Private Finished This is the price you pay for loss of control

Lochlann had not expected her to answer him.

He expected her to tell him not to be stupid, or, if he thought about it honestly, he expected to hear his father's voice.

Lorcan only ever viewed Lochlann as his troubled child. Lawrence was the favorite, the one that his father hoped would lead the family, but Lawrence could not hold his human shape in the rain. Even mist could trigger him. Lochlann was, by all accounts of things, one of the best at what he did.

"It's a shame you were born now," Lorcan had told his son after he'd killed his first girlfriend. "You would have been a hell of a monster back in the 1700's. They would have named a lake after you, kiddo. But now? Now you've just fucked up."


It's a shame he was so good at being so terrible.

But what Guin said made sense to him, just keep saying it until you believed it was okay. Of course, it was a lie, it wasn't okay, it was fucking horrible. But the best part of believe was the lie.

Lochlann knew this story.

He knew it very, very well.

He heard another version of it not just once, but twice while he was in rehab. It was supposed to be about the dangers of putting alcohol or toxic substances into his body. The difference, Lochlann thought, was that some snake venom could be distilled to cure things.

He hated the story because it blamed the fox for doing the right thing instead of the snake for being a monster.

And then her lips were on his. Lochlann jerked as though he'd been shot, the movement too fast, too unexpected, but he was pressed against the shower and there was no where to go.

He kissed her back with a hunger that came from being trapped.

Animals lashed out when they were cornered.

Lochlann brought his hand to her face and then he dropped it, not wanting to touch the soft skin on her cheek when he could...


...he grabbed her hands in his.

He bit her lip when he did, wondering if her blood would wash out the blood in his mouth, but he didn't bite her hard enough to draw blood. He was terrified she'd kiss him deeper. He was terrified she'd taste the blood in his mouth.

He dragged his thumbs over the tendons ontop of her hands, feeling how the scars around them were knotted and grooved. They were like carved wood. Drift wood, he thought, and slid his fingers up until he was touching the area where the scars faded and her unblemished skin remained.

It was the space where Lochlann existed.

He loved her hands.

Lochlann had never been kissed like this before.

He had given and received a lot of kisses in his short life time. Kissing was an art and he was a master at it, painting with strokes of his tongue and presses of his lips, working with someone's body as a canvas.

But he had never been kissed the way Guin was kissing him now.

It was not a kiss of lust, though there was certainly an undercurrent, because it was ever present with Lochlann. It was not a good bye kiss. It was a kiss like the one she'd given him at Christmas, the one where she'd said something that he knew was a lie but still wanted to believe in.

When she kissed him now, she told him he wasn't alone, and for the first time Lochlann believed this. He slowed the kiss finally, but he didn't let go of his hands. When he opened his eyes, they were tired, but they were green again.

"Thank you," he whispered.

He knew if anything changed, if she made any other comment, he would feel embarrassment come over him in a wave. He was still raw, he was still shaking, and he was still vulnerable but kissing her had made the taste of blood in his mouth bearable.

He rested his head against the shower wall. He ached. He felt like he was the one who drowned.

"Can i ask you something?" he said. He didn't wait for her to respond before he asked his question. She'd tell him or she wouldn't. "Is Guin your real name?"

Guinevere hadn't hidden her expression from him.

The parted lips, the head tilt...it was adorable.

If he'd been sober, he would have laughed.

The thought struck him as unusual because Lochlann was sober. He hadn't taken anything, even if he wanted to. Guinevere had taken the bottle from him and the pills were in his pants in his pocket. He ached for them now, just like he ached for her to touch him again, but he felt...he felt wrong somehow.

He was still shaking but he nodded. She'd averted her eyes so he closed his.

Lochlann was his real name, but it was foreign to him in a way. His name had been the look someone gave him, the nudge, a click and an echo when they needed him to move a certain way. Lochlann spoken in the tongue of horses was a different animal than Lochlann spoken in the tongue of man. The only time the two sounded comparable was when Guin moaned his name when she came. When he wasn't a man, he wasn't a monster, but he was just...Lochlann.

He felt like just Lochlann right now.

It frightened him.

"It's beautiful," he told her. He still didn't open his eyes but said, "Thank you for telling me."

His thanks was genuine, much like it had been before. Lochlann slumped along the shower wall and now he was lying against the cool porcelain next to her. It felt good on his head. Now that he was down here, it was hard to conceptualize getting back up.

If he got up, he would have to leave, and he would have to deal with what he'd done all over again.

With Guin, in this moment, it was a precious lie, but it felt like the most honest thing he'd ever experienced. He wanted to believe in it a little while longer.

"I don't want to tell anyone what I did," he whispered.

He should.

When he got up tomorrow, he should go see a therapist. He should go back to juvie, even though they couldn't help him. But if he did that, Lochlann was one step closer to signing his own death warrant.

He'd meant it when he told her he didn't want to die.

He remembered the day he'd fucked her in the shower.

"You were the first one, you know," he said.

He meant it in a lot of ways. The first one to live. The first one he couldn't kill. The first one he'd fucked in the shower. The first one who'd sucked him dry like that. The first one to make him so utterly and completely her own. She was his first long term relationship.

He had no idea what she was to him.

But she was the first.

Sometimes one is enough.

Guinevere gave him absolution.

Lochlann's breath came in and out in a slow, unsteady tempo, but it was relaxing. She squeezed his hands again and he relaxed further, practically melting into the bottom of the bath tub.

Lochlann was a monster who belonged at the bottom of the lake. He would never, ever forget that. But right here, right now, he could trick himself into thinking that maybe everything would be okay.

"I'm glad we met, Guin," he whispered.

And it was the last thing he whispered before darkness overtook him.