XO [Kyros]

He combed the crowd.

Lochlann had been following her since she left the house. He kept the distance between them, but he never let her out of his sight.

His hair was cut again, he was clean shaven and smelled faintly of a cologne he'd never worn before.There was something different in the way he walked, too. He was lighter on his feet, carrying himself with the grace of a dancer or a hunter.

The last one was more accurate.

He was hunting, after all.

Lochlann did not seem like himself, which was to say that Lochlann seemed exactly like himself. The self that wasn''t sedated behind a wall of grief, an empty bottle of vodka, or a bottle of pills. He let the part of him that was hungry be hungry, and Lochlann followed her with the single-minded determination of a bloodhound.

He picked her out just as she rounded the corner and Lochlann followed her, his steps even and his eyes looking about like he was searching for a specific building. Sometimes, he'd glance at his watch and sigh, keeping up the illusion that he was headed somewhere.

But no one noticed. This was the art of being invisible. This was the art of blending in.

Lochlann knew what he'd do when he found her, too.

He'd had a lot of time to think after she sent the cops after him.

A lot of time.

---

When Lochlann rounded the corner after he, she was gone.

A small frown crossed his face. He was certain he could still catch her scent on the breeze, but where was she? He stood for a moment, backtracking and thinking of the places he could have lost her.

What are you doing here, Lochlann?

A slow, wry smile spread across his face. He looked over his shoulder at her, not even giving her the benefit of turning all the way around.

The lust was coming off of him in waves. Being physically near to her again was delicious. He'd been thinking about this moment since they'd taken him.

"What are you doing here, Guin? I thought you'd be home tonight," he said.

His voice was calm and level. His green eyes searched her face, but for once, his expression didn't betray him. Just that same smirk that matched his eyes as he sized her up.

"I was hoping you'd be home so I didn't have to ask you this in public."

He let his voice get a little louder now, drawing some attention to them. Perfect. He still didn't turn, but his feet were pointed at her, indicating his interested.

The air between them felt charged and electric.

He wanted her to ask what. He wanted to play her like she'd been playing him.

He'd caught her gaze and Lochlann was latched onto it. He pivoted on his heel and turned to face her, bending over slightly to rock back and forth on his heels. It was a very cocky, very male display. His balance was perfect. A girl walking by checked out his butt, and Lochlann's eyes didn't leave Guinevere's face, but she'd know he knew.

"Well, your pleasure is my pleasure," Lochlann said. He clapped his hands like that settled it, and then Lochlann closed the distance between them in two easy strides.

He was so incredibly close. The lust was coming off of him in waves, but the worst part is that it would only get stronger the longer he was with her.

"Ask me what?"

Lochlann looked down at her and brought his hand up to her chin, tilting her face up to him.

"To ask you out on a proper date, of course," he said. Again, this was calculated, because someone was looking. He softened his face appropriately and then Lochlann swooped in, grabbing Guinevere and dipping her backwards with a speed he'd never have been able to manage intoxicated.

He kept his face inches from her own and whispered, "What kind of panties are you wearing, Guin?"

But, then, loud enough for everyone to hear, Lochlann said, "I can't stop thinking about you, Guinevere. You would make me the happiest man on the pier if you'd let me take you on a proper date today."

His mouth was inches from hers, his eyes boring into hers. He held her in the small of her back and around her hips, caging her body with his, the position dramatic and visibly appealing.

He wanted to kiss her, wanted to hear her answer, but instead he said, "So what do you say?"

When she came into his arms, Lochlann leaned back, pulling her up from the dip and into his embrace. He kept his one hand pressed into the small of her back and the other was up into her hair. He made it look like it was rest resting against the back of her head, but really Lochlann was tugging a small handful of it while she bit into his lip.

He expected some kind of pain.

He did not expect Guinevere Haze to keep kissing him. Something about the press of her lips bruised him and made him feel raw, but he pressed it down.

Lochlann settled her down, breaking the kiss and disentangling himself from her.

"I missed you, Guin," he said. She'd catch the double meaning in his words.

After all, he'd tried to see her once before and she'd sent him away.

"I would like to take you to the pier," he said. "To the amusement park. It's a nice day for somethig like this, don't you think?"

He'd been so close to her before that now the distance seemed like it was miles. He knew he'd find ways to get to her closer as the day went by. It was inevitable, like the tide coming to shore or the moon rising in the night sky.

Lochlann eyed her, taking note of the small gestures: the hand to the stomach, the blinking, the pushing of her hair behind the ear.

They were small and, on the statute he'd expected to see, they were interesting.

She'd just agreed without agreeing.

Her breathing was too even, too regular. It was the breath of a person preparing for a dive, or a fighter getting ready to enter the ring. Though her comments weren't intended to spite him, they felt like it.

Turn it off? Turn what off? He didn't even have his phone with him. There was nothing but him.

And he was sober.

"Guinevere Haze," he said, taking a step closer to her. "Didn't your family ever read you fairy stories?"

He took one of hands and pressed it to his heart, and he moved it in a counter clockwise circle. Then, he stepped closer, and took her same hand and pressed it to her heart, putting it in the same counter clockwise circle.

"Take a deep breath," he said. "Then say my name, and spit."

There was some truth in what he was showing her to do. It was faerie magic, to an extent, but it assumed that this worked on him. Maybe, if he was in his horse form, and she was drawing counter clockwise circles onto his skin with iron or rowen, this would work.

But the sad truth of the matter was that Lochlann could not make her feel anything she didn't already. Sure, his body might heighten that considerably, but he couldn't just plant those feelings on her.

So why was it that what should be attraction was disgust? Was that...fear?

He was still holding her hand, waiting for her to spit, and then Lochlann didn't let go. He'd pull her body the hand towards the direction of the food vendors on the pier.

"Come with me," he said, although since he didn't let go of her hand, the invitation was sort of a moot point. "Let's get you something to eat with bread and salt. You'll feel better. Try to think of three things that you can touch on this boardwalk that would be sharp."

There was painfully little magic in all of this because it wasn't a spell. Lochlann was just trying to distract her from what she was feeling.

"No?" Lochlann said. "I'll just have to tell them to you instead."

He watched the workings of her face, the twitch in her cheek and the ways her eyes shifted to look at hi. He watched her breath in, exhale, and spit.

"You have to say my name," he told her. For a moment, his voice had started to get husky, drawing himself back to every time they'd spent together in bed. But, Lochlann recovered quickly.

"For the magic to work the best," he said. "Otherwise, you're just spitting at me."

But, he smiled at her, because it seemed like it would work regardless.

He listened to the timbre of her voice as she spoke, hyper aware of her presence even as his eyes searched for the appropriate stand. Her fingers were cool and welcome, like a summer shower on a hot afternoon.

"Everything in fairyland is backwards," Lochlann said, starting a story. "When it is summer here, it is winter there. When it is day, it is night, and so forth. Things that are backwards here get their magic there."

Hence the counter clockwise circle. He didn't think he had to explain the significance of circles in magic to her.

Spotting what he was looking for, Lochlann set off purposefully in one direction, weaving in and out of the crowd but keeping her close to him the entire time.

"Good," he told her. "Now, how many of those sharp things do you think have iron in them?"

This one was dangerous.

Iron would hurt him. It could kill him.

Lochlann could recover from a great deal, but iron burned and scarred like nothing else.

He realized that that he'd meant to tell her an actual story, one his mother used to tell him, but he was finding it hard to get the words. Instead, Lochlann fished a few dollarbills from his pocket, and ordered a pretezel from the stand.

"Extra salt," he told the vendor. Carrying the pretzel in one hand and still holding Guin's in the other, he led her to the tables and motioned for her to sit, and when or if she did, he would hand her the pretzel.

"Salt," he explained. "And bread."

He would wait for her to sit before he'd sit down next to her and tell her a real story. He was trying not to be overwhelmed by the nearness of her. He'd wanted this, but now that he had it, Lochlann was trying to savor it.

He'd watched her jaw clench when he'd told her to say his name, and Lochlann felt a flicker of something inside of him. He wasn't sure what it was. It felt almost like sadness, but he wasn't sad that Guinevere Haze couldn't even bare to say his name. That would be ridiculous.

They were still walking when she'd pointed out that none of them had iron in them and then they were too busy with the pretzel and sitting down for him to have a moment to answer there, so he'd stored the thought.

She was staring at the pretzel and Lochlann was staring at her. She rotated it and examined it like a cat dipping it's paw into a waterbowl before deciding the best way to drink. He refused to believe that Guinevere Haze had never eaten a pretzel.

Lochlann was born at the bottom of a god damn lake, but even he'd had a pretzel.

She was eating it, though, so Lochlann settled next to her and put one of his arms on the table behind her so that it encircled her, but didn't exactly touch her. He brought one foot up to rest on his leg, but he didn't tap it slightly. He was still and relaxed.

"Salt is pure and from the earth. It is grounding. It's why you use salt to keep away ghosts and demons, too," Lochlann said. "Eating can help, but only if you're here. Never eat something offered to you in fairyland."

The thought did finally bring to mind a story, so Lochlann started.

"A piper was coming home from a bar, drunk and despondent, for he'd been sentenced to play all night on a lonely hilltop by the village priest, who was mad at the piper for stealing a goose from him during the winter. You see, the piper was the best in the whole country, capable of playing back any song he heard and playing it better, but what use was a power like that when he was trapped on a lonely island?"

He swallowed, both to stop the accent that was threatening to creep into his voice, and to stop from thinking about how small the island they were on was.

"Along the way, a water horse comes up and throws the piper onto his back, and the piper is angry. 'Put me down you great majestic stallion!'" At this, Lochlann broke out into a laugh, because of course that was not what the piper said, but he couldn't help but embezzel it.

"Shut up and eat your pretzel," he said, even though she hadn't said anything.

"Anyway, the water horse tells the piper that he is going to play for the fae at the top of the hill, only when they get tot the hill, the horse knocks three times," Lochlann wrapped his knuckles off the table three times. "And a great door opens, and he takes the man inside the hill!"

He cast her a sly look, and his grin still on his face, and he involved her now, asking, "Do you know what happened inside the hill, Guin?"

Lochlann was expecting violence from her, so that's not to say he wasn't caught off guard by her movements.

It's just that he'd anticipated incorrectly where she was going to hit. Lochlann's hands went to cup his balls and instead, her elbow hit him right in the gut. He doubled over in pain and when he finally managed to regain his breath, he laughed at her again.

"It's almost like you're feeling better, Guin," Lochlann grinned at her. He thought about turning up the wattage on his smile, but erred against it. He wanted her. Something about the sensation of pain and Guin causing it was familiar and well-worth it.

He shifted to get closer to her, to whisper the rest of the story in her direction.

"When they entered the hill they found...."Lochlann jumped up from his seat suddenly. "That you don't just HIT PEOPLE in fairyland because you are MAD."

He held his hand out to her again, offering to help her up, because Lochlann was ready to get moving.

"This is a Proper Date, so we should do Proper Date things," he said. "What would you like to do, Guin? And no, going home is not an option."

He liked the furrow in her eyebrows and the dry way she'd said seriously.

He was beginning to get the impression that Guin did not necessarily have fun. When she tossed the wrapper perfectly into the trashcan, Lochlann resisted the urge to mutter show-off, and then regretted not muttering it when she didn't take his hand.

He wondered if she knew how. Lochlann wondered a lot of things about her, this strange god who'd taken over his life, and he would test what he could.

"Oh, I want a lot of things, Guin," he said. "I want you, and I want you in every way that I can get you."

He tried to keep the intensity from working it's way back, but it was hard when he felt every look she gave him. Lochlann's lust was a patient thing, lying in wait like some kind of jungle cat.

The way she said his name was softer than he expected, and it spurred Lochlann on. He started to walk towards the games, looking for something to engage her with, trying to see what might peak her interest.....but still allow Lochlann some shot at having a chance. So, that one where you shoot the ducks with the guns were out. Nope. Lochlann did not want to do anything involving Guinevere Haze and a gun.

He stopped infront of the one game where you throw the pingpong balls into the cups of water and try to land in the center one to win a prize. He was happy they were not giving away goldfish.

Judging from her reaction to the pretzel, Lochlann was worried she'd eat it.

He wasn't sure why that would bother him.

Lochlann ordered a basket of balls and put them infront of himself and Guinevere. He was giving some of the control of the situation back to her, though he didn't intend to. He didn't intend to ask,

"Why did you call them instead of meeting me, Guin?"

He'd followed her eyes to the ocean when she'd said good luck, and for some reason, Lochlann did feel lucky.

"You want to get the balls into the center bowl," Lochlann explained. "When you get so many in the center bowl, you win a prize."

He did not think this admission of hers was so strange. He'd met many people who did not play carnival games. Lochlann himself hadn't played them until he'd been blackmailed by his ex-girlfriend, Sharon. She was the last one he'd eaten before he got sent here.

Lochlann did not want to think about her. He lobbed one of the balls and it bounced off a few of the cups, landing in the center one with a gentle sploosh. For some reason, succeeding where Guinevere hadn't pleased him, even if Lochlann knew it had just been dumb luck.

"Why did you run away?"

"Why are you answering my questions with a question?" Lochlann asked, tossing another ball. He'd overestimated it and it'd bounced across several cups and onto the floor. He didn't even glance at her from the corner of his eye, but there was a heavy weight behind his words. "I didn't run away."

"so why guin?"