You tried to save me but it won't work this time

Lochlann was caught off guard.

It was an unusual thing, he realized, loving Emily.

Loving wasn't quite the word he would pick. Lochlann still believed he didn't love her. He was terrified of love. The only person he was convinced he loved that was still alive was Adelene. Emily had seen Lochlann lashing out, but Adelene had seen him at his worse.

It wasn't meant to be a comparison. It was a state of relief.

Despite everything, despite how horrible he'd been to her, she hadn't seen what Addy had seen.

That was probably why Emily was even still talking to him.

"It's meant for sipping," he told her about the liquor. It was a bit late for it now that she was coughing. He wanted to reach out and pat her on the back but he was afraid of what would happen if he touched her.

Lochlann already knew.

He wouldn't be able to stop.

"Emily, you should probably stop," he said. Lochlann lifted his hand and then dropped it to his side, squeezing it into a fist. He'd meant to wave again, to motion to say stop all of those things, but he'd almost grazed it over her shoulder again. "Doing all those things, I mean."

He sighed.

He laid back in the grass and closed his eyes. The air smelled cool and faintly like her.

He said, "You're too smart to fall for all the cliches. Doing all those things isn't going to change me. It isn't going to fix me. You can't lose something you didn't have, Em."

It slipped off his tongue, that last phrase.

Em.

A slip of affection that Lochlann couldn't squash down.

Lochlann's eyes remained closed.

Lying here like this, Lochlann could almost imagine he was dreaming again. He could almost imagine that, if he wanted to, he could replay other moments, moments where he hadn't been desperately trying to ruin things.

A small, wry part of him reminded himself that he was always trying to ruin things.

Em's voice sounded a little off. Lochlann didn't open his eyes.

Good, he told himself. Either the alcohol is that strong that it's making her choke, or she's probably going to cry again.

Lochlann ran his fingers through the dried, brittle grass and imagined he was running it through his own hair.

He considered her question.

"I would feel exactly the same," he said.

He would still feel alone. He would still feel that disgusting, painful thing that kept trying to rise up in him that Lochlann refused to acknowledge: fear. He would still be drinking alone next to the lake. He would still love her or like her or whatever that blistering feeling that tried to warm its way in his stomach in the way alcohol was no longer capable of.

He said, "I don't know how many times I can remind you that I'm a monster before you'll believe me. You're smart, Emily, and you're talented and your kind and all your doing is wasting those things on me. There is no fairy tale that ends well for smart, talented, kind girls who cavort with monsters."

It took Lochlann a while to figure out what fairy tale she was talking about when she said the famous one. He decided to blame it on being tired, but the truth was this: when was the last time he wasn't tired?

He licked his lips.

He said, "The beast was turned into a monster after he refused to let a fairy in from the rain. He was a man to begin with. It's very different."

Lochlann was a monster masquerading as a man, after all.

There was no magic spell that would change him forever. If there was? Well, it wouldn't change how many people he'd already eaten.

When she made her speech, Lochlann groaned. He brought his hands up to his face and rubbed his palms into his eye sockets until the pressure made yellow and green splotches against his closed eyes.

He wasn't assessing his own emotions.

If he would have, he would have recognized that what he was feeling was fondness. He liked her tenacity. He liked that she was stubborn and prideful and was using those frustrating qualities to be kind.

He wished as much as he possibly could that Emily would find someone else to love because gods, she was a catch.

"The most horrible thing you can do to me is shoot me in the leg," Lochlann said. He dropped his hands back down to the ground next to him and was surprised when one of his hands found Emily's.

It was a touch that was unexpected and explicitly forbidden.

Very carefully, he trailed one of his fingers along her hand. Her skin was soft and smooth and so very human.

"I've already been shot once and the damage was pretty bad. If I'm shot again, that's it for me. I can't run. I can't walk. I'll be more trapped and then I'll be even twice as useless to my family," Lochlann said. "So that is the absolute worst thing you can do to me."

He drew his hand back from hers.

"So trust me, forgetting about me and having a good life would suck, but I'm going to be leaving here eventually anyway," he said.

Or he'd die.

There was no middle ground.

Lochlann didn't want to answer the first part.

He didn't like that the comparison did strike a chord with him. There were other differences, too: the beast was a wealthy prince. The beast had a whole castle, a kingdom, and plenty of securities to offer her. The beast would give her a future.

Lochlann could not offer any of those things.

He wasn't naive enough to think that's all a relationship needed, but he also knew there were other things beyond physical chemistry that would make another person happen. Not having to pick up and leave your home country, for one thing, or not having to re-settle over and over again because one of your children couldn't stop eating people.

The other thing that Lochlann didn't want to think about was this: had things gotten out of control?

Lochlann chewed on the inside of his cheek.

He just had to try harder.

It turns out, he didn't need to, because Emily reminded him about the lake a moment before he withdrew his hand. Emily laughed about the absurdity of a situation and it almost brought a smile to his face, but it faded quickly.

The idea of Emily holding a gun was....kind of hot.

Lochlann did not like that. When did he start to associate guns with hot-ness? Was this because he'd gone back to the states? Was his American-ness rubbing off on him?

"My family would probably kill and eat you if they knew that you knew what we are," he said. He said this the way some people said my family practices Catholicism or my family are Eagles fans. Truthfully, they'd probably kill and eat him, too.

"What do you normally see when you look into the ball?" Lochlann asked. The question drug him out of his thoughts. He still hadn't' opened his eyes. If he did this, he could pretend it was a dream. He could pretend to ignore the hunger starting up into him.

Lochlann's face flushed scarlet.

He couldn't even deny it. He couldn't say, No, absolute not, both because he was fae and because Emily would know he was full of it. Instead, he said, "Yup. All the more reason for you to back off. You're looking for love and I'm just thinking about all the pleasent ways we can fuck right here."

He swallowed.

Fuck. He shouldn't have said that. Now that he had, that image was on his brain, too. It mixed in with the hunger in his gut, stirring like the clouds before a storm. He pushed them away as best as he could.

Focus, he told himself, focus.

He didn't know how to explain his family to Emily. He'd never tired. My parents are strict was the excuse he used to give at his other school, but the truth was wonkier than that: his family was all playing pretend by trying to model themselves as a nuclear subgroup of people living in the USA. Ideally, they should all be solitary. They were not meant to live like this, but they were trying, because times changed and that was rule #1: adapt.

Lochlann's mother once told him she'd eat his heart since she'd made it herself.

He swallowed.

He focused instead on her explanation of the crystal ball.

"What do you think it means?" he asked. It was a relief to have the conversation away from him but Lochlann wasn't as calm as Emily about the idea of not being able to see anything. He hated himself but he'd be terrified if his powers ever stopped working the way they're supposed to.