Want To Learn Something New In 2022??

Want to learn something new in 2022??

Absolute beginner adult ballet series (fabulous beginning teacher)

40 piano lessons for beginners (some of the best explanations for piano I’ve ever seen)

Excellent basic crochet video series

Basic knitting (probably the best how to knit video out there)

Pre-Free Figure Skate Levels A-D guides and practice activities (each video builds up with exercises to the actual moves!)

How to draw character faces video (very funny, surprisingly instructive?)

Another drawing character faces video

Literally my favorite art pose hack

Tutorial of how to make a whole ass Stardew Valley esque farming game in Gamemaker Studios 2??

Introduction to flying small aircrafts

French/Dutch/Fishtail braiding

Playing the guitar for beginners (well paced and excellent instructor)

Playing the violin for beginners (really good practical tips mixed in)

Color theory in digital art (not of the children’s hospital variety)

Retake classes you hated but now there’s zero stakes:

Calculus 1 (full semester class)

Learn basic statistics (free textbook)

Introduction to college physics (free textbook)

Introduction to accounting (free textbook)

Learn a language:

Ancient Greek

Latin

Spanish

German

Japanese (grammar guide) (for dummies)

French

Russian (pretty good cyrillic guide!)

pairing: millions knives x gn!reader tags/warnings: knives is his own warning, knives tries to strangle reader, post '98 anime, trimax elements, reader sustains minor injuries, bullying by townspeople, slight possessive behavior, canon-typical violence, reader is called a "bitch" once, arson, jealousy, touch-starved knives, reader called "doc" as a nickname, hopeful ending, slice of life-ish genre: angst, slight comfort wc: 17,765 note: knives domestication arc real. there's a lot i could say about this fic (especially the word count…) but… i hope you all enjoy! please heed the warnings! 😭

The stairs creak with each step you take to the only occupied room on the second level.

In the quiet of an empty house, the light rattling of plates produces an ugly, jarring sound. But the minor inconvenience of improperly balanced dishes is nothing compared to the riots that’d taken place for nearly a full week prior.

It had taken a cumulative three hours of reassurance from Vash—making promises to keep the situation under control—desperate for the villagers to extend the barest amount of tolerance for bringing the Devil’s son to their settlement. Under it all, he faced cruel words and hysterical accusations—half the population furious at him for even considering letting such a demon to recuperate amidst their peaceful neighbors. Angry words came from every direction; at the previous homeowners, the doctor willing to stabilize this house’s only patient, the man who’d brought him here, and you—the single volunteer who’d offered themselves up as an extra pair of eyes to watch over the slowly recovering man.

Except, Millions Knives isn’t a man. The villagers had called him many things, and there was only so much they could comprehend—or be willing to understand—after the frightful demonstration of his gift he’d frightened the villagers with.

(“That Devil’s Abomination will ruin us!” they shrieked, clutching lit torches and pitchforks. “How could you think of bringing him here to our village!?”)

You can’t say that volunteering to look after Knives was due purely to satisfy a desire to help him, but you trust Vash: the look of relief he’d given you amidst the venomous cajoling of the crowd had been enough to win you over. And if you lived to tell the story in five or ten years, it would mean that the risk he’d taken of bringing his brother here hadn’t been for nothing, after all.

Millions Knives leaves no inch of his hatred to the imagination: just his glare is enough to raise the tiny hairs on the nape of your neck—his bloodlust potent enough to feel.

Maybe he thinks that enough insults will drive you away—will break your resolve. Maybe he’s hoping you’ll lash out and give him an excuse to kill you. But with the strict order from his brother—who’d been all too willing to accept your help, flourishing a wide, hopeful smile at your tentatively raised hand—to keep violence off the table no matter what, he was about as threatening as an aggravated child.

That didn’t stop Knives from reciting the most chilling threats at you, bearing sharp teeth all the while: lips pulling back until the pink of his gums could be seen.

But it hardly matters; you’ve been called worse by lesser men, and his vitriol barely leaves a dent when he’s fighting the lucidity of a fever—one stern, slightly disappointed look from his brother enough to send him crawling into the far corners of his bed, sulking like a feral cat.

According to Vash’s explanation of his brother’s special ability, it’s sharp enough to slice cleanly through steel—precise enough to sever nerves in a human body without damaging them.

(“I don’t want to scare you,” he’d said, voice grave, “but I don’t want you to be in the dark about it, either.”)

You’d been at the back of the crowd when Knives had lashed out, swallowed by the piercing shrieking screams of men, women, and children who’d been unlucky enough to witness it.

Knives himself hasn’t deigned to show you how deadly it is just yet, but you don’t doubt he’d hardly need much convincing to demonstrate.

“Human scum,” he sneers when you open the door, balancing the tray of food on one hand. “I’ll kill you.” His fever had broken yesterday, leaving him well enough to stay awake for a few hours at a time with little issue.

“The soup is good today—it would make Vash happy if you tried it,” you say, unblinking. “The bread might be a little stale, but if you dip it—”

“I don’t need to eat to live. Only your pathetic species needs to debase yourselves like that. You should know that much from my brother.”

“—I’m sure it’ll taste good,” you finish. “Vash has told me the necessary information. He’s hoping you’ll try some of the food while you recover.” You move the soup and plate of bread onto the table beside him, next to an untouched glass of water.

There’s a chair beside his bed. One you wouldn’t dare sit in: Knives had made it clear that seat would be reserved for Vash and Vash only.

“You probably think you’re special since Vash accepted your help—forget it.” Knives sneers, fists clenched so tightly in the sheets you’re certain they’ll tear. “Once I’ve recovered my strength, I’ll wipe out this whole village. Starting with you.” His threats are softened only by the fevered crease of his brow, the way his cheeks are blotchy with the lingering effects of his cold.

“That’ll make Vash pretty upset,” you remark, and watch his jaw move, teeth grinding his face into an exceptionally poisonous expression. The furrow in his brow reaching the bridge of his nose in its intensity. His lip curls up—in disgust or mockery, you’ve no idea. It matters not as you go to open the windows, hoping some birdsong or a breeze will placate him.

It had been unclear when Knives would regain his mobility—Vash had briefed you and the doctor about his brother. Namely that, though his body shared many similarities with human biology, his ability to regenerate put him well outside the expected recovery time of normal people. When he’d first arrived, he’d hardly been able to move his arms and legs. You thought it would be that way for at least a few weeks. But clearly you’d been underestimating his generative abilities.

You make the mistake of turning your back to him—an act Knives deemed punishable by death upon your first meeting—and look over your shoulder just in time to see him snatch the bowl of soup up from the nightstand. Eyes going wide, you’re frozen—meeting his wild, triumphant snarl as he flings it at you, its contents spilling all over the sheets and floor.

It all happens so fast—before you can even blink: the house creaks, a trigger is pulled. The bowl skews off course—colliding with the rubber head of a plunger dart and crashing into the wall.

The dish shattering doesn’t startle you as much as Vash’s appearance in the doorway. The toy gun in his hand is pathetically small and harmless. He twirls it, pretends to blow steam from the barrel; tosses a wink at you.

“If there’d been a gunshot, people would’ve panicked,” he explains to your wide-eyed expression. “Sorry about that, Doc. Can you give us a minute? Those insurance girls are here to say hi.”

“But,” you say, swaying—hands hovering towards the mess on the floor. The soup is still steaming.

“I’ll take care of it. Run along now, don’t keep them waiting,” he chirps, smile not quite reaching his eyes despite the sincerity of it. He looks tired.

You step over the soup and shattered bowl on your way out. Vash waves, shuts the door behind him with a gentle click. It’s tempting to linger and eavesdrop, but you know he’ll realize if you stay behind. You rub trembling hands on your legs with a sigh and head downstairs.

“Hiya Doc!” Milly greets you with a cheerful tilt of her head. She and Meryl are sharing a cup of tea at the kitchen table. “You’re alive!”

“Yes, somehow.” You give a wry smile in return. Take a moment to calm the rapid beat of your heart.

“We heard something break,” Meryl says, brows furrowed. “Was it Knives?”

You shrug. “He’s about as happy to be here as you’d expect. I don’t think stale bread alone is enough to convince him not to destroy the village when he recovers.”

“He said that?” Meryl pauses, face mapped with worry. You wave her off, pulling a hat onto your head.

“He did, but I doubt Vash would let him.”

“That’s right, Ma’am!” Milly beams, teacup raised to her lips.

“I’m going to buy a replacement bowl before going to work,” you say.

“I’ll go with you.” Meryl smiles, stands. “It’s safer that way, right?”

(“He shouldn’t try anything like that again,” Vash will explain to you when you return, bowl secured. “He’s promised to behave for the time being. If he tries anything, let me know, okay?”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” you’ll tell him, unwrapping the bowl from its paper confines to place into the cupboard.

“Sorry about this,” he’ll apologize, eyes downcast. “I know he’s not the friendliest.”

“There’s no need to look so gloomy,” you will say, bumping his side with your elbow. “As long as he doesn’t try to cut my head off it’s not an issue. I’ve handled worse.”

“He won’t… He shouldn’t,” Vash will say. “I just… it’s harder than I thought.”)

With tensions running high in the village, Vash had suggested that Meryl and Milly keep you company when running errands whenever he wasn’t available. They couldn’t placate the hateful words or glares of the villagers, but Milly’s huge stature and enormous stun-gun had been a deterrent for many of the unarmed citizens from trying to attack you.

Hostility, however, is one of those emotions that finds a way to sneak through the cracks, no matter how carefully monitored.

(It rises around you, like the thin spout of water in a slowly filling pond.)

At your job there is little protection: anyone with a gun can walk in. Though the owners make everyone forfeit their weapons before serving, you know there’s no such thing as an unbroken rule.

All things considered, you should be lucky not to have been fired immediately following the protests: plenty of people that come to the eatery for drinks and food glare at you. They’ll spit on the floor at your feet and whisper things under their breath. But you still get paid, your bosses give you sympathetic looks in private, after closing when no one else watches.

(It fills up, and spills over while you’re paying for groceries at the variety store.)

Even though you’d chosen the check-out line with the least amount of people, even though you have Meryl with you for safety, it does nothing against the sudden, rough pressure shoving against your back, forcing you to stumble. The cashier releases the change a second too late—or perhaps intentionally—leaving it to scatter on the floor at your feet.

“Hey!” Meryl exclaims, enraged. “How could you do such a thing?!”

You kneel to pick up the change. The heavy heel of a work boot steps on your fingers, crushing them against the floor. Air hitches in your lungs in a pained gasp, eyes squeezing shut.

Meryl lets out another angry shout, but the person is already hurrying away, heavy footsteps fading quickly as you cradle the injured hand against your chest.

“Are you alright?” she asks, hovering beside you, kneeling down to assess the damage.

“Move along, will ya? Yer holdin’ up everyone else!” a rough voice barks. The line that formed behind you hadn’t been there just a few minutes prior.

“‘Move along’?!” Meryl parrots, furious. You grab her arm, shaking your head.

“The bags,” you wheeze, grimacing. “C’mon, let’s go.”

“But they—!” Meryl protests.

“There’s no point. They’re gone,” you say, standing to move out of the way. “Let’s go.”

“It’s cowardly!” she argues, carrying the bags in her arms. “They shouldn’t be treating you like this simply for showing kindness.”

“It’s understandable,” you say, trying to flex your fingers and wincing at the throbbing pain. Your dominant hand too. What a pain. “It doesn’t matter to me. Vash has already sacrificed so much. I don’t want to let him down.”

Though the doctor checks your hand after you return, though you ice it to bring down the swelling and ease the pain, your fingers will be bruised and tender for some time. Nothing broken, luckily, but you’ll have a hard time carrying heavy things for a couple weeks at least.

But still you bring Knives’ meal up, trying to hold most of the weight with your uninjured hand.

Your appearance in his room is met with a frigid silence.

According to Vash, his brother agreed to cooperate to an extent: no more attempts to hurt anyone going in and out of his room. Not that the promise means much when out of the whole village, less than five people even go inside that house: you, the doctor, Meryl, Milly, and of course Vash himself.

“These are Vash’s favorite,” you tell Knives, setting down a plate of salmon sandwiches. Your fingers ache with a twinging, bruising pain. “And some soup.” At least when you move to open the windows, nothing is thrown at your head.

Knives is tight-lipped, but his glare is as chilling as ever. You ignore the prickle of it along your neck and busy yourself tidying up the room. The sheets and floor have been cleaned.

“You may hate me,” you say, facing away from the bed, “but I’m going to help you regardless. That won’t change.”

His expression is so furious when you look up, your breath stalls.

“You’re just a pathetic human,” he spits, face twisted with the force of his ire. “I don’t need your help. I’ll kill you, I swear it. I’ll wipe your pathetic existence from this planet.”

Silence befalls the room. Muffled outside, you can hear the sounds of people. The occasional bird call. Muffled laughter drifts from downstairs—Milly and Vash conversing in jovial tones.

You take a slow breath. “The soup will taste better if you try it while it’s hot.”

The bowl crashes against the wall when you leave the room. You consider it a win and head downstairs.

The next morning, there’s someone already in the kitchen.

You’re not a stranger to Vash’s early morning routine, but he’s already dressed, loitering without even waiting for the kettle to boil for coffee.

“Just in time for breakfast,” you tease with a smile, only for it to falter when he remains stony-faced, hovering in the doorway. “Vash? What’s wrong?” you ask, walking forward to meet him.

Your home is gone. Set aflame by villagers who wanted to teach you a lesson for putting your trust in Vash—who wanted to punish you for stepping forth. For your arrogance and baseless beliefs in a man who could kill the whole village in the blink of an eye. The neighboring rooms are vacant and untouched. Only your belongings are gone—consumed in that unforgiving inferno.

“I’m sorry,” Vash apologizes quietly, as you stare at the building from the adjacent street. He looks as stricken as you feel. “The insurance girls are trying to recover stuff now, but…”

The dream of making it out alive and keeping the quiet triumph alive disappears—swept away with the smoke as a breeze carries it up towards the cloudless sky. Tears sting your eyes under Vash’s solemn gaze. But you can’t cry yet. Not yet.

“We’re starting over,” you tell him, hoarse. “Me and Knives. There’s no…” your voice catches. “There’s no going back now.”

You can’t cry yet, but Vash sheds a tear for you anyway.

At work, no one can look you in the eyes. The eatery has gotten quieter lately: you’re sent to the back again to wash dishes, where the hot soapy water runs over your hands until the temperature no longer scalds you.

Sheltered in the back of the building, no one pays any mind to you. But in that house, showing weakness to Knives is not an option. You earn enough of his ire simply by existing.

When you climb the stairs later that afternoon, some hours before dinner, your eyes are dry despite the ache behind them. The lingering pain in your fingers has yet to fade.

Vash had offered to give you his room upstairs and take the couch, but you refused: there’s no way Knives wouldn’t raise a fuss over you suddenly sleeping where his brother was. It was better for you to remain downstairs so they could be closer together.

“I’ll be doing errands upstairs today,” you tell Knives, shucking the curtains open after collecting his meal—untouched, of course, except for the empty cup of tea. Vash often takes it upon himself to eat what his brother leaves behind, flourishing you with praises. “Not that I expect you would, but if you need anything, call for me.”

“What errands must be done in an empty shell of a house?” Knives’ lip curls. “Watching you scurry around here like a bug makes me sick.”

“…The situation suddenly changed,” you tell him, smiling apologetically. “If I’m here it’s a little easier on Vash. He’s only just settling down.” Knives snarls after you.

The day Knives moved in, the owners of the house had taken what they could in two suitcases and left the rest, moving out of this small settlement—driven by angry neighbors and the fear of retaliation from Knives himself. With your job and Vash’s help, you have the funds to take care of his brother.

Not a peep is heard as you tidy up the second floor rooms, making mental notes of what should be tossed and cleaned. In particular, there’s a study that overlooks the main street, giving you a clear view of the village.

The bookshelf in the room is full of untouched titles—left behind to collect dust. You’re not confident anyone would want them, and certainly not from you, but perhaps when things calm down they’ll find a new home.

Your deliberations are interrupted by a loud, heavy series of thumps from across the hall. Dropping the books you’ve gathered, you almost trip over your own feet to get to Knives’ room.

“Are you okay?” you ask, throwing the door open.

He’s in a heap on the floor, the blankets tangled around his legs. The food has fallen off the nightstand, though you suspect he likely swept the tray off as an act of rebellion.

“The doctor is coming to assess you tomorrow,” you tell him, stepping through the doorway, “please be patient until then—”

“Get out!” he roars, and you barely dodge in time to avoid the plate flying towards your face. It hits the wall behind you and shatters on impact, leaving a stain and a trail of food on the floor. “Get out! Get out! Leave! Don’t come near me! Don’t speak to me! Die, just die!”

His glare has not lost its potency. He’s breathing like a feral animal, chest heaving, the tendons in his throat and shoulders flexing, body trembling under the strain of trying to push himself up off the floor. A long, tense moment passes with your eyes locked.

“I can’t do that,” you say finally, quietly. “It would make Vash sad.”

His nostrils flare, teeth grinding. He grabs the nearby cup, the remaining drops of water spilling out to hurl it out into the hall. It shatters high above your head, glass bits raining down behind you.

“Don’t speak about him,” Knives heaves, voice trembling in his anger. “Disgusting human, pathetic—how dare you. How dare—”

Adrenaline pulses through your body. Instinct tells you to run. But instead, you crouch, begin to pick up the shattered pieces of plate, dropping them carefully into your palm. Your bruised, aching fingers throb in protest, but still you do it. Knives crawls back against the wall, looking not unlike a cornered animal. Fists clenched against the floorboards, glaring at you.

It’s agonizing and slow, and he watches you the whole time.

You call the doctor over to help Knives back into bed. The blond practically flies away from the touch as soon as he touches the mattress, buries himself under the blankets and doesn’t say a word. You thank the doctor and continue cleaning the mess, turning the floorboards spotless.

Vash returns later that evening with Milly and Meryl. They greet you with a smile. He manages to steal a sandwich from the plate of leftovers.

“Knives has been anxious to see you, I think,” you tell him honestly. Vash goes upstairs to visit his brother while you sit on the back porch with Milly and Meryl. There’s not much to see, mostly dry bedrock with a view of the vast desert planet. It’s sort of nice, in a lonely way; that even with the hostility you face in the village square and its shops, this house’s immediate perimeter has become an unspoken, off-limits area for everyone else.

Knives doesn’t seem to mind the quiet. From what you recall of his past—at least from what Vash has told you—he’s used to wandering alone.

“Well? Aren’t you going to tell Vash?” Knives sneers at you when you bring him dinner.

“Did you want me to?” you ask. He gives no answer except the tilting snarl of his mouth. “There was no reason to,” you tell him honestly. “The two of you have been through enough.”

You hadn’t even told Vash about what happened at the store, either. But the knowing, softened frown on his face tells you there was no need: Meryl already filled him in.

“You don’t know anything,” Knives hisses. At least there’s nothing dangerous within reaching distance.

“I may not know everything,” you tell him, pausing in the doorway, “but I’m not ignorant. I know what you’ve done. Why the village was so reluctant to let you stay here. But they let you because they trust Vash. And I do too.”

“You humans with your useless sentimental feelings,” Knives sneers. “That’s why you die.”

“It’s why we live, too,” you remind him.

Without a home to return to, when your hours are cut from washing dishes or taking care of other menial tasks at the eatery, you take care of the house as if it was your own, paying extra attention to the rooms that haven’t had much use.

Amongst the rooms downstairs, there’s a piano. Hidden by a sturdy leather cover, you peel it back to admire the sight of it. Except for a chair against the wall, the room is empty except for this instrument and its accompanying bench.

There’s not much you can do to liven the room up except get rid of the dust, but you lift up the fallboard to reveal the black and ivory keys. You test out a chord. The sound is twangy and a bit hollow. Not great, but not as bad as you thought. Playable.

For all the skills you’ve picked up over the years, tuning instruments is not one of them. But you remember that the doctor had an acquaintance that used to play during holidays and festivals. Maybe you could convince him to help you fix it up.

Knuckles rapping against the window nearly scare you out of your shoes.

It’s Milly and Meryl, peering at you from the other side of the glass.

“Hiya Doc!” Milly grins as you open the shutters to greet them. “What’re you doin’?”

“Dusting,” you say, waving the feather brush. “This room hasn’t been used in a while. It’s a shame with that piano there.”

“I’m sorry,” Meryl says, frowning. “It must be lonely.”

“It’s not so bad,” you say, leaning against the windowsill. “Knives aside, Vash seems to like it here. I think he’s enjoying finally having a place to settle down.”

“I think he would be happier if you played something for him!” Milly suggests. “I’m sure the piano gets lonely too. No one’s used it since we came here.”

“That thing’s been out of tune for a while,” you tell her, massaging your fingers. “They stopped doing regular maintenance on it a while back.”

“But that’s so sad!” she protests, lips turning a pout. “Can’t you play a song for us, Doc? Just one!”

“I’ve never really—” you try, but Milly leans into the window, puts her face close to yours. She smells like tea and sun and soap. You wither. “…Okay.”

The bench creaks as you sit. You try another few keys. Milly claps at the window to encourage you.

“This thing’s pretty busted,” you say, testing a few more notes. The sounds fill the quiet space of the room nicely. While you play, you imagine a happier future—the piano tuned and fixed up, the room full of happy, dancing people, and a cool evening breeze drifting in through the windows. A place where laughter is shared.

You try for a song from your childhood—something bouncy and trilling, fingers clumsily passing over the keys, memories filtering back to you. Meryl and Milly smile with you during the awkward pauses, the wrong notes accidentally pressed. The bruises on your hand have not completely healed, and it makes playing difficult. But you do all the same, unaware of how much you missed music before your ears crave for more.

The song’s ending is unsatisfying with the croaky notes, but Milly and Meryl clap for you all the same. They seem excited by the idea that it could be fixed up. You send them on a mission to ask the doctor’s acquaintance: they’ll probably have better luck than you.

Surprisingly, when you go to Knives’ room that afternoon, he speaks up about it.

“That was an awful racket,” he so graciously tells you. “You clearly have no ounce of talent.”

It takes a great deal of effort not to smile.

“Of course it was terrible,” you tell him matter-of-factly, “I’ve never had any formal training.”

He glares after you, but says nothing more.

Just a handful of days after that, the doctor deems Knives well enough to walk.

He would not accept help from anyone but Vash. And of course he’d bared his teeth at the doctor for trying to show his brother how to support him while walking.

So instead, the doctor asked for your help: posing as Knives for a demonstration. Vash had been all too happy to let you use him as a support, getting an arm around your waist like the doctor instructed.

Knives stared the whole time, stiff with what you could only imagine was barely controlled rage.

On the first attempts to get him to walk, he clings to Vash like a leech. Removing all hopes of mobility and nearly sending both of them tumbling to the floor. From watching them—taking in how Knives sneers and bares his teeth at you—you get the sense he’s leaning more weight into his brother on purpose. The arch of your eyebrow threatens to twitch up.

There’s not much he has to do to get better, but after a few weeks of bed rest, he needs to get strength back in his limbs.

The doctor had raised his eyebrow at the timeline Vash gave—an estimated length of time that would’ve been impossible for a regular human to imitate. But despite the relatively short period, it’s impossible for Vash to stick around at every waking moment.

It had taken nearly five days of convincing for Knives to even allow you to come within five feet of him. But Vash managed to convince Knives to at least let you walk the length of the room with him. Of course, it still meant Vash had to be there for the next few days.

Knives touches you as if there are strings attached to his limbs. His movements are stiff and creaky, made all the more difficult with his refusal to wrap an arm around your shoulders (though you don’t doubt he’d do it if it meant he could try choking you out), and as a result much of his strength belied in the painful grip he held onto your shoulder with, pushing tender spots into the skin.

He walks faster with you—likely to shorten the duration of having to rely on you for support—but Vash seemed to take that as a way to help Knives get better faster, using you as a motivator to improve his condition.

“Let’s try the stairs today,” Vash says with a smile, too cheerful and wide for Knives’ fingers that are digging bruises into your waist. “Those insurance ladies and I will be waiting at the bottom. See you soon!” He hums all the way down to the first floor, audible even after he slips out of sight.

You take a breath. “Shall we?”

Knives fingers dig into your shoulder. He tries to angle away from your body, but with an arm around his waist, it’s difficult.

“I have no idea what he sees in you,” Knives starts. His voice is different this close. You can’t tell if this is a good or bad development. The sound of it is nice even if it does rumble with the barely contained urge to kill you. “But I swear I’ll reveal your disgusting nature if it’s the last thing I do.”

“Can I at least get you down the stairs first?” you sigh. “Vash is waiting.”

“You dare mock me?” he hisses, dangerously close to bruising bone.

“You want to get this over with as soon as possible, right?” you ask, attempting a smile. “C’mon. After this you and Vash can sit together and I’ll get out of your sight. That’s ideal for you, isn’t it?”

His jaw audibly clicks as he snaps it shut, turning his face stubbornly away from you.

It’s not terrible, considering. Your shoulder aches from where his fingers are pushing bruises, but seeing Vash at the bottom of the stairs helps to loosen the knot in your chest. Knives goes first. You follow him slowly, tightening your arm around his torso at any signs that he might fall.

You’re not sure if Vash’s enthusiastic praise and encouragement helps, but having his brother there does seem to make Knives a little less hostile, his hold loosening slowly to a firm but less uncomfortable pressure.

He snarls at Meryl and Milly when they poke their heads curiously around the corner. And the downstairs trip hadn’t relaxed him by any means, but he re-tightens his grip on your shoulders when they appear, tensing up with all the intention and strength of a man who could kill if he wanted to. You send them an apologetic smile before they scurry away.

“Going up stairs is the hard part!” Vash chirps, bounding up two at a time. Knives scowls. You wait patiently for him to begin the climb.

Vash is right: going up is much slower than going down. Against Knives’ wishes, you end up leading, using the strength you have to half-lift him when his body falters—either under the strain of moving or lingering pains that have yet to disappear.

His jaw is tensed the whole way, the tendons in his throat flexing, teeth grinding. His gaze doesn’t waver, though, focused at the top of the stairs. It’s the most human you’ve seen him—the struggle and desperation he’s exerting to get better.

“Good job you two. I knew you could do it,” Vash says, greets the both of you with a smile. He’s leaned up against the door of Knives’ room, steps aside to let you in. “A few more days of that and you’ll be good as new, Kni.”

“Don’t patronize me, Vash,” Knives snaps. You elect not to mention the tremors in his arms, the strain of holding himself up, refusing to rely on you more than necessary. “The moment I’m better it’ll be over for this village!”

He and his brother share a look. When you’re within arm’s length of the bed, Knives all but tears himself away from you, throwing himself back onto the mattress with a snarl.

“Well! I don’t know about you, but I’m starved.” Vash beams at you. “Shall I get started on lunch?”

“You’ll burn the food without cooking it if you try to do it all by yourself,” you tell him, exasperated, resisting the urge to roll your shoulder. “Get Meryl and Milly to help—I’ll be down in a minute.”

“Mm… okay. Behave, you two,” he says with a flourishing wave, and hums all the way out of sight once more.

“Who do you think you’re fooling?” Knives sneers, sat on the edge of his bed, fingers digging into his pants. “Don’t expect any gratitude from me. It’s all your fault, trash.”

“You seem determined to hate me,” you say, staring him down. Even though he’s the patient, just his glare is enough to make the fine hairs on your neck stand. “You don’t have to thank me, but I think you’re mistaken: it’s true you may be different from us, but deep down, you want some of the same things.”

“What?” He glares, voice lowering to a deadly rumble.

“We both want to live. We both want to find a place for ourselves in this world,” you tell him, the fine hairs on your neck prickling under his stare. You think of the look on Vash’s face when he broke the news of the fire. You think of the look on Knives’ face when he learned he would be staying here to recover. “You can hate humans all you want, but you’re not as different from them as you’d like to believe. Neither of us are perfect.”

His movements are clumsy, but it catches you off guard all the same as he lunges with a snarl, hands outstretched to wrap his fingers around your throat. The weight of his body and the force at which he throws himself at you sends you hurtling back, landing painfully on your spine. It forces the air from your lungs, and Knives squeezes. Your hands automatically find his wrists, trying to pry his hands away from your neck.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” he bellows. Footsteps thunder up the stairs. “We’re nothing alike! I’m nothing like you! You filth! Garbage! Scum! We’re nothing alike! You’re all just a hoard of disgusting animals!”

“Kni!” Vash’s hollers from the doorway. “Knives, release them!”

“Get off of me, Vash!” Knives yells, jerks a hand off your throat to elbow his brother in the jaw. “I’ll kill them. I’ll kill them all right now!”

“Knives!”

Your knee comes up to slam against Knives’ abdomen. Vash grabs Knives by the collar to haul him back, snatching his fingers away from your throat.

Curling up to suck in wheezing, ragged breaths, you miss the immediate skirmish that follows after—the two brothers grappling on the floor, Vash winning the upper hand to wrestle his brother into submission.

“Mr. Vash! Doc!” Milly is at your side, a hand wrapping around your shoulders to support you.

“Kill…! I’ll kill you!” Knives is spluttering, red-faced, fingers reaching for you, clawing on the ground. “I’ll kill you!”

“Get them out of here!” Vash barks at Milly. “I’ve got him!”

“Vash!” Knives screeches, and aims a punch at his brother.

You scramble for the door, chest tight, adrenaline spiking through your blood as Knives’ scream reaches you even to the piano room.

(“I’m sorry,” Vash will tell you later, hunching with the weight of guilt and shame. “I shouldn’t’ve left.”

“It’s not your fault,” you’ll tell him, cradling a bag of ice against your throat and wondering when the bruises will fade this time. “I provoked him a little too hard, I think.” And he’ll look at you with a wilting, faltering smile, too many emotions to process flicking across his face.

“I’ll understand if you don’t want to continue looking after him,” he’ll say, a quiet offering to you. “We can figure something else out for you.”

And you’ll think about Knives, the furious agony in his face, and will shake your head.

“No,” you’ll say, voice creaky, a physical mark of Knives’ hands left behind. “I’ll stay. I made a promise, after all.”)

The following days leave Knives moody. But with Vash hanging around more and you busying yourself with taking care of the house, you don’t see him as much.

Except for one particular morning, you keep your contact with him at a minimum—strictly for mealtime while his brother and the doctor take care of other necessities.

Vash is sitting beside the door, watching you place Knives’ meal on the nightstand. There hadn’t been much talking even before you entered the room: you suspect Knives had been sulking at his younger brother for stepping in and preventing your murder.

Vash surprises you with the sound of your name.

Startled, you glance back at him. He beckons with a gesturing finger, a quiet smile on his face.

“Can you come here a moment?” he asks. You find no reason to refuse. His expression doesn’t change much, but you think his eyes flicker for half a second—just over your shoulder. “How’s the bruise here?” he asks, motions to his neck while staring at yours.

You resist the urge to glance back at Knives. “It’s fine,” you tell him, knowing his older brother is hearing every word. You hold your tongue against telling Vash what he was there to hear: that there would be no lasting damage, despite the slight hoarseness of your voice as the bruise fades.

“Can I have a look?” he asks. Perplexed, you tilt your chin up, allowing him to see your neck. You’re not expecting his touch, despite the wide motions to telegraph it, and the calloused pad of his thumb feels foreign against the column in your throat. Vash traces a thumb around it, looking oddly morose. And his touch is gentler and nonlethal compared to his brother’s, but your heart rate still jumps when his thumb passes over the dip of your throat, just at the base of it.

“Human,” Knives kisses mere feet behind you, beyond the limits of his patience. You swallow. Vash’s fingers move with the motion of it.

“It’s okay,” Vash reassures you, voice quiet. You’re not quite sure what he’s seeing: he can’t feel the lingering throb in your neck as his fingers pass over it, but whatever he does gather from this odd development must satisfy him, because his touch recedes. He leans back in the seat, smiling. “Thank you. I’m going to stay here a little while longer and chat with Knives,” he says, the dismissal not unkind, but firm despite its subtlety. “Those insurance ladies were talking about sharing some tea with you yesterday. The tall one was especially excited about restocking her pudding supply. I’m sure she’d be happy to have you tag along.”

Unable to rid your skin of the ticklish sensation, you raise a hand to rub the area lightly.

“I’ve never not seen Milly happy about pudding,” you say carefully. Vash’s smile widens. “I’m headed off to work. I’ll be back for lunch.”

“Mm. Take care.” Vash waves you off with a pleasant air. You do not make eye contact with Knives as you exit the room.

He’d been smug about nearly strangling you, and his smile—however leering and sharp, looks better on him than one of his angry, twisted scowls. You’re sure he would’ve been content to remember it as a victory over you. And maybe that’s why he doesn’t throw any more plates or bowls at the wall, why he agrees to be some watered-down version of civil when Vash is away.

“You really shouldn’t try walking on your own just yet.” You catch him mid-motion one afternoon: peeling back his blankets, looking half-caught. “Is there somewhere you wanna go? I’ll walk with you.”

Knives sneers, finishes tossing the blanket aside.

“I don’t need you,” he hisses. “I can get there on my own.”

It’s like watching a child walk for the first time. He sits on the edge of the bed, eyes down, bracing himself. He can push himself up fine, lips spreading into a victorious smirk. But then his knees buckle, and you lunge for him, hoping to catch him before he hits the ground.

“Don’t touch me!” he snaps, swiping at you. “Keep your filthy hands to yourself!” He curls away from you, this particular twist of his mouth looking different than you expect. Rather than looking angry, the tilt of his mouth carries the ghost of shame.

Slowly, you kneel in front of him. Vash is out—if Knives really were to try and kill you this time around, it’s likely he’d be successful.

“I’m sorry,” you tell him, “about kicking you. I did have a reason, though. You ever heard of that saying? That the mouse will attack a cat if it gets cornered.”

His lip curls, looking more like the Knives you’ve come to know.

“There’s no outcome for the mouse other than death. Because that’s what happens when you’re up against a power greater than yours. The mouse seeks death to escape the pain of living.”

You shake your head. “No, that’s not quite it. It attacks the cat because it wants to live. You want to live, and so you attack. I want to live, so I kicked you.”

Knives’ eyes narrow. “Clearly you don’t. Otherwise you would’ve left and never come back. You’re just feeling superior because there was a higher power on your side this time. But there won’t be next time.”

“So you admit your brother is a higher power than yourself?” you ask.

Knives hisses out a noise—a low snarl. Sat on the floor, though, he reminds you of the fussy stray cats, fluffing themselves up to appear deadlier than they are.

You stand. His eyes follow you. “I want to help you. That’s what I promised Vash. My feelings haven’t changed.” Your hands find your hips. “Now, about that piano—one of the doctor’s acquaintances has agreed to help fix it up, so it should be in better condition. If you wanna try playing it, I can bring you there. But you have to let me help you.”

“And why would I do that?” he asks, lip curling. “Maybe I’ll kill you now that Vash isn’t here.”

“Then I won’t be able to walk with you to the piano room,” you tell him. “Earlier you mentioned my playing, right? I figured maybe you’d wanna try it out for yourself. I bet it sounds better.”

Knives’ lips pull back to reveal his gums. “As if better sound will do anything for your lousy playing.”

“You should try it, then,” you say lightly, echoing Milly’s words. “I’m sure the piano is lonely.”

The look on Knives’ face tells you all you need to know about what he thinks of that sentiment. You try to keep your expression matter-of-fact, even as he tenses with clenched fists. Your throat tingles.

It feels like victory when he finally, finally acquiesces, easier to ignore the way he flinches when you help him stand, getting an arm around his waist. Out of politeness, you let him lead. He’s hobbling more than walking, but as long as he’s using the muscles you suppose it’s not a terrible thing.

The piano greets him with its sleek black cover. You can feel his chest expand with a quiet, long breath at the sight of it.

“Leave,” he commands when you help lower him onto the bench. It’s an act of mercy for you to comply without any remarks.

The house is quiet after wandering into the kitchen. Knives tests a few of the notes with a string of chords. The sound is better than you expected.

“Yo.” Vash greets you from the entrance. “Everything going well?”

“Vash,” you smile, “you’re back.”

“Those insurance girls are good at pestering people,” he sighs, drapes himself in a chair. You chuckle. “I’m always stuck with the hard jobs when they’re involved.”

“You seem to be having fun, though,” you say. “Are the… the villagers aren’t treating you poorly, are they?”

His smile is thin. “It’s alright. I don’t blame them for being upset. The insurance girls are good about keeping the damages under control.”

“Well, it is their job, I suppose. Old habits are hard to break. Besides, it probably makes it easier on them that you’ve finally settled down,” you say, smiling.

“You should keep them company too.” He pouts.

“I’ve got my hands full at the moment,” you say, gesturing to the direction of the piano room. There’s a song coming from it, now, a low, melodious hum that strikes a terribly nostalgic feeling in your chest. “Though maybe when Knives makes a full recovery we’ll finally be able to invite some people over.”

“I hope you have the funds for pudding,” he sighs.

“That depends on you, doesn’t it?” you tease through slight laughter. “Though I’m sure Milly would be just as partial to beer as she is pudding.”

“She’s terrible at holding her liquor,” Vash says, waves his hand in the air. “You’ve never seen her drunk, have you?”

“No, but I’ve seen you,” you say, moving towards the stove.

“I’ve never actually gotten drunk!” he protests, pout deepening. “Those other times don’t count.”

“You mean the times you vomited in public?” you tease.

“It doesn’t count!”

The moment it escapes, you realize it’s been a while since you’ve laughed. The sound of it surprises you, but it’s relieving to see Vash join in. It feels good—like stretching a muscle after a long period of stagnancy.

A loud, ugly sound from the piano room startles you out of it. Sharing a look with Vash, the two of you leave the kitchen to find Knives still at the piano, shoulders hunched, head lolled forward. His back is to the door. Vash angles himself in front of you.

“What’s the matter, Knives? Get bored already?” he asks with an air of nonchalance.

“I didn’t realize you were here,” Knives says. He looks over his shoulder to glare at you. “Were you enjoying yourself?”

Vash leans in his line of sight, hands up. You can hear the smile in his voice. “It sounded like you were having fun. I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“Take me back,” Knives says. You move into the room. He snarls. “Not you.”

“Now, now,” Vash says, puts a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “They just want to help, Knives.” He turns a smile to you. “I’ll take him back up, don’t worry about it.”

Though Vash seems content enough to help his brother, you cannot help but raise an eyebrow as Knives gives you a triumphant, leering grin on their way out the room.

From then on, whenever Knives picks up that his brother is in the house, he plays more passionately—gut wrenching songs filling the house. You think it must be a message from him—something Knives makes sure his brother hears before leaving.

And now that he’s more accustomed to walking, Knives makes it a point to fill the other rooms with his presence, too.

He watches you make dinner one night, seated in a chair by the door—having claimed he doesn’t want to sit at the table like a human—and sneers the whole time, watching you chop vegetables. Taking periodic sips of his drink, though never when your eyes are on him.

“Is that enough for the three of you pests?” he sneers.

“Hm? Well between the two of us”—you gesture between the two of you with a free hand—“and Vash, it’ll be enough.” His eyes narrow suspiciously at you. “…Oh, you mean Meryl and Milly? They’re limiting their time here.”

“Did they finally decide to leave my brother alone?” he snarks.

Your mouth quirks up. “No, but you didn’t like it when they visited, right? They understand. The porch is just as welcoming as the downstairs is.”

(Neither Milly or Meryl had been too put-off by your suggestion, waving off your apologies with an understanding smile.

“It’s the best course of action if it prevents Knives from becoming too violent.” Meryl had nodded sagely.

“Do we still get to eat pudding with you?” Milly’d asked. You laughed and told her yes, of course.)

Knives doesn’t say anything in response. When you glance back at him, there’s a split second before he scowls where his expression is less severe. Just for a moment, though, as if your eyes had reminded him of the hostility he was supposed to be spitting.

“Do all humans use these weapons as clumsily as you?” he asks snidely.

“This is a kitchen knife for cooking. I’m not using it as a weapon,” you tell him. “I’m using it for dinner.”

“You shouldn’t bother. I don’t need you poisoning my brother more than you already have. You’ll rot his brain.”

“I don’t wanna hear that from someone who won’t even eat the meals Vash helped make. He worked hard to help me, since I’m doing it all myself.” You sniff. Knives’ glare sharpens on your back. You’re lucky he’s not within arm’s reach, or you’re sure he’d test how well you could defend yourself with a utility knife. “Vash is coming back for dinner soon. You should try some of the food. I’m sure it would make him happy,” you say.

Knives merely scowls and looks away.

The more he begins to settle in, the more weight is lifted from your shoulders. The more he settles in, the more obvious it becomes that not everyone is as optimistic as you.

The assault comes before you have time to process what happens.

A gasp pulls from Meryl’s mouth—audible even across the street as a tomato pelts the center of your chest. It comes out of nowhere—soft and smelling slightly rotten from the sun, staining your clothes with the pulpy flesh. Another follows, splatting against your spine, the sound of it loud over Meryl’s protests. A rough set of hands shoves you off the walkway lining the grocery store’s front, sending you tumbling into the dirt. You can feel the bread get crushed between your shoulder and the ground.

“We’ll remember your face when that Devil’s Abomination kills our loved ones!” an angry voice hollers.

“You’re just like him! A curse on this village!”

“You should be ashamed to show your face around here!”

“Enough!” Meryl shouts, hovering protectively near you. “How can you all treat someone else like this?”

“Don’t bother, Meryl,” you say, pushing yourself up, using a hand to catch the groceries threatening to spill from the mouth of the bag. “Let’s go. Vash is waiting.”

“But—!” she tries. You turn to look at her, pleading.

“Let’s go. Please.”

No amount of scrubbing can get the stains completely out. With no other clean shirts, you’ve no choice but to wear it. The dirt will come out easily enough, but the tomato will linger as an odor and a visible mark. You’ll have to go to work in this shirt.

Knives clocks the stain for half a second before his eyes rise to meet your face, scowling from against the pillows.

“Are you so clumsy that even handling food is no longer a possibility?” he sneers.

You try for a smile. “You can tell?”

“Not only are you pathetic, you’re also a fool,” he snaps. “Even your measly skills couldn’t have regressed so much in such a short period.”

It’s not a question to ask what happened, but his eyes linger. You bite the inside of your cheek.

“Maybe I should ask someone for lessons?” you suggest.

“Human,” he growls, “don’t play games with me.”

“I’m not,” you tell him. “Vash will be here soon. I think it would make him happy if you ate lunch with him.”

Knives’ scowl deepens.

Even after switching shirts, you can feel the lingering imprints of the bruises, and Knives’ eyes flicker to the spot more than once, silent and observing.

Even with the extra eyes, you can’t completely swallow the trepidation in your throat, fingers tight around the scissors.

No matter how much time will pass, you get the feeling Knives won’t be very forgiving if you make him bleed—no matter how accidental the slip might be. If you’re not careful, you might clip the top of his ear.

When his hair had first shown signs of growth, he’d staunchly refused to let you come anywhere near him with hair clippers. It was only with continuous reassurance from Vash that he allowed his brother to carry him out the back door into a chair set out as a temporary haircut station.

Considering everything, his hair is surprisingly easy to work with. Soft, from what you can tell. He twitches with every quiet brush of your hand near him, likely disgusted from having your touch on him. But it’d been amusing to hear that he’d refused Vash’s generous offer to cut it.

Your nails accidentally scrape against his scalp—just a light touch, but it has Knives jerking his head away, turning to glare over his shoulder at you, body hunching. This close, he wouldn’t have to exert much effort to kill you. And it’s in the moments where you’re physically closest to him that you remember Vash’s warning about Knives’ ability.

“You can tell me what you want, you know. If you don’t say anything I won’t understand what you’re thinking.”

He’s completely tense in the chair, not even the muscles in his jaw relaxed as you continue to trim the pale blond strands.

“I doubt your small mind could understand anyways,” he snaps.

Your fingers pass over the curve of his ears. His lips pull back in a quiet snarl—more subdued than the one he would’ve given just a few weeks prior.

“Well, you never know until you try.”

“Pretty words from a hypocrite,” he scoffs. His ear is warm beneath your touch.

“It’s the human in me,” you say, trying hard to suppress a smile as his brow creases, visibly annoyed.

“When you’re done over there, can I get one?” Vash calls your attention over with a wide grin. He and Meryl are watching from the porch, their expressions carrying varying degrees of tension.

“Vash, I gave you one just the other day,” you say, raise an eyebrow at him as your fingers brush Knives’ nape. He twists, scowls. You move the scissors away from his head.

“When was this?” he demands. “I didn’t hear about this.”

“It was the beginning of the week,” you tell him. His eyes narrow, no doubt searching your face for any indication of a lie. “He asked for one.”

“Why wasn’t I informed?” he asks, sounding not unlike a child. Your hand runs lightly across his temple, separating the shorter hairs from the ones still needing a trim. His eyebrow twitches, lips pressing in an expression you daren’t call a pout.

“I didn’t think you’d care,” you say honestly. “Plus, you wouldn’t let me cut your hair until today. Else I would’ve given you both one on the same day.”

Knives scoffs, turns back around.

“Mr. Vash, I’m back!”

It’s Milly; waving with her whole arm, carrying a bright smile as she approaches. There’s a little package in her hands—it must be mail for him. You refocus your attention back to Knives. He hadn’t exactly told you what he wanted in terms of style, but you doubt he’d appreciate having anything that made him stand out—a simple trim would be enough.

“Doc!” Vash catches your attention with a loud, cheerful voice—his tone crooning the first notes of an off-key song. You brush stray hairs from Knives’ shoulders. “Can you come here a sec?”

“But…” you say, frowning. Vash smiles, beckons you with the wave of his hand.

“It’s alright—we have a delivery for you,” he says. “You can come here.”

You debate if you should leave the scissors with Knives. A half-thought you squash when you stick them in the apron’s pocket, giving his hair one last glance over. He’s not pleased—you can tell from the scowl in your peripheral. But he says nothing as you approach the porch.

“Here.” Vash’s voice is surprisingly quiet, his cheerfulness having mellowed into something soft—melancholy, if you had to pinpoint the lilt of his brow.

The packaging crinkles beneath your fingers. Vash prompts you to open it with a little nod. Milly and Meryl are smiling beside him.

It’s your pocket watch. The one you had tucked beneath your mattress—a parting gift from a figure of your past long ago. It’s yours, because of the etchings on the inside of the cover, though the watch itself looks new; shinier than you remember—even on the day you received it.

“It’s the only thing that survived the fire,” Meryl explains as you cup it in both hands, running a thumb around the circumference of it. “We brought it to the jewelers for them to fix up. Is it to your liking?”

The dusty air stings your nose. The fire hadn’t been that long ago, but you still mourned the loss of all your possessions: the ones that mattered, at least. Your pocket watch had survived, though, heralding the beginning of a new story for you.

“’s perfect,” you say, speaking around the thickness in your voice. “Thank you.”

They’re respectfully quiet as you inspect it: turning it over in your hands, running your fingers around the short, delicate chain. Snapping it shut and clicking it open, feeling the dulled, scratched out words on the inside of the lid. You raise a hand to your eyes, but they’re dry.

“It’s the least we could do,” Vash says. “You’re doing so much for us. And Knives.”

A smile touches your face. “Dummy, I don’t need anything in return for that.”

Vash’s eyes flicker up, glances behind you. He leans back in his seat with an easy expression. You pocket the watch and reach out a hand. He takes it—you squeeze his fingers gently, repeating the motion with Milly and Meryl.

“Thank you,” you say again, dry-eyed and soft. “I appreciate it.”

“Take good care of it, okay Doc?” Milly smiles.

“I will.”

Knives has a grumpy expression on his face when you return.

“We’re almost done,” you tell him, telegraphing the motion you make to pluck lightly at his hair.

“Finished mourning those burdensome sentiments?” he sneers.

The pocket watch is a comforting weight. You know he can hear the smile in your voice when you respond.

“Yeah. For now, at least.”

He doesn’t say another word, but he keeps that sullen expression on his face up until he makes Vash help him back inside as you tidy up the area. In the following days, however, you feel there is less resistance when you help him around the house.

Though you’d like to believe it’s because he’s finally come to tolerate you, the real reason is likely due to his recovery. The doctor had commented on the unusually smooth process.

“You’ll probably be able to walk on your own pretty soon,” you tell him, watching how he walks. Looking for any moments where he might falter. His posture isn’t as stiff, either. Though he’s not leaning into you more than he has to. “It’s impressive—most people would still need a few weeks to recover.”

“Of course,” Knives says, looking oddly smug. “You pathetic humans die so easily. It’s a wonder you’ve managed to survive this long.”

“We’re good at that,” you say, turning into the doorway to the piano room. “I know we’re nothing but greedy animals to you, but if anything, we’re resilient in different ways. The important ones, I think.”

His arm clamps around your shoulder, but his grasp loosens when he learns all it does it inadvertently pull you closer.

“Useless,” he gripes, but the severity of his leering is not as stinging as it had been when you first met. You mark it as another win.

Movement in your peripheral. The way the bench is facing, Knives can’t see behind him through the window. But you can—spotting a figure tiptoeing past, the silhouette belonging to someone other than Vash, Milly or Meryl.

A knot of anticipation twists in your arteries. Spine straightening, you glance down at Knives. He’s settling on the bench, stretching out his fingers.

“You’re fine here on your own for a little, right? Gotta bring the laundry in,” you say, lightly. He throws a scrutinizing glare at you, but you’re already moving towards the door, turning away before he can see the smile fall away from your face.

A hot dry breeze pushes into the house as you open the back door, beelining towards the figure.

You recognize the figure immediately: Marvin Goodrich—he’d been extremely vocal against allowing Knives to stay in the village ever since he arrived, carried over Vash’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes. If you recall, he and his brother Jonah had also been the ones to threaten the owners of the house into leaving. An encounter with either of them spells trouble.

“What are you doing?” you ask, voice strong and clear.

He fakes a surprised look, swinging a rusted shovel over his shoulder, doing very little to suppress the leering grins spreading wide across his face as you approach.

“Nothin’ much,” he drawls, the free hand on his hip, drawing your line of sight to the gun strapped there. “Just goin’ for a walk.”

“Where’s the other one?” you ask. Jonah might be an idiot, but he’d been one of the first to voice his protests at letting Knives stay—had cajoled the crowd into a heightened state of frenzy before Vash, Meryl and Milly were able to calm everyone down.

“Dunno,” Marvin shrugs.

The muscles in your jaw tighten. You gesture to the shovel. “What’s that for, then?”

“Just a little digging,” he says, looses a chuckling sneer. “Maybe I’ll hit a vein of water and become filthy rich.”

“That sounds nice,” you say, voice plain. “If you don’t mind I’d like to take the laundry in,” you tell him, gesturing with the basket in your hands. “Those sheets should be dry now.”

“Oh, are they?” Marvin hums, circling around one of the poles keeping the clothes line up. “It’s not very smart to leave them out like this. The wind could just”—he plucks the corner of one with a hand—“blow it away.”

“The winds have never gotten that strong around here,” you say, fingers tightening around the basket handles. “You’ve lived here as long as I have, Marvin. You should know that by now.” The smile falters on his face.

“Why don’t I help you, then?” he suggests airily, gesticulating with wide movements as he reaches up to release the clips attaching the sheet to the line. He mocks a bow. “More hands make light work. Plus, I know how tired you must be: looking after that Devil’s Abomination must be such hard work.”

“It’s actually quite simple,” you tell him. “I’m sure even you could do it.”

“Bitch,” he sneers, and rips the sheet from the line.

“Stop it,” you demand, and let out a startled gasp as arms wrap around your body, stopping your movements.

It’s Jonah. He snuck up behind you during the conversation with Marvin. He leers too close to your face. You try to cringe away.

Marvin takes it upon himself to strip the line completely of laundry, tossing each sheet to the ground and stepping on it on his way to the next one. Trampling the fabric into the dirt.

“Now, now, c’mon, just watch the master at work,” Jonah murmurs. You try to kick him in the shin. “Don’t be hasty,” he hisses, pulls out a short blade to hold to your throat. “We’re just trying to help you.”

“Funny, because to me it looks like you’re just throwing a tantrum,” you snap. He presses the sharp edge of the blade into your skin. Not quite cutting but close to it, the threat swelling at the base of your neck. Fuck, you shouldn’t have sent Milly and Meryl away.

“Well, that was fun.” Marvin sticks the head of the shovel into the ground. “But I think it’s missing something.” He starts to pile dirt onto the crumpled sheets.

“You—!” The knife digs into your throat. But Jonah pulls it back; he must not want to actually hurt you.

“Stop wriggling!” he barks, tightens the arm secured around your arms.

Marvin reaches for his gun. You freeze at the motion, thinking of Knives in that piano room. If they killed you, would they attack him next? You’re sure he’d be able to defend himself, but that’s not the issue—if even a single person outside of that house got hurt, not only would it increase the possibility of a revolt by ten fold, but Vash and Meryl and Milly would also face consequences.

But Marvin doesn’t point the gun at you. Instead, while he stomps the piled dirt into the sheets, he takes aim at the line strung between the two stakes.

“Don’t—” you try, but the gunshots drown your voice. The rope is shot clean through, dropping on top of the mess he and Jonah’d made with the sheets.

Satisfied, Jonah hooks a foot around your ankle to send you tumbling, taking the knife away from your neck in time as you collapse into a heap. You clamber up, racing towards Marvin. He takes a fistful of dirt and flings it at you. Your arms come up to protect your eyes.

“Doc! Duck!”

Without thinking, you drop, arms crossed over your head. The reverberating boom of Milly’s gun aches in your eardrums. Marvin and Jonah scatter with muffled curses, snatching up the shovel and escaping around the neighboring building.

“Doctor!” Meryl is the first to reach you, careful hands brushing dirt away from you.

“And stay away!” Milly shouts, mouth set in a firm line, chest puffed out. She rushes over when they’ve disappeared. “Are you alright?”

“I’m sorry we couldn’t get here sooner,” Meryl gasps. You lean into her touch, harsh breaths escaping your mouth.

“It’s okay,” you sigh, raising a hand to cup your eyes.

“It’s—” Meryl’s voice catches. “It’s not,” she whispers, furious. She and Milly stay at your side as you regulate your breathing.

“You really saved me there,” you say, raising your head to smile at them. “Thanks.”

“Your neck,” Milly says, frowning. The air stings it. You must’ve gotten nicked.

“Jonah has always been a clumsy oaf,” you say, standing. “I’m surprised they even thought to do this. It’s a miracle for them.” Your mouth twists bitterly.

“We’ll help you clean it up,” Meryl promises.

“I can’t ask you to—”

“Don’t worry about it, Doc!” Milly smiles at you, bright and kind. “It must be hard on your own. Besides, Mr. Vash wanted us to help keep an eye on the house anyways. This is part of that.”

She and Meryl won’t take no for an answer. Your shoulders sag.

“I guess I can’t refuse, then. Can I?” Milly’s smile widens. “Okay. I’ll get the bucket. It’ll be hard without the line to hang them up, though.”

Milly straightens her back, taps her fist against her chest. “Don’t worry about that! We’ll fix it up right away.”

“You should see to Knives,” Meryl says, picking up the nearest sheet and shaking out the dirt. “I don’t think he should be left alone for too long.”

You cast a glance towards the house. “No, I suppose not.”

You try to pat off as much of the dirt from your clothes as possible on the way in. It’ll be impossible to explain to Knives why you took so long. Why you’re covered in dirt. Not that you think he’d ask—or care, for that matter.

It’s quiet inside. Knives must’ve stopped playing a while ago. You expected him to wander off, no matter how difficult it would be for him to walk, but to your surprise he’s still seated at the bench. Hands in his lap, posture stiff.

“What’s wrong? Did you get bored?” you ask.

“You’re dirty.” He scowls. You offer a sheepish smile.

“The wind was stronger than I thought. It picks up a lot of dust.” His gaze sharpens.

“What happened.”

“Nothing much,” you lie, head tilting. “Something did come up, though. Lunch might be a little late today. Milly and Meryl—oh, you’ve probably forgotten. They’re the nice insurance ladies. They’re going to have lunch here so I’ll be making extra for them.” You move to close the fallboard.

Knives’ hand moves faster than your eyes can see. His fingers closing painfully around your wrist, but the pain is ambient as realization strikes you hot in the center of your chest: this is the first time he’s voluntarily touched you. Touched you, without the intention of hurting, if the fractional loosening of his grip is any indication.

Your eyes are wide as he yanks you forward, your other hand preventing you from falling face first into him by slamming onto some keys, creating an ugly sound that reverberates.

“I saw you,” he hisses. “I saw what they did.” His eyes flicker to your throat. “Why are you hiding it?”

“I’m not—” you protest. “It just—it’s not important.”

“It was about me, wasn’t it?” he snaps, voice rising. “You’re not showing me kindness by concealing it. I’m not weak.”

“It’s not that I think you are,” you argue, frowning. “I just—” Your lips purse. “I didn’t think you’d want to know.”

His lips pull back into a snarl. He releases your wrist.

“Useless,” he hisses, curling away from you. “Don’t touch me,” he snaps when you reach for him. “Leave me.”

On another day, you’d argue. But Meryl and Milly are waiting for you.

“We’re having pasta for lunch,” you tell him, and leave to fetch the bucket for washing.

He doesn’t speak another word for the rest of the day, content with expressing his dissatisfaction with varying degrees of snarled faces. It’s the worst mood he’s been in for a while—and you can’t for the life of you understand why. Maybe he misses the thrill of killing indiscriminately. Maybe he’s frustrated that he still hasn’t fully recovered, despite being quicker than a regular human.

He’s still sulking even when you return, electing to stay in the piano room while you make lunch.

After that, he takes to watching you. Not that he had any qualms about openly staring—choosing to follow your every move like a hawk, spitting all the vitriol he could at you into just his expressions alone. But it’s different now. No less deliberate but quieter.

You don’t talk about the incident with the laundry again, but it hardly matters when you can feel his gaze on you—tracing the front of your throat where Jonah’s blade had been: the tiny wound scabs the next day and is gone before the week is over, not even a scar left behind.

There are too many things to do—Milly and Meryl help you reinforce the clothesline. Their visits become more frequent, but they respect your wishes and don’t come inside, keeping to the porches and perimeter.

Now more than ever you want to create a home. Not just for yourself, but for Vash, who’s always smiling kindly at you no matter how much trouble you bring; even for Knives, who, despite his vehement denials and quiet leering at your insistence to keep everything tidy, belongs in a place he can think fondly of no matter where he goes—a place he deserves to call home.

When you next go to work, one of the owners stops you before you can make it to the back to get ready.

“I’m sorry,” Donna says, looking at least a little apologetic. “You should’ve seen this coming, though. We’re getting less and less customers. I think it’s because—well, it’s best if you stop coming here for work.”

There’s nothing you can say to change their minds. Not even offering to work without pay will get them to agree, and you walk back to the house, numb. When you get past the entrance, you sink to the floor in a crouch and stay there for the entire length of what should’ve been your shift.

It’s hard to try and keep things cheerful, but you do your best—testing out your luck with the piano when Knives isn’t playing it; getting Vash to help you with the mundane but necessary tasks like prepping for meals and deep cleaning the house.

One day, Vash surprises you by popping out of nowhere.

You’re fiddling with the piano keys when his head appears outside the window, much like Milly and Meryl had. You watch him with a raised eyebrow as he climbs in, pulling every inch of his lanky arms and legs through the opening.

“I don’t think Meryl will appreciate it if you make it a habit of coming in through the window,” you tell him, hands in your lap. “What about work?”

“They let me go early,” he says, nods to the piano. “Are you playing something?”

“Not really,” you say. “I don’t have formal training or anything—‘m just messing around with the keys.”

“May I join you?” he asks. You scoot over, smiling.

“You don’t have to ask, Vash. Though I didn’t know you knew how to play.”

“I learned a little on my own,” he says. The leather cover dips with his weight as he takes the spot beside you. “I only know one song, though.”

“Should I fetch Knives? I feel like he wouldn’t want to miss his brother’s grand performance,” you joke. Vash merely gives you a closed-lipped smile. He places his fingers on the keys.

The melody he plays is unfamiliar in its simplicity, but he strikes each key with such tender confidence you cannot help but wonder if he’s still even in the room with you. He and his brother share multiple talents, it seems.

Much of the song has the same repeated notes. You stay quiet on the bench, swaying with the music and looking between the keyboard and his face—taking note of the distant expression, the somber tilt of his mouth as he plays.

The music fades too quickly when he stops. You think, for a moment, the way the light catches his eyes makes them look glassy. Out of politeness, you look away.

It’s a quiet moment you don’t often get to spend with him.

“Thank you for playing—it was lovely,” you say.

He takes a breath. Sighs it out. “Yeah, it’s a good song. It’s—it’s my favorite.”

“Do you know any others?” you ask, gesturing to the keyboard. Vash chuckles.

“No, that was the only one I ever wanted to learn.”

“Does it have lyrics?”

“It does. Though I’ve… forgotten them,” he says. “Kni might remember, though.”

“Oh—” You jolt out of the seat. “Meryl and Milly are coming over for lunch—I nearly forgot. I’ll have to make extra. Want to help?”

He smiles—a fond, tired thing. “Sure.”

“I’ll let Knives know—maybe he’ll want to sit with us,” you say.

The stairs creak as you climb; propelled up by the subtle lightness in your chest. The door is closed. You knock.

He’s sitting at the edge of his bed, body bowed forward, elbows resting on his thighs. His head is down. In a t-shirt and loose pants, the sight is almost domestic.

“Oh, good, you’re up,” you say. “We’re getting started on lunch. Milly and Meryl will be dropping by, but I can bring you downstairs to sit with me and Vash if you want—”

“Quiet.” His voice comes out rough and scratchy. “Scum—where did you learn that song? What were you doing?”

“Song? Oh, you mean the one just now? That wasn’t me, it was—”

Knives reaches for you, closing the distance quickly to encircle your wrist in a tight grip.

“Don’t play it,” he hisses. “I don’t care who taught you—don’t.”

“Knives—” you protest, trying to pull your arm away. He yanks you forward, causes you to stumble into him, saved only by getting a hand up in time to brace yourself against his shoulder. “I’m not the one who played it,” you tell him.

“I don’t care—” His expression twists. “Scum… don’t.” The fingers around your wrist are warm. You have half a mind to reach out to find his pulse, to find it along the length of his neck and feel it jump beneath your thumb.

His breathing is loud. Forceful and uneven. You let him sit and listen to his breaths, waiting patiently for them to mellow.

“What’s wrong?” you ask plainly. He refuses to answer. “…Do you want to sit with us?” you ask. “I’m sure Vash would like to have lunch with his brother.”

Knives shoves you away, leaves you with the bare throbbing memory of his fingers around your wrist, squeezing.

“Leave,” he snarls, and crawls back onto the bed. “Trash.”

“I’ll bring you tea,” you say. Curled up with his back to you, Knives makes no effort to respond.

Vash doesn’t mention his brother’s absence, and you don’t bring it up when Meryl and Milly arrive, all smiles and grateful hands when you pass off their portion of lunch to them. The four of you eat on the back porch, and even though you know they can see how often your gaze drifts up to where Knives room is, the windows firmly shut, you can’t stop the worry creasing between your eyebrows.

Knives’ moodiness is nothing new. He keeps it to himself, though—unwilling to share with you or even Vash, who takes to visiting Knives after dinner. You think of the song Vash played on that piano. The significance behind it is lost to you—maybe a song from their childhood?

The chores keep piling, though, and the opportunity to ask Vash about it slips away. You take it upon yourself to repair little things—squeaking hinges in the kitchen and bathroom, loose screws of well-loved cabinet doors. You tidy up what you can and have Milly and Meryl help to put unused books and accessories away for later sorting. You fix up the creaky porch chairs that they love to sit in during visits. Milly helps you give the wood a fresh coat of paint.

And for the most part, Knives has nothing to say of it—though he does watch while you fix the stickiness that prevents the windows in his room from opening smoothly. Though you think that’s probably because he hates the change that happens without his knowledge.

“It’s empty in here.”

He sits stiffly on the couch—one leg crossed over the other, arms folded against his chest.

“I’ve been cleaning,” you say. There’s a growing pile of trinkets near your feet. The bookshelf nearly cleared off completely. Maybe Vash will help you redecorate it.

“…And this?” He nods to the folded up sheets hanging over the couch arm.

“Oh, I sleep on the couch—that’s my blanket and stuff.” He makes a face. “I put a sheet over it—it’s not dirty or anything,” you say, reflexively defensive when his mouth grimaces.

“I simply assumed Vash would’ve let you sleep on the floor or outside like a proper animal,” he says.

“Well, he did offer to give me the room he’s in now,” you say, “but I declined. Didn’t think it would be a good idea.”

“Most humans are content kicking someone else out for their own benefit,” Knives recites smartly.

“I just didn’t think you’d wanna be apart from him,” you admit. “And it seems that I was right.” His scowl deepens at the sight of your smile.

“Don’t push your luck, human.”

You leave him to his own devices not long after. He seems content enough to sip the mug of tea you brewed earlier, casting a critical eye about the room yet offering no insight to brainstorm about the next set of decoration.

“I was thinking about painting the study upstairs soon.” You speak into thin air. “Milly said she’d be able to help. You’ll probably want to sit outside while it happens, though. It doesn’t smell very nice.”

“Must be nice to be so carefree,” he says as you wash dishes, dragging a soapy sponge over plates. “Taking care of someone that could easily free the planet of the resource-sucking scum that lives here.”

You don’t spare him a glance—it’s obvious he’s frowning at you.

“I have no choice,” you tell him, solemn; the quiet leaving no room for a cheerful facade. “There’s nothing else for me here.” There hadn’t been—not after raising your hand to offer help, voluntarily separating yourself from the people you’ve grown up with, their faces carrying deeply etched disgust and betrayal at your willingness to help Vash. There would be no easing the hatred that developed in your hearts for you—cultivating into a visceral enough emotion to wish bodily harm upon you, no fixing the emptiness that’d made a home in your bone marrow ever since Knives’ arrival.

With no home or job, you must find other activities to keep yourself busy. And if that means helping take care of Vash’s murderous, abominable older brother, you’ll do it as many times as it takes.

“It’s not like… like I can suddenly go back after this.”

And even though you regretted it, you’d do the same thing over if it meant Vash had a place for him and his brother. Watching Knives get better day-by-day is the only way you can justify taking care of a man that has no qualms with murdering everyone in the vicinity.

“I can’t. I still… still have a lot of fixing up here to do.”

The soap is fragrant, but even with its scent clinging to your hands, you remember the char of burning wood—the devastation left behind by the fire that consumed your home. The space you called your own, the people you called neighbors—they were all gone now. Out of reach, never to be touched again.

The loneliness inside you peaks, and spills over outside of your control.

Tears sting your eyes faster than you can stop them. They fall silently, invisible to all but the dishes still in the sink. You take in a quiet, shuddering breath through your mouth. Face and ears hot with him staring at your back, despite trying to cry as quietly as possible. You can’t show weakness. You won’t.

The floor behind you creaks. Instinctively, you glance over your shoulder, jumping when you see Knives approaching, leaning a heavy hand on the table.

“You—you can’t walk,” you hiccup stupidly, and watch his chin tilt, eyes narrowing. Your hands are hot and soapy and your face is wet.

He lumbers forward, reaches out to support himself with a hand on the counter—caging you in. It’s not that you haven’t noticed before, but at this very moment you remember he is Vash’s twin beyond skill or reputation: looming impossibly tall over you, casting a shadow.

Your shoulders hunch, wanting to turn away. He reaches out with his other hand, grabs your chin to tilt your face up. You blink tears from your eyes. His irises follow their movement down your cheeks to your chin, then back up to meet your gaze, watery and confused.

“This is why I hate filth,” he murmurs. Your mouth opens to protest, but the words die in the back of your throat with a withering gasp as Knives dips his face to meet yours, his tongue darting out to run up the left side of your face, licking away the streaks of tears there.

Even with his hand gripping your face, your jaw goes slack, gaping up at him with wide eyes—speechless. His head tilts.

Mercifully, he does not repeat the motion on your right cheek, but you watch his jaw move as he runs his tongue over his teeth. He uses his thumb to smear the tears away from the right side of your face.

“Kni—Knives?” you breathe, only just remembering that the sink is still running. Without breaking eye contact, he reaches over to shut it off. The silence slams into you like a physical entity—you shudder audibly in the quiet. Knives presses closer. At this distance, he doesn’t need to rely on his limited mobility to kill you.

A series of knocks on the door shatters the moment. You jump, chin pulling from Knives’ fingers, dampening your shirt by clutching wet hands against your chest.

“Doc! You in there? We’re here for our nightly visit!” Milly’s voice filters through the door. “Also, I’m kind of hungry!”

Knives nearly visibly hisses, you can see the scrunch of it in his face, the way he pulls away from you to hobble into the other room. You want to protest, but your feet are frozen in place. Your face is still wet. Dumbfounded, you raise a hand to touch where Knives tongue had been.

“Doctor? Is everything okay in there?” Meryl calls out.

“C-coming!” You dry your hands on the towel and drag your sleeve across your face. “Sorry about that,” you tell them when the door opens. “I was just cleaning up.”

“It’s no problem, but are you alright?” Meryl asks, obviously taking in your teary-eyed appearance.

“Y-yes, I just—it’s been a long few days,” you say, smiling.

“Where’s Mr. Knives?” Milly asks, turning to gaze into the kitchen.

“He’s, uh,” you stammer. “I’m not sure. He wandered off on his own.”

Meryl blinks, surprised. “He’s well enough to walk by himself already?”

“Well, not quite,” you say, glancing behind you. “He’s downstairs, but I… I think it’ll be alright if you have a cup of tea inside.”

“Are you sure?” Meryl asks, frowning.

“Well, if he has anything to say about it, he’ll have to go through Vash,” you say.

“Yay!” Milly cheers.

The house is livelier with them here. Vash will be returning late.

“Knives hasn’t been cruel to you recently, has he?” Meryl asks, hands cupped around her mug.

“No, he’s been fine,” you tell her, offering a small smile. “I think… well, not that he’s been enjoying it, per se, but I don’t think it’s as agonizing for him as it used to be.” She looks unconvinced, but Milly’s grin widens.

“The two of you have gotten pretty close, huh?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” you fumble with the words, eyes dropping to the table. They can’t see the spot where Knives licked, but you can’t help ghosting your fingers over it at the kitchen table with them while they talk about other topics, smoothing a distracted thumb over the spot, face hot.

Knives continues his observation of you after that. With each day he regains more strength, and it seems he’s taken to not letting you out of his sight—entering each room after you, taking long periods to stare at you despite flashing that disinterested, disgruntled expression when you turn to look at him.

It might’ve been endearing had it been anyone else—had it not meant he was usually watching from some obscure corner, or through a window as you chatted with Milly and Meryl while elbow deep in laundry.

Though his tolerance of you has widened some, it hardly extends beyond simply making the conscious choice to overlap his presence with yours at any given moment.

He starts—to your delight—sitting in the kitchen when you and Vash eat dinner. There’s never a plate of food in front of him—only a mug with some beverage—but you enjoy seeing him there all the same. His stare becomes less overbearing, but his apparent interest manifests in other ways.

This is especially true when Vash is within the vicinity. The one time he had volunteered to help untie a knot in your apron, Knives had intercepted, reaching across the table and simply severing the strings off. The breeze of it barely touching your neck as it falls to a useless heap on the floor. He’d said nothing after the fact, merely leaning back in his seat and taking a sip of his drink, looking quietly smug and oddly satisfied while you and Vash gaped.

The music he makes has changed, too. On his next visit to the piano, he pins you with a look—brows furrowed and mouth pinched—and orders: “Stay” in an impressively flat tone, managing to leave no room for argument despite the way it made him look like he’d eaten something rotten.

The chords do not groan or protest as his fingers dance up and down the keyboard, body swaying with the music. For as ruthless as he’s made himself out to be, the scene unfolding before you is nothing short of breathtaking. It’s captivating, watching his chin dip, the tendons in his hands and wrist flexing as he plays, pulling sounds you didn’t know existed from the piano.

The experience threatens to choke you—emotion swelling in the back of your throat, not moving a single muscle through the whole performance.

You wonder what he sees in your face when he stops, his foot lifting from the pedals, shoulders drooping carefully as the last note feathers into thin air. You weigh the risk of him cutting off your hands for clapping.

“That was very nice,” you tell him sincerely, managing a smile. “I’ve never heard it sound like that before.”

Knives blinks slow, gaze unmoving from your face.

“Play something.” His command catches you just before your suggestion to sit outside.

You nearly bite your tongue. “On… on the piano?” you ask, stunned.

His eyebrow tics. “Are you testing my patience?”

“No, I just—it’s been a while and uh, well we both know I’m rusty and—”

Knives cocks his head at you. “Come,” he commands. With no choice but to obey, you try to swallow the flash of heat that sparks along your nape.

You sit as close to the end of the bench as you can. His gaze is heavy on the side of your face. Your lips part to take a breath. Though you’re not unfamiliar with this instrument, the keys look like nothing more than blank ivory and black buttons. But Knives is waiting, albeit with little patience, and you set out to find middle C, pressing the keys with a feathery touch.

It’s difficult to find the correct words: you settle for saying nothing at all, putting hesitant fingers on the keys and trying not to brush Knives with your elbow.

The song you play cannot hold a candle to the ones he’s coaxed from its chords, but it does well to chase away the anxiety of him watching you. And Knives says nothing the whole time you play, fitting perfectly into the polite picture of an audience.

Your arm stretches out as your fingers play up the scale, coming close to touching Knives’ chest. You try not to flinch away as your elbow bumps him: you’ve long overcome the novelty of touching him, but on the too short piano bench, it feels more invasive than even his attempt to strangle you had been.

When the song ends, you replace your hands in your lap trying to furtively adjust your position to put a few centimeters between you.

Knives takes the opportunity to lean into your space, a broad arm reaching for the lower register on the keyboard, coming dangerously close to touching you. The notes reverberate in the center of your chest—you’re sure they tremble in the very arteries of your lungs. He leans even more, his thigh shifting to press against yours. Heart in your throat, you try to fight for your claim on the bench, bracing your feet against the floor.

The corner of his mouth twitches. He plays a devastating run of notes, plucking them in time with the rapid pulse of your heart as he pushes against you, the solidness of his body threatening to shove you off the bench.

Instinctively, your hand shoots out to stabilize yourself, grabbing onto the edge of the piano. Your thumb catches the lowest key, startled by the low rumbling bass of it. Your other hand jerks uncertainly in the air, not wanting to grab into the only thing within reach to save yourself from falling.

Knives does it for you. Grabs your arm with his free hand, the contact tearing a quiet gasp from you. You’re nearly chest-to-chest with him, his body angled in front of yours to reach the lower register of keys. His eyes tilt down to glance at your mouth.

He’s close—closer than he’s ever been. Closer than he ever should be outside of the mandatory care you’ve been giving.

“Kn-Knives?” you ask, hardly breathing. He’s watching your lips move to speak, and this close you can count his eyelashes, watch them brush against his cheek as he blinks.

If you just tipped your head forward, you could meet him halfway. Your body tries it—coaxing you forward just a fraction, watching his eyes flutter. His head tilts, and you—

You fly off the bench, wrenching your arm from his loosened grip, retreating until your back hits the nearby wall.

Knives stares, eyes rounded, irises flickering after you. The meager amount of space you’ve put between you is nothing: he could cross it in an instant if he pleased. And for a moment, you think he will—his shoulders turning to face you, a hand supporting his weight on the bench. You hardly dare to blink—half afraid that if you do, he’ll be there in the next moment, leaving behind all pretenses to snap the tension building thick in the room.

“Kni? Doc? Are you playing hide and seek?”

Vash’s arrival helps the sudden numbness in your fingertips fade to an unpleasant buzz. You clench and unclench your hands, pushing blood back into your fingers as Knives stands.

“I—” Your voice catches. “I need to make dinner. It’ll, uh, take a while. Stew… stew takes a while. Wait… wait here. I’ll get Vash.”

The back of your neck prickles as you hurry away from the room, the distinct mistake of running away spidering across your neck, visceral and potent.

Knives takes dinner in his room. Or rather, after Vash comes downstairs, he gives you a bright little smile and says his brother doesn’t feel like seeing those insurance girls, who you all already know won’t be joining you for dinner. He takes up Knives’ meal, too, giving a dramatic little goodbye wave, humming all the way up. You can’t hear anything while all the way in the kitchen, so instead you busy yourself on serving up portions to give to Meryl and Milly later.

Meals with Vash are never a quiet affair, but you’ve known him to be extremely perceptive. All it takes is a too-stiff smile for you to know he can sense something is off.

“Why don’t you go see what Knives is up to?” he suggests while clearing the table. “I can hand off the containers to the insurance girls when they come.”

You’ve made the walk to Knives’ room many times before, but on this particular night it feels as though Vash has sent you into the maw of a beast.

The stairs creak ominously with each step you take—maybe it’s just the nerves that are choking you, the memory of his unmoving stare a distant threat.

“Knives?” The door is open, but you knock anyways. “Can I come in?” A grunt is your response.

You take it as a yes. He’s sitting at the table sipping his drink when you spot him.

“Do you want some more?” you ask, glancing at his tray of untouched food.

“No.” The cup bumps quietly against the table when he puts it down. “This is enough.”

“Vash helped make this stew. I hope next time you’re able to enjoy a bit of it,” you tell him, lamenting a bit. Vash will probably have no trouble eating it—you thought he would’ve volunteered to come up himself to do just that, in fact.

Knives hums. “The stew aside, you shouldn’t let the bread dry out like that. It was nearly too stale to chew.”

“This was our last use of it,” you tell him, pulling the curtains shut. “Tomorrow I’ll turn it into bread crumbs and—”

Your head spins so fast something in your neck pops. He’s not watching you, but his arms are crossed, stubbornly avoiding your eyes.

The piece of bread has a bite taken out of it. Just the smallest little chunk, but you can feel a smile spread across your face all the same.

“Did you dip it into the stew? Just the bread on its own is going to be a little bland,” you say, trying to diminish the excitement in your voice. “Vash didn’t say if there was anything you did or didn’t like aside from coffee, so I—I haven’t been thinking much about what to make. Or rather, I was hoping there would be something you’d like to try, so I’ve been making a bunch of different things—”

“Human,” Knives snaps, but he doesn’t sound truly angry—his mouth is pressed together, into what you can now confidently say is an embarrassed pout. Like this, you can see the resemblance he shares with his brother. Maybe if Knives practices that face a little more, it’ll be better at pulling on your heartstrings. “Stop it,” he says, glancing at you, no doubt referencing the wide smile on your face. “You shouldn’t concern yourself with that.”

“I wanted you to enjoy it,” you admit, resisting the urge to reach out and feel along the reddening curve of his ear. They were hot, too, that day you gave him a haircut. When you had an excuse to touch him.

And though he can’t read your mind, Knives looks at you, eyes narrowing, scrutinizing the expression on your face.

“Help me to bed,” he says instead. Not quite defeated—not Knives—but stiff.

“Okay,” you say, finally, finally giving yourself enough room to be quietly hopeful.

For the last time, you let him use your shoulder as support. For the last time, you get a hand on his waist to support him. He doesn’t flinch from your touch—you rest your arm on his back.

“Maybe due for another haircut?” you murmur, not letting yourself reach out to touch the strands. It hasn’t been that long since his last one—he knows it, too. There’s more you want to say to him, but the words are stuck in your throat as you linger.

It’s only a handful of steps to the edge of his bed, but those sparse moments melting away the tension and distrust left within the cracks—the warmth passing from his body to yours, yours to his in real time. The mattress creaks as he sits. You can feel everything. The drag of your fingers against his back through his shirt as he sinks onto the bed. The weight of his gaze, locked with your eyes and then dipping to your lips as they part.

“I think Vash will be happy to hear you tried some of the bread,” you say. “Even if it was a little stale.” His mouth thins. “Will you sit with us tomorrow, Knives?”

It happens before you can process it—his name as the precursor. The expression that crosses his face at the sound of it is hard to decipher: stricken and agonized. Then it settles into something hard, and his hands are reaching for you, hauling you onto the bed by your neck as his fingers wrap around your throat. The mattress dips with your combined weight as he climbs on top of you. Your own hands are limp by your head.

“I’ve been too soft with you,” he hisses, sounding distant. “I’ve been too lenient.” He doesn’t squeeze, but his entire body is tense; you can see his jaw tighten. “I could easily… snap your neck.” A thumb dips into the base of your throat, right above your collarbones.

“You could, but then I’d die,” you tell him plainly, “and I think that would make you sad.”

His fingers twitch. You know he can feel your pulse, the vibrations of your throat when you speak.

“No,” he whispers, a small tremor going through his hands, like he can’t decide if he should really strangle you or not. “No. I won’t let him have you.” Knives’ voice is quiet and distant—as if speaking to himself. He lets out a harsh breath. “I’ll never let him have you. He doesn’t need more of you.”

His grip tightens a fraction. Your hand lifts up from the mattress. His eyes snap away form your face to follow its movement, but he doesn’t let go. When you brush gentle knuckles across his face, the muscle beneath his eye jumps. He reacts to your touch like a frightened animal, but refuses to let you go.

Your fingers move along the curve of his ear. His fingers squeezing reflexively. But then your nails scrape lightly against his scalp, just like they had the first time.

“You have me,” you whisper. “I’m here.”

He blinks slow. You run the pad of your thumb just above his eyebrow, and he melts. His head drops, hanging between two broad shoulders. Knives makes a beautiful picture—closer to prayer and holier than even the mortal men that recite their hymns. The firm muscle of his chest presses into yours. His hands leave your throat; instead they cling to you, holding you beneath him.

Voices drift up from the floor below—Milly and Meryl are here.

“Knives, I have to get up,” you say. “I should greet them.”

“No,” he says, voice rumbling. “They should just disappear.”

“They’ve helped Vash a lot in the past,” you remind him lightly. “I don’t think they’re going anywhere anytime soon.”

He buries himself into you like a child, pulling you against him fully.

“Then they can wait,” he says, tucks his face into the crook of your neck.

It occurs to you that, though he’s had contact with a small amount of people, Knives has traveled mostly alone all this time. With no friends, no lover, no brother, you wonder how he’s managed with the loneliness—if he still considers himself above it all. Despite his hostility and cruel tendencies, there’s genuine love inside him for Vash. And no matter how hidden and locked away it may be, you hope there’s some of that same love left for humans.

Your fingers find his hair again. His body goes stiff, but all you do is drag your hand lightly from the crown of his head to his nape, threading your fingers through the short strands in a repeated path down, patting him to a loose and relaxed posture.

“Knives,” you murmur, “I have to get up eventually.”

He doesn’t budge. Merely slides an arm under your back in a near crushing move. Strong-arming you further against him, as if he could melt the two of you together—taking what he knows you’ll gladly give.

“Let them be,” he says.

“I have to go to sleep at some point,” you say. He scoffs. “Would you rather we sleep in the same bed?”

“…A bed would be an upgrade to that sorry piece of furniture, wouldn’t it?”

The laughter that escapes is surprising: it moves your bodies with the motions of it. You continue to stroke his hair.

“I’ve become attached to that couch,” you say around a smile. “Maybe I prefer sleeping on it.” Knives leans away enough to glare. “…Can I at least bring the tray downstairs?”

Knives’ glare softens to a muted scowl. He climbs off reluctantly, watches you until you leave the room.

Milly and Meryl are still here. You greet them and give the tray to Vash, meeting his eyes with a wide grin when he notices the bread.

When you return, Knives is waiting for you on the edge of the bed again. But this time, he’s sitting up—alert. You hover by the door.

“Are you sure?” you ask. His scowl deepens.

“Enough dawdling.”

You shut off the lights. He waits for you to get on the mattress and lays himself across you, leaving the other side of the bed completely open.

“You won’t get hot?” you ask.

“Quiet,” he mutters, and nestles his head on top of your chest.

It’s hard to tell who falls asleep first, but as the night stretches, you can feel both of your chests moving in sync, the rise and fall of each breath matching up to ensure not an inch of space grows between your bodies.

It’s hard to tell, but when your eyes next open, you’re tangled up in sheets and limbs. The room is still dark, but you’re almost too comfortable to move. Knives is nearly fused to your side, long arms wrapped around you, head resting on the pillow. Your eyes trace his face, the gentle curve of his lashes, the beauty mark beneath his eye.

(When he wakes, you’ll greet him with a little smile. He’ll frown and try to buy more time for sleep, turning his face into the pillow. But he’ll tighten his arms when you try to leave, refusing to relinquish you.

And when you’re finally successful in removing yourself from his clutches, he’ll frown after you until you tell him to come downstairs for breakfast.

“It’ll be better than the bread from last night,” you’ll tell him with a groggy little smile.

It’ll take some convincing, but when you finally go downstairs and greet Vash, he’ll give you a knowing little smile, will cheerfully ask if you slept well.

“Very,” you’ll say, a little shy, and Vash will laugh with the air of a man who’s finally willing to heal.)

But for now, you smooth your thumb across his cheek, and smile in the quiet privacy of early morning when his nose wrinkles—painfully human. You rest an arm across his waist, gaze at the wall, and think that maybe there is a place for him. Just like he’d always wanted.

on the cruelness of fifteen

@/petrichara // the shape of a girl, joan macleod // @/cowboyvamplikeme // fifteen, taylor swift

Chuuya Nakahara x afab!Reader

wc: 14k+

general warnings: afab!reader (gn pronouns/nicknames, afab genitalia), mer!chuuya, eldritch mermaid au, author plays fast and loose with the definition of eldritch, thunderstorms, injuries, tension, strangers to lovers, cult references, island survival, hunting, descriptions of food & preparation, unedited writing

nsfw warnings: MINORS DNI, fingering, oral & penetrative sex (all reader-receiving), unprotected sex, handjobs, multiple orgasms, biting & blood, mild dacryphilia

written for the teahouse server's mermay collab, hosted by @petrichorium !!

Rain has notoriety amongst humans for a plethora of reasons.

Some people find it calming, revitalising, a sweet nurturer of life from the heavens. Others live in fear of the rain’s tender lovers, the thunder and the lightning, who join their sweet peacebringer when turbulence rages through the skies.

And one thing that you have learned about rain in particular is how such a gentle nourishing sensation can feel just like shards of glass against your flesh when you’re caught in the throes of a storm. 

Soft droplets that kissed your skin when the clouds were still close to white turn sharp and violent as the wind picks up, whipping them around in a frenzy and sending them hurtling back at you. 

The small rowboat you’d taken out with you isn’t by any means well-suited for these elements, swaying and sloshing through the ocean with such fierce turbulence that you’re surprised its still holding out on you as you desperately try to navigate your way towards the eye of the storm. By now, the floor of your vessel is drenched, puddling, soaking your poor feet even further. Surely the wood will crack under the damage, the interior not made to withstand contact with water like the hull. 

For now, you grit your teeth and carry on, oar so tight in your hands you may very well contract splinters. You are rocked and shaken from side to side within the confines of your little boat, battered by the torrential downpour above and bombarded from all angles by the sea below. 

A sharp crack splits from under you. 

You are sinking. Fast. 

The water rises higher within the body of your boat, reaching your ankles now. Each splitting strike of thunder from above resonates through your body with every desperate oarstroke, and you fight against the elements with all that you can muster. 

Foolish of you to think that you could power through against the inexorable rampage of the rain and her tempestuous partners. 

Contact with land is inevitable, you suppose, with how long you were drifting on the splintered remains of your boat. Weeks, or even months could have passed with how fragmented time feels when you are on your own out at sea. Of course, the fact that you’re still alive reminds you it has been shorter. But several days must have gone by at least, floating in and out of a hazy state of unconsciousness, becoming aware of yourself for the scarce moments you could drag some soggy old rations from the bag you’d kept around your person before zoning out once more. 

And then there is something beneath you, suddenly, a rocking motion that rolls you from the planks of wood you’d clung to, forces you onto something hard that does not bob atop waves. 

Whilst the rain from the previous storm continues to drizzle, the winds have ceased on land and the storm itself has all but ebbed. Thick, wet sand clings between your fingertips as you anchor yourself on your palms and rise to your feet. The tide pulls waves up to the beach, which lap at your toes as you double over and catch your breath. 

You're lucky not to have drowned out there.

Some machination of fate must have a watchful eye out for you, perhaps. It's a rather daunting prospect to dwell upon. 

In the distance, there lies a forest. Small, like the island itself, but you are sure to find decent sustenance within. Through the other side, poking out above the trees like a beacon, is the top of an old lighthouse. You’re sure it probably works, but the light inside is off and moss lies encrusted in thick patches around the walls. If it does still run, it’s surely abandoned by now.

The first order of business, you decide as you make your way along the beach, circling the forest to get to the lighthouse with less issues, is to see if you’re alone on this island. 

And hopefully soon, before night falls. 

Having a secure shelter is a blessing. Some of the lighthouse walls have holes from years of dilapidation, but there are whole floors still perfectly intact, and the entire top half of the building is still in one piece. 

The storage room is the most well-preserved, though the metal barrels and wooden crates that line the walls are all strangely void of contents. Almost as if it was the least used, which you’d think is strange for a lighthouse that clearly must have been operated by someone at one point. At least, you think, there should be some old canned goods that might just about still be edible. But there’s no food stock in sight, nothing more than a few bags of salt- supposedly to cure fresh meats. 

It doubles as some sort of records room, you realise when you find the neatly stacked collection of papers on the shelves. These must be the documentation of past keepers, all penned in a language you don’t have a clear grasp over. Similar to writing you’ve seen in older treasures you’ve witnessed over the years, but with scripture that doesn’t fit the patterns you’re used to. Maybe ancient, or perhaps from a lost civilisation you’ve never come across. Either way, you quickly have to give up trying to decipher it. 

Your journey through the lighthouse brings you further up to the next undamaged room, what must have been the keeper’s living quarters. It’s almost uncomfortably scarce, no more than a single thin bedroll in the far corner with a handful of crumpled sheets piled on top. You’ll have to try and wash them before you use them, you think to yourself with a crinkle in your nose as you bypass this floor to try and find the control room. 

As you ascend the spiral staircase that skirts the inner edge of the lighthouse, you can’t help but notice the strange symbols etched into the walls. They’re scarce on the lower levels, but increase in frequency the higher you climb, until they reach a point where they cover the surface of every single brick. 

They lead to the control room, far darker than the other floors so far, only a few small portholes filtering daylight through. There are switches all around, some across the walls and more still upon the various short plinths that stick up from the floor. It looks like they’re arranged in a circle of sorts, with a taller and thicker pedestal in the middle. 

Unease settles into the room with you like an old friend, your most constant companion since you had washed ashore. But you need to try and get this thing running, and these switches seem to be the way to do it. 

You’ve never had to operate a lighthouse before, and judging by the type of writing you’d found in the other room you’re sure there won’t be any useful instructions around to give you any sort of help. The best you can do for now is try, and surely turning everything on would be a good start. 

Making your way to the nearest plinth, you turn one of the switches and another one starts to emit a faint light from beneath. Like a trail of breadcrumbs, you weave your way around the room lighting each plinth in turn. It doesn’t quite follow the circular shape they’re laid out in, criss-crossing over one another as you move from one to the next, but it’s the best possible lead you have to getting this working. There’s surely no harm in keeping up with it. 

As the final toggle switch is flicked, the center console glows an ominous deep red. Light runs like a stream of blood along the grooves etched through the room, filling up the various runes and circles until you are surrounded on all sides by bright lines of claret. 

There is a resounding shutter-like thunk! from above and, through a tiny porthole window near the ceiling, you can see the lamp at the top of the tower come to life and flood the sea with brilliant white light. Intense and blinding, it shifts to fill the control room and you shield your eyes with your dominant arm to avoid any lasting damage to your vision until everything fades. 

By the time you can finally peel your limb back to your side, even the red lines have dissipated. Everything seems to the naked eye like it has returned to normal. And yet, the air is thick, causing each breath you take to feel rougher, heavier. Like something is pressing against your lungs with every single inhale. 

It is night-time now, and colder still than it had been. Though the rain has subsided, a sharp chill whips through the building and bites through to your very bones. Each step you take away from the control room is accompanied by an unnerving sensation, something grander than yourself, a malevolent force that is encompassing and suffocating. There is an errant humidity that lingers in your lungs, thick and heavy and far too warm. 

Despite the atmospheric clemency, you need to get some air. 

It floods into you all at once when you breach into the open, the juxtaposition dizzying as you find yourself able to breathe again. The sounds of waves crashing against the beach, of birds making their way home for the night, distant leaves rustling, all bring you back to your center as you force through several deliberately paced inhales and exhales. 

Upon the beach stands a man. 

Unremarkable in stature, yet with an aura surrounding him that fills you with a strange sort of dread deep in the pit of your stomach. A creeping sort of fear, that lingers in the corners of your mind and holds on tight to your shoulders, wraps around your wrists and your ankles, keeps you where you are in the sand, frozen. 

Something within your subconscious tells you not to entertain the notion of interacting with him. 

Something incomprehensibly stronger entices you to take a step forwards. 

“Who are you?” you call. “What business have you here?”

“You don't know?” barks the man, incredulousness in his tone. “You summoned me here.”

“I fixed the lighthouse,” you correct. “I did not summon anything.”

The moonlight reflects the jewels that hang around the stranger’s neck on silver chains, bounces off the iron buckles of his boots, and drapes along the hints of white undershirt that frame the dip of his chest, deep and v-lined. Around his waist, you can make out the tinge of bright red, a thin scarf belt decorated with little chains and common gems. He wears a black coat and a tricorne hat hemmed with silver, smaller and less fancier than the ship captains you have seen in the past, but grandiose enough to tell you that this man is important to his crew. 

He has frowned at you for so long now that you’re certain it’s a permanent feature of his visage. The downturn of his lips is deep-set above his chin, disapproving, and a frustrated huff slips through them as he observes you. 

“What I’m taking from this is that neither of us have a way to get off this fucking island, yeah?”

“For now, pretty much,” you say, “yeah.” 

“Brilliant.” His arms raise in exasperation, and he turns away from you. “First I’m woken up late, and now I’m here in the middle of nowhere with some idiot who can’t recognise a pharos when they see one.”

“Pharos?” you repeat. “What do you mean?” 

He sighs. “You really are clueless, huh?”

“That’s mean.”

“Get used to it, sailor.” 

Your pointed jab of the tongue in retaliation goes ignored, sidelined as he continues to speak.

“A pharos,” the stranger says, “is an ancient lighthouse. A lot of them got used for rituals, for summoning eldritch deities to do their bidding. They got taken over by a bunch of cults a few centuries back. This one-” he takes a quick respite in his explanation to turn his attention to the building behind you- “seems newer, but still at least a hundred years old.” 

“So why are you here then, if these were meant to summon ancient gods?” You mean it more genuinely than it sounds, but you can’t help taking a bit of a jab at the man who has been nothing but abrasive towards you until now. 

“Why do you think?” he returns. 

“You can’t be,” you chuckle, disbelief riotous through your tone. “You’re human.” 

He scoffs, focusing his gaze somewhere far past you. “You’d be surprised.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Come on then,” the stranger interjects, swiftly changing topic as he walks towards you, and then passes you by. “Let’s see the damage you’ve caused, we’re going inside.” 

“Hey,” you call out as you catch up, legs starting to burn a little from all the exertion of running around the island that you’ve undertaken today. “If we’re going to be stuck together, can I at least get your name?” 

“Call me Chuuya.”

“Alright.” You introduce yourself in turn, giving him a name you actually won’t mind being called. “No more of that nickname stuff, okay?”

“You got it, sailor.” 

Oh, this is going to be torture.

The trip to the lighthouse- the pharos, apparently- is less daunting when you’ve already taken it once before. You know what you have to expect, and pretty much remember which parts of the early levels of the staircase to avoid so that your foot doesn’t come crashing through the wood. 

Though it still seems to stretch upwards endlessly on your way up, the runes on the walls let you know that you’re closer. They’re not glowing any more, and you assume they must have faded once the pharos’ work was complete. 

For a moment, you watch the way the Chuuya walks around the space, approaching a wall and running a gloved fingertip across the divots, tracing the shape of one of the runes. You wonder if he’s able to understand them. If maybe he can even read the scriptures you found downstairs. 

“You fixed this place up?” asks Chuuya after a while, hands resting on his hips as he continues to idly observe the control room. “Tell me you noticed the cult runes on the walls when you did it.”

“I was a little busy,” you huff, “trying to get help so I could get the hell off this island.”

“And now we’re both stuck here,” he retorts. “Genius work, sailor.”

“Like you could do any better.” Frustrated, you cross your arms over your chest. “Aren’t you supposed to be some fancy eldritch being? Why can’t you just magic us off of here?” 

“It doesn’t work like that.” 

“Of course it doesn’t,” you scowl. “Well, what are we supposed to do, then?”

“Why are you asking me? You’re the reason we’re here, you think of a way out.”

“The only thing I can suggest is building a boat. Or at least a raft.” 

“Then it looks like you need to start collecting some wood.”

“Oh no you don’t, mister. You’re stuck here too, the least you can do is help us both get out of here.”  

“Why should I?”

“You’re a pirate, right?” You gesture vaguely towards his outfit. “You know the importance of teamwork. We’ll get this over with quicker if I’m not the only one working my ass off.” 

“Fine,” he concedes. It seems you struck a nerve. “I’ll help. On one condition.” 

“Yes?”

“I get to be the one that gathers our food. I don’t trust you.”

“Okay,” you agree. “If you’re taking control of that, we’ll both prepare whatever you bring back. And I’ll take the lead on finding things to make a decent raft in the meantime.”

Chuuya doesn’t dignify that with a response, instead turning on his heel to leave. “Let’s get started. The sooner we’re done, the sooner we can get the fuck out of here.” 

“It’s nighttime, you really want to start now?” You have to jog a little to catch up with him, taking a few stairs at a time until you’re closer. “Do eldritch deities not need sleep, or something?”

“No, we don’t,” he replies smoothly, and you barely just catch a glimpse of the amused grin that flickers across his lips. “Better get to work, sailor, you’ve got a lot of late nights ahead of you.” 

As it turns out, building a raft from scratch isn’t as easy as it looks. 

Only a few planks of wood tied together and something to function as a sail would be needed, you’d thought. Simple design, easy to carry out, that’s why it was the go-to survival plan for being stranded at sea. 

But when you have to scrounge for the wood yourself, because somehow this lighthouse doesn’t even have spare logs lying around for firewood, things become substantially more difficult. Thankfully, you’d been taught how to chop lumber in your youth- a friendly face when you’d first been out on your own, a skill you’d never forgotten. That doesn’t stop it from being absolutely gruelling work, though. Especially when you then have to haul those very same logs you’ve felled from the forest to the beach. And then try to tie them together with the rope you’ve managed to salvage from one of the busted lower floors of the lighthouse. 

In a turn of fate, Chuuya ends up being more helpful than you first expect of him- considering how he’d treated you upon first meeting. It’s still abrasive, clipped speech and thinly veiled insults, but it’s help. You’ll take it. 

Besides, he’s not all bad.

You catch him one night finally settling down to sleep long after you, having stayed up late to do… well, he’d never quite told you. He pads into the room quietly, and you assume that he’ll immediately head to his side and fall asleep without any fuss. That’s what he’s been doing lately, and it’s not like you’ve any reason to expect anything different. 

And yet this time, he stops. 

After a few moments of quiet, you feel a soft weight drape across your body and then the footsteps retreat at last. A blanket rests atop you now, something to fend off the harsh chill of the breeze that cuts into the bedroom from the lower levels of the lighthouse. You don’t know where he found it, you’re sure you scoured this building top to bottom for things like this, but you’re certainly not about to complain. 

It’s small things like this that remind you that Chuuya is just out here trying to survive, just like you. It wasn’t his fault he got stuck with you here, and all things considered he’s taken to your new forced dynamic as well as he could. 

If you’d been thrust into the same position, you know you wouldn’t have taken things in stride the way he has. It was one thing to have been washed ashore upon an island in the middle of nowhere with no way to escape when it was your own seafaring misdeeds that had brought you here. It’s another entirely to have been going about your day as normal only to have been plucked right from it and dropped into this situation by somebody else. 

Even so, he doesn’t seem to hate you. Not really. 

He may make the odd quip that seems purposefully vicious, a jab here and there designed to hit hard, but it’s just for show. At least, that’s what the hidden smiles formed from exasperated laughs when he thinks you aren’t looking seem to tell you. The playful gripes that weave their way in with the hounding until the entire ordeal feels like something far more endearing. 

Chuuya’s just trying to get by, you think, the same as you. When this is all over, you’ll likely never see one another again- and that’s fine. But you’re still glad that he’s trying to make things somewhat pleasant in the meantime. 

One of the few pleasantries of being stranded out in the midst of nowhere is certainly the scenery. A small island like this is the best place to find views unlike any other, to see the beach and the sea spread out in front of you like a feast for the eyes, a veritable buffet of colour and feeling. 

The sand crunches between your toes with each step, your shoes swinging gently in your grasp, and the feeling of fresh sea air is as refreshing to your senses as it always has been. 

You can practically taste the salt upon your tongue as you reach the waves, the timid little things lapping at your toes in cautious flowing motions. Gulls cry overhead, desperate shrieks that sound like home. 

As you stand there at the edge of the water, you look out to the horizon. 

It takes the breath from your lungs with ease. Such a grand sight, the ocean stretching out endlessly in front of you, reflecting the array of reds and golds, pinks and purples that paint the sky in the wake of the sun. Spots of white twinkle where the light hits at its strongest, and the unfathomable depths of the water already feel like the blanket of night that is set to descend. 

And then something moves, breaks the gentle cresting of waves. 

A fin, by the looks of it. Large, but bright; a striking orange shade you’ve yet to see on any sort of shark. 

It slices through the water effortlessly and then dips back below the surface once more, proof of its existence only found in the ripples that fade out from the epicentre of the breach. 

This creature, whatever it is, is a hunter. Skilled and deadly, if the silent precision of its movements is anything to go by. 

You step back, your toes suddenly far less safe this close to the tides, and hold your breath in anticipation. Whatever is lurking beyond the shoreline, close enough for you to see it so clearly, is new. It’s dangerous. 

Despite your self-preservation instincts screaming out to retreat as fast as you can into the safety of the lighthouse, you are so very intrigued. 

But the mysterious being never resurfaces. 

One beat, and then another, you hold on just to see. Just in case. 

Perhaps it had noticed you and is now in hiding, just as bemused by your existence as you have been by it. Maybe it is biding its time, sizing you up as its next potential prey. It was certainly large enough to make swift work of you. If you had been unlucky enough not to spy it beforehand, you could very well have become its next meal. 

Or, perhaps, it had simply swam away. 

Before you have the chance to dwell on it for much longer, your new begrudging acquaintance is approaching. Bucket in hand, which sways to and fro as he walks, you are met with a bewildered look. 

“What are you doing out here?”

“I was bored,” you explain. “I came out to see where you’d gotten off to.”

“There are more fish down by the cliffs,” Chuuya says, jutting his free thumb over his shoulder for emphasis. “I went over to catch them.”

The bucket is practically bursting with fresh fish, some still writhing as the light of their life is snuffed under the intensity of the beating sun. It’s difficult to ignore the gleam of red that lies embedded within the grooves of the wood, as though some of the poor creatures were caught by something far more violent than a simple fishing line, but you’re not granted the opportunity to dwell upon it when Chuuya walks past you, lugging them along with him towards the lighthouse. 

“I’m impressed,” you call out, jogging to catch up with him. “You caught a lot, there’s enough here to feed us for at least a week.” 

“I told you,” he shrugs, “there were more of them over there.” 

As you get inside and start to help him prepare the fish to store them away for the week’s meals, salt-curing the ones you didn’t plan to eat that day, your mind wanders back to the creature you had seen upon the beach. 

“Hey,” you speak up, “do you think we’re really alone on this island?”

“Of course we aren’t,” Chuuya scoffs, deboning one of the fish in a singular fluid motion. “There’s a forest, there’s bound to be all sorts lurking where we can’t see them.” 

“I mean something sentient- “ you throw your hands down dramatically, small particles of salt flying across the room from the motion- “something big. Not just little bunnies or whatever in the woods.” 

“Why are you convinced there’s something out there?”

“I saw something at the beach. A creature, in the water.” 

“A shark?”

“No, this was different. I’ve never seen something like it before.”

“Whatever it is, I’m feeding you to it first.” Chuuya rolls his eyes, tossing the last of the fish onto the tray to move to the storeroom.

“And here I thought we were finally making progress,” you sigh dramatically. With a cheeky smile and exaggeratedly batted lashes, you turn back to him. “You really wouldn’t save me from the big scary sea monster?” 

“Nope,” he hums, hauling the tray into his grasp and walking out of the kitchen. He throws one last glance over his shoulder towards you, a grin playing upon his lips. “You’re on your own, sailor.”

A few days later, you find yourself making decent progress on your escape plan. 

The raft is all but ready in terms of the base materials. You’d spent the best part of a whole week cutting down enough trees to provide sizeable logs that will bind together to float two people- with a little help from Chuuya along the way- and now the next step would be to try and assemble them all. 

With any luck, you’d be done in only a few more days. 

That is, at least, if you didn’t keep running out of rope. 

The lengths you have managed to scavenge from inside the lighthouse are heavy, but deceptively short. By the time you wind them securely around two logs, it’s all but run out. Which leaves you running back in and out of the building more frequently than you’d like to as you try to work in order to look for more. 

On one of your trips, you don’t notice that Chuuya has decided to sit horizontally across the platform that joins one floor to the next, taking a rest from his own duties. 

Before you realise what’s happening, your weight has been displaced from under you. Arms splaying out to brace your fall, the rope you’d been holding tangles itself around you and makes for a whole new level of accident as you tumble your way back down the stairs. 

Luckily enough for you, the plateaus between each floor are rather wide- so you don’t end up falling all the way back down to a lower level. Not to mention, leaving the ordeal with nothing more in terms of injury than an ache in your lower back, though you just know it’ll persist for the rest of the day. 

“You should look where you’re going,” snickers Chuuya, looking down at you with an amused simper. He goes to hold out a hand to help you up, but you petulantly bat it away. 

“You shouldn’t have been in the way!” you exclaim with an exaggerated pout, folding your arms across your chest and huffing. “Who even sits on the stairs like that?” 

“I thought you were out working on the raft.” 

“I was, but I came back to find some more rope.” 

“Seems like you’re really tied up with that,” he jibes. 

“I’m going to kill you,” you threaten halfheartedly, picking yourself back up off the floor. 

It’s more of a hassle to get yourself out of the mess of ropes you’ve dropped than it was to stand, and you find yourself stumbling around the plethora of loops in some haphazard sort of dance as you struggle to maintain your balance. 

“Here,” Chuuya says, “you’re going to fall again if you keep that up.” 

His hand comes to your shoulder to make you stop moving, and the other grabs onto the rope and starts to untangle you. On instinct, you cling to his forearms for stability. 

They’re tense to the touch, firm, but you don’t get much of a chance to focus on them as you’re instructed to lift your leg so that you can step out of a particularly perplexing knot that had made its way all the way around your knee. The tips of his fingers brush against your thigh as he slides the rope from your body and an involuntary chill passes down your spine. 

Something about this current proximity brings a searing heat to your chest, and the gentle look that he gives you when his gaze flits back up to check on you holds enough power to still your damned heart entirely. 

He’s far more caring than he gives himself credit for. 

Even now, as he mumbles under his breath about how ‘we’re never going to get off this island if you keep playing with the ropes instead of helping build the raft’, his touch is so tender and cautious. Making sure that you’re entirely safe before he takes a step back starts to loop the rope around his arms to make it easier to carry. 

“Thank you,” you say quietly, taking the rope back off him.

“Of course,” he nods. “Now, get to work sailor. I’ll go hunt for tonight’s meal.”

With the raft mostly ready, but a bad rainfall hitting for a handful of nights in a row, it takes several more days until you’re next able to head out to the beach to work on it. 

You let yourself get up a little later that day than you have been, a luxury you grant to yourself knowing how near you are to your goal. Only a few hours of work at the most if you apply yourself- and even less if you can cajole Chuuya into giving you a hand. He’s far more agreeable now than he first was, and more often than not you barely even need to bully him into helping you out these days.

Running into Chuuya on the beach as you step out is a welcome surprise. 

When he leaves before you in the mornings, he tends to spend the majority of the day fishing or in the forests scavenging. Either way, he ends up entirely out of your sight and you tend to not see him until you’re ready to prepare food for the night. 

Now, he’s sat by the edge of the shoreline. A stretch of hope assumes he might be there waiting for you, but as you step closer you see that he seems oddly… elsewhere.

He’s taken his hair down from the low ponytail you’re used to seeing, ginger strands splayed across his shoulders like a waterfall, slightly damp from the fresh sea air. 

Salt clings to your tongue as you watch him quietly, settles in your throat and keeps you silent, savouring the peaceful moment. 

The muscles of his bare back tense and contract as he shifts, not incredibly defined but prominent enough to know that he clearly must be strong. He leans forwards, fingers dipped into the water below his makeshift seat upon a large flat rock. It ripples out from the point of contact, tiny little disturbances that flow and change as his hands brush through the liquid. 

There is a contemplative rhythm to his movements, as though he’s deep in thought. Pensive, you think, is the best descriptor for it. Somewhere lost between wistful and sad. 

Chuuya’s sights are set firm on the horizon in the distance, the sun dipping low and painting the sky orange in its wake. You wonder briefly what he must be thinking about. 

An idle crab wanders past your feet and you walk around it carefully, not wanting to risk a nipped toe whilst you’re out here. The last thing you need whilst you’re trying to get off this island is something that stops you for a while. 

But now that your angle is adjusted, a few steps forwards and to the side, you can take in the full sight of what is in front of you. 

No longer does Chuuya have the steady pair of legs you had accidentally barrelled over the other day. In their place lies a mesmerising fishtail, scales of orange and white and black dappling the surface reminiscent of the koi fish you have seen on travels to the Caspian Sea. Each one reflects the light, iridescent and shimmering, practically twinkling like the night sky under the radiant sun. 

The shape, however, is unlike any of the typical fish you have seen in your lifetime. This is larger by far, tapering towards the end, extending out past the rockpools and swaying idly in the water, more akin to some sort of eel or sea-snake. 

A webbed caudal fin splays out at the tip just above the water’s surface, stirring up tiny waves that froth and foam and fade away, ochre spines thick and long and extending out past the membrane to curl softly at the ends. It’s easily as big as your torso and as broad as your armspan, if not moreso, not to mention the several feet of tail that it is attached to. 

“Wow,” you breathe out quietly, coherency lost to you as you watch each subtle shift of Chuuya’s tail. 

He startles at the sound of you, a loud splash as he scrambles back from the water and onto the beach. As the scales begin to dry off from the tailfin up, they shrink and morph back into human flesh, until two bare legs greet you once more. 

It is now that you realise what has been piled beside him, what you had assumed at first glance were simply more rocks, or perhaps some loose seaweed. Chuuya’s clothes are folded neatly, shoes resting on top to weight them down, and he is entirely bare before you. 

“What?” he snaps. A scarlet blush buds on his cheeks and blossoms along the entire length of his body, betraying his tone. “This the first time you’ve seen a guy naked, or something?”

You avert your eyes, though the temptation to take another peek is almost overwhelming. “You caught me off-guard, is all.”

“I caught you off-guard?” he laughs. “You’re the one sneaking up on people on the beach.”

The scoff of retort you were about to release quickly gives way to a sigh. “Okay, you’ve got me there. I just didn’t want to interrupt you. You looked… peaceful.”

“I was just thinking,” he says.

“About home?” you ask.

Chuuya laughs. “I don’t have a home.”

“Everyone has a home.”

“Well, where’s yours?”

“Hm.” You pause. “Can I turn around yet, or are you still just weirdly naked behind me?”

“You’re good.”

Chuuya is still in the process of slipping his arms through the sleeves of his shirt when you turn to face him, and you’re stilled by the sight of a few stray water droplets rolling down his stomach. The sunlight beating down from above bends and twinkles and reflects the image of those pretty orange scales back towards you in each trailing drip, as though even the slightest contact with the water is enough to spark his transformation. 

His lips are pursed in concentration as his head pops up through the collar of the shirt and you can’t deny that you’re almost disappointed in how the rest of the fabric falls across his skin and obscures it from view. 

And then you’re hit for the second time as he grabs hold of his hair ribbon and places it between his teeth, keeping casual eye contact with you when he gathers up the loose ginger strands and ties them back into place. 

There’s only one thought running through your mind- he’s beautiful.

“Well, come on then. Out with it.” He stands where he is, in stasis with his hair half-tied, hands still stretched back behind his head. 

You have to force yourself to snap out of your distraction to finally respond with a half-assed “what?”

“Your home, tell me about it.” 

“I don’t remember a lot about my home,” you admit. “I’ve been on my own for a while, going wherever the sea takes me. I’ve spent time with crews on ships here and there, travellers and explorers, researchers and the like, but none of it ever felt right. So I’d always end up alone again.”

“Anyway,“ you interject yourself suddenly, barely allowing Chuuya the chance to process your words, “what about you?”

“I don’t have a home.” He turns away from you, finally lets go of his hair and looks out towards the horizon. “But I found people, and they’re good to me. I like being with them.” 

A wistful ache tugs in your chest at his words, how clearly dichotomous his life is to your own. “That sounds nice.” 

“It is,” he nods. “I… miss them, sometimes.” 

“We’ll get you back to them,” you vow. “I’ll make sure of it.” 

“Do you have anywhere to go once we’re off this island?” 

“I’ll probably keep travelling. I’m going to stick to the land for a while though, I think. Don’t particularly want to get stuck in the middle of nowhere and accidentally summon any more eldritch gods, you know?” 

Your speech is light, tinged with gentle laughter, but you can’t hide the way that your inflection cracks at the end. You only hope that Chuuya doesn’t catch on to it, or at least that he will choose to ignore it. 

You don’t know him well enough to be acting this vulnerable. He’s still a stranger to you at the end of the day. A stranger who has abilities far beyond your comprehension, who isn’t even human. 

And yet, he’s been more realistic with you in the past few weeks than anyone you’ve ever met. Everyone has an agenda, a reason to strike up a conversation with you. He’s no different- you’re supposed to be helping him get out of here. But despite all of that, there is something so undeniably relieving about his presence, especially in the quieter moments like this. Something that, try as you might to tell yourself otherwise, makes you feel comfortable. 

Besides, for being the vessel of an eldritch being, he’s not exactly been intimidating towards you. In fact, he’s been downright kind through all of this. Helpful, co-operative, like it’s his natural state of existence. Like he needs to be useful like this with others. It’s sweet, and you can definitely see why he’s the type of person to prefer other peoples’ company if he’s like this. 

Chuuya laughs, an unrefined sort of noise that sounds far more natural than the times he’s chuckled teasingly at you before. There’s a little snort to the end of it as he tries to stop himself, and an embarrassed flush to his cheeks as he realises you’ve just witnessed this. 

“I don’t think you’re gonna have to worry about that any time soon.”

Three more weeks pass before you’re finally content that the little sailboat you’ve put together is sea-ready. The decision to try and upgrade the initial from a raft to something more sturdy had pushed your escape date further back than either of you had wanted, but it was acquiesced at the potential that this way you were more likely to actually make it off the island and far enough to reach land- or at the very least some other ship that could help. 

When you first tried to float the raft you’d built, the poor thing was barely suited for the type of journey you’d need to make. Even in the slightest of breezes, it swished this way and that upon the water, barely controllable. There was nowhere to keep hold of any rations you’d have to bring with you for the trip- who knew just how long you’d end up at sea before you come across any more land? Worst of all, despite your efforts to make the floor of the raft large enough, you’d still ended up practically sat on top of one another when you’d set up for your test run. 

But now you had something better, stronger, more resilient to face the turbulent sea and come out of the other side of it unscathed. 

Or, at least, that’s what you’d both thought. 

The little boat you’d put together was surprisingly well-made considering your limited resources, and it had held strong for the first ten minutes of rowing out. As the island grew smaller and smaller behind you, you’d even let yourself imagine that maybe just maybe this time would be the one that worked. 

Angering the spirits of the skies seems to be something you’re uncannily good at, without even trying. A storm, fiercer even than the one that you’d faced that had landed you on that island in the first place, strikes up with a deadly intention. Lightning flashes and thunder roars, and even the sea itself is in fear of their power as it whips and frenzies in an attempt to escape their wrath. 

Your poor craft is caught in the middle, tossed from side to side until it fractures and cracks. 

The rain no longer merely kisses your cheeks. It spits and slashes, stinging your skin and biting into everything it can reach. 

Making a pair of oars for both yourself and Chuuya was a godsend now in hindsight, as it gives you a better semblance of control as you force your boat to stay upright even with the water that rushes in from a gash along the side. His arms gleam with each new flash of lightning from above, iridescent scales making themselves forcefully known as they abrase the fabric of his clothes. 

Though his shins have been folded below his thighs as he kneels to get more traction with the oars, by now it’s no surprise when you start to see the flexing orangey tips of a tail poking out from behind him. 

The water starts to lap higher and higher along the sides of your sinking ship, and distant waves crash ever closer, building up ever taller. If the storm doesn’t ease up soon, it won’t be the integrity of your boat you have to worry about. 

It’ll be the water itself that claims you. 

“Listen,” you say tersely, deliberately avoiding eye contact. “If uh… we don’t get out of here… I just want you to know. It’s not been all that bad being stuck with you.”

“We’re going to be fine,” Chuuya promises. He goes to reach out to place a hand on your knee comfortingly, but another oncoming wave has him recoiling back to grasp his oar harder. “You don’t get to get rid of me that easily, you know.” 

One incredible rush of water comes up like a goliath, hulking its way towards the boat with a deafening roar that pierces through your eardrums and reverberates against your very soul. You can feel it consuming you internally before it even reaches you, and you’re thrown into the depths with the most ungodly of crashes. 

Something whacks against your side, probably a part of the boat as it fractures underneath the pressure of the tidal wave that’s assaulted you. It screams pain through your body, numbs out your brain until you can’t think straight, close to blacking out. 

In the distance, as you force yourself to maintain consciousness and desperately kick your legs to bring yourself up to the surface, you think you hear a familiar voice cry out. 

When you feel like the last of the air is leaving your lungs, another hefting weight slams you up to the surface. 

It almost feels like you’ve come face to face with the afterlife. Everything’s too bright, too painful, and the view that greets you as you slowly peel your eyes open, rain still falling slick down your cheeks, is something you’d never encounter in the mortal realm. 

Chuuya is the one who’s saved you, that much is clear. 

But he looks different, in more than the senses you’ve grown used to. This is more severe than the simple manifestation of a mer’s tail that you witnessed weeks prior. 

This is something ancient, dangerous, the type of creature you hear horror stories about from passing tradesmen. 

Fins run the full length of his back, and the outline of several more protrude from where his ears and hair used to be. You can’t make out any clear details, especially not with your head tucked against his collar like this, but it is incredibly clear that he is no simple mer in this moment. 

His hands are webbed now too, thick membrane joining fingers that are clawed and dangerous. The scales that litter the edges of his palms are rough like sandpaper as he grasps onto you, biting into your flesh and leaving small abrasions in their wake. 

You cling to his shoulders as he drags you up to the surface, forcing your head above the water to take a sharp inhale of air. It rushes into your lungs like lava, setting your body ablaze as you gasp and splutter. 

And it hits you. This is what you saw that day at the beach, not the subtle transformation you had witnessed days later. 

This is a version of Chuuya at the peak of his eldritch influence, so far changed that he barely seems the same man whom you accidentally summoned to your side all those weeks ago. And yet, it is still so unequivocally him before you now. 

Though it isn’t easy to see him under the quickly falling blanket of night, he feels like the man you know. It is something intangible, unexplainable, and overwhelmingly real. 

Bobbing above the water like this, you can finally see more of the man in front of you as you try to stay afloat. You already know that this is more than the form you had seen in the rockpools, monstrous in comparison, but he is astoundingly beautiful in a way you can’t quite comprehend. 

Chuuya’s irises have narrowed into slits and his eyes are framed with more scales, spreading out across his forehead and cheeks, all the way up to his hairline and around to where his ears used to be. They are the same dark orange of his tail, but the edges of these scales are lined with a deep crimson that catches the occasional flashing of light like blood. 

In place of his ears sit two fins, similar in shape to his tail, but smaller and thinner, translucent and pinkish in the rising moonlight. His hair has been replaced by these as well, gossamer-looking fins that scintillate and lay like bunches of silk all the way down past his chin.

Upon his neck, below the jawline, a set of gills idly flex open and shut as he breathes. His teeth are sharp as well, barely contained within mostly-human lips. They peek diamond-esque out of his maw, like the enticing light of an anglerfish in the deep. 

Weaving across his torso are familiar red markings, though rougher around the edges than the smooth carvings in the lighthouse, jagged and visceral like scars cutting into his flesh, these are without a doubt the same sort of glyphs and runes you had been surrounded by for the last month. The skin here is thicker- calloused like the rest of him, but not as rough as the scalier areas- a thin salty sheen catching the starlight and making him all but glow in front of you now. 

“Sorry,” he rasps, voice lower and harsher, like the words find themselves trapped in this body. “Didn’t want you to see this.”

“It’s okay,” you say, hands bracing themselves against his chest as you keep one another afloat. You run the pad of your thumb across his pectoral, water slicking below your touch and running in a rivulet past your nail. Quieter, with tenderness as you meet his troubled gaze, you repeat, “it’s okay.”

You dip closer and press a comforting kiss to his cheek, surprised by how cool the rough skin feels on your lips. Around you both, tiny star-studded waves lap at your sides and keep you swaying gently upon the water’s surface. Like a dance in its own way, slow and intimate, and the fond look in Chuuya’s dark slitted eyes beckons you with all the allure of a siren guiding you towards your final perfomance. 

“You’re strange,” Chuuya says quietly, breaking the silence. “You aren’t scared.”

“Why would I be scared of you?”

The sharp rows of teeth peeking out from behind his lips practically gleam in the moonlight, large and powerful. They could bite through you in a single, swift movement, with no resistance even against your bones. 

“Why wouldn’t you be?”

You drift ever closer, until your chests bump together. Your nose brushes past his own, lips less than a hairsbreadth away. This close, you can feel the erratic beating of his heart, and you’re certain he can feel yours in turn. 

“Because I know you won’t hurt me.”

“I’ve hurt people.”

With a steadfast deliberation to your movements, you reach up to cradle the sides of Chuuya’s face and press your lips onto his. Just once, pulling away as quickly as you had swooped in, but affirmingly, leaving him endearingly bewildered as he stares at you like you’ve sprouted a second head. 

“You won’t hurt me.” You release a breath, shakier than you’d like it to be, and shift your hands down along his arms until you reach his webbed hands. “Come on, let’s get back to shore.”

Clumps of seaweed try to cling to your ankles as you’re guided back to land. The injury you’d sustained from the crash can’t be anything serious if you’re still able to kick your legs like this to keep yourself afloat, now no more than a tentative hand on your back from Chuuya to make sure you’re still with him, but it’s still enough to slow you down and tire you out faster. 

It’s a slow swim. Arduous, even. 

The large presence at your side is soothing. Chuuya is colder than he has been when you’ve made contact in the past, in part due to the rain still pounding from above and the other part due to his more monstrous form at present. Occasionally, an exposed patch of your skin brushes against his and it’s rough, enough to make you grimace with how otherwise tender you feel right now, but you’d take it over a potential lack of company. 

“Thank you,” you utter when you finally see the shoreline coming close. “I think I might be dead without you.” 

You don’t get a response, but Chuuya’s arm moves from behind you to encircling you, squeezing lightly. Like he doesn’t quite want to face the fact that, yes, you really could have perished out there. You suppose you shouldn’t dwell on it too much, either.

As you haul yourself onto the sand, you notice that Chuuya deliberately tries to slip from your grasp. He frowns at you, though it’s far more toothy than you expect it to be, and it seems more like he is just… staring. 

“You can’t change back.”

He shakes his head. The upper half of his body has started to dry, and yet not a single scale has returned to flesh. As if stubbornly proving his point, the thick lines of red that cross his chest glow brighter. 

“Too hard,” he rasps. “Went too far.”

“You’re going to be okay, right?” you ask. “You will change back eventually… right?” 

“It’s never been this bad.” 

He’s distressed, though he’s trying to hide it. You can tell in the way that he keeps looking over your shoulder, not quite bringing himself to make eye contact. In how he shifts uncomfortably within your arms and leans towards the sea, desperate to reach somewhere that he can escape from this situation. 

“We can worry about it later,” you declare quietly, pressing a deliberate kiss to his forehead. “For now…”

A contemplative hum leaves you as a new issue arises. You glance over your shoulder towards the lighthouse, then back to Chuuya, who watches you with his eyes narrowed in curiosity. 

“Do you need any food? Or… anything?” 

He shakes his head. “No.”

“Okay,” you nod. “Well, I don’t think we’re going to be able to do much to help you whilst it’s so dark out. I should head inside, and we can figure something out in the morning.”

A more aggressive shake, a firmer “no.”

“No?” you echo. “You want me to stay out here? I can get some sheets from the lighthouse and sleep on the beach.”

“No!” 

“Stop saying ‘no’! What do you want from me, Chuuya?” 

“Stay with me.” 

“I will,” you say, “but I can’t do that if you don’t let me sleep on the beach.”

“It’s not safe for you out here,” he says. 

“So, what do you suggest?”

His gaze shifts towards the lighthouse and you stare at him blankly for a moment as you process just what he’s insinuating. 

“You want me to carry you inside? Seriously? You’re going to be heavy!” 

“You can do it,” he states. “I know you can.”

“I don’t like you right now,” you huff, stepping towards the shoreline. Taking a knee, you offer your arms out to heave him up onto the land. “Come on then, let’s get this over with.” 

He’s unfathomably heavy, but you’ve gained a unique set of skills over the past few months- namely, dragging massive bulking trees across the island. Though he’s bigger than any log you’ve had to haul to date, the technique is mostly the same. Lift from the knees, don’t put your back into it too much, take advantage of the soft shifting sand below to readjust when you need to. The bulk of his weight is balanced around his upper body, so even though the length of his tail is utterly tremendous, you find its no more hassle than some sort of trailing veil. 

“So,” you say after a moment, “what’s with the blunt speech, anyway? I noticed you’re even more straightforward than normal.”

“This form,” Chuuya explains, “isn’t for talking. It hurts.” 

“Oh,” you say, “I didn’t realise. You don’t have to keep talking if it’s too much for you.” 

“Worth it,” he says, “for you.” 

Getting to the lighthouse itself is a little more of a struggle, namely trying to drag him up the stairs to reach the washroom. With the wooden banisters, he’s able to support himself better without your assistance- which allows you room to breathe and rest. But for all you’ve taken this very same trip on the regular, it seems to stretch on immeasurably now. 

You take a small break upon one of the plateaus between floors, resting back against the wall to catch your breath. Your muscles ache and burn, and the thwacking you’d taken from the capsizing boat earlier starts to throb from all the latent flooding adrenaline in your system, but you can’t give up just yet. There’s nothing you’ve learned from all of this lately if not how to be incredibly resilient. 

“I feel like,” you say between heaves, trying to break the tension in the silence that has descended, “I’m trying to sneak you past my parents, or something, like a kid. Silly, huh?”

Chuuya hums quietly, as if he doesn’t really share the sentiment, and you have to wonder for a moment just how much of a childhood he was really allowed to have. Being a human vessel for an oceanic eldritch deity since you’re barely fresh from infancy probably isn’t conducive to a warm and fulfilling life.

Though he hasn’t divulged much about his past to you, you’re sure it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. He seems happy enough with his place in life now- with the Port Mafia crew, if you remembered correctly- but whether he had been with them this whole time or not is unknown to you. 

You’re sure he’ll tell you whenever he’s ready. He’s opened up to you enough lately as it is. 

Finally picking yourselves up again, the washroom is reached at last and you start to run the water in the tub so that Chuuya doesn’t have to worry about drying out. 

“Do you know if that… actually will affect you whilst you’re like this?” Your question earns a uncertain headshake. “Well. Better safe than sorry, right?”

The running water echoes in your ears as it sploshes around the tub. There won’t be enough to cover Chuuya entirely, but it’ll be adequate at least. By the time he’s in and the fluid has a chance to displace around him, it’ll work. He’s mostly quiet as you finish up, and you don’t even have to help him to lift up and lower into the tub when you’re done. There’s a bit of a far-off guilty look in his eyes as he sits there at first, as though he’s feeling bad about you having to be here like this. 

“I like this side of you,” you admit quietly, idly trailing your fingertips across the scales on his upper arm. “You’re not as mean… and more honest.” 

That earns you a splashing of water, a loud thud echoing through the room as the ends of his tail thwack against the walls of the tub. 

“Alright, you’re just as mean!” you gasp out as the coldness hits you all at once, blinking droplets out of your eyes. 

Flashing his sharp fangs at you, Chuuya is smiling now; giving you the best approximation of a self-satisfied smirk that he can manage. 

He looks utterly ridiculous crammed into the tub in the washroom. It’s surprisingly spacious, really, especially considering it’s part of a lighthouse that clearly didn’t see regular use- just not when an oversized eldritch mermaid is occupying it. 

“You know, we could have stayed on the beach,” you chuckle, perched on a stool near the side of the bath. “But someone insisted I take him indoors because I wasn’t allowed to stay outside at night or leave him alone.” 

“It’s fine,” he insists. 

The constant fidgeting tells you otherwise. In your peripheral you catch the idle shifting of his caudal fin like that time you had seen him at the beach. The muscles of his upper arms flex and contract as he tries to keep his torso comfortably upright. His hands, webbed as they are and far less than suitable for their current task, grip tight to the edges to keep him from sinking too far into the tub. 

“It’s clearly not,” you note, trying to keep your tone light and non-confrontational. Sparking up an argument right now wouldn’t do the situation any good, and would probably only leave Chuuya in a worse state than he already is. “Please, if there’s anything I can do to help. Let me.” 

“Anything?” he repeats quietly, almost shy at the prospect of whatever he has in mind. 

Perhaps the room has heated up too much from the bath you’ve drawn, because your head starts to spin at the realisation of such a complete lack of proximity between the pair of you. It hadn’t been a problem before, when you had been so focused on making sure Chuuya would be safe. Now, at his insistence, at the situation unfolding between you, it’s hard to ignore the fact that you have your knee pressed up against the thick muscle of his tail. That he is bringing a clawed fingertip towards your shirt, hooking against the fabric and pulling you closer. 

That he has brought your face towards his, and that you can now see every single smattered red freckle that has persisted upon his cheeks through his change of appearance. Every individual scale, each of which shift hues so subtly in the dim candlelight of the washroom, sparkling at you enticingly, urging you to lean in. 

He stops you before you’re too close, splays out the hand that was holding onto you so that it spreads across your chest. “You can say no.” 

“I know,” you nod eagerly. “I don’t want to, though.” 

Chuuya’s mouth is cold as you press your lips to his, the sudden sensation almost enough to make you withdraw quickly. But something snaps in the moment that you connect, a tension that has broiled away for the better part of a few months. 

The first kiss you share is tentative, cautious. The next is hungry, impassioned, and your shirt is being fisted once more as Chuuya tries to bring you closer, to the point that you’re practically hanging over the edge of the washtub, nearly falling in. You bring your arms out to steady yourself, bracing against his shoulders, clinging onto him. 

“You sure you don’t want to be comfier?” you ask, thinking of the way you’d seen him shuffling only moments prior. “This can’t be nice for you.”

“Don’t care,” he says, stealing a third kiss from you, “not anymore.” 

He must be fine, you think, by the way that he takes hold of your hip with his free hand and pulls you onto him. Your own earlier injury declares its continued existence through a prolonged throb, but it’s the last thing on your mind when something else starts to stir within your core. 

The water in the tub splashes up your thighs, soaks your knees, drenches your clothes thoroughly as you fall onto his chest. You don’t miss the way his slitted eyes trail along the folds of wet fabric, keenly observing how it now clings against your skin and outlines your figure. If you weren’t in such a compromising position, you could be fooled into thinking the look he gives you is that of a hunter seeking out its prey, ravenous, and you are his prized meal.

If there had been any lingering doubt in your mind before about the creature you’d seen at the beach weeks ago, this was by far your most decisive proof. 

“This might be a bad idea,” you say between each feverish kiss, but Chuuya is desperate in the way that he clings to you, claws skimming the fabric of your shirt and threatening to tear it to shreds. 

“I want you,” he says simply. Kisses you again.

And you’re not exactly in a position to argue with him when he has you all but pinned to his body like this, one arm snaked around your waist and the other still pressed in between you, firmly sunk against the flesh of your chest. Not that you’d want to anyway, you think, as heat swells in your stomach and a fervent desire pleasantly clouds your mind. 

“Okay,” you agree against his mouth. “I’m yours.” 

Your declaration seems to spark something feral within the eldritch mer, fiercer than the behavious he’d already exhibited, and far more exhilarating. One of his claws tears into the fabric of your shirt and rends the poor thing straight off of your form, the remains falling off your shoulders and into the tub below the pair of you. 

Having your body exposed to him like this is thrilling, a chill running along your spine as he takes hold of your flesh within his large hands and squeezes tentatively. A rough thumb runs across the bud of your nipple and it rouses at the touch, pebbling in the cool air of the washroom. His mouth finds your neck, tongue lathing along your throat, making you arc forwards into his touch. 

“Can I?” he asks hoarsely, hand stopped just above where you need it most, and you grind down against the pad of his fingers in response. 

“Please,” you whine, “I need you.” 

The pressure of his thumb against your clit is fucking heaven as he brings his mouth back to yours and kisses you hard. The heady intoxication of sex in the air combined with the powerful friction brings you close to your first orgasm far quicker than you could have expected. And yet, despite his clear thirst for you, Chuuya manages to take his time to fully coax that first tantric climax from you. It bubbles up slowly, quietly, blossoming from your core until your entire being is consumed by flames, hot and heavy, and so damn good. 

He isn’t neccessarily skilled or not at the act, in fact you wouldn’t be surprised if he’s only done this a handful of times before- and most likely not at all in this current state of being. But there is a abstruse emotion that dances with you as you move together, reaches its peak with you and flows out between you. It wouldn’t matter even if he was bad at this, you think. It’s simply the fact that it’s him making you feel this way that has everything so very heightened. 

The same man you’ve spent the past few months with such a budding tension growing between you, who you’ve shared late night talks with and vulnerable conversations- even though he’d been so standoffish with you upon first meeting. You’d gotten to know him, as much as he’d let you. And he had in turn learned about you. 

Sure, part of it feels like it was a necessity to ensure your continued survival on this island- there’s no way you’d have made as much progress on your inevitable escape if you’d continued to be at odds- but you won’t deny that it feels like so much more than that. 

And that is why, as you come for the first time that night, crying out your partner’s name as your nails find scaled flesh and dig in tight, riding out your high against those thick rough fingers, you are already so very desperate to seek out more. 

Continuing to grind against his hand as your afterglow washes across you, thoughtless movements that ebb and flow and pulse your orgasm away with them, you shift to balance yourself against his chest with your palms. 

The new angle brings about a new sensation with it, something warm and hard pushing against your ass. His cock has released itself from the confines of the slit it was previously tucked away in, still humanlike in size but textured with ridges and bumps that press into your skin and give you a precursor of what’s to come. 

It’s not huge, but it certainly isn’t small either. And the prospect of being stuffed full of it is so very enticing. 

Indulgently, your hand slips between your bodies to take hold of the organ. 

To the touch, it’s far slicker than you’d expected, and Chuuya hisses at the sudden contact, his mouth finding your neck to stifle the noise. There’s a moment of pressure as his teeth graze your skin, and then a release, the sharp fangs puncturing the first few layers and drawing small wells of blood into your clavicle. It’s by no means deep enough to do any real damage to you, but it certainly causes you to gasp out in shock at the sensation, making you grip onto his cock harder. This in turn has him run his tongue against the wound, eliciting another salacious whine out of you. 

“Fuck,” you exhale, a bubbled laugh catching in your throat, “you’re rougher than I thought you’d be.”

“You thought?” he echoes, unable to quite bring himself away from you for long enough as his mouth finds your jaw, then your cheeks, then your lips again. 

“Mm.” You roll your hips down absently, indulging in his kiss, pulling away to pepper smaller ones across his cheeks. “I thought about it a lot recently, how this would feel. Admittedly, I didn’t expect you to be-” you run your fingertips across a small patch of scales- “quite like this. But I’m not complaining.” 

With his cock still in your hand, you move to align it underneath you. The anticipation of what you’re about to do builds within your chest, exciting, enthralling, and you pause right on the very precipice. 

“Is this okay?” you check. 

He nods.

“Alright, tell me if you want me to stop.”

“I won’t,” he assures, leaning in to place a kiss to your forehead. 

The tip alone is thicker than it looked, and it spreads you apart far more than his fingers had. Your jaw tenses as you try to adjust to the sensation, and Chuuya notices this. Leans down and kisses along the tightened muscle to try and soothe you, trailing absently along your neck and all the way back up again. 

“I can stop,” he mutters against your cheek. 

“Please don’t,” you beg. 

To prove your determination, you try to sink yourself down a little lower, and both of you keen out at the sensation. It had been a while since you’d had sex like this, a few months even before you’d been stranded out here let alone after, and the fullness is such a profound experience. 

Once the initial discomfort has passed, a euphoric bliss takes its place. 

Feeling bold enough to start moving, you set a slow pace. Lifting yourself up just a little, barely enough for him to really shift inside of you, but enough to feel that delicious drag of his cock in your cunt. The descent feels even better, the slight rub of your clit against the hard scales that surround his sex, and you let yourself sit there, speared by his full length, eyes shut tight to sink into the sensation. 

“You feel amazing,” you coo out, stealing a kiss as you move again. His hands come to your hips to keep you in place, purposefully gentler around your side injury. “Wanna make you feel good too.” 

Fucking Chuuya like this brings a warmth to your veins, holding onto one another like a lifeline as you clench around him and ride your way to another climax. It’s tantric, emotional, and every single thrust of your hips makes you feel closer to him in a way you’d never imagined. 

Your second orgasm starts to creep up on you unexpectedly. A combination of the perfect friction, the angle you’ve sat at where his cock curls against your g-spot each time you fuck down onto him, and the ardour that seeps into the air between you, all building up within you until you’re close to exploding. 

As it hits, you curl forwards into Chuuya, bracing yourself hard against his chest with your palms. He takes over the brunt of the work, gently fucking up into you as you pulse and throb around him. When his own climax peaks, he pulls from you, releasing onto your stomach with a breathy pant. The worst of it becomes one with the water you’re sat in, and you grimace at it briefly, knowing you’re going to need to change that out when you’re done. 

But for a moment, you can rest, basking in the afterglow of your sex. 

Empty now, but emotionally sated, you rest your head against Chuuya’s chest as his arms wrap around your torso. But it’s not to let you relax, you find, when he lifts you from below the arms and sits you down on the edge of the washtub. 

“What are you doing?” you giggle breathlessly, heart still pounding. 

“Want to taste you,” he says simply. 

Exactly how he plans to do that, you don’t understand at first. Until, that is, he picks you up again, firmly grasping your thighs to keep you stable, and shifts so that he is on his front and your back has been pressed up against the washroom wall. It’s freezing cold and your body jolts at the contact, but it is very quickly replaced with an overwhelming warmth when Chuuya dips between your thighs and kisses your clit. 

You’re still sensitive from the two orgasms you’ve already had, but that isn’t about to stop him. His tongue is hot as it flicks out to swipe along your folds, slowly, teasingly. He really is going to take his time to savour you, you think, and your head comes to fall back against the wall as your back arches forwards to lean into the friction. 

It feels like he’s swallowing you whole as his tongue eases into your cunt, so incredibly long and just textured enough to drag against your insides in the perfect way. The tips of his fangs graze across the outer skin of your pussy, gentle like he’s actively trying not to hurt you. Your hands find the back of his head and push him against you harder, working with his mouth to bring you to the edge once more. 

This orgasm takes longer to peak, even with how desperately you grind with him to reach it. The overstimulation in your core has all of your nerves feeling like raw electricity, frazzled and intense. 

When it hits, it courses through you slowly. Bubbles up from the pit of your stomach until it crescendoes into a bursting supernova, a cry of utter bliss falling from your lips like a holy mantra. A song of worship, all for the archonic mer that is settled between your legs, swallowing every last drop of your essence like its the first morsel of real food he’s ever had. 

There are tears welling up in the corners of your eyes as you come down from this third high of the night. Your hands don’t know where to put themselves as your spent energy dissipates into the musky, sex-steamed air of the washroom. You settle for idly running along the sides of Chuuya’s body as he pulls away and balances himself in front of you, chest to chest now. 

Traces of a glossy sheen linger around his mouth, and not from the water in the tub. It awakens something possessive in your soul, seeing parts of you across him like this. With the way his own eyes sweep the expanse of your body, it looks like he’s thinking the same thing about the marks from his teeth and claws that now litter your skin. 

“Was that good?” he asks, voice notably less raspy than it had been earlier but still tinged with something gravelly. 

“It was wonderful,” you chuckle. Your head falls into the crook of his neck and he holds you there just like that with him. The steady beating of his heart echoes in time with your own. “Thank you.” 

“Thank you,” he echoes with a grumbly laugh. “I needed that.” 

You press a kiss to the scaled skin beneath your lips and pull back. For just the smallest moment, everything feels so unimaginably right. 

Then the bruise on your side starts to pulse again. It has blackened now, a bristling purple that spreads across the tender skin like a cluster of flowers, made far worse from all the jostling about of the last hour or so. 

Now that you’re coming back down to reality, every muscle in your body seems to be aching tenfold. 

“I think I need to get some sleep,” you say lightly, giving a squeeze to his shoulders. “Are you going to be okay like this?”

“I’ll be fine,” he replies, leans in to press a kiss to your cheek. “Get some rest.” 

You clamber out of the washtub as adeptly as you can manage given your condition. Before you have the chance to leave him fully, Chuuya takes hold of your unhurt side and pulls you back. Spreads kisses along your neck and collarbone as he takes hold of one of the washcloths settled nearby and tries to clean you up. It’s a little difficult and unrefined with his hands webbed like they still are, but the effort is unbelievably sweet, and you let him do the best he can before you finish the job yourself. 

“Good night.” The tiles on the floor are cold as your damp feet press against them, and you jump a little at the contact, almost slipping and falling from the momentum. But you gather yourself up before Chuuya even has the chance to worry, laughing it off. “Yeah, I really need to go and rest, huh?”

As you turn back one last time, a sleepdrunk smile on your face, you could swear the eyes that gently smile back at you have more of a human gleam to them. 

It’s still dark when you first wake up, the faint silvery light of the moon idling through the porthole window above the dingy little mattress you’d settled on. Only a couple of hours had passed, but that didn’t seem too strange. Sleep has been a bit of an anomaly for you ever since you’d first washed ashore on this island. 

You find that you’re alone, which isn’t a surprise. After the events of last night, you’d dragged yourself back here to get some ample rest- but it feels almost too quiet on this level of the lighthouse. 

There’s no sound of moving water coming from the washroom, unlike how you had fallen asleep, and you bolt upright to check on Chuuya. 

Missing. The water in the tub has been thrown out and any mess that had splashed around is long gone from the bathtowels lining the floor, cleaned up deliberately. So he must at least be okay, but that doesn’t answer the more pressing question of just where he’s managed to run off to considering you’d had to haul him up here in the first place. 

Your search drives you out to the beaches, the most sensical place to look. The early morning sunlight starts to edge its way above the horizon, the post-storm air still just chilly enough to warrant you wrapping your arms around yourself to hold in your body heat. 

Below your bare toes, the top layer of sand shifts and molds itself to your footprints, clinging onto your skin each time you lift your feet. You’d lost your shoes to the storm, unfortunately, and hadn’t found the time to fashion yourself new ones between returning to land and the other… events that had unfolded the night prior.

You were right, though. He’s out here just as you had expected. With his back to you, looking out towards the horizon, the same way you’d found him near to the start of your time together. 

“Figures I’d find you out here,” you say loudly enough to alert Chuuya to your presence. “Did you even get any sleep?”

He sits the same way you’ve seen him before, legs morphed into a pretty tail as they lay submerged in the rockpools. Smaller than what you’d seen last night, more controlled. It’s a relief to see his eyes back to normal, lighting up upon sight of you as he turns around. In fact, his entire upper half is notably human again, and you can tell he’s just as relieved by the change as you are. 

“Sorry, I didn’t want to wake you up.” 

“That’s fine, I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

You step carefully around the sharp rocks and make your way to his side, sitting down and letting your toes dangle in the water. It’s cool, refreshing, and the view of the horizon stretched out as far as the eye can see before you makes the entire experience all the more relaxing. You can see why Chuuya likes to do this. 

His shoulder presses against yours at this proximity, but it’s pleasant, warm even, a nice contrast to the sensation of the flowing tides below. Impulsively, you give in to the urge to rest your head upon his shoulder. In turn, he rests his against you. 

“I’m glad you’re back to normal,” you say, hand finding his and fingers interlocking. “I was worried for you.” 

“I think you helped,” he admits. “I’ve never been stuck like that for so long, but you being around made it all feel like it wasn’t going to be the worst thing in the world if I couldn’t turn back.” 

“I’d have stayed with you, you know,” you confess, “if you had to stay that way.” 

“I thought you didn’t get along with people,” Chuuya teases, bumping his shoulder against you and making both of you sway gently. 

You push him right back, stifling a giggle. “You’re not exactly ‘people’ are you, mister vessel of an eldritch deity?” 

He squeezes your hand pointedly, “okay, you’ve got me there.” 

The air between you quiets, but there’s no awkwardness. It’s pleasant, this silence, relaxing. Morning breaks above your heads and showers you in comforting sunlight, warm, inviting. If it weren’t for the fact that you were both actively trying to leave this place, you’d almost feel inclined to stay. 

“Hey…” you speak up after a moment, fiddling with the hem of your shirt, “can I ask you something? It’s a little personal, so I don’t mind if you say no.” 

“After last night?” Chuuya laughs. “Ask away.” 

“Okay,” you nod, bracing yourself for the topic you’re about to broach. “Why didn’t you just… stay with the cults when you were younger? Let them worship you as a god, be revered and adored by so many people?”

“You could have had it all,” you continue. “Riches, power, people worshipping you and laying their lives down for you. Whatever you wanted.”

“It's all bullshit,” scoffs Chuuya. “You know what happens when you have a bunch of people at your feet? There's nobody left to see eye to eye.”

“That’s why you found a crew.”

“I may have subordinates on the ship, but more importantly I have their respect. Not their fear.” 

There’s a far-off look in his eyes as he speaks, reminiscent and light. Clearly, he misses these people- cares for them greatly. You know he’s the type of person that thrives around the company of others, unlike yourself. He’s built himself into a community, into a life that works for him. And it happens to be so very different from the type of life you’re used to. 

But you can’t say it isn’t the sort of life you wouldn’t try to give one final chance to. At least, certainly not when it also involves the company of someone you’ve very much grown to enjoy over the past few months. 

“Well,” you say, breaking the silence at last. “We’re no use to anyone moping around on this beach. Let’s scavenge what we can of our old boat and start to fix it up.”

“You want to try again?”

“What else would we do?”

“And if it fails?”

“We try again,” you insist. “And we keep trying until we finally get out of here. Or until someone finds us, whichever comes sooner. I’m sure your people are already looking for you, if they’re as family-oriented as they seem to be.”

You almost miss what Chuuya asks next, words much quieter and fragile. They slip from him as if involuntary, and he silences himself immediately after. 

“Would you come back with me?”

A determination fills your soul, resilience surging through your veins. And you smile. You smile so brightly that it is your turn now to be envied by the elements, by the rain and her lightning and thunder.

“What else would I do?”

author notes: i've popped these down here bc the warnings are SO LONG they were already making all the pre-cut stuff horrendous lmfao. anyway, i hope if y'all made it to the end that u liked it <3 i personally feel like it gets rather ooc in parts because of how much i was fighting this tooth & nail in the writing process, but i'm still very proud that i finished this and that's good enough for me >:)