The water did not feel the same against his skin. It fought, it tried to dominate in a way that it never had before, attempting it seemed, to pull his molecules apart, to break him down. He noticed it, in the bath inside her glass house, sitting in the water the tips of his fingers appeared to start to dissolve, softening the longer he stayed in the warmth of the tub.
Now, standing in the shallows of the beach he swallowed and breathed in the familiarity of the salt. The seaweed’s pungent rot ugly sweet inside his nose despite the smack of the wind against his face.
The water was calm, unlike the night his life ended. It wasn’t flat, like the glassy smoothness of a tide gone out, but the waves rolled in sleepy and tired, only a bit of foam to show the possibility of rabid squalls.
Above him the sky rolled, an expanse of gray like her eyes. Twisting and turning as though trying to contain the orb of light she called the sun. Fighting to keep it’s warmth beneath the cover of their ever changing softness.
He turned back, for only a moment to look at the glass house, like an aquarium it stared out into the face of the sea, trying to capture it in it’s windows and metal frames. There was no way he was going to be able to survive this world any better than he had been surviving his native waters. At least in the depths there had been length and breadth of movement. At least there, he had not lived in a box.
He stepped up further towards the water’s encroaching touch and watched it slither up and sigh against the sand, tickling his new fascinating toes, pricking them with the cold.
A yearning and loathing swirled within him at the feel of the liquid and he glared at the next stretch of wave and it’s possessive gasp against his skin, reaching for his ankles.
Would she notice? Would she be relieved? His eyes lifted and he listened to the sounds of the ocean, wondering if he could pick out the only voice he had heard so far above the surface of the water. Would he be able to differentiate her from the whisper of the sea breeze whistling around the glass of the house she called home?
The ocean sucked on his legs like they were delicious, slipping around him and back, gathering itself up for another go at his thighs, his hips, his torso.
The smack of the wave against his chest surprised him and he wondered that she had stood there that night and let the ocean roar at her, teeth bared.
The pull was strong and he felt his legs, still uneasy beneath him strain to keep him upright as the ocean pulled back, coiling together like a cat ready to pounce. A humming energy snapped as it crashed forward, embracing him to his shoulders, and then his neck, lifting him from the sand so his feet drifted above the solidity of ground.
As the water rose over his mouth he heard her, and she didn’t sound like the breeze, her voice was sharp, a harpoon through the quiet of the wave’s hush.
“Sasuke!”
She knew, like he did that without a tail, without gills, without scales the water would come and devour him. He was only surprised by the sound her voice made at the realization of what he was doing, and for a moment he wondered if he had made a mistake. Perhaps she would not be relieved.
She was small, but determined. She knew that at least. Her hands were shaking from the strain of fighting the sea for him. Fluttering they landed on his chest and completely soaked she sat nearly on his lap, gray eyes frantic as they searched his face, pushing back the dark hair on his forehead with sea soaked fingers.
“Please… please.” She was whispering, pressing her ear nearly to his mouth to listen for breath. “Please don’t die…”
He coughed then, and she sat up with a strangled breath as he rolled to his side and spat the sea water that both tasted familiar and rancid in his mouth. “Oh God.” she whispered, and he felt her hand on his back, pressing there.
His chest heaved with shards of glass as the water worked its way back up his throat and out of his lungs. Lungs which, only a month ago had sucked the water in greedily, eating away the oxygen without issues, feeding his muscles with the fuel.
Now it was poison, now it was pain.
He lay there on the sand and wondered again at the fact that she had allowed herself to be consumed in the middle of the terror of an angry ocean. This particular mood was soft and spoiled like a cat that had been given cream recently and therefore wasn’t as interested in hunting.
Even so it still played with him, sliding around in his chest where it didn’t belong, mocking. Reminding him again he was no longer wanted.
She was breathing hard next to him, her hand hesitating above his head and surrendering to the weight of gravity against his hair. “What… what were you doing? You can hardly balance, you can’t… you can’t swim.”
“…damn it.” He finally managed, shoving her hand away. “Don’t.”
Jumping back nearly a foot from him she dragged air in and out of her lungs, shoving the tangle of salt, water and hair that was clinging to her face. “Sorry… I’m sorry.”
His eyes stared into the grains of sand below him, the texture of each little bead hypnotic as he breathed, wondering how many of those tiny insignificant beads were in his lungs causing the fire that raged in his chest in that moment.
“…I guess we’re even now.”
His voice made her start and she felt her hyperventilating slow. Gray eyes stared at his crumpled gasping form and she tried to remember what he had looked like that day, sitting in the chaos of a furious sea. The dark made it hard for her to remember. Had his scales been green or blue or purple? Had they been smooth like pieces of glass or reflective, like pieces of metal dipped in silver?
Everything about him looked so normal now, and yet there was something about him that screamed irrationality. The perfect almost painful way that his wet lashes rested against his pale cheek, the fact that the tussle with the ocean only made the dark hair on his head frame his face in a wild and vivid beauty. Blinking rapidly he turned to look at her, as though expecting a reply to one of the few sentences he had directed at her without venom and she sucked in air.
His eyes, always made her feel like dying. Or living. She wasn’t sure.
“Why?” she felt the words stumbling over her lips before she could reign them back, her terror at his still, white lips only moments ago had unhinged something in her jaw and they escaped before she could sound the alarm. “Why do you think people decide they’re okay with dying?”
She had not asked him a single thing after the first night, and now months later of existing within the house like magnets of the same type, always around each other but never quite touching he was genuinely surprised.
There was liquid on her face, water from the sea but he could tell there was a rainstorm beginning in the clouds that were her eyes as well, threatening to pour.
His shoulder shrugged, a strange and yet perfectly normal action on his body. “I did because there was no one left to stop me.”
She stared, and her lips trembled as she pulled air into her body, he watched the plumpness of her pink mouth, fascinated for a moment by the play of light along the smooth skin of her bottom lip. There was not a color like that in all the sea, he had never encountered that precise pink.
“I…I… stopped you.”
Her words hesitated at the door of her mouth and then leapt out, making him raise his gaze to her eyes.
Slowly he straightened his body so he was kneeling on the sand beside her, watching the reckless abandon of the waves against the rocks further down, feeling the whisper of the wind against his freezing skin as she waited.
“Yes. I suppose you did.”
Something seemed to loosen her spine at his words and he watched her stiff back relax until she buried her face into her hands, trembling. He wondered what she was thinking then, for the first time since arriving on her beach.
The truth was the realization was dawning on her as it dawned on him.
And you stopped me.
The sun was up, and it’s weak gray touch slid through the room, highlighting the curve of Sasuke’s cheek on the pillow beside her. She stiffened, watching him breathe in and out slowly, frightened by seeing the face from her dream (or nightmare) up close after just waking.
Could she really call it a nightmare? She blinked herself awake with her heart already doing laps through the darkness of her chest cavity, the rush of blood loud in her ears, competing with the sound of the sea outside her window.
Groggily she moved to lay on her back, covering her eyes with one hand to block the light. He had a room, down the hall with his own bed and his own sheets and his own everything, and it didn’t matter. Every morning, like clock work she would wake up and he would be there beside her, fast asleep.
Sleeping was the one thing he seemed to like to do. He slept for hours through the mornings, waking reluctantly and in a foul mood, usually in search of food that she presented nervously.
What did merpeople eat? She had had no idea but assumed cooking had not really been an option below the shifting surface of the sea.
Sighing she slid her hand off her face and stared up at the ceiling, watching the rafters above play with the light of the weak autumn sun. The light moved like water, shifting and dancing, fluid despite it’s straight unwavering trajectory from the sun.
Months of this, day in and day out, watching him watch her was growing both familiar and exhausting. His words were few, usually reserved for irritated comments or reluctant questions.
She had not meant to be saved, had not known he was there. And by all rights, he should not have been.
So then why did she feel like his fate was her fault?
A movement beside her made her turn, reminding her that there was someone else in the bed with her. One of his eyes peered at her and she felt herself struggle for air. With the light from the window behind her directly on his face the usual black of his gaze always shocked her. It glimmered, a thousand spectacular blues swimming in the iris, greens and even yellows dancing, demanding her worship.
“Hi.” She didn’t know what else to say. His stare was always unwavering, unaffected by anything she did.
He sat up slowly, and it didn’t help the nerves plaguing her. The shirts she had bought him were a little big and the loose neck of the black fabric slid along his shoulder, revealing the smoothness of his skin along his neck, taut with muscles just beneath the surface.
“…you speak, in your sleep.” He said it so calmly and yet it made her stomach try to invert itself inside her. Limbs already shaking she scrambled to sit up and throw her legs over the side of the bed, her hair tumbling over her shoulders protectively, barring her from his sight.
“Oh.” She didn’t want to ask what she said. She had a bad feeling she already knew. Eyes closed in a new disturbing kind of humiliation she heard him take a breath, as though considering.
“You called to me.”
A snap of anger at herself shot through bitterly and she clenched her hands into the bedclothes around her. Her shoulders so tight they nearly reached her ears with the tension. “Sorry.” she mumbled, unsure of what else to say. “…I… I guess I’m preoccupied with getting you home.”
She had been studying. Books lay piled all over the floor, towers of them. Some were small, paperbacks that she had ordered online in foreign languages with dictionaries so she could read the lore of the people of the sea. Others were thick, bricks of mythological information. None of them had anything to say about the guilt of man in the tales of the sirens. In them only the people of the sea were deadly.
There was no one to share the burden with.
“I don’t think so.” He was firm, and she swallowed, standing up and heading towards her closet, her limbs jarred with the movement. The dream was already fading from her grasp and yet she knew, whatever he said next was going to make her want to climb back into the arms of the ocean only this time, she knew she would be alone with no one to save her.
“You begged me to stay.”
There it was.
The blood seemed to be pooling at her feet and the tips of her fingers, she felt cold and slowly she dragged in a breath.
There was a word she had never quite understood. It was pathetic.
Pathetic.
It confused her when she learned it and as a result she rarely used it. Pathetic, something too disgusting or revolting or humiliating to even think about? Is that what pathetic was?
This was the moment that word had been waiting for. Slowly she looked at her hands, small and white and useless. Pathetic. She was begging for a person she hardly knew to stay with her, in her sleep. Someone who was moody and ill tempered, someone who wanted to go home. Someone she had accidentally wronged and could not repay.
Pathetic.
“…I have to go.” she whispered it and grabbed the first item in front of her in the closet, her throat thick with tears as she stumbled out of the room and down the stairs, feeling him moving behind her.
His presence was like a heat seeking missile, somehow she could always sense him despite the near silence of his movements, the lack of whisper in his breath.
“You have not found anything in any of those books because there is nothing.” He was speaking calmly and yet it felt like he was throwing rocks. She winced, throwing the oversized sweater over her head as she stumbled to the bottom floor, pulling her hair out of the neck with trembling hands.
“We knew from the beginning. There’s no way back.”
She was almost hyperventilating as she pulled boots out of the closet. Her good ones had been lost in the storm and she had been mourning their loss more than anyone would have been mourning the loss of her had she been dragged with them to the ocean depths.
“You have to stop pretending.”
His eyes glared at her in the mirror of the closet door, it reflected only the darkness of his gaze, none of the luminescence that reminded her of fireflies in summer and the glowing jellies of the deep ocean. There wasn’t exactly anger in him so much as frustration.
Pretending.
Her eyes lowered once more to the ground where her boots sat, unsure if they were going to be going for a walk or not. Wary, it seemed to her, of leaving the house.
“I don’t know what to do.” she murmured softly. I barely know how to live and yet I belong here. What can I possibly do for you?
“I’m sorry.” she began, as she always did. I’m sorry you were there, I’m sorry you did not let me drown, I’m sorry that I cost you the ocean, I’m sorry that you’re stuck here, I’m sorry.
“I don’t want your apologies.” His tone was both tired and annoyed and he turned away, heading back up the stairs, to her room, she knew, not his. “This is what is.”
Startled she turned to the stairs as he disappeared into her room. Up there he would be curled into the covers of her bed, a tangle of limbs and tension, only relaxing when sleep finally overwhelmed him.
This is what is.
Her eyes drifted to the gray and black of the ocean in the weak sun, the colors tame, like the white, gray and black palette of her home. She didn’t want this to be all there was.
Slowly she dropped her boots, wandering up the stairs again until she stood on the threshold of the bedroom, watching the curled shape of him breathing slowly in and out, facing the window, watching the waves crash and roll beyond the glass.
Her feet lingered on the hardwood floor, one inch further and she would be in the room with him, not standing outside of it.
Carefully, she breathed in, wandering to her side of the bed before sitting on the edge. His gaze lingered on her, a small momentary shock flickered through the blue waves within his eyes and then became placid again as she lay down facing him.
Looking back at his unmoved expression she clenched her jaw, feeling the heat rise to her face despite her best attempts to keep calm. His hand lay limp on the sheets of her bed and cautiously she pressed her fingers to the palm.
A movement traveled from the point of contact over his body but he didn’t pull away or push her back. His eyes fixated on her face as she spread her fingers over the skin of his hand and then twined her digits with his.
All she wanted to do was apologize again, but that wasn’t helping. Some things could be fixed, and others could not.
“This is what is.” she murmured, raising her tear filled eyes to his, determined that despite the moisture she would not weep. He stared and something bloomed on his face, relaxing his tense shoulders. It was relief.
“This transfers the heat.” Her voice was gentle and he sometimes had trouble with it’s cadence. Here sound moved differently than back home. It shot in one direction without anything to stop it but walls, and when it did hit a surface it seemed to bounce instead of slow to a stop as it did below the surface of the sea.
She was adjusting a pan on the stove, and her fingers moved deftly, pressing a button that clicked with sound before a blue and orange flame breathed to life beneath the heavy black of the cast iron.
The gasp of the fire being born always made the skin around his eyes tighten briefly, almost a wince. He didn’t know what to make of the flames, although he had to admit that whenever she moved in the kitchen the smells on that side of the house would drag him from wherever he was to inspect.
It had occurred to him after a few weeks that she had no sense of smell, or a poor one at least. The world around him was a vast mess of senses, things were harder, he was heavier, the air was dry and his skin brittle.
“Not…that you need to learn to cook, I like to do it.” She added, and in her hands a handful of vegetables landed on the pan, sizzling with the butter she had melted on it’s surface. The smell of cooking onions rose from the dish and he studied her hands moving to grab a spatula, swirling the contents before turning back to the island where he sat.
Her hands shifted the shrimp on the ice in the bowl and he abruptly reached for it, pulling it from her grip. “I will do this.”
Blinking rapidly Hinata stared at him, watching as he deftly released each bit of protein from it’s shell, tossing the casings to the counter without raising his eyes to her.
“…thank you.”
He could smell her. The scent of her skin was just a few breaths away. It was a different scent than he had ever encountered. It reminded him of light, of the ice that hardened above the ocean sometimes, or the first gasp of air above the surface. It was not like the other people he knew from home, muted and unique but generally the same, always awash with salt.
This scent was subtle, and he had grown accustomed to it as the months passed, until it’s lack was noticed more than it’s presence. Of all the things he had seen out in the world beyond the ocean she was the one that was most alive. She moved like a pearl in stones, always glittering and white in a backdrop of noise and sound that didn’t move in familiar ways.
“Is it…normal for you to be this alone?” The question had been bothering him. There were no other smells in the house, no scents of people or lives lived near hers. There was the sea, there was the chemicals on the furniture and the scent of her, touching everything. But nothing else.
Hinata didn’t move, ignoring for the moment the sizzle of the pan behind her, eyes wide in her face as she stared at him. It had been months, the weeks had dripped by. At first they had done a lot of sleeping, ignoring the lights of the moon and the sun, and she had actually thought that perhaps he would not notice.
Or at least that he would not ask.
His dark blue gaze lifted and he stopped moving as he studied her parted lips, her shallow rapid breath.
“No.” She finally sighed, lowering her gaze to the counter in front of her. “It… is not normal.”
The calls to her cell phone had been ignored. The texts from her cousin replied to in quick one word answers. No one had really noted her missing for months. Stepping out of her life had been easy, and when they reached out to make sure she was alive she wondered if it was like suddenly noticing the change in light as hours passed. A gradual thing that caused no pain.
“Hn.” He had not removed his eyes from her face and she could not look at him again. She turned around, stirring the contents of the pan slowly, her hand allowing a shake that made her clench her teeth.
“Who is missing?” His questions were always pointed, and abrupt with no lead up to it, like dumping a bucket of water on her mid sleep. Swallowing, Hinata lowered the temperature on the oven where bread was finishing baking.
“No one. I… I have lived alone for some time now. I…” she stopped. She could not say she preferred it. Because she didn’t. She just didn’t want to live with…anyone else.
“I am…hard to tolerate.” She murmured finally. “Other people find it hard to tolerate me.” That was more or less true. At least of her family.
The sound of the stool pushing back made her turn and he was suddenly beside her, holding the bowl of de-veined shrimp in one hand, studying her calmly, if a little confusedly.
Hand shaking she took the bowl from him, dumping the shrimp into the pan only to sigh with dislike as a handful landed below it.
He was moving to poke them out with his bare fingers before she could say anything and her pale hand pushed him out of the way hard, slamming her knuckles into the blazing heat of the element. “Ouch!” she gasped, holding her hand to her chest as the spatula clattered to the ground.
The blisters were already forming and wincing she let out a breath. “Oh, don’t.. don’t touch anything near there, it’s so hot.”
Trying to not groan she moved to the sink, pouring the cold water over her hand as she turned to look at him studying her again.
“You’re hurt.” he muttered, and glanced at the fire warily again, as if it had confirmed his suspicions.
“It’s okay, it’s just a little burn.” She shook her head. “It’s fine.
"A burn.” He tasted the word and she stilled as he approached. He took her wrist carefully in his hands, turning her limb so he could see the bright red sensitive skin along her pale fingers.
“The water helps?” He turned to her and she nodded slowly, interested in the way his face looked as he took apart a problem.
Abruptly, and without asking he placed her finger in his mouth. His tongue was warm and soft against her digit and a sound came out of her throat before she could catch it, somewhere between a squeak and a sigh. Smoothly he withdrew his lips from around her index finger, inspecting it again and she stared.
The blister was gone, the redness a soft pink. “What…?” she began slowly and jumped as he placed the next burnt finger in his mouth, treating it with his tongue slowly, making her tummy tighten painfully before pulling it out of his mouth and putting it back under the flow of water from the sink.
“…we heal rapidly.” He murmured in answer to her obviously flabbergasted expression.
Pulling her hand from the flow of liquid he inspected his work carefully, and lowered her wrist slowly, fingers still tight around the delicate bones beneath her skin.
The scent of her skin had changed at his touch and he was curious. Experimentally he tightened his hold on her wrist and watched as pink appeared on her face, gray eyes widening a little as she stared at him, mouth plump and soft as the flesh beneath his fingers.
The perfume of her skin had something in it that was new, less airy and more enticing. Slowly he released her hand and moved back to sit where he always did, nodding towards the pan on the stove.
“Is it going to…burn?” he tried out the new word and Hinata jumped, snapping out of her spell to drag the pan from the fire, blinking to clear the fogginess in her mind.
“It’s… it’s actually okay.” She mumbled, licking her lips dryly.
But, am I?
He woke and she was not in the bed where she usually would be, staring at him. There had yet to be a morning when she wasn’t the first thing he saw. Instead the wildness of the ocean danced before his eyes and he felt a pinprick of pain.
The sky was matching the ferocity of the sea below it, and he didn’t move, instead listened to the crashing and tossing with calm eyes. If this continued the night would be the same as it had been nearly six months prior when he had arrived and died to the ocean.
Experimentally he raised himself to his elbow and scanned the room, but there was no sign of her, no clothes on the floor from her changing or water from the shower to signal it’s occupation.
Slowly he breathed in the smell of her off the sheets, the familiar cleanliness of it had been marred lately with something else that he found he could hardly stand because of how much it gratified him. Without her present to watch and wonder he lifted the pillow she used to his face and closed his eyes, letting the scent overwhelm him.
He had no name for it, nothing to compare it to. It was soft, and subtle and dark, it made something tighten in his belly and inspired thoughts of her mouth.
Swallowing thickly he pushed himself out of the bed and to the doorway, peeking down the hall and starting in surprise at her leaning against the wall further down, staring at a closed door as though it were arguing with her.
The surprise didn’t fade from his face as she turned to look at him, sensing his gaze on her form.
“Good morning.” Her voice was soft, and subdued, as though something had happened. He blinked slowly at her, studying her shape. Her legs were at an angle, pressing her hips to the wall and keeping her there. He could see the shape of her ankle bone by the shadow it made beneath it. A little cliff edge on her limb followed by the smooth curve of her calve and the strength of her thigh.
“What are you doing?” He couldn’t help it. She had never done such a thing and he didn’t understand it. Observing would not be enough, a question had to be asked. His eyes flickered to the door she was staring at again and she nodded at it.
“That’s my studio.”
He studied the door. It seemed unimpressive. It had never occurred to him to get near it. Further down the hall was the room that she had wanted him to use and that he continued to leave in the middle of the night. In it there was no sign of her, she had never spent any time in it and the idea of being in a place where nothing had ever lived made his skin crawl. In the ocean the water carried history, it had been breathed by creatures for centuries, it had bits of ancient things. There was nothing sterile, nothing truly and completely dead.
That room however was.
Figuring that the door she glared at had to be the same he had never even pondered opening it, now however he took a step towards it.
She had told him, briefly that she had been a painter. There was no such thing for his people, the ocean claimed everything, from their bones to their thoughts, and nothing was ever truly permanent but the cells that lingered in the molecules of the sea.
Only rock could be carved and kept for any length of time and so she had had to explain that here people used color that came from bottles and painted what they saw, or felt, or heard, turning the other senses into sight by force. He had not understood but figured it was similar to bards who made stories and sang beneath the waves.
She had mentioned her studio, using the word briefly to describe the place where she did this…creating. He had had no idea that it was so near.
“I’m going to go in it.” she said it reluctantly, as though it were a thing she had been trying to talk herself into doing for some time, and he realized that probably she had not slept long, if at all. Instead she had been there, staring at it.
Irritated, he moved forward, grabbing the door and flinging it wide, causing her to gasp in an O of surprise as he stepped inside.
The room held nothing, the walls were white, there were square canvases on the floor, lining the walls, their pale faces devoid of emotion. Along the other wall was the ever present glass of the windows stretching from one side to the other, letting the harbor beyond spread out wide and the last wall was decked in wood shelves covered in things he did not understand. Tubes, jars and brushes.
On the right he saw a pile of the square things stacked against the wall, hiding their faces. Slowly he moved towards them and she jumped the way she had the first night he had been in the house, pulling on her shirt with his fingers in the closet.
“Wait.” she whispered, but he didn’t. He had never been one for listening, and quickly before she could say anything else he began to pry the canvases apart, stopping abruptly.
He stared.
His ocean, the depth and breadth of it was in the square. The light as it filtered down between the darkness and the particles of past things that once lived in it. The tendrils of sea plants that swayed in rhythm with the ocean’s pulsing heart lingered at the edges, each fiber of the seaweed clear and defined. His fingers moved without asking permission and he touched it, feeling the smooth ridge of the paint beneath his skin.
“…how did you know it…” he began, and stopped, looking up at her. Her eyes were fixated, staring into his face in a way he had not seen her do before. The scent that was subtle before on her skin flared from her as she pulled her hair into a braid, fingers moving deftly and with purpose he had only seen her use in the kitchen.
“I’m going to paint your eyes.” she whispered almost to herself. He blinked slowly, absorbing this new creature that was stepping out from beneath the skin of the girl he had thought he knew.
She had been in the room the entire day and it was surprising him how irritated he was by it. Once only she came out, asked quietly if he would please look at her and he had, fixing her with his usual unwavering stare. Her cheeks had flared with heat as she looked back, trying desperately to keep her gray gaze on his until finally she succumbed and thanked him, hurrying away without another word.
The sun had moved through the clouds, fighting to be seen and losing. Now as it set, the rolling storm moved in with a vengeance, as though it could smell victory. The rain began to pour in buckets.
There was a place in the house where a table was set with six chairs, three on either side and a vase filled with flowers that he knew were made of something thick and disturbing and unreal.
This room was both his least and most favorite because the flowers disgusted him in a way he couldn’t shake, but the window from the living room and the window from this room connected making an unbroken corner of glass that looked out and encompassed the entire harbor.
With the lights on it seemed dark out there, the water rolling and black like ink, the clouds above twisting and turning with frustration he could almost feel. He had been thinking about turning the lights off to see it in it’s full glory with the rain screaming down the windows when they flickered and then went out on their own.
He had never heard her make a sound louder than a soft word so Hinata’s voice letting out a “Oh no!” Of dismay from the second floor made him turn, interested.
The house was in darkness, a familiar darkness that spilled in the halls without windows and abated where the moon could peek at the see-through walls.
Slowly he made his way to the stairs, climbing up to see what had made her make such a noise. She was meandering through the hall, holding on to the wall as her eyes adjusted to the black. Her studio lights were bright and their sudden loss had nearly blinded her.
“I have… some flashlights in the drawer on the nightstand.” She explained slowly, wandering into the bedroom with him. She raised her hands and he blinked at her arms, nearly to the elbow smeared with different colors. “I have to wash my hands, I’ll be right there.”
Following her instructions he dug through the wood box of the drawer, feeling several hard shapes. Curiously he pulled out a bottle with beads and stared at it’s yellow see-through plastic. Her name was scrawled along it’s side and another word that made him slowly sit on the unmade bed curiously.
Anti-Depressant
“Did you find that flashlight, it’s going to get so dark in a few minutes-” she stopped, and he looked up from the bottle at her, giving it a light shake that rattled the pills within it.
“What is this?”
Breathing in deeply she let out a sigh and wandered over, extending her hand for him to put the pill bottle into it. He hesitated for a moment and then lowered it to her skin.
“M-medicine.”
“For what?”
Hinata sat down beside him then, just as the first flash of light and then the boom of thunder rolled off the waves and into the house, giving it an experimental shake that rattled all the glass.
“My head.” She whispered. “Its…supposed to make you happy.”
He stared at the bottle, contemplating it’s contents. “You went out to the sea instead.”
“Yes.” She shook it gently. “It didn’t make me happy it… made me cold.”
She turned then and looked at the window behind them with the giant expanse of sea and sky, the lightening ripped through the heavens and she sighed. “It looked angry, like this that day and I thought… I’d like to feel something… even if it’s just angry, like the ocean was.” she blinked rapidly, realizing what she was saying as she said it. “I didn’t like the cold of the pills. It was worse than the…”
He knew what she was saying. It was worse than the pain.
They had never discussed the events that made them be alone, capable of wandering to the edge of the land and sea to stop their heart beats. And he was not about to start. But the idea of her staring out into the raging ocean and envying it did something strange to his stomach.
“I would do it again.”
She turned to look at him, wide eyes the only thing reflecting light in her face, the rest of her in shadow but the curve of her lip.
“If I saw you out there, I would do it again.”
The scent he realized that he had been noticing on her more and more was less a smell and more of a pull. Like a magnet tug only it was his molecules to hers, the atoms that structured him irrevocably dragged to where she was. In his new body he wrestled with it, grappling it and making it succumb to his will, although he was confused at the same time by the tension. He didn’t understand it.
For a moment he thought she leaned forward towards him, half an inch of movement that she corrected rapidly, and he wondered if it was normal, if this was how people of The Shore lived, always holding themselves away from each other.
Something happened on her face then, a slight change in her lips, the tone of her gray eyes fading to a soft glow as she smiled.
“…thank you.”
His hand was not complying to his orders and he picked a lock of her dark hair from her shoulder, the feel of the silk between his fingers as interesting and intense as the touch of her breath along the smooth skin of his arm.
The pull was there, almost an irrational need that he could just barely handle. It wasn’t a need however, he knew because it wasn’t like breathing or eating where death would come without it being satisfied, it was a want. And as he raised his gaze to hers he saw it there, on her face.
Maybe it was normal then. It seemed they were both holding themselves taut against the drag of their currents crashing and it wasn’t just him.
Ink Child Writing 