkness that envelopes it in its most consistent state; being devoid of life. 

 

He has left the door ajar, the aroma of boiling herbal soup trickling in and down the stairs. In his hand, he holds a battered book, the pages close to disintegrating with their fragility each time he turns one.

 

He is scouring already covered land in hopes something new will have materialised. So far, there’s been no such luck. He turns another page, a corner flaking off and coasting to the floor. He pulls a face.

 

The books in his own house held no answer when he drained them dry the other night, but he always predicted that. The books here being no more knowledgeable is the problem.

 

The nonsensical and the incomprehensible are right up Yama’s alley, and yet he’s walked it twice now and both times it’s been a dead end, and if the brick wall staring him down needs a passcode to be shifted, he doesn’t know what that is.

 

Sighing, he slams the book shut, dust bursting up into his face.

 

***

 

“I need you to help me,” he begs. 

 

His knees hurt and his wrist throbs. He feels like a clementine, split open and dripping his insides everywhere. 

 

“Please,” he says thickly, in an up-pitch. She smells kind, sunny and sweet, and it feels unexpected for a woman who he’s been told would cook him into a stew since he could toddle.

 

His hands are shaking, his head in knots and tangles as he grips the hem of her dress, staring up with wet, pleading eyes.

 

“They say you blasphemise the natural order. Do miracles, do curses, do it all. I don’t care what you have to trade off, but please, please, bring him back to me. I can’t– I cannot live without him.”

 

“I do not mess with those crossed over, child,” she says. Her eyes are soft, but it feels like they shoot daggers nonetheless. Her eyes give the sensation within that she’s unraveling him in her mind, threading him apart and stitching him back together again.

 

“Haibara,” he chokes out, watching a glint of recognition weasel its way into her gaze. “Haibara came back. Can’t you do the same?”

 

“So many assumptions in one single sentence, boy. I didn’t make that creature. No, you know very well what spat that out. And what a bold exclamation, to call that thing your friend.”

 

“It has his face,” he whispers, sitting back on his haunches. “Of course it was Haibara.”

 

She laughs, the sound a hammer that cracks open the shell of his soul, all the whimsical, wispy nature of his existence seeping out the injured side.

 

“It did have his face, yes. Impressive, I will say. But you didn’t see it, did you? No, all you know is from hearsay. It didn’t act like Haibara, Gojo. Not in the ways that mattered. And if it couldn’t do that, then what importance does its face hold? If the soul is unrecognisable, was it really your friend?”

 

“If it wasn’t Haibara,” he presses, head throbbing, “then what was it?”

 

She shrugs.

 

“I know a lot, but not all. And even if I did, something tells me you wouldn’t find pleasure in the answer I gave.”

 

In the end, the most jagged and ugly pieces of him take charge, and he shoves his way into her house and tears the place apart, cursing up a storm, hunting down the solution he knows she must have. All the whispers that circulate and the pointed fingers can’t just be the consequence of rumours’ sharp tongue. He refuses it.

 

Glass hits the floor and shatters. Pages are torn from books. She lets him flurry through her house like a vengeful hurricane, until fatigue gets its claws into him and he collapses into a shelf out of exhaustion.

 

She holds him in her embrace as he sobs, everything numb and weak. 

 

***

 

Snow falls lightly when he takes the boat out this time. He is swaddled in his fur-lined coat, cheeks rosy as his knee bounces with anxiety in the raft. Umpteenth times the charm, they say. Maybe today, Suguru will make a miraculous reappearance, just like he did that day on the beach, wailing up a storm, bloodiest of all wounds situated upon his form.

 

Flakes dust the end of his nose, catching on his dainty eyelashes. 

 

Suguru used to tease him about it, saying it made his eyes look crystalline. The teasing only ever lasted for as long as Satoru didn’t have access to a snowball.

 

He stares at the horizon line, wondering if Suguru is even still around, or if he’s moved on to fresher pastures. Left him all alone again in a town that makes him claw at his skin out of boredom. 

 

His teeth begin to chatter, limbs growing periodically number as the sun inches down towards the horizon line.

 

And every passing hour, minute, second, only was one thought to accompany.

 

Once, he let Suguru leave without him, and dripped hours down the drain waiting for him to come back. Luck fell in his favour, and his patience or patheticness was rewarded.

 

And now Suguru is gone again, and he can either wallow like a limb daisy, or take some initiative.

 

***

The thing is, Suguru died in the spring.

 

They wheeled the body out in an old wheelbarrow, an old greying bedsheet thrown haphazardly over the body wedged into it.

 

Careless in its presentation, the sheet crumpled around shins, feet and fingers exposed to the air. The soles were clean. The nailbeds of marble fingers were stuffed with black.

 

The third wheel squeaked the whole time, like the gulls in the bay; it made his ear itch. 

 

They formed a crowd, a janky line, and the unfortunate soul tasked with collecting muttered under his mask as he maneuvered them both through the nosing populace. Janek, he recalled in the moment. Sweet Janek, who never even gets the soles of his shoes dirty.

 

He wondered, briefly, if when Janek stuck his hand high into the air as a volunteer, cheeks cherubbed, he’d have expected it to be like this. Dirty, with nothing honourable about it. Tossing bodies like unwanted goods.

 

Sickness comes in waves, but never is the wave meant to last this long.

 

Everyone par a dozen got better. For the first time in his life, Suguru decided he didn’t want to join Satoru, and walked his own path. 

 

His mother kept his hand on his shoulder the whole time, like Satoru would float away unless he did so. Or worse, like he’d toss himself into the barrow and only get out when tipped into the six foot hole in the dirt, flopped over a lifeless form.

 

So Sugugu died in the spring, and the funeral came on the same winds, and that was that.

 

***

 

If you were to crack him open, here is what you would find.

 

All his life, he’s known how to stand alone. He has never needed a shoulder to lean on, his own feet paramount. He is unfathomably annoying and petty and petulant when the wind strikes right and that is most days, and the world has never hidden how exasperating that makes him. 

 

But he is also kind when it calls for it, gentle even, capable of holding things with soft hands when they ask for it. When they need it. So it never meant much of anything, being alone, because the loneliness was better than trying to force people to see the good parts of him when they were being marionetted by the bad.

 

But also, something had been ballooning in his chest for a long long time, tucked beneath so many other things with different names and different shapes. And he’d done a good job, he likes to think, of keeping them down, choked and bleeding in places only he could see. It helped too, that no one was really looking.

 

But then there was Suguru, and Suguru stared.

 

Suguru, who pushed past and looked when everyone else turned away. Nowhere to go and nowhere to hide, flared open and bare, Satoru was seen and the air came quick and all of a sudden, he was not lonely anymore.

 

All the world could’ve been in his palms, and he’d have dropped it to the dirt for Suguru. 

 

He thought they would have forever, naively. That the gods would show a kind hand. They did not, of course. Wicked grins beared down on him as skin drained of life and blood dragged itself up from beneath a sternum.

 

The loneliness was ignorable before Suguru. Bearable. When it returned, it returned scorching. It wrenched him open and wide and crawled back into a space it didn’t fit into, ignoring his cries of agony as it bullied him apart.

 

Like a knight in shining armour, Suguru came back to save him. Shaped wrong in places and odd on the eye, but Suguru still with a sword in hand to slay the best. In the end, the princess always rides off into the sunset, squished on horseback with the charmed one.

 

Well the knight has forgotten his passenger this time, but that’s alright.

 

Satoru has feet, and they haven’t failed him yet.

 

***

HERMES DAILY

 

Small town found its own Loch Ness monster?

 

The world knows, of course, of the Scottish legend of the Loch Ness monster, a creature that resides in a Loch of the Scottish Highlands. But this small seaside town finds itself haunted by a sea oddity they cannot identify.

 

What they can tell of it is very little, but little is not nothing. 

 

They say it finds pleasure in teasing the sailors, rocking the waves beneath their boats to precarious levels. It steals items left on the rocks, gift or not. It holds a favoured hand for colorful shells. In the quiet night hours when the moon is bright and high,  it sings a song, a haunting, wailing thing that makes your skin prickle and robs you of comfortable slumber.

 

And whilst its appearance differs from eyewitness to eyewitness, there is one string of consistently, a trait all synonymously point out. There is one thing all seem to notice when staring into murky depths.

 

The eyes, a shade of extraordinary, vibrant blue.

 

Notes:

Go yell at me on tumblr if you want :)
AmantesV

(And if you noticed I can't spell, no you didn't lmao)