I keep a book of the names

For some reason, Lochlann was always surprised that people kept fish as pets. He was used to seeing them as most people were birds, and, while he could see why they might be pleasant, the idea of owning fish just seemed sad unless you could actually get in there and swim with them.

He realized he was a little homesick, suddenly.

"If you still do that," Lochlann said. "I'd definitely like to see it."

When she called it as motion sickness, Lochlann debated about correcting her. It would be the right thing to do. That way, she wouldn't owe him two negatives.

"It's not out of the way at all," Lochlann said. "I'm actually at a motel down by the pier right now until I get an apartment squared away. Besides, I'd much rather walk than be in a damn car."

He hesitated for a moment and then, finally, Lochlann said, "You don't owe me two. It's that I'm umm..."

Lochlann had never, ever told another person what he was.

Dani didn't necessarily count. She was fae. She told him first. And admitting even this small bit to Cat felt like he was signing away a death warrant, but she'd been honest with him and now that he'd offered to walk her home, he didn't want to do so without giving her some knowledge of what she could do to hurt him.

"I'm allergic to iron," he said.

It wasn't the same as outright confessing it, but Lochlann realized his hand was staring to shake so he shoved it back into his pocket.

He stood up slowly and stretched, shaking out his legs, and then Lochlann offered his hand to her.

"Thank you for coming out with me today," he said.

“You used to compete, too?” Lochlann asked. He knew very ittle about gymnastics except that it involved high degrees of balance and flexibility. “So I don’t get to hold up the 10 scorecard for you?”

That was pretty much the extent of his knowledge of gymnastics. He would have to read into it more. Luckily, they were on top of the library, so it’s not like Lochlann had far to look to understand what it was he was looking for.

“No, I left Lamby with a friend so he’s out at one of the pastures in the agricultural district,” Lochlann explained. “I’ve got to pick him up when I find a job and a place. I used to bar tend at this place down at the pier, but they’re not sure if they’re going to need the help.”

He didn’t let go of her hand even once she was on her feet. Lochlann saw no reason to remove it unless she made an indication that she wanted to. He craved this physical contact sometime, this nearness that they’d shared this evening. It reminded him in various ways that he was alive.

“Something like that,” Lochlann said to the iron/silver analogy. It burned him. If it was only on off a little bit, the scar would fade, but he couldn’t change shape as easily and it blistered like all hell. On long enough and the scar would show even in his horse shape. “I don’t know if I’m anemic. That’s not the food-one, right?”

He was terrible with medical conditions. He

He had not even realized that a person could be allergic to coconut, and his eyes widened in surprised. How did one scratch an ichy throat? The whole thing sounded quite unpleasant.

“I don’t think we’ll have to worry about the lights going down” Lochlann said. “The stairwell lights up—Ah, there we go. We just hit it the spot where the enchantment still registers as daylight even if the sun is dipping down.”

The stairwell was lit, but dimly. He liked that it didn’t hum with the energy or electricity that some of the other ones did. It must have been some kind of solar spell. He wondered if there was someone out there who just did this for a living, solar spelling lights. It did make holding her hand less of a necessity, but he pretended not to notice and kept himself close (though not close enough to walk uncomfortably).

“I was going to spend it trying to figure out if the academy has floor plans anywhere,” Lochlann said. He pursed his lips as he mused her personal-history-chess moves. “So wait, on your tally now, I owe you one?”

He considered this.

His free hand hovered over the library door.

“The first time I had pizza, I ate it crust first,” he said. “It was not a good impression to make as the new kid. I got lucky though.”

He realized this wasn’t really a negative but he didn’t want to tell her in the library.

“I used to compete on local gym level,” she waved the comment off, “very low level stuff. You can hold up a score card if you must but the only card you get is the 10 so what’s the point?” She chuckled.

"I think the point is saying that you're a solid ten," he said. He lifted his eyebrows, winked, and shot her a finger gun with his other hand just in case she missed the fact that this was a very lame pick-up line.

Lochlann loved pick-up lines.

"To be completely honest," Lochlann said. "I cannot remember. I was really, really drunk. I know I didn't steal him. I think I got him in exchange for helping this guy with his horses, and then maybe I tried to use the sheep to get a date with someone. It's a little hazy. I just remember waking up and knowing the sheep was mine.*"

He shook his head.

"Whatever the cause, I'm glad I've got him. It's nice to visit someone out in the fields. And the job thing is no big deal, I'll find something eventually. I'm having more of a hard time because most places want to know what I want to do with the rest of my life when I apply. 'Where do you see yourself in 5 years?' and I haven't really formulated a professional answer yet."

He appreciated that she thought of him with the bookstore. "I wouldn't mind being bossed around by you, but I think you'd end up firing me for laying on top of the shelves and then jumping out at customers."

He was actually surprised how well the anemia description fit. Of course, his dizziness and headaches were usually related to his damned necklace, but he always did feel better after he ate some nice red meat.

It'd been a long time since he had anything that tasted so wonderful.

Lochlann swallowed.

He opened the door to the library and walked them through it. He gave a short laugh at her comment about already having the blue prints. "Can you imagine where I'd go if I had them?"

Lochlann made a surprised face when she said she ate pizza rolled up. He asked, eyes wide, "That's a way to eat it?"

He owed her a negative. Lochlann tried to pick one from the list. There were many. He was self-centered and kept flipflopping between sleeping too much and too little. He hated buttoned up shirts. He had really bad taste in music in that he would listen to literally anything so long as it sounded good.

There were all the other negatives, the big ones. He was a water horse. His family threatened to literally kill him if he exposed them again. He ate the vast majority of his ex-girlfriends. He'd been shot in the leg and knifed a few times by a girl and for some reason he couldn't kill her. He'd been hospitalized at least four times. He'd pretty much shot most of his friendships to hell because he'd either try to sleep with them or eat them, or more frequently, both.

"I dropped out of college after my girlfriend died," Lochlann finally said.

It was a big negative.

He seemed strangely disconnected when he talked about it, as if it was about someone else and he'd read about it in the newspaper. "The whole thing was a mess. A lot of people thought I did it. I didn't, for the record."

Not that time.

"But I knew it was a real possibility when we started dating, but I guess I just sort of tricked myself into thinking this time would be different," he said.

He was almost wistful, but there was a decided lack of emotion in his voice about it. He talked like someone who was quite certain he'd moved on but refused to name specific details.

"I suppose that's a rather dour negative," he said. "And not all that reassuring, but I probably can't safely say that I'm a good person to be around. So my attempt to reassure and lighten this conversation just made it worse."

He really wasn't trying to be self-deprecating. His tone was blunt honestly.





**ooc:.....i honestly cant remember how he got the sheep lmfao

He was glad she laughed at him, and the more she tried to laugh quietly, the more Lochlann started to laugh. It got worse when she gave the impression of her pitching herself and doing the man’s interview voice at the same time. He was clasping his hand over his mouth as they left the library.

“You seem like the kind of person who could write a novel, at least in my very limited experience with you,” Lochlann said, once he was finally able to get a grip on himself. “You seem…”

He looked for the word.

“Tenacious,” he said. If she could wrangle all that information out of him in an afternoon, he could only guess what she could wrangle from her own imagination.

He couldn’t even respond to the threat of not looking for blue prints or torturing her customers because she was miming eating the pizza and Lochlann actually doubled over.

“Okay,” he wheezed. “Okay. We are definitely going for pizza one day. It’s on the list now.”

He liked to think that he might have two reasons to see her again, two things to look forward to.

Surprisingly, Lochlann found he wasn’t as uncomfortable to be talking about this with her as he expected. It was the switch from such a positive conversation to the negative that, rather than being jarring, somehow provided a little bit of padding.

“It’s okay,” he said automatically, and then he flinched a little bit. She’d tugged his hand and he stopped walking to turn and look at her. He said, “I mean, thank you.”

Maybe it was the taste of laughter still in his throat that made him finally say it.

“People I like—Girls I like, Girls that I’m with—have a tendency of getting hurt,” he said. “I didn’t hurt Dani, but I could have. I certainly didn’t want to hurt her. And I certainly don’t want to hurt you, but it’s a possibility I think you should be aware of.”

He swallowed. He wanted to avoid her eyes, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t cheapen this by looking away.

“Not all the rumors about me are true, but there’s enough truth in them. I want you to like me, but I think it’s probably better if you don’t trust me,” he said. “I don’t trust me. Because right now, I’m telling you all this stuff, and all I’m really thinking about is that I would very much like permission to kiss you because you’ve made me happy and kissing is how I want to share that happiness with you.”

He half expected her to yell at him again. He half-hoped she would.
He shook his head, as if trying to break himself from some spell, but really the spell was just this: he was hungry and he liked her.

“So now, I think, it’s your turn, because that was definitely a negative.”

Lochlann decided that, one day, if she ever wanted to write a story, he’d introduce her to Cabel. Cabel was a caffeine fueled train wreck of a human being, but he would be able to introduce her to people who had good stories to tell.

When she said no more negative, Lochlann was half relieved and half disappointed that he anticipated that she was going to go on her own.

He was the very worst sort of monster.

He knew it was bad for him to be around people, to be around a person like Cat. But he wanted it—this, the friendship, the laughter-- so fiercely that he’d put her life in danger just to share these moments with her.

And then her lips were almost touching his. It was a chaste kiss, the kind that spoke in tentative whispers. They said I like you, not I want to fuck you.

That was one of the things the rumors had wrong: Lochlann very much liked the first kind of kiss.

It was just that he was very used to giving more of the second kind.

He’d closed his eyes for the kiss and when he opened them again, he gave her the smallest, shyest smile he ever had given to anyone in his life. He looked very much like a young adult.

“Thank you,” he said.

And then, Cat surprised him.

She asked him questions no one had ever asked before. The guilty, torn part of him clung to these questions. This will be different, that part said. Maybe she can understand. He tilted his head at a slight angle and didn’t tear his gaze away, but definitely lost focus on her and instead on the things in his head for a moment.

He came back to himself in a second.

“In no order,” he said.

“It wasn’t stupid to go up to the roof alone with me, well, I mean, besides the jumping off of it part, but that’s less to do with me being untrustworthy and more to do with me being young and stupid,” he said.

He didn’t realize he was doing it, but Cat could probably feel it. Lochlann responded by twitching each finger as though he was counting it off. It helped him think. That was one.

“I don’t know if you’ll be safe walking in the dark with me,” he said. “I can tell you that has less to do with me and more because I don’t know what’s in the dark. I have no intention of doing anything sketchy.”

That was two. He wondered if he should tell her that he had no intention of doing anything sketchy but he might be thinking about it, when Lochlann realized what he could tell her.

“I can’t hurt you without some form of your permission,” he said.

He wrinkled his nose, knowing how ridiculous that sounded. It was supposed to be reassuring, but he worried it sounded creepy instead. “It’s hard to explain. I’ve never actually had to explain it. You know how you know you can’t turn into a fish—I’m assuming you can’t turn into a fish?”

He tried to think of a way to explain it. He was struggling. But he wanted her to understand.

“Caitlyn, right now, if there was a big enough part of you that wanted me to, I could kiss you without asking for permission. I can touch your hand without asking for permission.” He squeezed her hand as if to demonstrate that he hadn't asked.

“If we were at a place where sex was an option you viewed as favorable, I could attempt to initiate without permission,” Lochlann said. He spoke about sex the way some people spoke about their first language. He spoke of it less as something that was magical or the flipside, vulgar, but more as a conversation shared between two people.

“The keyword there is attempt. If you revoke permission, I can’t do anything about it. I will literally, physically, impossibly, be unable to do anything about it,” he explained. “And for the record, as far as sex and physical things are involved, I don’t find it appealing to have an unwilling partner. So it’s not I’m going, ‘ah damn, I can’t assault someone’.”

This was turning into a longer explanation than he anticipated and Lochlann still wasn’t certain he was explaining this properly. “To be honest, I’m not really fully sure how it works which is why I’m doing a piss-poor job at explaining this. The consent doesn’t have to be verbal for it to be given or revoked—that’s why things get wibbley wobbly. Whatever magic there is has been different with each person. “

With demons, in particular, it had been very interesting.

That was neither here nor there. But Lochlann couldn’t explain why he could undress one person without ever having asked but not cop a feel on a fully-clothed date with another person. It was just part of being a fae. The rules were unpredictable, but there were rules.

“So we’re as safe as two people can be when one of them makes chronically bad decisions,” he swallowed.

For as comfortable as he was talking about sex, the subject of himself was uncomfortable, and the last subject was downright impossible. But she asked, so he steeled himself. “I’m the most dangerous in water. That’s where I could hurt you. And once you give that permission, it can’t be revoked.”

He swallowed again.

Every person Lochlann ever killed had come willingly.

“I’ve never told anyone this before,” he said. He needed to pull his hand away from hers because his palms were starting to sweat. He wiped them on his pants leg as though wiping away the fact that he’d broken every single rule that had ever been taught to him.

Lochlann took a deep breath, and then another, realized he forgot to exhale, and took a third deep breath before finally exhaling. He had to lean against the wall for support. Lochlann didn’t think to check to see if she understood that he wasn’t talking about sex when he was talking about hurting her there at the end.

“Sorry,” he said.

Holy shit.

What had he just done?

He thought he might pass out which would be, by far, the least bad thing that could happen.

"I'm sorry,' he said.