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

Lochlann was at Guin's apartment door.

He wasn't sure what he was doing here. He wasn't sure what he was doing with the bottle of pills in his hand or the bottle of whisky. He wasn't even sure why he was wet.

That was the worst part.


Baby, why am I all wet?

He had a feeling he knew why. It was a horrible, sinking feeling. It reminded Lochlann of waking up after Dani had died, where there was a moment where he felt all the pain but wasn't sure what the cause was.

He had been trapped in that moment since he woke up. His suspicions seemed to be confirmed when he called Cat's number and it went straight to voiemail.

The taste of blood in his mouth should be enough.

He had done everything right. Everything different. He had told her what he was. They'd made rules, they'd made plans. They did everything Lochlann had been too afraid to try, everything that could put him at risk for exposure, for his family finding out, for being killed, just to make this work.

And he didn't think it worked.

Lochlann didn't know what time it was, but it was late. He didn't even know if she'd be home.

But she was the only one who would know what to do. Who could do what he was going to ask her to do.

He rested his head against her door and closed his eyes and knocked.


@Kyros

Lochlann's head swiveled towards her voice and he looked at her, assessing her, as though surprised that it was really her.

Now that he was here, looking at her, Lochlann wondered if he made a mistake.

He wanted to take a deep breath but he got no air on the inhale. It felt like he forgot to breath this way. His entire body was tensed, like a deer standing on the edge of the road, trying to determine if it should cross the road or retreat back into the woods.

A bead of water dropped down his face and onto the floor.

Lochlann took a step back from the door.

He made a small, strangled, animal noise in the back of his throat.

It was her name.

'Guin?"

Guin took a step closer and though Lochlann twitched, his shoulders tensing and his body hunching as though he was going to barrel away, he didn't move.

You came here, he reminded himself.

But what was he doing here?

Guinevere took another step and Lochlann jerked as though he'd been shot, but he didn't move. Her footsteps were loud. Everything was loud.

The hallway seemed to be tunneling, where one moment he was hyper focused on Guinevere and nothing else, and then another moment everything expanded and he was so overwhelmed by all the surroundings that he could barely understand what she was saying.

She asked him three questions. Three was a magic number. Lochlann wondered if she was casting a spell on him, because he felt glued to the floor, as though every step closer she took, every word she said, binded him there.

Her chest brushed against him. She was so close. Her words were soft, but the weight of them almost made him collapsed.

He could only find the answer to one question. He could only answer her last question.

His voice was a struggle to get out. His hands were shaking. His skin was on fire.

He looked down at the bottles in his left hand, as though noticing them for the first time. He had all his addictions here: sedatives, whiskey, and Guinevere.

When he finally spoke, the word came out like it'd been slit from his throat. "You."

Lochlann closed his eyes. He tried to take another breath, but the air wouldn't come, and when Lochlann looked at her again, his eyes were black.

He swallowed and the scars on his neck felt like a noose.

He remembered he should offer to take her bags from her and help her carry them inside. That's what a gentleman would do.

That thought was very far away from the reality of the situation. Lochlann wasn't even sure who thought that. It was in his head, so it must have been him, but he was doubting everything now.

He looked at Guin and looked at her door and the question on his face remained unspoken. The words were too elusive to grab hold of. Could they go inside?

Guinevere took him by the hand and her grip was so gentle. She was so quiet.

Lochlann crumpled.

Not physically. He was still standing, moving as though he were in a daze, which he really was if he was being honest with himself. But when she led him into the house, Lochlann realized he couldn't do this anymore. He was tired of trying to figure it out on his own. He didn't know what else to do. Lochlann wanted to give up and let someone else handle this.

But he couldn't.

Even numb like this, he knew that. It's why he came here.

Lochlann didn't know where to go once they were inside the apartment. He was both highly aware and oblivious to the fact that he was wet. Water kept dripping down his face, down his arms, over his fingertips and down the bottles in his left hand.

But he wasn't wet enough.

Lochlann had the strong desire to crawl up inside a bath tub, to turn the water on over his face, but it was a pale imitation of what he really wanted.

Guin was looking at him. He realized he'd been staring ahead, not even sure what he was looking at, and it was only now his thoughts registered that she was here, she took him in. Half of him didn't expect her to. Half of him wished she hadn't, that she'd walked past him and slammed the door in his face or called security.

What happened?

That was the worst part.

Lochlann wasn't even sure. He tried to find the words to tell her about the blackouts, how at first they were a relief because he thought it meant he was finally getting to sleep at night, but now he wasn't sure.

His tongue felt too big for his mouth. He tried to focus her eyes on her.

Now Lochlann did crumple.

He sunk down to the floor but made no effort to make the action easy on himself; his ass hit the floor hard and his head whacked the door behind him.

He looked up at her and searched her, trying to ignore the pull he felt even now to go to her. What the fuck was wrong with him. Why couldn't he ever be sated?

He started to twist the cap off the whisky bottle.

"I don't know," he whispered.

His legs were shaking.

"I really don't know," he set the cap on the ground next to him.

He took a breath and this time he had enough air in his lungs. The room was still spinning but it was moving slower now, making it seem like Guin was on the carousel in front of him.

He said, "I can't get the taste of blood out of my mouth."

It wasn't his blood.

Lochlann might have protested Guin's taking of his bottle if it wasn't for what she said after.

It won't wash away the taste.

He nodded.

She told him it's okay, which might have been the worst thing to say to him normally, but Lochlann believed her. For one fragile moment, he fell into the trap of thinking that everything might be okay, that maybe it wasn't so bad.

Gods, he wanted to believe her.

Part of him wished he didn't know she was human so he could believe she could cast a miracle that would make him better.

There's one way to make it better, the voice in his head whispered, and he ignored it because Lochlann spent his entire life trying to stay alive.

She took his hand and tugged and Lochlann came willingly.

When they walked into her bathroom, Lochlann flinched and said, "Don't turn on the light."

His voice was small and quiet.

Because he didn't know how old he was, Lochlann tended to fluctuate between appearing older and younger than he really was. Right now, Lochlann definitely seemed younger. There was something about death that simultaneously aged him and made him into a child.

He still had the pill bottle in his other hand. He tucked it into his pocket, and then found the question that he'd come to ask.

He pulled a dishtowel out of his pocket and unwrappted it.

He held the kitchen knife by the blade and pointed the handle at her.

"Can you fix this?" he asked her.

Guinevere reached up and started to towel him off.

And it was....

Lochlann didn't move. His shoulders stiffened and his legs froze.

He was ashamed.

Because Guinevere toweling the water off of him was one of the nicest things he'd ever felt. Lochlann's family loved him, in the way that predators love each other, but they wouldn't hesitate to kill him to protect themselves. They had their affectionate moments but they were more likely to display them as animals. He could remember being in the water and having his mother biting at the back of his neck where the minnows were chasing his mane to scratch an itch, or standing next to Lillianna when she was a foal in the depths during a storm to keep her anchored next to him and stopping the currents from taking her. Horses were social creatures, but water horses were another story. Lochlann knew they were generally solitary fae and it was the changing times that had his family staying together instead of seeking out their own rivers and lakes.

No one in his family would have ever seen the value of making him dry. He had never been toweled off by another person. He had never been touched like this.

And he loved it.

He was ashamed by how good it felt. He was ashamed by how much he didn't want her to stop. Guinevere had done things to his body that he'd never experienced before. Everytime she touched him Lochlann felt like he was learning something new about himself. These revelations weren't always pleasant, but this one..

Oh gods.

He wished he wasn't a monster.

"I woke up in the lake," he said from beneath the towel. Her touch was waking him up, making him feel a little more human. But it was so easy for him to slide back down into the dark of his mind, just as it was easy for him to slide back into the lake.

"I didn't go to bed in the lake," he said.

He closed his eyes.

His voice was very quiet when he said, "I don't know what happened."

He still had the knife in his hand and he realized he was squeezing it so tightly that it was starting to cut into his palm. He didn't let it go.

"I don't know what to do. I have tried every. single. thing. I don't want to die, Guin," he said. The confession was resigned. It was tired. It was every single things Lochlann hated about himself put into one sentence.

He wasn't even sure why he came here.

He just wanted to feel safe.

Safe with the only person who he could never kill.

She said she could stop him and Lochlann believed her.

He wanted to believe her.

Lochlann was not a religious person. When they were in Ireland, and even Man, Lochlann's father had taken him to a Catholic church. He'd been a young boy then, but he'd been able to hold his human shape long enough for his father to deem this a worthy venture.

Lochlann had a difficult time understanding. The ritual was different than the few limited exposures to magic he'd seen. The chanting was hard. Standing and sitting at the right time had been nerve wracking, and he'd been...kind of bored, if he was being honest. But his father had made him pay attention. They still thought they might stay in Ireland at that time and churches could be a good hunting ground.

Lochlann wondered how these people could want so badly to believe in something that made them feel terrible.

But he understood now, that feeling terrible had nothing to do with being in the Church. it was the labeling of an act that made it terrible or not. Some would argue that killing was not a terrible thing. Lions do not feel guilt when they devour a gazelle that is still alive when they start to feed.

They felt terrible before they came in there. What they were seeking was the promise that someone understood. That someone could make it better.

Lochlann would never have that but Guin made him believe he could.

Guin was a human but she was his goddess.

He wanted to believe her promise that he could have a better life, but Lochlann already knew he was a condemned man.

"You can't stop me forever," he said. His eyes were still closed. The knife was sharp. "Eventually, I will go home, and I will work on the farm until I slip up there, and then my father and brother will take me into the river and rip me into pieces. They will mix whatever remains of my body into the feed for our horses."

He considered an alternative.

"Or, I escape. And I go someplace else. And maybe, just maybe, they don't find me, but eventually I slip up and someone else finds me," Lochlann said. "Some angry human, some disgruntled person with a vendetta against the monsters that snatched his ex-wife, his daughter, his sister. And he will shoot me in the chest and maybe, just maybe, if I'm lucky I will know what it's like to drown in my own blood."

Lochlann did not expect to be alive this long. Everything he'd ever done felt temporary.

This was a lot of words. The effort of speaking them exhausted him. Guinevere tugged at his shirt and Lochlann didn't understand.

He was on fire. His whole body was hot, and he was shivering. How could he be hot and cold at the same time?

He wanted nothing more than to crawl into her shower and put the water on over him.

Lochlann did not believe in fate.

But he was glad he met Guinevere.

"Sometimes," Lochlann said. "I have a hard time forgiving you for letting me live."

She said she needed him.

The words caught him off guard.

They followed his statement of why she kept him alive easily enough that Lochlann would have been willing to accept that for simply a statement to his statement, like an answer to a question. But the words stirred something else in Lochlann. He wasn't sure what it was. But it was the same feeling that kept him from diving back into the ocean. It was the same feeling that drove him around the states, then back to here, looking for some kind of clues as to who the fuck would break all the bones in her body.

She said he was hers.

And he was.

Body, mind, and his uncertain soul.

Lochlann had to let go of the knife to do what she asked. He squeezed it again. He opened his eyes and Guin was looking up at him.

The knife made a small clang when it hit the bathroom floor.

He tugged at the bottom of his sopping shirt. It clung to his skin and when he peeled it up over his head, Lochlann felt strangely vulnerable.

Despite what he must have done, there was very little sign of anything wrong on Lochlann's body. The only indication that something might be off was a faint, molted bruising along his inner elbows.

His skin was still burning. The air around them felt cold and Lochlann was surprised he couldn't see his own breath in her apartment.

He held his wet shirt in his hands. The blood from his cut palm would have seeped into his shirt if it wasn't already drenched.

"I'm getting water on your floor," Lochlann said.

His voice was disconnected.

He knew he was wet, but he hadn't really understood the implications being wet might have. It was weirder to him that Guin wasn't wet. But now he wasn't so sure. He wasn't sure if he belonged here, with her, or if he belonged at the bottom of a lake. It would never cross his mind that it could be both.

He looked down at the small pool of water around his feet.

He wondered if he could drown her in it.

It was too dark to see his reflection. It was too dark to see hers.

Guinevere's hands were ice against his bare skin. Even through the gloves, they felt cold. Lochlann was mesmerized by her touch. It drew his gaze up from the puddle on the floor and into her face. He might not be able to drown her in the puddle, but Guinevere could drown him in his eyes.

His own were still black, not that he would know. She tossed the towel onto the floor and then, to his surprise, she peeled off his gloves.

Of course, he thought, because the best magic was made skin to skin.

And she traced those beautifully textured hands across his chest. His eyes dropped half-lidded and his lips parted as if to say her name. His expression might have been mistaken for erotic at a first glance, but it was the sleepy expression of someone who was being woken up from a deep sleep.

Her fingers worked lower to the edge of his pants. He followed their movement and when she spoke, he obeyed. His fingers worked the loop of his belt and his zipper and he took a step out of them.

He was not ashamed of his nakedness, though he did hold his pants in one hand low in front of him to shield her from the view, but it was more out of habit and the lethargic feeling in his limbs than any sense of modesty. Even cold he was still well-hung. It was real and it was an illusion all at the same time. He was not conditioned to feel the same shame of nakedness as others.

He was burning. He was freezing. He was fire and ice, a monster and a person, all wrapped up into one shivering bundle in her bathroom floor.

Despite the words, despite the way she'd touched him, Lochlann didn't anticipate sex.

His thoughts were on the knife on the floor.

His thoughts were on the lingering taste of blood in his mouth.

Lochlann reached out to take one of her small hands in his own. He held it for a moment, feeling it's coolness in his feverish body. Her hands were a work of art.

Like some art, he could only imagine the story behind it was terrible. He could only imagine the pain of a young girl being burned. But the texture of it was something Lochlann hadn't felt anywhere else. He would never forget the sensation of it. He didn't want to forget. He wanted to memorize every crease, every curve, every sensation of it.

They were the most honest part of her.

Lochlann's legs threatened to betray him and his vision started to tunnel again. He shook his head and his breath escaped in a short, strangled exhale.

Maybe he could be honest with her, too.


He made a confession.

"I keep losing time, Guin."

Lochlann was losing time again right now, but at least this time he was awake for it.

He felt like a marionette in someone else's play. Guinevere was pulling on his strings now and he was dressed in a robe, in her bathroom...but it was really big. Before he'd been playing a monster and it felt like someone had passed him off to a little girl to play dress up.

If only things were that easy.

It would be nice to be able to blame someone else.

Lochlann closed his eyes. He took a deep breath. He exhaled. His lungs cooperated, mostly.

The bigger bathrobe had Lochlann wondering about the last year.

Had Guin been seeing someone?

He hadn't really expected her to wait for him. He always talked about leaving, always talked about going away. Why would he expect her to think he was coming back? Even he wasn't sure if he was ever coming back to this god forsaken island. He hated it here.

It was just that Guinevere seemed incapable of having another person in her life that she wasn't planning on killing.

It made Lochlann kind of sad.

Her bathroom was cool and dark and smelled the most like her, only perhaps next to her bed. He wondered if it was her soap.

Lochlann took a step, then another step, over to her shower.

And he took a step into the shower, then slumped down in the corner of it and rested his head against the cool porcelain. She probably used the tub more, he realized.

"I must be sleeping but I'm still tired," Lochlann told her, trying to explain what he meant about losing time. "I'm awake right now Guin. I wish I wasn't. But I'm here. You're here. I'm certain this is real."

He took a deep breath. He rubbed his own face in his palms.

"I remember when I eat someone," he told her. "I dream about it at night sometimes. but i...I don't remember what I think I did. And that...I think that means it's become a habit. A really, really bad habit."

The idea that Lochlann could do something so terrible without remembering scared him. It reminded him of when he drank too much and he'd wake up in bed without any idea of how he got there.

"I can't even pretend this meant anything to me if I can't remember it," he said. His voice was very, very quiet.

He took a deep breath.

And then, he asked for her advice.

"How do you do it, Guin?"

How do you not feel? How do you kill so many people and not have nightmares? How do you not break down like this?