Private Finished Running out of days to get it right

Lochlann picked the most innocuous place he could think of to meet Kaya.

He didn't want to meet her anywhere with food. He didn't want to meet her at her shop. He didn't want to meet her at the park, because it might have obliscs and those were too phallic shaped. He picked the least sexual place he could think of and left a message asking her to meet him there: an eye glasses store.

He sat on a bench outside and waited for her.

The irony of his appearance is that Kaya had seen Lochlann in worse physical shape in the past. He was healthy by physical appearances. His hair was getting a bit long, but not bad. He didn't appear sick. Due to an increase in his jogging regimen, Lochlann was looking a little sturdier, too. More like his old self.

But he did look tired.

There were dark bags beneath his eyes, which he attempted to conceal with a pair of sunglasses.

He couldn't clear his mind.

Everything on it was weighing him down. He needed the advice of someone better suited to dealing with these things. Someone he couldn't hurt. Someone who knew the situation and wouldn't end up at the bottom of the lake.

he had to admit, he was a little afraid of her.


@Kaya

Lochlann jumped when Kaya appeared in front of him.

He didn't really realize she could materialize anywhere like that. She folded her arms and cocked and eyebrow and Lochlann put his hand to his pounding chest.

It was a miracle he hadn't leapt off the bench and started running.

"No, not frames," Lochlann confessed. Of all the things wrong with him, his eyesight wasn't one of them.

"I was wondering if I could get your opinion on Emily," he said, taking a deep breath. He stuck his hands in his pockets so she couldn't see how badly they'd just started to shake. "I didn't know else who to turn to."

Post people were happy when they found out someone loved them.

Lochlann wanted to be happy. Instead, he was sliding downward in his seat in despair.

And also, there was a little bit of him that was sliding downward in case he needed a fast escape from Kaya going to punch him in the face. When she said that Kaya had been the one making her feel better, Lochlann was swarmed with gratitude and relief.

"You're a good friend," he said, quietly.

He couldn't quite look up at her. He couldn't really avoid her gaze, though, because she leaned forward to look her right in the eye. Fuck she was doing to punch him again.

The easiest answer was this: everyone he love kept dying and Lochlann did not want Emily to die.

But Kaya had a tendency to look past what should be an easy answer and make it not so easy. Lochlann groaned. He rubbed his eyes on his palms.

"There are a lot of reasons," he said. His heart was hammering so loud he wouldn't be surprised if she could hear it. He was glad they were outside because he was feeling less claustrophobic than if they were inside a building, but he still had the urge to bolt.

He didn't, though. He stayed sitting.

He took a deep breath.

And then, he said one tiny small part of the truth. It wasn't even the biggest issue.

"I can't be monogamous," he said. "I can't be the kind of person Emily wants me to be."

It wasn't exactly a lie.

He couldn't lie.

It was really more of the i'm really scared I'll eat her Kaya. But how could he tell her that without telling her what he was?

His stomach growled at just the thought of Emily's blood in his mouth.

Kaya had him by the shirt and Lochlann imagined he must know what it felt like when a wolf snatched a rabbit.

Lochlann hadn't told Emily he couldn't see only her because he thought he could. He had tried to understand thing from Emily's point of view, but it was hard, because he just kept coming back to one thought: why didn't she hate him?


When she said that he deserved to be miserable, Lochlann actually relaxed. It was as though Kaya acknowledge something Lochlann always believed, always knew to be true, but couldn't openly admit. It was horrible, but it also a relief.

But then she made him loose his mental footing.

He tried to catch it.

She was right. If he was pulling Emily down with him, he needed to try harder to cut her out of his life. No, he didn't need to try. He needed to succeed.

He tried to hide the look of pain that spread across his face, at the sudden frown and the furrowing of his dark eyebrows, but he probably wasn't fast enough to avoid Kaya's gaze. her face was only a few inches from his, after all.

In any other situation it probably would have been hot.

She asked him the reason.

The real reason.

Lochlann's heart made an attempt to escape his rib cage. He felt the panic starting to settle in.

He tried to breath but his lungs forgot how air worked. He reached up and pried himself out of Kaya's hands, falling backward on the bench, and for a moment Lochlann looked like he might take off running.

Instead, he leaned forward and put his head between his knees, his hands on the back of his neck.

He fought hard to push that feeling away.

"Kaya, when we...when we're together, you've figured somethings out about me, haven't you?" he said. He didn't want to tell her what he was. Lochlann tried that once, and only once, with another woman and it had not gone over well. That's part of why he was here now.

"So please, understand when I tell you why, it's not a this might happen scenario. It's just a question of when," he said.

Lochlann was starting to believe it didn't matter what he did. Lochlann was starting to think that maybe, really, he was cursed.

"She would die."

When Kaya said water fae, Lochlann flinched like he'd been hit. When she said drown people, his shoulders curled up, as though he was trying to physically shrink himself to minimize the pain. It didn't work.

If anything, it was a visible confession that she'd guessed right.

It was a painful, visible confession that Lochlann felt nothing but shame and disgust for what he was.

Most of the students on the island just assumed he was a gifted human of some kind. Lochlann made no attempt to correct them. If enough people put water horse and missing girlriends together, Lochlann would be even more afraid for his life than he already was.

But then Kaya hit a sore spot. A very, very swore spot.

If he flinched like he'd been hit before now Lochlann's body jerked like he'd been shot. His head sunk lower, his eyes closed, and Lochlann's shoulders arched like he'd taken a deep breath but he hadn't.

The panicky feeling he'd been fighting before came over him in a wave.

For a long time, the only answer Lochlann managed was a tiny breath of air that was barely a word. If Kaya wasn't listening for it, she might miss it.

"Yes," he said.

Lochlann was weak.

He did everything he could to make himself stronger. He self-medicated himself until he was a walking zombie stumbling over his two feet, because it made it harder to be a good predator when his senses were dulled. He tried to cut people out, tried not too get close, but he couldn't help himself. He wasn't strong enough to stay away. He stopped eating around others to try and break any connection between food and person. He tried doing everything he could to not fuck up.

The problem was that Lochlann didn't want to die. if he did, he could have solved these problems a long time ago.

It took him a very long time to get enough air into his panicking chest to answer her.

His responses were short.

"Because you feed on me," he said.

It was why she was alive.

"I can't love her," Lochlann said, which was wrong, because he'd meant to say he doesn't love her. But can't and don't were close enough to the same thing.

And the last part?

"Do you dream about it?" he asked her, filling looking up. He did his best to keep his face blank but despair was seeping through the cracks. "Do you wake up in the middle of the night wanting to kill them so badly it hurts?"

He swallowed.

"I tried, Kaya," Lochlann said. His voice broke. Tried was his murder confession. He'd tried, and tried, and tried, but it didn't work. He'd still slipped up. Lochlann had done everything right and Cat had been dead for less than a month.

"I can't do that to Emily, too," he said. He tried to think about slow breathing but he couldn't. His hands shook. He was glad they were outside.