Beta'd by the amazing Chaotic_Panda
~
confessional
a first-person style that is often presented as an ongoing diary or letters, distinguished by revelations of a person's deeper or darker motivations
Pete's day is restless and, consequently, the following night is the same. Each hour feels shorter than the last, dripping off the clock with a sticky kind of glee. Fingerprint minutes press against the window in the shape of a fading sun. Soft seconds slip from Pete's grasp with the elusiveness of soap suds— good and clean but bitter and impossible if he tries to hold onto them for too long.
As night falls, he waits, almost hoping for a whisper from the bathroom— laughter or perhaps a cursing of his name. But it's silent— so silent. Even the monsters in his mind circle his thoughts unresponsively and, though he's only seen them in imagination, Pete can almost feel the weight of their eyes on him like blind, crawling ants.
Stop that, he tells himself sternly, sitting with his back pressed against his bedroom wall. You're acting as irrational as everyone claims you are.
Still, the minutes drag on and Pete's breaths expand to thunderous sighs filling the room like oversized balloons. The mermonsters listen closely in his head, lined along the edges as if attempting to decode a secret message.
"Curious today, are we?" Pete asks, only for them to shriek their way back into the shadows like rats suddenly exposed to light.
We heard you are bringing the siren. A good choice. A smart choice. Go home, soon, human. We will leave. We will be gone and the prince will be—
"Shut up." The words pull involuntarily from his throat as Pete jerks his head to the side— all his choice but not his conscious doing. He's been on edge since the... the discussion with Patrick and the monsters' words are far from helpful. Not that there has been anything helpful around here. It's all so messed up and Pete smiles like it's funny. "No matter what happens, he's still a siren and that means he has more power than you."
Believe what you will but we have the truth, the creatures say, more curtly than they've ever spoken before. You cannot protect him forever. You will leave, sooner or later. We promise.
Pete's lips press tightly together. He doesn't entertain their words with a further response, brushing off their sniggers-- scratched and hushed but leaking through his thoughts all the same. The sound brings a scowl to his face. When had their presence in his mind expanded so far? It began with dreams and whispers, the odd chuckle here and there, with only one full attack to concern him. But, now? Conversations and constant commentary? A smiling quietness that hadn't been there before? The quiet contempt grows more unnerving with each day. As if they're... planning. Scheming.
Preparing.
Pete pushes the thought away and rests his head back against the wall.
The moon rises with a light that drowns out the stars. It's welcomed by the subtle shifts of water swaying back and forth as Patrick wakes.
Pete smiles softly at nothing in particular; he shuts his eyes before they have a chance to tempt him with the sight of the bathroom door.
Moments pass like this. Little splashes and quiet breaths, heard only because the silence of the house dares to emphasize each sound. Water trickling through the air on soundwaves meant to shut the monsters up, keep them hidden because they can't see what their prey is doing.
Pete can't, either, but that doesn't stop him from imagining. Patrick twisting and turning as he opens his eyes, trying to keep quiet but too clumsy to do so properly. Somehow, he's short— small, little? — enough to fit in the bath but his tail extends over the edge in a manner he often jokes about. Never complains, never whines. Just... comments.
"I never realized how much space I have out there," he'd said one time while rubbing at the sore muscles beneath his scales. "I had always thought the beach small but at least it gave me the chance to swim around."
Twisting, turning, trembling thoughts enter Pete's mind, repeating what he'd been thinking before. He promised to take Patrick back soon, swore that he would if the siren wished. How horrible does it make him if he longs to keep Patrick here, keep Patrick near? Away from the monsters with needle-teeth and cursed blades? Away from the dangers and promised fates? If Patrick stays, he's safe. He's alive. He's close.
He's a reason for Pete to stay, too.
Again, guilt and shame and anger coil in his gut like the voices in his mind. His mother's voice, now, plays through his thoughts, her words telling him he needs to come home. His sister is wounded and his mother's alone and Pete's here, with a stranger. With a siren.
With a story lacking only an ending.
Pete grabs the collar of his shirt, clinging tightly and pretending the cloth is cool. Patrick's so adamant about going back to the ocean, so set on letting these dangers crawl closer to him. Why? Why can't he understand that Pete's only doing this to protect him? Why can't he—
No. That's not fair. Pete can't waste time wondering about Patrick's thoughts— he'd never be granted the answer. Instead...
Why does he wish to protect him? What does he have to gain? What does he have to lose by releasing the siren to the sea?
The mere thought sends his heartbeat into a panic.
It isn't fair that such a mythical being has taken so much control in his life. A few months ago, Pete would have raced to his mother's side. Does it make him horrible that he's weighed the consequences of the choices and found Patrick's to be the heaviest?
His jaw tightens. His breaths deepen.
There's no one to blame but himself; there's nothing to blame but the monsters. The longer he sits in the darkness, the more certain he becomes that he and the creatures are cut from the same cloth. Selfish and petty, good with words but horrible in action. A danger to themselves, to others, to the world. Warning labels in the form of uncontrolled emotions.
Keep away, the sign says. Don't get caught up in this mess of a human wreck. Don't get trapped in this storm.
Storm. A corner of Pete's lips curls upwards like charring paper. Lashing winds and pelting rains? Screaming thunder and the threat of lightning?
With so many emotions wracking through him— so many with no explanation, no answer— Pete feels a bit like a storm. And Patrick may be a siren but even he can't handle such a thing.
Captured. That's what Patrick said he was. So who is Pete to feel protective?
He shakes his head. These thoughts are too many and he's tired of them— he's tired, in general. Patrick would understand if Pete took the night to sleep, to feel human for a bit. His mind's always had the midnight watch but, sometimes, he can close his eyes and dream at the same time as everyone else.
Patrick would understand if he was alone for one night. Wouldn't he?
Patrick would understand.
Patrick—
A sudden splash. A terrified shriek.
Pete's eyes snap open and he's on his feet before Patrick's done screaming, running for the bathroom with his heart in his throat. Had the monsters taken over Patrick's mind? Had they caused him harm? Was it a nightmare? An attack? A threat? Pete dares not imagine for long.
The door slams open with a thunderous sound, Pete's eyes scanning the room for anything out of place.
"What happened? Are you okay? What's going on, Patrick, what—" He stops, ice-cold panic draining from his veins as he finally looks to the bath.
Patrick's still making terrified noises, flapping his tail furiously and scrambling back from the offenders.
Scrambling back from the bubbles.
Pete watches, wide-eyed, for a moment as Patrick tries to escape the suds surrounding him, the bottle of soap bobbing harmlessly in the water.
His tail slams down into the water and his hands claw at the edge of the bath. Pete's snapped out of his trance, rushing to Patrick's side even as confusion continues to trickle through his mind.
"Calm down, they're just bubbles. They're not gonna hurt you, just—" Pete reaches for Patrick's arm, swearing under his breath when the siren yanks away, his frantic motions only causing more bubbles to appear which, in turn, only seems to heighten his fear. "Come on, it's fine, I swear, let me help you!"
Patrick doesn't listen, shaking his head and rubbing the bubbles off his skin and scales, thrashing as if he's caught in a net. He slips free from Pete's hands each time there's contact, the soap aiding in his escape but also causing him to slip against the smooth surface of the bath.
"Patrick, calm down!" Pete shouts, propping a knee up on the bath to more easily reach the siren. Patrick's eyes shut and his tail flaps again, soaking Pete. Pete loses his balance for just a moment, catching himself with hands on Patrick's shoulders. Water soaks up to his elbows and his knee loses its place on the edge of the bath, dipping into the bubble-filled water and skimming across Patrick's tail. He twists along with Patrick's writhing, murmuring pleas for the other to calm down. "Patrick, chill. Patrick, Patrick, Patrick, I swear—"
Patrick yanks back one last time, pulling Pete down with a hand fisted in his shirt. Pete's halfway in the bath, stuck in an awkward position with one leg hovering over the water and another barely keeping him balanced on the bathroom floor. He's leaning over Patrick, hands on the siren's shoulders and their faces a breath apart.
"Patrick, stop," he says, careful not to move or collapse into the bath. Somehow, magically, Patrick stills. He opens his eyes and Pete's greeted by terrified blue-gold.
Deep breaths and fluttering gills, Patrick pressed onto his back and Pete doing his best to keep balanced. Pete doesn't know how much time passes but he's more than aware of the water finally stilling around them.
"Patrick," he says, at last, through heaving breaths. "What the hell happened?"
Patrick blinks, half-guilty and half-innocent. It's impossible for Pete to keep his accusatory tone as Patrick looks to the side.
"I was reaching for the duck," Patrick admits, glancing at where the rubber toy still rests on the edge. "I was so focused on being careful that I failed to see my tail knocking into the bottles. One of them fell in and spilled whatever was in it and I tried to pick it up but it started making these... things. Like air bubbles but they smelled weird and stuck to my skin and I had no idea if they were dangerous or not."
Patrick's embarrassment would be obvious from any angle but, this close, Pete can see the confusion and regret curling together in the siren's eyes— sorry and full of childish distress.
Pete takes a long breath, focusing back on the issue at hand and not on the way his stomach's twisting.
"Bubbles. They... They're a different kind of bubbles but they were bubbles," he says, pulling back a fraction but still keeping one hand on Patrick. "Like, they were made of soap and they're meant to clean you. Kinda. Whatever, they just... They aren't dangerous. So, you're fine. There's nothing to worry about."
"Oh," Patrick says after a bit, red spots coloring his face. "I... Oh."
"Yeah." Pete frowns, his attention caught by a small bubble steadily making its way down Patrick's cheek. "Hang on, you have one on your face."
"I do?" Patrick asks. "Where?"
"Here," Pete says, reaching to rub it away.
Reaching at the same time Patrick does.
He brushes against the bubble first, popping it without a sound and landing against the soft skin beneath. Patrick's there a second later, his fingertips against Pete's with the gentlest touch.
Pete doesn't move, doesn't breathe, and Patrick's stilled gills reflect the same. Wide blue-gold eyes and parted pink lips, steady fingers and the light press of his nails. Everything is silent. Everything is so impossibly still.
Damp. Warm. Patrick.
Pete pulls his hand away like he's been burned. Gasps fill his lungs, tearing through his throat as if he'd been pressed beneath relentless waves.
His mind blurs with unfair thoughts, crawling with what-ifs and why-nots. Crashing waves take over the sound in his ears, rushing blood and heavy breaths. Patrick stares back up at him, eyes wide like he's comprehending nothing— or as if he's comprehending too much. It's a gaze filled with deep blues and an expression like the one Pete saw when Patrick first rose from the water. A look speckled with stardust and glowing with trepidation, eyes stuck on Pete's in a way that makes it forbidden for Pete to turn his head. A look that dares Pete to feel anything other than the heat rising to his cheeks, the anxious excitement in his blood. A look dripping with a thousand words while revealing none. A look only a siren like Patrick could give.
Beneath his touch, Patrick squirms and it is then that Pete realizes he is still holding him down.
Pete has no idea what thoughts are now racing inside Patrick's mind, and he doesn't care half as much as he should; he only hopes that they align with his own.
It'd be easy, almost too easy, to give into the raw emotions burning through his mind. Patrick's eyes, seeming to smolder and scorch Pete's soul, tear through him with a sensation far too much like magic for it to be natural. Pete can feel the gaze on his skin, harsher than the monsters' had been but so much more pleasant. Sunset rests in Patrick's hair when he shifts a fraction of an inch, light dancing upon the gold as it fades into the dampened reds. The sight before him burns across his veins and thoughts, turning him to fantasies better left unsaid.
So easy.
A hand on Patrick's shoulder, pressing him into the water. Another raised above his cheek, pulled back but ready to return to the smooth skin at any second.
It'd be far too easy.
Pete's eyes follow a line of bubbles traversing the terrain of Patrick's jaw as the siren lifts his head, slipping from his brow and down the side of his face, finally making their way towards his lips. Careful. Cautious. Captivating.
Captured
No.
Pete pulls back the way he had before, like a fire had been lit beneath his touch. Without hesitation but with more than enough remorse.
"Pete?" Patrick sits up, eyebrows furrowing and a frown forming on his face. "I— Pete? I thought—"
"I'm soaked," Pete breathes, an excuse not even he can twist to sound valid. "I need to change. You know how to switch out the water so... Get rid of the bubbles, I guess, if they're still bothering you."
Patrick sits up, frown deepening. "But, Pete—"
Pete steps back, shaking his head— shaking all over and pretending not to know why.
"I need to change." He hurries to the door, unpleasantly pleasant emotions pressing into his guts and veins, shooting vivid images and scenarios into his mind. Images Pete's locked away; scenarios he's only dreamt of. "I need to go."
"Pete—"
"I need to write, Patrick, I don't have time for this, I—"
"Pete!" Patrick shouts.
But Pete's already pulling the door shut behind him.
~
No words. No breaths. No voices. Only the sound of Pete's pencil scratching across paper.
No thoughts. No fears. No wants.
Pete's words are fiction as he scrawls them out; fiction, and nothing more, he swears. A distraction to keep him from returning to Patrick. A cry clawing at his mind to escape, worse than monsters could ever be.
He writes, lead staining the side of his hand and paper threatening to tear beneath the maddened touch. An insatiable need to empty his mind of these words drags his hand across the page, sentences appearing before he's truly thought them out.
He's not doing this for any reason other than his book, he promises. These words, these lines, these desperate scribbles are nothing more than a writer fulfilling his duty. To write.
Right?
Someone out there must, too, crave the taste of salt on their lips, he writes. Be it of the ocean or their own tears.
Or maybe it's merely the bitterness of promises kissed across too soft skin— both things meant to be torn apart and broken before this year is through.
He barely blinks as he continues to write, never stopping to read what he's written because reading it makes it real, reading it means he'll have to think about it.
Reading it means he'll have to admit it.
At that moment, that too close/too far moment, I saw lightning burst within the room like fireworks— now-you-see-me, now-you-don't oaths of what could have been, what should have been. If monsters didn't exist, if sirens weren't real, if myths remained only on these pages, what could have been in that moment? What should have been done? Even now, these questions, these what-ifs, these... these... these imaginings agitate my mind.
Another thought stirs up. Another scene breaks through the barrier he's created and Pete bites his tongue to keep from cursing the images he sees.
I may have captured him, yes, but he caught me first and he did so in the cruelest ways. A siren only knows how to tempt and, try as he might to deny it, he knows, he knows, he has to know. No one carries the stars in their smile without feeling their heat. And he must feel the weight of gold within his eyes, the enticement buried in his very existence.
Overwhelmed with words, inundated by their presence, Pete bleeds them onto the page. There's not much to writing, correct? Sit down at a typewriter and bleed?
More words. More thoughts. More scenes spill across the paper.
Pete's a writer, writing what he must, no matter what pretty veins die in the process. It's easier to sacrifice those over his sanity.
And what of sacrifice? How should I write about something that has yet to exist?
A page tears as he flips the notebook over, as crazed as he's ever been. Isn't this how writers are meant to be? Romanticized as they write in the light of a fading moon, raving until their pains become poetry? Their madness and misery a music for those wishing to dance along to someone else's disease?
A necklace is not a sacrifice. A departure is not an offering. Admirable, perhaps, but nothing like the loss of a life. Nothing like the lack of freedom.
Nothing like losing someone you care for (or want or need) to monsters of the deep. Nothing like willingly leading someone you care about (or want or NEED) to a certain promise of torture.
This is not the promise I wished to give.
And the promise sewn into my mind is not one I should ever imagine.
The stars outside spin, dazzling Pete in ways only one other has.
He shakes his head. No. No. He must keep writing, must drain his mind of these thoughts before he can question why he's writing them. Why he's thinking them.
Why is he thinking them?
No.
I couldn't stay away. The siren is an obsession and he always has been. Will he always be? A catch-and-release I'm not meant to be used to. He's nothing like the come-and-go of every other person in my life.
I'll be the one cutting the line. I'll be the one beginning the goodbye.
Will I be the one left abandoned at the end? No matter the pattern, no matter the ways, will the result always be the same?
Pete writes like he can lock summer onto the page, keep time still with his hand on the clock— counting sentences instead of seconds, quoting memories instead of minutes.
These monsters wipe their hands on my dreams, staining nightmares into my brain. Blame them for my incoherence, my ramblings, my confession
No-one will care about the torn pages and smudged letters when he transitions this onto ink and machine, typed up and printed out like it means nothing. Like he meant to create a masterpiece rather than stumble upon it hiding in the ocean one night.
Water shifts in the bathroom, hushed and teasing.
How loud would I have to scream to drown them out? This siren's unyielding presence, the monsters' unforgiving cries.
The only things I've learned to drown are my dreams, weighed down by a sun lost to crashing waves. Weighed down by the appearance of a choice, force rotting behind the mask of free will
Force and free will are the extremes, Pete thinks, pressing down on the page until the pencil tip threatens to snap. Give him an excuse to stop, remind him that this is not the story he's meant to tell.
Force and free will.
He needs to tell this tale; he wants to keep it secret, stitched onto his chest like another tattoo, the edges of words taking the place of thorns as they dig into his skin. A perfect kind of pain.
I don't want this agony. I don't want these feelings. I don't want these thoughts or this siren in my home.
Is this force speaking? Is this free will?
Or has it been me, all along?
Pete's pencil slides across the page, never surfacing to breathe as more words— more questions, more answers, more promises and fears— appear, filling the room like a thundercloud, storming without care of how terrified Pete grows with each strike of lightning.
It'd be easier to imagine him as wicked, as an abomination. But not even fiction would excuse such a lie. How dare I suggest his strange beauty as anything other than captivating? How dare I pretend I haven't dreamed of it since the moment we met?
You've read the pages. You know the thoughts.
Why, then, has it taken so long for me to come across them on my own?
He's reaching dangerous territory. He's crossing into words he's pushed away for weeks.
He doesn't care much anymore.
Someone else must also long to know how soft red-gold hair can be. Someone else must desire to keep the feeling of him— damp and warm and trembling and perfect— beneath their hands.
This is what it means to become a predator. But, that time, he wasn't afraid.
Darkened lead on cream-shaded pages, like tattooed skin pressing a siren onto his back.
Pete's a writer. He'll always pretend there's meaning in meaningless things. Isn't that what he told Patrick, more or less?
I told him I would take him back to the ocean. Was he afraid then?
I've seen his widened eyes, his pale face. I've heard his cries and screams. Afraid of the past and reacting to pain.
What is he afraid of now? Why do I want to know?
And what do I want, anyway?
Time slows, capturing the question in a net and holding it in the air just long enough for Pete to breathe.
I want him to be afraid to leave. Not because I want him to stay but because if he leaves— when he leaves— I know how horrid these monsters are. They're in my head and in my dreams, telling me what they plan for him.
I want him to want to stay. Not because I enjoy his presence but because I can keep him safe. I can keep him trapped and contained but I can also keep him alive and well.
I want him to be happy. Not because his smile is a sun I've lost but because he's told me his pain and no-one deserves to live through such horrors without a light appearing at the end of the storm.
I want him to be human. And, god, that sounds selfish but it's not because it would keep him at my side and in my world but because it would keep him away from them, away from the terrors of rebellious monsters and their sunset weapons.
I want him to be everything that he is not— safe and at peace and mine— but I still want everything that he is. His beauty, his voice, his magic and myth and existence.
What do I want?
I want him