Author: Rhine
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I'm sorry but I fell in love tonight
I didn't mean to fall in love tonight
.
What is love to a monster?
A ship appearing out of the fog, slow and cautious – lost – and his heart beats faster, his muscles start to tense and he can already taste the metal in the back of his throat, he can already see the bodies in the water, bowing beneath him – and that's not love, that's adrenaline.
Skulls with algae growing in the fractures made by time, bones with bits of cloth or skin lazily flapping in the movement of the waves, silver watches on decaying bones and gold necklaces on sunken ribs; he lines his cove with them for all to see, for all the know that beautiful things like him were also the most deadly – and that's not love he has for the people at the bottom at the ocean, that's pride for what he's done.
Marooned islands made of the skulls he's created in misty swamps and crashing oceans; mouth open and voice thin as it skims the water like pebbles, waiting to see how much it'll resonate before it sinks – before he slips back into the cold waters like a second skin and looks for directions in an endless expanse – that's not love, that's loneliness for all the silence that echoes back.
He doesn't know of love – it's merely a child's story to him, tales of those who went on lifelong quests to search for it only to die when they finally found it – he doesn't know what it is besides a joke; humans crooning about how it's the greatest thing on the earth, yet so quick to abandon it once he starts to sing.
What will your love do for you now?
He has skulls of lovers that weren't his own, who chose him over this fickle idea of love; how much is love to you now?
He laughs in the face of it; foolish humans who thought they had it, foolish sirens who thought they could have it.
And why have love when you can have the adrenaline of a new catch; he's not the haul but he's the bait and he loves the lengths they'll go to just to reach him; the control over something that wasn't his, the dominance in everything he asked for with singing lips.
And why have love when you can have the pride of being so feared; of being more than a legend told by sailors he stole hundreds of years ago, of being the cause of the frozen engines of a sputtering boat and the chill up your spine, the spear of the silence; the pride of being the owner to broken ships at the bottom of the sea and unclaimed bodies that'll have no other name than victim.
And why have love when you can have loneliness?
You see, you see –
Love to monsters was always meaningless.
For no one could love a monster anyways.
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He doesn't know of love, and quite frankly, nor does he care much about it – but he does know about infatuation.
He knows the look of glossy-eyed sailors and doe-eyed passengers, he knows the open lips that he presses his wet mouth to and he knows the lull of his bodies that match the one in his song; he knows the rhythm in which they will step towards them and he knows the crescendo of their fall.
Oh, he knows infatuation very well.
It's a song, a melody of waves against the hull of the boat and their promises on his skin that he knows they'll never break; it's the libretto in his voice and the curve of his neck and the slope of his jaw and the branches of his throat that spread to his plated collarbones that reach out to them from the icy waters he called his home, that they'll call their graves.
And you are his favourite song.
Your eyes are so bright even when they're hollow from him; you're so beautiful even in your confusion, so radiant in your infatuation for him and he swears he's never seen a creature as beautiful as you and it's a shame, a pity really, that humans were merely skin and foolish dreams, that you'd be nothing but a memory and a skull in time.
But for now, he can remember you in this moonlight.
Padding out to the sound of his voice with bare feet, hair in tangles down your back, just roused from your sleep – you're looking for the sound of your dreams that's been weaved somewhere into your reality, and you find it – you find him.
Wet hair, dark blonde in midnight but surely golden in the sunlight; his skin stands out like the moon and you can see every hard line of the outline of his bones; throat and shoulders, jawline and cheekbones – he's waiting for you in the water, droplets glistening off his pale skin.
"Are you a dream?"
You say the words but they might as well have been his own; he doesn't dream himself but if he did, it'd be of you.
"Only if you want me to be."
And you both know – you with shy glimpses at his bare skin and him with mysterious smiles at your fragility – that if he was a dream, you'd never wake up again.
You don't question why he's in the ocean below you, pale torso peeking up with sharp chin pointed up as he looks at you – he's a dream and you're blind to the nightmare underneath waiting for you.
A twisted tail, shredded at the ends with wafting pieces, pink flesh peeking from the missing scales; winding and unwinding, nothing is ever beautiful but he can pretend with a blue-eyed smile.
You walk out closer to him and he's careful to reach up only enough for you to see the faintest glimpse of his navel and not the angry red scars where his tail begins; he wants you to want him and he doesn't do the reaching, just the dragging.
And you don't what it is that compels you – maybe it's the echo of his voice that resonates in your ribs, spiking every heartbeat, maybe it's the smoothness of his touch that makes it so easy for you to melt into, maybe it's the ocean in his eyes that you just want to drown in.
Maybe it's the way he looks at you, like you're the only thing he's ever seen, like you're the only thing he ever wants to see.
You're almost nose-to-nose to him and you've barely even realized how far off the deck you've been leaning out to reach him, too enraptured in the soft glistening of the ocean on his skin and in his eyes.
"Do you love me?"
He doesn't know of love, he doesn't care for love; he cares for the slope of your neck and just how his teeth fits on it, he cares for the slant of your jaw and how his fingers will trail it; he cares for the heart you'll hand to him, still beating in his hands, your sacrifice for him, your infatuation.
"Yes."
You whisper the word against his salted lips and there's no second thought, no doubt about it – there's something in his question that gives you the answer and you don't want this beautiful boy to slip away; you don't know him and you don't know love, but you can pretend so long as he keeps on looking at you like this.
He smiles and he meets his lips with yours, soft hands cupping your jaw and wetting your hair with his saltwater touch; he pulls you out with his mouth against yours and he floods through your veins like an ocean, like a poison.
He sinks slowly back into the water and you follow with his touch on your skin and his taste on your tongue; you'd do anything to hear the music of his breaths against your skin, you'd do anything to know if his heartbeat sounds like the lullaby of the waves beneath you.
You'd do anything for his love, and he'd do anything to pretend he had it.
You barely even notice how the tip of your chin starts to skim the cold ocean water, you barely even notice how your body is more out than it is in; you barely even notice how you're in the waves with him, how you're slowly sinking, how you're slowly drowning.
His kiss makes you believe you're breathing; he makes you believe his breaths were all the air you needed, that he was all you needed.
But a kiss wasn't air, and infatuation wasn't love.
But you could both pretend you had the things you needed most.
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