Simultaneous release

RE: [Event] Simultaneous release

Good. So she might be okay with him kissing her. Maybe. Maybe she was saying that as a polite way to say she wasn't interested, but something about her smirk made him think she was.

So she didn't have any other family on the island. Lochlann found that hard to believe. Her resemblance to Guinevere Haze was uncanny.

"And Riley doesn't go by...I don't know...any other names, does she?" he asked. Guinevere was younger than him by a year or two, but he didn't think she was that young. It seemed unlikely that they were the same person, but Lochlann felt he had to ask.

He shook his head.

"No," he said. "I'm the only one of my family on the island. I have a younger sister and an older brother, but they're both living in America right now."

There was a pang on longing in his voice. Lochlann would much rather be there than here. He tried to hide it behind another question.

"Where did you live before here?"

RE: [Event] Simultaneous release

So there was no chance Riley and Guinevere where the same person.

He nodded and listened to her continue.

England. She was very close to his first home, before his family moved to the states. He'd been thinking of himself as American for so long that it was hard to remember a time when he wasn't. Really, he was about as American as he wasn't human. It was all a lie.

"Did you have a farm?" he asked, cluing in for more hints about her life before the academy.

RE: [Event] Simultaneous release

He tried to picture what her home in England would have been like. He imagined a big garden, with a lot of plants, and maybe one of those....Lochlann wasn't sure what the word was, in English or welsh, for a rack on the side of the house used to dry plants.

He was puzzling over her house and what it would be like to grow up there. He wondered how it had shaped her and how it had come that the herbalists daughter grew up to be a bank robber.

"That's very interesting," he said. "Do you miss it there?"

She sat up suddenly and her question caught him offguard, because she seemed so enthusiastic about it. Lochlann wondered if she'd been one of those girls who grew up wanting a pony.

"Yes," he said. "Before and when I came to the states. We raised livestock."

And pumpkins. He wondered if he should tell her about the pumpkins.
But
why would he?

Why did he want to tell her all of these things?

RE: [Event] Simultaneous release

she missed it, too.

That relaxed him for some reason and Lochlann blinked his eyes open from his spot on the couch. THe lights were still to bright and he couldn't keep his eyes open for long, so he closed them again before he could answer her.

"We had horses," he answered. "But we could never afford many more until we came to the states.We had chickens, and we had sheep, and sometimes pigs. But always chickens and sheep. We raised a lot of sheep."

He didn't really want to answer the last part of her questions, so he took a deep breath and exhaled.

"We ate whatever we could afford to," he said. "It's hard to raise animals for slaughter and then never get to see any of the meat."

It was easier than saying, I ate a lot of women.

"I lived in Europe, before I moved to the states," he finished. He didn't know how to specify where. Ireland, Isle of Man, Wales. They'd done a tour, basically. "Never England, though. Tell me about England. What is your favorite memory of England?"

RE: [Event] Simultaneous release

It was probably the bracelet on his ankle.

Lochlann looked human. He could pass.

That was the whole purpose of sending him to school: look human, blend in, get your education, come home, and then play human. Pretend to be human. Look, act, think like a human.

But being a human was never supposed to be permanent. He was as much a human as a horse, as a cabyll-ushtey.

When she said faerie ring, Lochlann wondered if she knew what he was. It would be so, so easy to mistake him as just a human with powers rather than a faerie horse. If he didn't have the anklet on, maybe Lochlann would be able to tell what she was.

But, Lochlann was thinking none of these things.

Lochlann was thinking about faerie rings.

"What was it like?" Lochlann asked. "When you danced in the faerierings?"

He wondered if she was human. He wondered if she was fae. He wondered if he should have just asked outright, because he was so, so curious.

RE: [Event] Simultaneous release

Lochlann's eyes were closed and his breathing evened while she talked about the faerie rings. If she wasn't close enough to hear his heartbeat and really catch his breathing, it would be easy to assume that Lochlann had fallen asleep because of how still he'd gotten.

He didn't want to ask her if she was fae.

He was too afraid she'd ask him what he was, and if he told her and she knew, that she would put so much distance between them in a heartbeat and he'd be alone again.

Instead, Lochlann swallowed, which was dumb, because his throat hurt. He really, really needed to stop doing that, but it was hard to stop a habit he'd been doing for years. He chewed the inside of his cheek.

"You're a fae?" he asked.

He didn't think she was a changeling, someone who was swapped with a fae baby at birth and grew up in the faerie realm. But he was surprised he wasn't able to tell earlier.

It was the anklet, Lochlann finally realized. He shifted to look down at his foot and then he frowned.

He glanced back at her and tried to hide his excitement. He felt like he'd discovered someone who'd read his favorite book, only this was better. Or was it worse? He didn't know what to feel.

RE: [Event] Simultaneous release

So she was.

He couldn't bring himself to look at her, so Lochlann fixed on the ducks on her pajama pants. His hand was resting on her ankle, where it had been for some while, and Lochlann didn't realized he'd left it there. With his other hand, Lochlann brushed his hair away from his face.

It fell back a moment later, but he was already wringing his fingers together.

He couldn't lie to her. If she was fae--which she was, she just told him--she'd just find out once they were out of here. It'd be really hard to hide it. She could probably piece together what his name was supposed to sound like when it wasn't Americanized.

Here it went.

Years
and years
and years
of pretending

and he nodded.

"Yes," he whispered. "I'm fae."

Lochlann wasn't sure what he expected to happen now that it was out. He felt giddy. He felt shamed. he felt....he felt scared.

"It's...it's been a long time since I ran into another," he said. The other fae he'd met had been a harbringer of death and she'd told him he was dying.

RE: [Event] Simultaneous release

He felt like he should have felt something different.

He was excited, he was, but it was weird to think that he'd be excited over meeting someone who would know what he is and, maybe, understand. He wasn't sure if he could place this feeling.

When she jumped to her feet and tugged his arm, he rose and followed her automatically. He walked sort of as if he was in a dream, trailing slightly behind her. His hands hung by his sides, the ugly scar across his right hand shining like a badge in the forescent light.

He realized he should apologize.

"I'm sorry," he said. He still couldln't quite bring himself to look up at her. What the hell was wrong with him?

"I'll come, but you don't have to treat me to any," he said. "It'll be nice just to go for a walk--I'm happy with the company. I appreciate the offer, though."

Another.

Fae.

RE: [Event] Simultaneous release

She took his hand and squeezed it, and Lochlann squeezed back. Something about the gesture seemed to draw him back to the present. He snapped back into it as though someone had dumped a bucket of cold water onto him.

"I don't know," he confessed. He didn't know why he was apologizing, except, well, maybe for being weird.

He followed her across the room and when she groaned, now it was his turn to squeezed her hand.

"I don't know," Lochlann said. "I don't tihnk there's anything wrong with eating ice cream alone. It means you don't have to share it with anyone."

But he sounded pleased with the idea of sitting and eating ice cream with another person.

On the subject of break ups, Lochlann just shrugged.

Most of his relationships had ended with him eating the other person, so while almost all his relationships had come to an end, it wasn't exactly breaking up.

"I think a break-up gives you the rare opportunity to do whatever you want, and say it's because you're mourning the relationship or whatever," he tried, but he failed, so he just gave another frustrated sigh. "I'm not..I'm not very good at this. it's been a while since i've had an actual conversation with someone. I'm sorry."

RE: [Event] Simultaneous release

"I am greedy," Lochlann told her. "It's like when you get those ice creams with the three-in-one flavors. If I eat it by myself, I don't have to worry about opening the container and finding out that someone ate all the strawberry, or let it sit out on the counter so the vanilla contaminated the chocolate."

Her shoulder bump reminded him of his time with his friend, Addy, for whom shoulder bumping was a normal and familiar thing. It both saddened him and endeared him to Dani further.

His reflexes were so dull from the pain that he barely realized what had happened. She'd stopped and grabbed his face, turning it to and fro, and Lochlann blinked because he wasn't sure what had just happened.

"Dani what--" he started, but she was speaking and her words were sort of flying over his head. It took him a minute to realize what she was saying, what her words meant....and then another moment to realize that he'd just missed the perfect opportunity to kiss her.

He blinked at her and then, slowly, he rewarded her with a shy smile.

"Okay," he said, and he sounded like he was agreeing with her, but Lochlann wasn't really certain what he'd agreed to. But, he supposed, it felt okay. It would feel better if they weren't...here.

"Tell me," Lochlann said. "What kind of ice cream you're getting."