It was one of the few days that the sky had not looked gray. Instead it was a slate of pure bright blue glass and he paused from walking along the beach to stare up at it. There were no clouds at all, nothing as far as his eyes could see and unbeknownst to him it caused the darkness of his gaze to recede. Hinata struggled through the entire day to not stare at the gems that glimmered in his face, focusing instead on the ground at her feet.

The sand always hid treasures if you knew where to look and they were crawling through the jumbles of rough seaweed plastered stones looking for smooth glittering shards of glass.

“It’s so dead in the house.” Hinata had whispered that morning. “I need color.”

He had thought that would mean she would paint something but instead she had pulled on thick boots and a coat and stood waiting for him, as though it was clear he was supposed to come along. He had avoided the beach, looking at the water made him feel both home sick and irritated with it, like being mad at a lover. But her expectant expression was enough to make him sigh and gather the clothes she handed to him, following her eventually outside.

There was never really any hope of not knowing what the weather was like in her house, as most of it was just glass. But no matter how much glass there was, the sky could simply not be captured in it. He turned slowly in a circle eyes up, trying to keep himself from feeling insignificant and failing.

“I guess… you never really looked at the sky that much before.” She murmured, watching intently. A slow calm shake of his head was his answer.

Smiling just a bit she turned back to the stones and flipped one, letting out a soft sound of distaste as tiny spider crabs scampered out from beneath it hurrying on their way to calmer abodes, travelling over her boots and getting tangled in her sleeves.

His fingers were suddenly there on the fabric of her sweater, tugging one adventurous crab off with his fingers and releasing it back onto the wet sand with a plop.

“The glass,” He nodded towards the bucket she had half full of various colors and shapes. “What will you do with it?”

Hinata shuffled the material in the bucket, making it rattle and release the perfume of the sea into the air of her face. “I’m not sure… but… I want the sun to touch it, in the house. I have some tiles too, that were supposed to be used in the bathroom but never got done. They’re blue, and green and… I dunno.” She shook it again nervously, unable to look up and meet his gaze when she knew he was studying her so intently.

He cocked his head a little at her and did not say more.

“Did… you find anything on the book shelves that you liked though?” Trying to change the subject sometimes worked with him. His intensity was almost as supernatural as his origin. There was an unwavering sense of self in his stare that almost rendered her mute sometimes. It occurred to her more than once that maybe she should ask what he was looking at but the thought of opening her mouth and saying anything almost seemed like blasphemy. He was staring because he could, because that’s what he wanted to do in the moment and that’s just who he was. End of story.

If only his story didn’t make her face overheat so much she would have been glad.

“Some.” He turned then and picked another piece of glass from the ground, turning the dark blue item in his fingers slowly.

“Oh?” She couldn’t help turning to study his face in that moment and he nodded thankfully without looking at her. “Someone named William Blake, and another…Yeats.” He put the piece of glass in her bucket, surprising her by the touch of his other hand on her elbow as he did it.

“And a couple of books about history.”

“Poetry.” She murmured, and her wide eyes screamed her confusion. Something happened to his face then, a soft wrinkling of the corners of his eyes, a pull to his lips and she realized he was smirking at her.

“What?”

“I just… I just… didn’t think… I’m not sure what I thought you would read but I didn’t really think it would be poetry..” she admitted slowly. “Blake is one of my favorites.” The last comment was quiet, almost for herself.

“It’s how we remember history back…” he had been going to say home and then paused, turning to look at the sea just a few steps away, moving gently against the sand as though it had never been angry in it’s life. Just a docile watery tear with no festering feelings at all.

“…home?” She peered at him, following his eyes to the water a few feet away. He shook his head.

“…this is home now.”

He moved to continue down the beach but paused, turning to look over his shoulder at her standing in the shade of the cliff side, lifting a hand to block the surprising burst of winter sun to his eyes so he could see her clearly.

She stood frozen, lips parted slightly and heavy with words she was struggling to say, a tension had taken over her body and he waited, knowing eventually she would whisper her thoughts if he let her.

“…I’m sorry I took your home from you.”

A movement in his shoulders happened at her words, as though her voice had been a shove to his chest, the start of a fight.

“You did no such thing.”

“If…I had not been there-”

“I made my choice.” He was glaring and it was unnerving so she looked at the water, only a five minute walk down the beach was where she had woken to his lips on hers and his breath in her lungs, effectively severing the ties to everything he had ever known without even being awake.

“…I was being selfish.” She admitted, flickering her eyes to him for only a second as the ferocity of his glare was too much to take even on one of her good days, with the sunshine brightening the world and the sea a calm whisper of herself.

He shrugged, and turned around to keep walking again, pulling her along with an invisible tether she was unaware of. “There was nothing left for me there.” His voice was quiet and she strained to hear it over the soft waves lapping at the rocks.

The silence was thankfully punctuated by the cries of seagulls as they meandered around the curve of the harbor, gathering more glass every few steps in the quiet. Despite the calm he could feel something in her, her face seemed strained, as though she were clenching her jaw until finally he sighed and looked at her, almost tiredly.

“What is it?”

“What…what happened to you?” She didn’t stop shuffling the sand with her hand, the skin of her fingers and palm coated in it’s coarseness. Her body would smell like salt and sea and wild air for several hours after they got home and he would be both interested in it and also happy when she finally showered and returned to the flowery perfume that made his stomach tight and his hands shake.

“They died.” He knew what she was asking, despite her lack of articulation and she looked at him again, with the same fixated fascination that had transfixed her in her studio months ago.

“I’m sorry.”

“We were a warrior clan.” He shook his head. “They died well.”

“…but you…”

His gaze left her then, moved out to the sky again as if searching it’s vastness for words. “I was spared. I hunted him down.”

“…the one who spared you?”

“Yes.”

Hinata waited, watching as he looked back down at his hands, studying them. They had not changed much since the loss of his home, they remained long fingered, wide palmed and strong. She didn’t know what he could do with those hands and he wondered if he wanted her to know.

“I just had that one purpose.” He lifted his shoulders and then glanced at her. “After he was gone, there was nothing.”

“…so you looked for…a Sufine.” An exit.

Somehow the idea that he had killed and seen killing was not surprising. There was a depth to his gaze that spoke of things she would not understand, one that came when blood and death had been handed out and observed. She dragged in a breath, and stood. “…I guess the stories should have been more accurate about people like me.” she muttered, lacing her arms behind her back.

His eyes lingered on her a moment longer before turning around. “I am glad they were not.”

---

The clouds had been chased away by winds and when the darkness fell she had opened the door and stepped outside without a word to him, leaving the freezing air to filter through the house with the tang of salt and sea on it’s currents.

He found her out there standing at the outcrop of rock that overlooked the winding path and the beach where he had found her, looking not out to the rolling whispering ocean but to the sky, her hair a cascade of darkness against the white of her painting smock.

Following the trail of her neck up to the heavens he paused and breathed in deep.

Down below, in some of the furthest darkest recesses of the ocean there was a world that sparkled as this one did. The expanse of the sky was all consuming, a slate of navy and purple and black that was smeared with pinpricks of light in dazzling patterns and swirls throughout. Abruptly and without warning a flash of light would begin on one end of the heavens streaking through in a flurry of light and fire disappearing into the darkness like it had never been. The idea that something so breathtaking could be unseen if he had blinked made him feel a little sick with something like desire.

His almost gasp made her turn to look at him, a smile on her face at the obvious stillness that had overcome his limbs despite the freezing snap of the cold wind through his shirt and sweater.

“I love the sky of the sea.” She whispered softly, turning to look back up at it as well. “I had…forgotten.”

The air smelled cleaner, the ocean sounded mournful and the scent of her was light, a feather on the wind that touched him.

“This is why you live here.”

It wasn’t a question because he was sure that’s what it was and when her gaze drifted to him she seemed surprised despite her slow nod. “Yes.”

“And… other things.” She admitted, turning to go back inside. He hesitated to follow, although curiosity eventually drew his limbs inside, shutting out the bite of the cold for the warmth of the living room with the fire blazing in it’s white marble grate.

Her steps were light, and the smell of her had changed again, something spicy and exciting, sparkling like the streaks of the falling stars that had ripped through the heavens. Following it like a hound he found himself in the doorway of her studio, watching her shifting through the canvases with faces, tossing some aside until she pulled out a frame as long as she was tall, and about half a foot wide.

Knowing he was standing behind her the way she knew the calm crash of the waves were sounding down below she spoke without looking. “Like this.” She turned to him then, showing him the expanse of the painting she held.

In the frame a wash of green spread wide, pines and ferns, the dew drops on each leaf and the bold overwhelming height of mountains behind it. His eyes scanned the image for a moment before taking a step towards it.

She studied him, watching the color of his eyes brighten as they roved over the image. Raising his gaze back to her she smiled, satisfied with the reaction.

“We can go there tomorrow.”

He didn’t even have to ask.

---

The forest had beckoned with a kind of ferocity that neither of them had really anticipated and when they reached it they had entered with a sort of abandon, like diving from a cliff into the depths of the sea. The rain however, had snuck up on them as though it had been waiting for them to stop paying attention to the heavens and begun to come down with a fury that surprised them both.

The trees stretched up high and tall around them, swaying to the rhythm of the wind that had brought them the downpour. The pines stood on tip toes, trying to tickle the under bellies of the gray clouds with their pointy tips.

They had not been walking long, barely half an hour up the hill and the torrent had begun. Just long enough for Sasuke to be overwhelmed by the vastness of the world he now belonged to before the sea came calling after him in the form of the clouds.

His balance was better than hers now, and she was a little envious. His dexterity and movement came naturally after awhile, once the idea of gravity and resistance became second nature. So it came as no surprise to either of them when she slid along a particularly mossy slimy bit of trail and ended up on her butt in a puddle.

“Ugh!” Hinata gasped, blushing furiously and thankful for the dimming light of the afternoon sun as she sat on the ground, coated completely in mud. His hand came into her line of vision and she looked up at him, freezing at the sight of a half smile on his lips.

For a moment she could not move, the water was pouring off his chin and taking dives off the edges of his lips, clinging to his eyelashes like dew, leaving rivulets of liquid down his cheeks. For a moment she could see him, with the bright green and blue of the fins hiding behind his ears, his pupils had been huge the night she met him, nearly the entirety of his iris. He was otherworldly, and strange, and yet he was smirking at her, hand outstretched.

Before she waited a beat too long she took his fingers in hers, feeling their grip and started as he hauled her easily to her feet, gripping her hand as they began to run again.

“It’s everywhere.” Sasuke’s voice was half a shout over the torrent. The rain had no qualms about it’s force, there was little wind just the perpetual haul of a river coming down overhead.

They had wandered off the path and Hinata was starting to regret that decision more and more as they scampered over fallen logs and drenched bits of landscape. The feel of soaked pine branches leaving their wetness along their clothes lost its effect within minutes of the rain and now worried that they would get turned around in the depths of the forest she stopped, looking slowly around herself.

The trees seemed thicker, and with the clouds blocking the sun there was no light to guide the way, no way to see where the sun was in it’s travel through the heavens.

“Um…” she began, too quiet for him to hear her in the wash of the rain. Slowly she turned to look at him over her shoulder and stopped.

Like so many times before he was looking straight up in her moment of stillness, wincing against the rain that threatened to make his eyes cry with it. In the wildness of the trees he seemed to belong. His hair was pushed back from his face and with the paleness of his throat exposed to her wandering eyes she shifted within her clothes, feeling uncomfortable and desperate at the same time.

Feeling her gaze on him he turned, meeting her pale eyes with his near black ones.

“It’s that way.” He turned and pointed breaking the stillness of their stare.

“…How did you know?” she blinked, pushing through the under bush towards him again, and then gasped feeling the ground give way beneath her hard.

The dirt had turned to mud that was closer to water than solid and gasping she clawed at the shifting ground, his voice ringing through the heavy rainfall with her name. Through the breaking of the branches and the tug of the earth beneath her jeans she drew in air sharply, more surprised by the sound of him above her than the stomach wrenching feel of the fall.

With a smack that was wet and thick she stopped, crumbled on her knees at the bottom of the small ravine that had been hidden by the wide leafed dense bush, shuddering in the cold and stickiness of the mud.

Swallowing thickly she peered upwards towards the heavens in time to see him holding on to a tree branch and peering over the edge only ten or twelve feet above her. Panic lingered on his face she had never seen before.

“Hinata!”

It occurred to her then that his voice was like a siren song. It sounded melodic even in his fear, and blinking rapidly she moved to stand and then stopped, rethinking it when her lungs gave protest. The impact had not been bad but she was panting to catch her breath.

“I’m… I’m okay!”

With the crack of branches and the slip and slide crunch of rolling mud he landed beside her, light on his feet and elegant even when covered in dirt. Eyeing him tiredly she waved at herself.

“I’m… I’m sorry. I’m not…very coordinated.” Her voice was wobbly as her legs, and holding on to the melting ravine wall she dragged herself to her feet, feeling his grip on her arm tightly.

“You scared me.” His voice was cloaked in the fall of the rain but she looked up at the sound anyway, surprise blooming on her features as she stared back. He blinked rapidly, as if equally surprised by his statement, removing his grip on her like it burned.

Licking the rain from her lips she sighed and changing the subject inspected her muddy clothes, shaking her head. “…it doesn’t matter where I go… I always feel so much like a fish out of water.”

A sound that was almost a laugh came out of him then and she turned again, not surprise but shock on her face. He looked incredulous and pressing a hand to his forehead shook his head a smirk so wide it could almost be called a smile lingered on his mouth.

“I don’t think you get to say that around me.”

Nervous and trembling she started, blinking the rain from her lashes and then burst out laughing, burying her face in her hands at the sound of his chuckle along with her.

“I am so sorry.” She finally sighed, leaning against the tree closest to her to catch her breath. Her hand was on her stomach where it hurt from laughing. She couldn’t remember the last time that had happened, it made her cheeks hurt and her torso feel like she had done sit ups.

He shook his head briefly, still smirking just a bit and then peered up above, eyeing the distance. “We may need to climb.”

Wrinkling her nose she followed his gaze and bit her lip, considering the possibility of not being able to get out with the pouring mud tugging against her.

“I will help you.” Turning back to him she blinked, seeing his calm expression again. He was unconcerned, even comfortable in the fierceness of the rain. There was no worry or trepidation, just a stillness that had not been there before. She felt a tug on her lips, realizing.

“You’re happy.”

It wasn’t a question, and he cocked his head a little at her, extending his hand in answer. Trusting him, she took his hand in reply.

---

They arrived at the house just in time for the rain to turn into half melted snow, the sleet followed and soon after hard painful knocks against the window began with hail.

Standing in the entryway Hinata sighed, watching the mud coming off their disgusting jackets leaving smears of chocolate colored grime in the white tile.

The pounding of the hail was different than the rain, more aggressive and nerve wrecking when the glass shuddered under it’s finger taps. Warily she eyed the gray of the sky beyond her see through walls, turning just in time to see him rip of his soaked shirt, moving to his pants without a care.

“Ah- no!” she began and they froze together, listening suddenly not to the hail but the firm knock, knock, knock of someone at the door.

His black gaze turned wonderingly to her pale gray and they stared at one another for a breath.

The reaction on Sasuke’s face was a war between confusion and incredulity as he stared at the doorway. “What-?” He began and she shook her head rapidly, putting a finger to her lips and choking the words on his tongue.

“Please… go to my room, okay?”

Slowly, and perhaps a little irritably he turned and headed up the stairs, his dark eyes piercing her as they turned away and he stepped into her bedroom on the loft floor.

Sucking in a breath that didn’t seem to want to fill her lungs completely Hinata turned to the door where another polite, firm, familiar knock sounded.

Licking her lips she pulled the handle and peered outside, meeting the face she had expected to see from the start.

“Cousin.” She whispered.

Familiar gray eyes looked back at her, filled with concern that she was unsure she wanted to trust.

He listened in the hallway, wondering why he was standing there, eavesdropping. Her voice was gentle, if a little defensive but he couldn’t quite make out what was being said over the din of the hailstorm. aAnd whoever it was although invited in didn’t appear to intend to stay.

All he knew was that he could hear it was a male voice, deep and dark like the ocean waters beyond the deepest trenches and the concern was evident even to him.

Something was festering in his chest as he listened, searching her voice and the tones she used for clues, tearing it apart in his mind even as he struggled not to go down the stairs.

The conversation could not have lasted five minutes, and then the door closed and he heard her sigh. Peering from above he studied the droop of her shoulders and the way her hands pushed through her dark hair at the crown of her head, dragging through tiredly.

He couldn’t wait until she turned, until she walked up the stairs. His words were right at the edge of his lips, prying his mouth open with impatience.

“Who was that?”

Startled, Hinata turned, her soaked sweater hanging from her small shoulders as tiredly as they drooped.

“Why… why aren’t you showering? You’re…you’re going to catch a cold.” She stuttered, starting slowly up the stairs after him. He ignored her cold comment, she had made it before and he had not understood and still didn’t care.

“Who was that?”

Closing her eyes she walked slowly past him into the room, removing her sweater carefully before tossing it in the laundry basket by the open closet door.

“…um… just… he was just…”

Her reluctance to answer was making his fingers fidget, he ran a finger along the hard hem of his jeans at his waist, trailing her cold shuddering form with his eyes as though it would give him the answers her mouth refused to surrender. These creatures of the shore, they were different than his own. He knew that. The stories were vague, but he knew one thing they had that his people did not. Abruptly, and before he had thought through what he was saying words were snapping out of his mouth.

“Is he your mate?”

An expression he had never seen before on her face flickered over her features, like the cracking of porcelain as she grimaced. “No! No… he’s… he’s family, he’s my cousin. I don’t have a…” she blanched for a moment and then finished with some clear discomfort. “…I don’t have a…mate.”

His eyes had never been quite this unreadable, there was something in them that glimmered and caused the blue to shine but nothing about his face was familiar, it’s impassiveness was marred, even the relaxed hang of his limbs from his torso seemed different.

Keeping her eyes from his bare chest she turned and began to dig out clothes from her closet for both of them. “Do…do you have a…mate? Do you miss her?”

His reaction merited looking over despite the lack of shirt. He seemed confused, his head cocked just the slightest bit to the right, tossing his mane of wild black hair to the side. “No…I have no one. I was the last of my clan.” There was a pause in which she forced herself not to sigh, remembering she had known that. Still, she kept moving her arms in the closet despite already having everything she needed, as if searching for something to say in there.

“…we do not mate, we… are born from pearl eggs.”

She turned then, mouth agape. “You…you what?”

He was watching her with care and she noticed a movement about his shoulders, as though he were tightening with slight discomfort at her tone.

“But you have a belly button.” Her eyes went straight to the little circle on his stomach and he looked down, following the trail of her eyes, the confusion mounting on his face.

“Yes.” Then, slowly as though trying to follow her thought. “You do as well.”

“But… but…”

Her confusion was making something happen inside him as he watched, a tugging at his belly that intensified with the tightening of her shoulders and the widening of her eyes. Cocking his head he took a step towards her and before she could stop him with her hands full he had the edge of her shirt in his grip. The wet material pealed off her stomach as he lifted it. The ivory skin was pricked with goosebumps from the cold, but there was the belly button, a dimple in her smooth torso.

“How were you born?” His eyes lifted to her, and he paused, seeing the panic in her face for the first time. Stepping back sharply he frowned.

“I can’t.. I can’t…um…” Pushing her shirt down with her free hand she took a towel from the open closet beside her and pressed it to her chest.

“I am going to have a shower.” She whispered, eyes down as she turned and vanished into the bathroom, door closing quietly behind her.

Sasuke frowned after her, puzzled. Curiously he glanced at the mirror in her closet where his reflection looked back, one hand lingering near his belly button.

---

Although the questions lingered he did not ask, again. And as the days went by she began to hope that they would not have to discuss it further, ever, if possible.

Instead she focused on painting, her empty canvases beginning to take on a life of their own, their expressions and faces coming to the light in stroke by slow stroke of her brushes on their rough surfaces.

Usually she painted alone, but on the third day of spending hours entranced, her hands stroking blues and greens and yellows through the darkness of an endless void she felt the soft prickling of someone watching and turned.

He was standing at the door, arms crossed studying her as she moved. There was no way to know how long he had been there in the silence and she stared, lips parted in protest that never made it out of her mouth.

Two calm steps and he was beside her studying the canvas with a calm aloof expression. Heat was rising to her face and she stared down at her palette, scrambling to find words that would hide her in the moment of vulnerability among the brightness of her lights and the white of her studio walls.

In the canvas the ocean swirled, a depth made intense by the darkness and the lingering light that flooded from a single solitary source beyond the reach of the frame.

It was his silhouette in the shadows, but Hinata had not made a small fortune for herself by being bad at what she did, and his likeness showed. In the sharpness of his chin, the length and straight cut of his nose, the tousle of his water swept hair, the smooth long fingers.

Turning his head just a bit to the side he breathed in softly beside her.

“…you…” Hinata began, and winced at the half whisper that escaped her throat. “…you have to say something.”

He turned half to her then, dark eyes set on her face, their calmness changed if only for a moment as he studied her, setting her face to flame, a knot in her belly tightening until electricity seemed to run through her limbs.

The gaze that inspired the image glowed at her and she flinched away from it. She had not done it justice on the canvas yet again.

A touch made her start, his fingers trailing through the sheet of her hair and to her cheek. “You seem to know a lot about a place you’ve never been to.” He murmured, withdrawing his hand at the feel of the heat radiating from her skin.

Hinata stayed still, searching the paleness of her studio for something that would be calming.

“…I can imagine though.”

“Hm.” He stepped back, the pull was hard, her scent flowery and soft, over powering despite the scent of paint and thinner.

Before she could say anything else he had disappeared out the door and she covered her eyes with her hand, blocking out the inadequacies of the canvas on her stand.

As the tangle of feelings inside her chest began to ebb away she shifted, feeling the buzz of her phone in her pocket for the third time that day. Sighing she lifted the device to her face, reading the words on the screen with a tiredness that no amount of sleep would help. Shoulders drooping she let the hard block of technology drop from her hand to the floor with a crack, hoping it would break.

---

“I have to… go away… for awhile.”

He was laying on one of the couches in the living room under a pile of blankets so thick he seemed more of a cocoon than a person. His eyes lifted from the book in his hands to her and the sun glistened on them. It didn’t get old. She could stare at him for hours in the light.

“Away?” He pushed himself up and the blankets tumbled off of him. Outside the window the wind was blasting at the house with a vengeance, trying to reclaim the outcrop of rocks on which it was built by sheer force of will alone. Across the harbor the clouds were starting to gather for their impending attack on the town on the other side of their crescent beach and soon it would reach them, dumping the snow in piles that blocked huge chunks of the windows, the ice clinging to the glass.

“Yes.” Hinata steadied the shake in her voice. “I will be away for three days… and two nights.”

His eyes didn’t move from her face, waiting.

“My family… expects me for Christmas and I…” She hesitated for a moment, looking at him, at the fragility of what he was. She would not risk it, if she didn’t go at least for those three days they would come looking for her, asking questions, demanding space in her life where there was none she wanted to give.

And if she took him with her they would mangle him, as only the Hyuuga could.

“Christmas.” He whispered it again.

She glanced at the books that had been pulled from her shelves and left strewn throughout the living room, studying the faces of the familiar pieces. Surprised she lifted a large encyclopedia of human anatomy in one hand, measuring it’s weight.

“If I do not go they will come looking for me.” She murmured, opening the book in her arms to glance through it’s pages so she didn’t have to look at his face. “Maybe I can get away even sooner.”

“Okay.”

She looked up, confused that there were no questions and yet not surprised at the same time. He studied her with his impassive gaze and she sighed, reading the inquiry there. “They would know that something was different about you… they would sense it.”

“They think that of you too.” He could read her more easily and had been able to for longer than she liked to admit. Looking away she lifted her shoulders in an answer that was neither a yes or a no.

“I have prepared food though, for the next couple of days. And I will be back as soon as I can.” She rubbed her hands along her thighs to dispel the stickiness of her nerves from her palms. “Perhaps it will snow.”

He nodded and looked out to the clouds. “The sky is angry today.”

“Yes.” Hinata turned her eyes to follow his to the window where the heavens rolled and twisted as though in pain and fury, their gray and white plumes almost like smoke from a billowing fire.

He watched her, interested in the fact that her gaze, like the heavens looked frustrated and upset as well.

---

She left in the morning. They woke as they always did, staring at each other, only this time the urge to touch her won out and he felt his fingers trail along her hand for two seconds before he reigned himself back, feeling something akin to embarrassment at the movement.

The touch had made her pale cheeks brighten to apples on her skin and as she shifted the sweetness of her body lingered in the air she moved to get up, abandoning him to hug her pillow, face buried in the fabric while she showered, eyes closed, wondering why he always thought of her mouth.

At the front door she had lingered with something he thought might be uncertainty, hesitating at the exit to watch the fat flakes of white that were drifting down from above in slow lazy swirls as the breeze began to pick up.

“Hm.” Sasuke sighed, stretching his hand out and watching it land on his flesh only to disappear, the cold raindrop that morphed out of the ice absorbed into his skin.

She watched him and gripping her bag tightly whispered. “I’ll be back soon.”

Dark eyes turned back to her with interest. He felt the tug of his limbs towards hers, the desire to press her body to his puzzling even as he stepped back into her house with a slow nod, dragging each extremity inside and away. “Okay.”

She left, the growing tension mounting like the snow as the car pulled away. Her house made of glass and metal and stone hunched against the beat of the growing wind in her review mirror and inside it he was alone. As she had been.

Her hands struggled on the wheel, hesitating, agonizing, and even after she hit the highway she had not really made up her mind. But it was just too late to turn around, so she continued on, wishing she could be home.

As he watched the red of the vehicle tail lights disappear in the distance he wondered when the snow would stop.

It didn’t.

Through the night and day it fell, soft feathery puffs of white that danced in the whirlwinds of the ocean sighs. At times it was sharp angled slices of ice that fell like meteorites, bent on piling up around the house, covering inches and then feet of the windows at the floor level so that the glass fogged with the heat from inside.

Her absence was a sort of empty echo, and in the stillness of an already quiet house he heard the silence almost like a painful grinding on his ear drums.

Reading distracted him for the first day, but the night was difficult. Wrapped in her blankets and breathing in the scent of her made him twist and turn through the rotation of the moon in the sky, blowing snow flurry kisses at him in the dark.

The realization that beneath the waves, or above them the only point of contact in his life was her face made a small insignificant panic begin to take root.

What if she never returned?

What if she had left with no intentions of coming back?

What if something happened to her out there where he could not see, hear or help?

He began to pace, moving through the house touching edges and doorways, memorizing the feel of the place and wondering if he had indeed died when he pressed his mouth to hers, giving her the air she needed and therefore ending himself. It was possible, because the slow tick of the clock and the lazy absent minded movement of the light across the floor signalling day to night was a torture he had not thought of. It was hell, pain through breaths counted, seconds passed.

His wanderings took him to places in the house he had never bothered to ponder about. Including a doorway in the kitchen that led to a dark unlit stairwell going down, further into the ground, a third level that he had never known existed.

His steps creaked on the rough untreated wood stairs and the smell of damp and cold sifted upwards into his nose.

The cement was unfinished and coarse against the smoothness of his palms and when he reached the bottom landing he studied the place, noting the squat space was not meant for walking in. Too short to even really bend and walk it was empty, save for a half dozen boxes that sat ignored by the steps, covered in a layer of dust and grit that left gray on his fingers as he opened them.

The light from the kitchen upstairs was filtering down in gray scales to the place where he crouched, and as the last flap of the box opened a glimmer of blue and green reflected it’s brightness. Shining dully with their sleepy dusty faces the tiles were of various shapes and sizes, some as big as his thumb, others his palm and none were of the same color blue or green.

Transfixed he smoothed his finger over the hardness of the tile, recognizing the ceramic material instantly. One of the few things that survived the sea’s corrosive power was tile, and although they didn’t make their own, finding ship wrecks with materials that were similar was not uncommon.

Slowly he uncovered the other boxes, moving his hand over the brightness of the small squares before picking one up and heading upstairs to find the glass they had gathered from the beach.

---

In the house she was a ghost. There were images on the walls of a woman who had her face, her eyes, her mouth her cheeks, all put together in the same place. She was regal and smiling and her hair flowed like the ink black depths of the ocean currents. She was dead.

Her family seemed to forget that her mother and Hinata were not the same person. Her mother had been frail, but determined, her weakness buoyed her strength and with sheer force of will her world turned at her beck and call until she stopped turning with it.

The disappointment of who Hinata was and the contrast of what she looked like was an unforgivable offense, and returning home always reminded her of it. Only her cousin and occasionally her sister would soothe her after the lashings of her father’s tongue.

Around her the twinkle lights, the delicate snowflakes made of glass that her sister loved so much and the enormous 10 foot Christmas tree dominated the landscape of their elegant home.

Kids that were familiar only because of their intense pale gray eyes ran through the house in fancy clothes, and a smell of cinnamon and spices drifted through the rooms along with the jazz music that someone had put on in the background, soothing the lilting voices of her relatives.

Handing her a glass filled with blood red wine she was unlikely to drink her sister sat beside her. She was similar and yet hard where any edges on Hinata had been sanded down by time. “Here. I’d be downing that if I were you. We just got started for the holidays.” the younger Hyuuga murmured, taking a long sip of her own cup.

Hinata twirled her wrist with the glass in hand, watching the depth of the red circle over the windows of it’s house and worried that if Sasuke was hurt there would be no one to help for days. “Thank you.” She murmured without conviction, and Hanabi sighed, glancing at her cousin then.

“You’ve been even less..present.. than usual this last year.” Neji finally added, glancing back to see where his uncle was and if they should be making a retreat to a different room. But the family had arrived en force and the sound of booming voices and the crinkle of gifts being placed under the tree was dominating, hiding their conversation.

“…I’ve been busy.” She raised her shoulders, wondering how fast merpeople healed. If he needed a hospital would they be able to go to one? Would they notice something in his body or blood that was different?

“With?” Hanabi’s question was kind, but loaded and Hinata looked out the window to the ever falling snow. It had not stopped since she had arrived and through the night she had stayed up watching it with worry. If it didn’t slow down getting home would be difficult.

“…have you been painting?” Neji was not one to pry, and his usually stoic disposition made it clear that he was desperate for some shred of information if he was willing to ask a second question. Swallowing hard Hinata put her glass down, rubbing her hands together. “I…just needed to take some time to think, after what happened.”

Something happened to their bodies in response to her words and she studied out of the corner of her eye as they glanced at each other, shoulders both tensing and tightening at the mention of the past.

“…Naruto…asks about you regularly.” Hanabi supplied softly.

The wince was involuntary to the point she felt her body was not her own and she stood, rubbing the sudden ache from her arms. “I don’t really want to talk about this.” She murmured and moved to go, feeling the grip of her cousin’s hand on her shoulder.

“Hinata. He was just… a chapter, for you. There’s so much story left.” Gray eyes roamed her face and were surprised when they turned to look back with a calm he had not seen for some time.

“I know.” Blinking rapidly Hinata felt the lack of lie on her tongue and pondered that. “I hope he’s happy…with her.”

Hanabi made a face, the disgust tangible in the air around her. “I don’t.” She stared at her sister’s worried frown. “I don’t. The car accident should have made him propose to you, not leave you for that girl while you were both in the ICU.”

“It clarified things for him, nearly dying does that to people.” Hinata stopped, the sound of her voice had risen, the force behind it backed with first hand knowledge. Swallowing she lowered her gaze, realizing she was probably revealing too much even as she spoke.

The silence lingered too long after her statement and turning once more to the window she fretted, hands tightening and loosening together as the snow began to fall with earnest.

“…I hope this stops…how am I going to drive home in this?”

“I really don’t think you will be going anywhere.” Hanabi let out a soft sound that was almost a scoff. “Father won’t allow us out in that, I guarantee it.”

“It wouldn’t be safe, Hinata.” Neji’s voice agreed, and she watched their pale reflections on the glass looking at her instead of the snow outside.

Jaw clenching she turned, heading to her room to pack despite their words.

---

He found his head turning towards the window at the front of the house, where her car would come sliding like a black knife through the white expanse of the snow, but it didn’t. As night began to fall his hands began to shake, and although he ignored it the tightness in his belly intensified making eating revolting and sleeping impossible.

Smoothing out the cement in the bucket he had found with the tiles he breathed in deeply and tried to remain calm, even as the light outside faded, and the moon rose high and tall, her face hiding behind the cover of the snowfall.

He worked straight through the night, moving the tiles onto the wall where the kitchen received the most light. He had had to move one of the shelves to bare the expanse of white un-decorated panel. It never occurred to him to wonder if she would be upset. The subtle boil of his own distaste was wavering in his blood stream as he waited, sliding the tiles into place on the wall bit by bit, eyes flickering from his work, to the driveway that never lit with the headlights he expected.

The idea of going upstairs and smelling her on the sheets made him feel sick. Like the empty room where she had first wanted him to be, she was fading with each day. Soon the sheets would smell like nothing, just him and the break down of fibers.

He couldn’t sit there and breathe her in anyway, the images of her eyes, the feel of her long hair between his finger tips or her mouth pressed into a smooth pink smile made the cells of his skin hurt, aching through the evening, refusing to let him sleep.

The paint sheet he had found down below with the tiles caught most of the debris of his work on the wall. With the time he found the tiles practically drifted to their places, sitting comfortably next to each other. In the water placing them had been more difficult as each one had to be fitted into stone that breathed with life. Eventually the life beneath the sea would claim mosaics anyway, destroying them, rendering the people who lived below the ocean waves nothing but a forgotten dream.

By contrast here the tiles glimmered, happily sitting in their new home as he pushed them into place. This thing, with nothing but air and light to touch it would last forever if it wanted to. There was no water, no salt, no drag on it to destroy it. But then, what good would it do if there was no one to look at it? His gaze fluttered then again to the darkness of the driveway, where the snow billowed outside with madness.

What good was it if it was left alone?

---

The walk began when she finally, after many stops and a few frightening moments of being stuck made it to the dirt road that led to her house on the cliff side.

The snow was deep but the wind from the sea had done her the favor of pushing most of it to the side against the trees and black berry bushes that tangled up the shoulder of the road during the summer time. With her cell phone to her ear she had walked, arms wrapped tightly around herself after abandoning her vehicle in the dark of the predawn morning.

“I’m sorry, Neji-nii.” She whispered it softly, trying to keep her teeth from chattering.

“Whatever is happening, Hinata, I wish you would talk to me. Uncle is very upset that you left without letting anyone know. Especially with the weather the way it is.. It’s not safe. I’m shocked you made it to your road.”

“I know. I’m sorry to worry everyone.”

“Were we such bad company that you had to get back home so quickly? Why do you like being alone so much, I’m… I’m so concerned for you, Hinata.”

She had breathed in slowly then, trying to think of how to respond, to explain that it wasn’t that she wanted to be alone, but quite the opposite.

“I…I have someone I…” she began and then stuttered on the silence that tasted so much like shock transferring through the phone.

“You have someone?” His voice sounded incredulous.

“I have to go, Neji-nii. Please, please apologize to father for me.”

“You can’t just- Hinata, who are you talking about?”

The house suddenly appeared through the white of the swirling snow and Hinata stopped, seeing the door open, swallowing the knot in her throat at the sight of the familiar shape that stood looking straight up into the snowflakes twirling down in soft freezing pirouettes.

“I have to go.”

“Hinata- wait.”

“Neji, I love you. Bye.”

And she hung up, focusing for once on something that made her heart beat faster and not the disappointed voices of her family in her head.

Her voice was breathless and it startled him. He had been so focused on the feel of the snow kissing his face, the touch of the flakes landing on his cheeks with a tickle of pain from the cold, a small pinprick of dislike before melting and turning to a soft drooly touch as they melted.

Above the sky was a blueish gray and the snow fell in patterns he could almost trace but turned too complicated within seconds of watching. Nature was too clever for him.

“Sasuke.”

He blinked, and turned to her.

The snow, the ice, the wind, it was all over her, coating her in it’s fresh and wild flavors but her scent was still there, it lifted through the fibers of her clothing, tangled in her hair and drifted with the snowflakes into his face.

Dark eyes pensive he studied her pink cheeks from the cold, her gray eyes filled with tears that he wasn’t sure how to interpret. He had been wrestling with the panic through the sleepless night, worry making him almost angry, frustrated that there was no way he could find her in the vastness of her world. But now she was there, breathing deeply, cold pale fingers tense at her chest.

The pull was not a pull, but a binding. The control it took to keep from moving towards her took his breath away. Almost as much as seeing her take three rapid steps towards him, wrapping her arms around his torso with her face buried in his chest, shoulders trembling.

“I’m sorry I’m so late.”

From breathing in the remnant touch of her on the pillows to feeling her pressed to him he flinched and trembled, unsure of what his body would do in response to the contact. Unsure too of what was happening to his blood flow. It had spiked and it thundered, muting the constant sound of the ocean that was the soundtrack to his life.

Hands moving of their own accord he felt for the first time the curve of her hips to her waist beneath the cover of her jacket, the smallness of her shoulder blades and the smooth watery silk of her hair against the backs of his hands.

It felt, like walking into the ocean from the beach after having lost his scales. It felt like drowning. The panic surprised him and taking a step back sharply he sucked in air, staring at her like she was something new and frightening, unable in that moment to keep the expression from marring his usually calm features.

Hinata stared back, shoulders tight around herself, equally confused.

“I…made something.” he stuttered, surprised by the trip of his voice, by the heat that was engulfing his body despite the freezing touch of the winter that swarmed around them.

Her face fluctuated between confusion and curiosity and something else that was making his stomach clench fervently.

“Made something?”

Unable to restrain himself completely he reached out, grabbing her pale fingers in his hand and dragging her in.

It didn’t matter why she was late, the point was she was there, with rain in the clouds of her eyes and the electric tingle of her skin between his fingers. That’s what was important, that and keeping his breath from escaping his lungs as her smell overwhelmed him.

He pulled her, hardly giving her time to close the door behind them before they were standing in the kitchen with their backs to the blast of the white snowy morning facing the 12 foot wall that he had bared and then doused in color.

The tiles were small and large in places, but they took her breath away as they captured the light. He had taken the entirety of the empty wall, and with each piece created a mosaic that was at once his gaze and the way light filtered through the ocean from above. Darkness lingered at the edges, growing lighter and more pure in it’s blue and green towards the center where the sun was trying to touch it’s ocean brother. The sea glass danced throughout, glimmering with sparks of color.

The circular motion of the tiles was intricate, it had twist and turns in the patterns, and yet no form at all, like the way the waves danced. Raising a hand to her mouth she stared and remembered to breathe.

“…I haven’t…loved anything this much in such a long time…” Delicately she reached out, pressing her fingers to the smoothness of the greens and blues.

Something released in his chest at her words, and a sigh escaped him that made her turn to look, meeting his gaze.

“…what is that?” He said suddenly, and she felt herself tense at his breathless tone. The hunger in his face.

“What do you mean?”

Her perfume was overwhelming now, it was not a cloud but a mist he was losing himself in. The desire to touch her, to taste her making his hands feel hot and cold, his mouth dry. “You… you smell different.”

Startled she looked down at herself and then back up at him in confusion. “What?”

“You… I can…” He took a hesitant step forward and she started, the feel of his fingers on her cheek and chin so new they felt like the bite of electricity. “Your body… wants something from me… I can smell it on your skin.”

Eyes widening Hinata felt herself take a step back, her chest heaving with air that wasn’t helping her feel less breathless. “What? No…” Flustered she turned, heading up the stairs, fingers stumbling to undo her jacket buttons.

“I… I have to change.”

“Wait.” He was behind her and she felt for a moment the desire to escape tangling with the feeling of wanting to stop, to watch him and the way his eyes flickered to her mouth again and again.

In her room she scrambled to remove her wet sweater, shaking visibly even as she dragged out clean clothes from her drawers. He stood watching her, and the way his chest was rising and falling rapidly didn’t escape her notice.

“Hinata, stop.”

“You’re wrong, I don’t.. I don’t want anything from you.” Her voice was a traitor, it twisted in her vocal chords before coming out weak kneed and helpless. The lie didn’t even fool her and hesitantly she pressed a hand to her face, hiding the rising heat to her cheeks.

He swallowed, so hard she could hear it. It was all over her, on her face, on her skin on her hair, it was in the air and he was drinking it, shaking as it entered his lungs and commanded his attention. Like being offered water after crawling through a desert, he struggled with the almost pain of standing there, apart.

“Then you want me. You are all want.”

His words had the desired effect of making her look at him, her hands tight at her sides as though ready for a fight although her lips were parted in something like panic.

His body was taut with the tension of pulling back, of keeping himself separate from her even as he felt the desire to mesh himself with her so there would be no distinguishing where he started and she began. Breath shaking as it traveled in his body he stepped closer, wondering if this was the correct choice despite the scream of his body saying yes.

Desperate, he had her in his grip before she could gasp out his name, his lips hovered over hers, making the pain in his stomach tighten, a coil of agony that needing soothing.

“What… is this?” He was so confused, almost angry as he trembled. His confusion was so close to panic that she felt a shard of pain anchor itself in her chest along with all her fears.

How could she explain without making the action cheap, the tension untrue? How could she alleviate the anxiety in his eyes?

“…do you want?” Her mouth somehow found words that made sense, and he started as if it was something he had not thought of. His chest lifted with a breath that shook painfully, releasing the word with force.

“Yes.”

She was terrified and he could see it, it was the same look she had had when the ocean had taken her alive, accepting the offering of her life only to trade it for his. Despite the terror she had walked into it, shaking. The same trepidation made her limbs shudder, and eyes glow as she stood on tiptoes and pressed her mouth to his.

His hand relaxed it’s grip on her wrist almost instantly, a shudder ripping through him as she pressed herself to his chest. Hand loose in the joint of his wrist he shakily pressed into the small of her back, pushing the hardness of his hips to her own and a sound came from him that sent heat and something akin to pain travelling into the heart of her belly.

The child of a moan and a sigh escaped him. “…oh…” he stared into her, eyes wide in an innocence she had seen in his eyes before. Innocence that was heavily doused in a heated desperate flame at her touch. “I’m sorry.” He shook, his thumb passing over the plump smoothness of her bottom lip. Hunger licked like flames in his gaze and still trembling he breathed against her mouth, making every muscle in her body tighten with anticipation. “I can’t… I can’t stop.”

It felt like drowning.

Gasping for breath she struggled to keep above water, feeling him as a wild sea that overwhelmed, that bruised and loved with desperation. Clothes were insubstantial obstacles to the raging heart beneath his chest, his voice raw in her ear as he whispered her name.

There were no words, nothing but the glow of his ocean eyes consuming her. He was everywhere, and at the same time all his senses were in tune with her, the taste of her skin, the feel of her in his hands, the sound of her moans and the shadows that played over the curves of her body beneath his fingers.

She was what he had hoped she would be. Her flavor as delicious as the perfume of her body, her cries a melody he could listen to the way the waves crashed on the shore. If this was dying, then he had made the right choice.

The spool of tension within him tightened, her body the archer to wield the bow. Aching at her touch he shook. This was new ground, unknown territory. He had thought this world was too small, a glass box with boundaries to hold him but in her hands he was in the nothingness of space, every shift of her hips and the feel of her curves beneath his finger tips a reminder that this world was as wide open and new as the sea was old.

Cheek pressed to his, feeling the agony and pleasure in his grip on her she closed her eyes tight, succumbing to the wildness of the ocean he brought with him among the tangled sheets and sweat.

“…I love you.”

Just a breath, a whisper before she drowned in him. His eyes were on her, as hypnotic and strange as the day she had met him. She watched as understanding overwhelmed him, his lips claiming hers.

That is what the want was.

There would be no more fighting with it anymore.

---

The snow had stopped and when it did the sun came, making everything glitter in the afternoon.

They slept through the morning in a tangle of limbs, more soundly than either of them had slept in too long. Waking was not the same, and yet familiar. Carefully she blinked her eyes, feeling each of his breaths along her cheek and neck, his face tucked in against her and her pillow.

His mouth seemed bruised, lips pink and plump as he drifted in his slumber. Pale skin reflected the weakening winter sun and she could see the smoothness of it clearly in the close proximity.

The warmth of his body made moving and separating any inch of their tangled limbs a freezing affair and so instead she nestled further into him, burying her nose to the curve of his neck.

“…hey…”

Startled she looked up to see him lazily opening one eye to look back at her, watching as she bloomed with color on her cheeks.

He had thought, that the tension of wanting her would end as he satisfied the craving, watching her moving above him, watching her moaning below.

But now, staring at her in his grip he realized there would be no satisfying it. Carefully he drew her up against him tighter, trailing her neck with his lips until she was shaking again. The tremble only fed the hunger and he sighed, almost a growl as he breathed her in.

“Why were you late?” His question, as always surprised her as he explored the length of her neck.

Eyes dazed she watched the play of light in the rafters again, more fascinated by the pattern of his mouth on her skin than the beauty of a distant star shining into her bedroom.

“…the snow tried to…stop me…” her words were coming slow, somewhere along the way his hands had started to travel like his lips did, and she was melting. How could she hold words if she was melting?

“Did you miss me?”

This shook some of the dizziness from her mind and slowly she turned to look at him, watching him travelling over the curve of her ribs, blue eyes orbs of light she would probably die without.

“Yes.”

The intensity in her answer drew a genuine smile from his mouth before it returned to her skin, lingering over the curve of her rib cage before trailing to her belly button.

“I know why you were confused by my belly button.” He murmured and she felt the heat engulf her at the memory, despite her nakedness in his hands. A flicker of realization dawned on her, remembering the anatomy encyclopedia she had found open in her living room days before.

“…okay…”

He smirked again at her reply before moving back to her mouth, his weight pressing her in a delicious way against the softness of her bed.

Closing her eyes to still her body she breathed in deep, opening them again only to have the air taken away by his staring.

“You’re mine.” He said it factually, searching her face for contradiction and she realized this moment was why they were called sirens.

“Yes.” she didn’t even think to argue, there was no argument to a fact. Just additions.

“And you,” she paused, watching his interest in her words play clearly in his gaze. “You are mine?” There was less conviction and more of a question in her tone but his smirk returned, satisfaction allowing him to press her down further, lips bruising as he tasted the honey of her tongue against his.

“Yes.” His breathlessness was not lost on her.

Abruptly a sound echoed and they stilled, listening.

From downstairs the door opened and closed and suddenly Hinata was scrambling to get up.

A voice sounded and she gasped, listening intently.

“Hinata?”

Feverishly she stood by the door, biting her lip and staring at it. “My family.” she whispered. Sasuke watched, interested to see what she would do, and not particularly alarmed despite her momentary panic.

Slowly, she took her clothes and began to dress herself, hearing the call of her name again.

“You… you should get dressed.” Her voice sounded unsure but at her request he lifted the clothes from the floor, unable to find his shirt for a moment until he realized it was on her body, baggy and flowing as she pulled it down.

Another smirk was making it’s way onto his face before he could help it and with chagrin he found himself another from the closet, following her out the door as she tried to untangle her hair with her fingers. Swallowing hard she led him downstairs, hand gripping his tightly, looking up in time to see her cousin and sister’s eyes widen at the sight of two coming down the stairs, not one.

“…Hinata?” Hanabi sounded incredulous. “Who is that?”

Neji was staring at the man with a wary calm tightness about his jaw that Sasuke found amusing.

“Where’d he come from?”

All three turned to look at her expectantly, waiting to see what she would say. Blinking up at him Hinata bit her lip. Steeling herself she started, making sure her tone left no room for discussion.

“He’s…my Sasuke. I caught him in the sea.”

---

He called it a pearl, and she laughed every time he did. Sitting on the sand with the wind soft and hot from the summer sun she dipped her toes into the water and smoothed her hand over the giant expanse of her pale belly. She felt bigger than she ever had and yet more comfortable in her skin too with someone else in it.

She could see him coming back from the water, rivulets of liquid dripping from him as he pushed his hair back with his free hand. His other held the bag of clams he had dug from the bottom of the harbor. It had not taken him long once he wanted to learn to swim, and like everything else that involved strength and movement he excelled at it. Holding his breath for ages he could linger near the bottom where she could only dream to even glance before feeling like she was dying.

Tapping her toes in the coolness of the ocean she wrinkled her nose at him cheerfully when he came to sit beside her, cool against the warmth of the hot sand.

“Clams. As requested.” He murmured, tossing them into the bucket they had for that purpose. The baby wanted nothing but clams. Sometimes she wondered if it would come out of her womb with a tail or a shell. Sasuke was adamant it would not. “But it will have a belly button.”

Every time he mentioned it she blushed.

Today the ocean was a calm placid thing, kissing at the beach with soft sighs, a lover after pleasure resting in the warmth of an embrace.

Other days were more difficult, with storms and light that bit through the sky and booming thunder that rattled their home. Nothing was easy, but anything was harder than being apart.

Over time her family stopped asking questions and started commenting to each other. She could hear them, as could he.

“…I literally never see them separate, is it normal for couples to be that attached?”

“What do they do again? She’s painting but what does he do?”

“And no family for him? Nothing? How does someone end up alone like that?”

“…she does seem happier though… less gloomy? Am I right, does she seem less gloomy?”

Like water on fish scales nothing ever stuck, and they always returned to their calm quiet, where the only cries were at night in each other’s arms.

“I think I may actually be getting sick of clams.” His voice was almost amused and Hinata’s eyes widened with disbelief. “No!”

“Yes. I think so.”

“I… I can actually eat more clams…than a Sylph?”

“Yes.”

“…wow.” Hinata looked back at their toes sitting sandy together on the beach, the ocean’s wet lick at the bottom of their feet. “I have been thinking about shrimp a lot lately though.” She admitted, turning her pale eyes to him. In the light of summer they were almost white, bright puffy clouds with no rain nearby. He smiled, a genuine smile that had taken months to take root.

“That would be a nice change.”

“How long do you think you can eat shrimp for?” She frowned, calculating how much longer she had left in the pregnancy. A sound like a strangled laugh escaped him and he leaned back, exposing the length of his neck as he rested on his elbows beside her. Eyes trailing the places she loved to kiss the most she watched, feeling heat rise to her cheeks despite the familiarity.

“…as long as you want. Clams too, for that matter.”

“I know.” She moved over to press her mouth to the salt wet of his neck. “That’s why I’m happy to change though, because I don’t have to.”

And the sea kept licking at their feet.

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.