Private Finished The whole truth is nothing but a good excuse

The library assistant had legs a mile long. Lochlann did his best not to stare at them, but he kept wondering what they'd taste like. Despite her long legs, she was relatively short, with messy hair pulled into a bun, a limp sweater, and, his favorite part, a pair of glasses on a chain. Just like a real librarian, or at least, what Lochlann thought a real librarian should look like.

Only he had no interest in her at all. She was a means to an end. Lochlann was a taken man now. Or at least, he might be. He wasn't sure how things were going to stand with Cat after the last time.

"I'm not a librarian," she corrected him again. "I'm an assistant. And I have no idea where the book is that you're looking for. What is the title again?"

Lochlann looked down at the note in his hand. The handwriting was impossible to read.

"I didn't write the title down," he said. "You did."

The assistant stepped closer to him and looked down. They were so close, painfully close--literally painfully close. Lochlann shifted and his jacket rubbed against his neck, chafing the still too-fresh set of stitches covering it. He needed these books to keep him occupied.

However, it looked way more like he was interested in the person standing so close her hair was beneath his chin, peering down at the note and then looking up at Lochlann's face like she was going to kiss him but--



@Nightstripe

Someone walked by in a hurry and, as she passed, Lochlann caught a whiff of her subtle scent and just the briefest glimpse of her face.

Emily.

Lochlann was a predator but, as a human, his senses were basically the same. He could pick up on a few things if he tried but he was mostly oblivious to the information he got. But he didn't need any extra senses to see the look on her face.

It cut right through him.

He didn't expect it to hurt so much.

He was doing the right thing by not being with Emily. he knew that. His family would have been happy with him, he thought. This is what they sent him to this damned island to do: learn to not fuck-up and eat the pretty girls he cared about.

But he was weak.

He tried to convince himself not to go to her, that he was dangerous when she was vulnerable, but he couldn't.

"Excuse me," Lochlann said to the librarian.

"Are you sure you don't want this book?" she asked him. Her fingers were sliding across the shelves. They landed on Recognizing Addictions.

Lochlann shook his head.

"No thank you. I appreciate your time, he said, and Lochlann went off to find his addiction.

She was in the psychology section on the floor.

He stood before her.

Even though it wasn't splinted, Lochlann's bandaged hand was resting up above his heart. When he saw her, he dropped it down into his pocket. He pretended he didn't feel the unexpected WHUMF of his heart hitting against his ribs even harder, punishing him from the inside for what he did to her.

He ached.

"Emily?" Lochlann said.

Lochlann had never been in this situation before.

Usually, when he ate someone, they were dead and that meant he had to wade through his uncomfortable guilt, despair, and existence as a monster alone.

When he'd almost eaten Addy, she'd graduated and been on her way out. He hadn't seen her after that. He hadn't had to deal with her knowledge of him as a monster. He missed her still, even now, but it was for the better.

And this was for the better, too.

Standing here with Emily with this distance between them. This was for the best.

But it hurt. He tried to assume the pain across his heart was from the stitches. But it wasn't. It was unfamiliar and alien. What was he supposed to say? How do you get over that?

Sure they were on an island of monsters, but Lochlann wanted to pretend so desperately that he was human that he resented the fact that he wasn't. If he could cut away the part of him that was a cabyll-ushtey, he would. He would die, probably, but wouldn't that be better than this?

When she reached out and took his hand, Lochlann was petrified. He didn't know what to do.
He wanted to back away and tell her not to touch him, that he was poison and tar and she'd just get dirty touching him.

But her hand felt so good on his. He let himself close his eyes for just a moment.

He couldn't lie to her but he thought about telling her something else.

Instead, he said the truth. "Guinevere."

'She's uh.." he searched for an explanation. "Unhappy when I touch someone else."

When she said that it wasn't healthy, Lochlann didn't know what to do.

He wanted to laugh because obviously, how could bleeding this much for a woman be healthy? But what did he know. He ate people. maybe this was exactly what he deserved. He might not want it, but he didn't have a choice.

He ran his non-injured hand through his hair instead.

"No, it's not," he finally agreed. He shrugged. What could he do?

He was reluctant to have her let go of his hand. He was too distracted by the sensation of her fingers against his own to even think of trying to mask his feelings. Sadness, confusion, longing, but mostly guilt.

She couldn't make eye contact with him and Lochlann didn't blame her.

He misunderstood though. He took it as fear.

Even now, there was a part of him that wanted desperately to eat her.

When she asked his relationship with Guin, Lochlann was startled. A small wave of fear threatened to breach the levis he'd constructed inside of him, but the walls held and pushed it back down.

"I don't have a relationship with her," he started to say, but the words died in his throat because that wasn't exactly true. Everyone else had come and gone in waves and dark lakes but Guinevere was still there. He was the one who kept running.

"I don't know," he finally said. "She wants to kill me. I thought I wanted to kill her. I don't really get why neither of us have finished the job."

This was surreal, her asking him how he was, if he was eating. The second question sent another wave of burning guilt and panic and fear rising up in him, but he squashed that down, too.

"I haven't slipped up, if that's what you're asking," Lochlann said after a moment. His words didn't sound harsh or snarky, just a genuine confession, albeit a tired one. He seemed smaller once he said them, younger. Lochlann could often come across as self-assured, as capable of living alone, but right when he said them, he showed his nineteen years of uncertainty.

"I used to, well, I mean," he wasn't sure how to say it, so he shrugged. "I used to take things to deal with it. But I haven't since I came back. I'm...doing okay."

Things.

Sedatives. Needles in his right arm, shots of whiskey, sleeping pills, and his favorite drug of all: sex, sex, sex.

"How are you doing?" he said. he lifted his hand again, ready to brush the lingering tears away from her cheek, but his hand caught and hovered in the air between them.

He wanted to touch her so badly. But how could he ever touch her again?

Her reaction surprised him. Lochlann's brows drew together and then darted in, his facial expressions shifting as quickly as his thoughts before he managed to settle his face back to neutral.

Lochlann had not considered that Emily would still want him in her life after seeing what he was, what he wanted to do to her.

This was unfamiliar ground, too.

"I'm sorry," he said.

He tried to smother the longing for her but he couldn't. He wanted to reach out to her. He wanted to touch her, to hold her, to bring her close where he could keep her safe and stop those tears.

Lochlann didn't know how to explain Guinevere to Emily because he didn't really understand the situation himself. He felt like he needed a powerpoint presentation and a flowchart and directional arrows to tell this story and even then, Lochlann wasn't sure he understood.

Lochlann rubbed his bandaged hand with his whole one and considered this.

It was all he could do to stop himself from reaching out to touch her.

He missed her.

Lochlann shifted his weight onto his other leg and then leaned partially against the bookshelf, his head resting against anxiety disorders.

"I don't want to hurt you," Lochlann told her. "I don't want to hurt anyone."

Except maybe Guin, but even then, Lochlann knew hurting her was hurting himself.

It was mutually assured destruction. She was his checks and balance, tallying up his sins and weighing his heart at the end of the each day.

"I wouldn't live if I tried to kill Guin," he finally tried to explain. "She would kill me. But I wouldn't live if I hurt you because it'd be too much to bare. And Emily, sometimes I want to. You saw how much I wanted it. You saw that I...that I dream about that."

He swallowed. He pressed his thumb into his hand, into the bandages and let it hurt. The pain cleared his head.

"So it's not okay. And it's not fair. And if I had a choice, I'd chose you," he said.

His throat was doing something scratchy, like the words had claws and wanted to stay burried in his chest. He swallowed. Now, Lochlann looked away. This was unfamiliar and uncomfortable.

Her questions about his nutrition through him off.

Lochlann started to shrug and then stopped, catching himshelf. He hunched his shoulders and gave her a small, sheepish smile and shared her half-hearted chuckle.

When she licked her lips he wanted to kiss her.

"The usual," Lochlann said.

Food was complicated. His body wasn't human and it wasn't equine. What it needed and what it wanted was a big, complicated mystery.

Emily reached out and took his hand from his. Lochlann gave her own hand a squeeze while she talked about school and pushing through everything. He nodded softly, his dark curls flouncing with the movement.

"I miss you too," he said, and he managed to hold her eyes for a second before he dropped them to the ground. Guilt. Guilt. Guilt.


Lochlann tried to imagine a paralel life where everythng worked out okay and he and Emily were happy together, but no matter how hard he tried, everything ended in death.

"Emily, can I ask you something?" he asked.