Look at that edit! It's lovely and I love it. @soulpunkpatrick unexpectedly gifted it to me and my stone cold heart has been warmed ever since <3
Beta'd by chaotic-panda, whom I cherish dearly
~
re·al·ism
noun
(in art and literature) the movement or style of representing familiar things as they actually are
Patrick's tales only come about every two or three days and never with a warning— stories about Roy, mermonsters, his time at the beach and, if he's particularly tired, his interactions with the stars. Sometimes, they're prompted by questions from Pete-- by a pen in a writer's hand and years of secrets in a siren's head.
Pete writes them in every true way he knows, bleeding emotion onto a page and using Patrick's tears as ink. It feels as if it should be cruel, exploitative even, but Patrick's known from the start that Pete would do this. And his smile when Pete turns to a fresh page is more than enough permission— wary as it is.
The stories, too, ease the mermonsters— at least the ones in Pete's mind. At the worst of times, the creatures are like the needle of a compass, swinging aimlessly in search of something Pete couldn't explain. Seeking, shifting, spinning in ways that cause his mind to ache and throb— ways which make sleep more than a foreign concept but less than ideal. Discombobulated and disorganized, they shift.
Until they hear Patrick speak. Like a true north, they seize on his voice with a fearful force, gathered at the front of Pete's mind but still— so still. Listening with the occasional cackle, the odd comment on how Pete would be better off without this creature in his home. Yes, they still scream and laugh and howl but it's in a unison monsters should never have. A symmetry, Pete feels. An ease.
Perhaps he should be afraid of this, worried that they sense something he can't. For a few days, he lets these concerns consume him. Do they hear something in Patrick's words to help them attack the siren? Do they understand the fear in Pete's tone when he asks his questions?
Or are they clever enough to know what's beneath each conversation? Have they guessed yet the protection Pete promises Patrick, the way he burns with rage at every unjust action in the siren's life? Do they feel what Pete feels when he tells Patrick as much?
Pete puts his pen down for the night, seated at his writing desk as Patrick sleeps.
Can they make out the words he's writing from the scritch-scratch-scritch of his pencil against a page?
As he balls up another paper and tosses it into the trash, Pete desperately hopes they can't.
~
The thing about having Patrick is that it gives Pete a muse. The thing about a muse is that it gives Pete inspiration, motivation, creation, and desire all at once.
The thing about this is that Pete's book is nearly done within a month.
Now, granted, it's not all Patrick's fault. Pete came here because he knew he'd have the time and boredom, knew he'd have no choice but to write a couple thousand words a day. It's just that Patrick took the goal and twisted its straightforwardness into the shape of a hook, slowing Pete down when the last few chapters near.
Slow, slow, and slower. He goes from a few thousand a day to a few hundred until he's lucky to hit fifty in one night. He still scrawls in a notebook when Patrick speaks, still drowns out the monsters with the gentle timbre of Patrick's voice, but he doesn't use it in his books.
I used to waste my time dreaming of being alive.
Now, I only waste it dreaming of him.
The last sentences he's written hangs hauntingly on the page, daring him to continue, daring him to write out THE END.
Daring him to say there's an ending at all.
But it's a rough draft, he tells himself one quiet morning. Patrick had fallen asleep with washable marker scribbled across his body— an attempt to recreate Pete's tattoos. It had been an interesting activity, Patrick drawing intricate shapes on his own arms as Pete held his breath and lightly pressed the tip of a dark blue marker to the place above Patrick's tail, tracing out his most infamous tattoo. Patrick's tail is just a tail and he hadn't understood the strange blush on Pete's cheeks when he asked him to draw above it. Pete hadn't known how to explain how intimate it would have been if Patrick were a human.
Patrick hadn't told him a story that night but Pete memorized every sound from his lips all the same. For all his tragedy, Patrick's laughter always fills the room with the light of an exploding star.
Not, he thinks, that Pete plans on writing any of that. One more word on his page? One more page in his book? One less sentence left between him and the siren.
Pete bites his lip as dawn creeps in through the cracks of doorways and curtains, spilling into the room with a steady slowness. Slower than it has before but quicker than Pete's been writing these past few days. The light crawls across the floor, stretching like a cat preparing for a nap. Pete watches, breath caught in his throat, as it finally comes to rest on the dresser beside his bed— a place he hasn't slept in since the beginning of the month.
The bed, though, is not what draws him forward.
He'd shut his phone off upon arriving and he'd told everyone to leave him alone. His agent, though, must be losing her mind. To not hear any updates or plans? Pete knows she'll fly down here herself to drag the book from his hands.
Unless he tells her he's done. Unless he tells her he's on the verge of something wonderful and can't afford to leave. Unless he begs and pleads and tells her that he's found something to protect, something to care for, something that might be killed should he leave.
Another season, another year, maybe the rest of his life. Pete's mind buzzes with the mermonsters' interest as he opens the dresser drawer, imagining all the excuses he'll give when his agent demands he return at the end of summer as he promised he'd do. He connects his phone to a charger and waits for it to turn on. Impatience in his stomach bubbles, not unlike the rising voices of the mermonsters when they hear the sharp bells signaling his phone's been turned on.
What are you doing what are you doing what are you doing what—
Pete ignores them and unlocks the phone. He presses his contacts without thinking, already searching for his agent's name.
But then notifications light up his screen— one right after the other. Missed calls from friends and acquaintances, texts in all-caps from his agent. Nothing of consequence, nothing he'd feel bad for deleting.
Except for the text from his mother. Sent the night before with a handful of missed calls connected to it, her text is as straight to the point as she'd always been.
Call me, it says, causing Pete's heart to drop. Something's happened.
~
Pete doesn't sleep that day, mermonsters granting him no peace from their questions and false concerns. His pacing and heavy breaths have alerted them to the anxieties rolling around his skin like drops of water. By the time Patrick awakes with telltale splashes, Pete's mouth and pens have long dried out, the phone still warm from the hours of conversation he'd had with his mom.
Thankfully, Patrick takes longer than a while to fully wake, like a computer booting up. He blinks as Pete steps into the room, the softest of smiles spreading across his lips. He sits up, rubbing at his eyes, and Pete ignores the chill he feels when Patrick does so without a wince. Ink still stains his skin in the shape of childish tattoos, refusing to slip into the water the way the package had promised. Pete rubs the side of his hand, thoughtlessly stroking the lead left there.
"Let me get started on changing your bandages," he says instead of his usual question of nightmares and dreams. Patrick's eyebrows furrow together briefly but he nods, pulling himself further out of the water until Pete has full access to the wound on his side.
For once, without Patrick's nightmares invited into the conversation, no one speaks as night begins to fall.
Patrick hums an eerie tune as Pete works on opening the first aid kit. He's become braver with the melodies over time, never singing but always threatening the air with the chance he might. Pete glances up at Patrick's face, his eyebrows pinched in thought as he does so. He's never asked Patrick why he sang that night, why he traded his safety for a few meager hours of companionship. It'd be another dangerous question to venture into, another one with no definite ending, but he can't bring himself to dirty the air with such darkness. Not when there are already so many shadows slithering through his mind.
Patrick's eyes meet Pete's, the siren still humming. Pete's always admired the gold within them but, tonight, all he sees are the waves of the ocean Patrick calls his home.
"Is something wrong?" Patrick asks. It's a harsh cut through the song he'd been humming but at least it carries some of the youthful innocence Pete had once associated him with. At least he doesn't truly sound afraid.
"Oh, no," Pete says, fumbling for words and a way to open the first aid pack without revealing how much his hands are trembling. "Well, I mean. Maybe. But not in the... not in the sense that you'd think. Just some news from my mom, that's all."
Patrick's head tilts to the side, his flicking tail going still as Pete finally opens the kit to retrieve bandages and gauze. He waits to speak, tongue crossing his lips again and again until Pete's kneeling beside him. "Your mom? You have not mentioned her before."
Pete scoffs, an easier option than laughing. "I never had reason to. We haven't spoken for a while. But she still keeps me in the family loop, no matter how hard I try to pull free from it. Her news comes from a good place, I think."
Patrick lifts his hand form the water, brushing it gently down Pete's arm.
"What did she say?"
Pete swallows down his answer, ignoring their sharp edges and bitter tones. It's easier to be silent. It's easier to keep Patrick's eyes soft and his sense of safety intact. It's easier to pretend he has no news at all.
In his mind, the mermonsters repeat the phone call back to him. They're cruel creatures in that way but Pete's known this. Their joy in his sorrow is no surprise.
Pete finds his voice, his words broken shards.
Just like that knife he left by the sea.
"Pete," Patrick says, soft yet stern. "Tell me."
"Let me finish this first," Pete says, whispers. "Let me... Let me focus on fixing you, okay? I need... I need something to focus on for a bit. Something I can do— something I can fix, dammit."
Patrick gasps a sharp breath and Pete bites back his own exhale. He hadn't meant to curse, hadn't meant to speak so harshly. Before he can take it back or try to form a half-honest apology, Patrick's eyes darken and his mouth closes with a click of his teeth. He shuts down, shuts off, like it's the only thing he knows how to do in an unfair situation— because, Pete knows, his life is one big unfair situation and being alone for so long certainly never taught him the best coping mechanisms.
Pete sighs and kneels by the tub. Patrick looks away, muscles tight when Pete peels off the bandage.
He only looks back over when Pete gasps— when Pete sees the wound's progress and understands how little time is left before it's fully healed. It's not perfect yet but the tissue Pete had seen forming over the past few weeks has grown stronger, more formidable, and it'll only be a week or so until all that's left is a red scar down Patrick's side.
And an empty bathtub in Pete's home.
"You heal quickly." Pete's words are hardly a breath, barely rippling across the water's surface, but it's more than enough to cause the mermonsters' voices to dance with the crazed tone Pete's grown to know all too well. He reaches out towards the wound, pulling back at the last second. Patrick looks over, eyes still dulled with a bitter smile on his face.
"It would be faster outside," Patrick says. "With nothing to block the light of the stars and with the saltwater of my home... It may be cursed by the moon but the salt has always eased the pain of my people's wounds. And you wonder why I asked you to take me back to the ocean."
Pete's blood goes cold. He's not sure if it's from the cheering of the monsters or the thought of releasing Patrick back into the waters outside. He could get hurt. He could be killed.
He could swim away and never return.
Pete's never been good with the people he cares about. He always needs too much and too little at once, never giving into how he feels and sure as hell never showing it. He needs people more than they need him but the crowds still crave in a way he can never return. Not until they've moved on to the next fad, the next headline, and his fingertips itch with the urge to claw at their backs so they're forced to face him again. Violent enough to throw his fist through a car window after one too many lies; soft enough to feel bad for the glass he shatters.
Violent enough to wish he could leave Patrick to the ocean without a word; soft enough to know he could never perform such an act. Be it protection or friendship or some other unnamed thing, he knows Patrick's life is too closely tied to his own to ever part ways in such a cold-hearted fashion. As insane as it is, he keeps things interesting. As strange as it sounds, he keeps Pete afloat.
Take me back to the ocean
The last part of Patrick's statement hangs in the air. Hauntingly so.
"She wants me to go back," Pete spits like it's the words to an exorcism. "My sister got in a car wreck and she's in the hospital and god knows where Andrew is so... My mom needs someone with her. She's sick— nothing bad, just frailer than she used to be— and she needs someone. Hillary would take care of it but she's hurt and she's on bedrest and. She needs me."
It's a lot and Pete knows it but, cruelly, he justifies it with the fact that Patrick's spilled so much more onto his shoulders.
"Oh," Patrick says, face somehow appearing more blank than before. "So then..."
"I— I told her I couldn't." Pete swallows, looking away from Patrick's widened eyes. Hope? Shock? Disappointment? Pete doesn't care to guess. "Not now, anyway. Not if you need me."
Patrick's lips purse. He looks away, squirming in an embarrassed manner.
"You know, if you go, the distance between you and the monsters will be too much. They will lose their control. I should have told you... I could have told you but you seemed to have had your mind made up on staying here." Patrick turns his head sharply, looking at Pete with eyes as electric as lightning. "I would not blame you if you go. If I could see my mother again... I would give anything."
"I know," Pete breathes, so much more quiet than the gloating voices in his mind. He hates them, he hates them. "But I want to stay if that's okay with you. Until your injury is healed, at least."
Patrick blinks. "I heal quickly." It's not a push for him to leave but it's not a meaningless detail, either. It's a reminder, a soft statement. It's as if Patrick's speaking to himself.
Pete swallows. Why must his words always disappear around this being?
"I know," he says again, head dipping down to hide the heat on his cheeks. The air grows cold, colder than it's ever been. "I know."