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Keith wasn't sure how long he had been floating on the water. It was rare that someone was strong enough to resist a siren's song, and Keith had been completely unprepared for the handsome sailor that washed up on his shore to be one of the few who could.
He had pretended to be drawn in until he was close enough for Keith to attack—and then Keith was surprised by a sword between his ribs, a knife slicing open his throat, and being unceremoniously tossed onto the rocks along his island's shore and kicked into the water. He'd drifted in and out of consciousness after that—briefly woken up by a boot striking him in the side sending him tumbling into the ocean, or by the ache of something brushing against one of his definitely-broken wings, or by the sting of salt in his wounds.
This time, what woke him was the grit of sand in his face, and he woke slowly, blinking in confusion and sitting partway up. He hissed in pain as he did, and winced; even that sound ground at his poor, abused throat. He brought up a clawed hand to check, and yes--the injury was no longer bleeding. It was lucky, he knew, that he'd been tossed into the water; he had been an oceanid, before the curse that turned him into a siren, and just a little of the connection clearly remained, enough that the water healed him. Not entirely, but enough. His wings were still broken by the impact on the rocks, and he suspected it would be some time before he was able to speak easily or normally again, but he was alive. That in and of itself was a miracle.
He could hear a quiet murmur of voices around him, slowly escalating, and he winced, looking up from the sand.
He was surrounded by humans in strange clothes, and that, if nothing else, told him that he had drifted farther and longer than he had even begun to imagine. They looked like farmers and fishermen, armed with hoes and nets and small knives, and Keith felt his heart sink.
For all that he had survived one attacker, he suspected it would be much more difficult to survive what looked like an entire village.
Such was his luck, he supposed. Saved from one terrible death, and dumped right into another.
“Stop,” a voice said, and everyone turned, including Keith. The speaker briefly took his breath away, and all Keith could do was blink at him.
He was tall, and handsome, with broad shoulders and a face that looked inclined to easy smiles. His long hair, inky black with a single streak of pale silver framing his face, was pulled in a high ponytail, and under his gray eyes, across the bridge of his nose, was a scar. His clothes were unfamiliar—loose black robes with wide sleeves, drawn closed by a wide purple belt. One hand was covered by a strangely metallic glove—armor, maybe—and Keith was fairly certain that whatever he and the other humans were speaking, it wasn't Greek. Not that he could identify it; he could only understand it because of the siren's gift for languages, granted so they could better lure any target regardless of what tongue their prey understood.
“Shirogane-sama, whatever pity you take on this creature, it is clearly dangerous,” one of the villagers said. Shirogane—that had to be the tall, handsome stranger's name—narrowed his eyes at the speaker and crossed his arms, and everything about the way he stood said that he expected people to respect him and respect his authority.
“He is wounded, badly, and poses no danger to anyone right now,” Shirogane said. He looked around as if daring anyone to challenge him. “I will be taking him home with me.”
“That is insane—” the same man who had challenged Shirogane before said, but Shirogane cut him off with a flat stare.
“And it is my insanity to bear, Morishita. Leave. Go back to your homes. You will need to be up again in a few hours. Don’t let your work suffer because of your fear.” Shirogane’s voice was firm and confident, and Keith watched it ripple through the crowd, and watched people turn, and leave, slowly, until it was just him and Shirogane on the beach.
Shirogane approached him slowly, hands open to show he wasn’t holding any weapons, and Keith would have been annoyed at being treated like a panicked animal were he not aware that he had to look very like one. He narrowed his eyes as Shirogane knelt down, and shied away when he reached out a hand.
"Relax, I'm not going to hurt you," the man said, and Keith made a noise he hoped conveyed how dubious he found that promise. "Call me Shiro. Will you let me help you?"
It seemed a strange offer. This man found a monster washed up on his shore—because Keith had no illusions about what he was, and he wasn't exactly hiding it; great bird wings and clawed hands and feet were unsubtle, never mind his teeth, all sharp fangs designed to rip out throats—and wanted to help, not finish it off.
But what other choice did he have? The next person who found him would undoubtedly not be so accommodating, and Keith was not actually eager to die. Even if this only meant living as long as it took for Shiro to change his mind, it was better than his current position.
Besides, he healed quickly. All monsters did. It wouldn't be long, he was sure, before he would be healthy and able to fly again, and then he would get out as quickly as possible.
So he nodded, slow and mistrustful. When Shiro's face lit up, Keith felt something in his chest stutter, which was idiotic, because sirens didn't have hearts and certainly didn't get flutters over strangely helpful humans.
"Good," Shiro said. "Can you stand?" Keith pushed himself up and tried to get to his feet, but his legs wobbled underneath him. Shiro sighed. "No, then, I see." Gently, he looped an arm under Keith's knees and the other under his wing joint, and carefully scooped him up. Keith hissed in pain as his wings were jostled, and Shiro frowned.
"Are those broken?" he asked, nodding towards them, and Keith nodded slowly, even though he was displeased with the prospect of openly admitting such a weakness to a stranger. "Alright," Shiro said, "I'll be careful then."
He was, indeed, as he carried Keith up the beach and to a small shack at the edge of the sand. In the distance, not far beyond it, Keith could make out all kinds of houses in a style he was entirely unfamiliar with.
Wherever he had ended up, he was incredibly far from home. That thought made his heart ache, irrational as it was. It wasn't as if he had much to miss; he'd been alone on that rocky shore, with nothing but his victims for company, and that had been a terrible existence. He knew it. But the knowledge that he was so far away, that he might never see home again…that was depressing in a way he hadn’t expected.
“Where are we?” he asked, and Shiro hummed.
“Nowhere you’ve heard of, I’m certain,” he replied, as he used his shoulder to push the door open. The inside of the home was incredibly foreign to Keith, which he supposed made sense because he was so far from home. Leading in were two steps up, and Keith blinked in confusion when Shiro paused to take off his shoes on one of the steps. He made a small querying noise, and Shiro gave him a look of equal confusion until he seemed to realize what Keith had to be asking about. “We prefer not to track dirt into the house, here,” he explained, and Keith huffed.
So much for that, when he had to be crusted in sea salt and sand. But oh well, Shiro had to know that, bringing him here. Keith was not exactly
subtly
dirty.
Shiro carried him through the entrance-way and to a back room, and into what had to be a bath. Keith was surprised at how deftly Shiro managed to keep holding him whole filling the tub, and he couldn’t help but notice that Shiro was very careful about keeping his gauntleted hand away from the water, which seemed strange. He had to wonder why Shiro hadn’t just taken it off, since it was clearly in danger from rusting.
When Shiro laid him in the hot bathwater, though, Keith stopped wondering or worrying, because it felt so good. It wasn’t the sea, it wasn’t
home,
but that was for the best. He could wash the sand and salt off his wounds, and could sit there in the warmth while Shiro walked away and came back with bandages and splint-pieces to wrap his wings.
The splinting process was painful, but Shiro’s hands and voice were gentle, and Keith found himself relaxing in spite of himself by the time it was done.
Before long, he’d fallen asleep.
In the weeks that followed, Keith learned many things. Some were small—the place he’d landed in was a small village called Rausu, on the island of Ezochi—and others were larger, and many of the things he learned were about his rescuer, specifically.
He learned that Shiro’s gauntlet was not a gauntlet at all—it was a half-magic prosthetic, to replace an arm he’d lost under circumstances he preferred not to talk about. Much of Shiro’s past was a blank; he talked little about himself, preferring instead to divert conversations away and back around to the other person. Keith had the general sense that his life was for the most part very lonely; while he got occasional visitors, none of them seemed to be close friends or family, and they mostly seemed to be seeking his advice or guidance.
That was another thing Keith learned; the people of the village respected Shiro. They listened to what he had to say, and took his advice, as best as Keith could tell. Not because he had any position of official authority, at least as far as Keith knew, but because he knew what he was talking about on a wide variety of subjects. Farming, fishing, pottery, hunting, sewing—any time someone asked Shiro something he seemed to have, at the least, an idea of what might be done to fix the problem.
He seemed to have all sorts of knowledge of all sorts of things. It was difficult to imagine one mortal had learned all that in what couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years or so of life, but Shiro somehow had. Keith suspected his lack of official position was due more to humility than to inability, because he was clearly more than capable and intelligent.
In return for his aid, and for the bits of knowledge of Shiro gleaned from small talk and observation, Keith told Shiro of himself, and of how he’d come to change from oceanid to siren. How he’d been tasked with befriending and protecting another oceanid who was a favorite of Poseidon’s, and how when that oceanid ran off with a beloved the sea god didn’t approve of, Keith had faced his wrath and found himself transformed. Shiro had expressed sympathy, but Keith considered it worth it. The other oceanid had truly become a friend, even if they had clashed at first, and Keith was happy to know that he was happy.
That was how Keith learned that a shoulder touch and a look of soft sympathy from Takashi Shirogane could feel more warm and comforting than any hug.
Shiro was also, fascinatingly enough, immune to siren song.
It was an automatic defense mechanism—Keith had mostly recovered from the damage to his throat, and his wings were better, and he wanted to try them out, and adding a little bit of siren song persuasion to his voice when he asked Shiro if he could go outside was automatic. Shiro just laughed and rested a finger over Keith’s lips, which sent a tingle through Keith’s entire body.
“No need for that,” he’d said, with a soft smile that had Keith’s heart doing little flips. “It won’t do any good with me, anyway. If you want to test your wings, wait until it’s dark, but you’re welcome to do it. I’m here to help you, not keep you prisoner.”
It was a strange thing, for Keith, to find that he unquestionably trusted a human—but he trusted Shiro. Shiro, who had risked himself and his social position to help Keith, and had been nothing but kind to him while he recovered, and who followed him out onto the beach to watch him stretch his wings.
He started small, just stretches and flaps to test range of motion and to make sure it didn't hurt too much to do so.
“Doing alright?” Shiro asked.
“So far,” Keith replied, and then he gave a few harder beats and leapt off the ground, carrying himself a few feet into the air. It wasn’t much, but it was more than he’d been able to do in weeks. Keith found himself laughing in delight as he carried himself a little higher.
“You look like you’re doing wonderfully,” Shiro said, and Keith did a little spin in the air just to show off, grinning down at him.
“It feels great,” he said, and then he dove down towards Shiro, stopping and hovering a few inches away. He found himself struck by how beautiful Shiro looked in the moonlight with a soft smile on his face, gray eyes shining and focused on Keith like he was the only thing in the world.
That night, Keith learned that Shiro kissed softly, but with passion, and that his kisses tasted like sake, and that kissing was much nicer than he’d expected it to be.
Keith also learned that he was wrong.
Sirens could fall in love.
Keith should have known that the simple happiness he’d carved out for himself couldn’t last.
He’d heard rumblings of discontent from the villagers, and none had ever been happy to see him hanging around Shiro’s home, but he knew that Shiro worked to keep him mostly isolated from that sort of thing.
Still, he listened. He knew that the village had been having a run of bad luck since his arrival and he knew that the villagers blamed his presence, which struck him as wholly unfair. The curse he carried was for him and him alone, and he was hardly some omen of
their
sea god’s displeasure.
It still hardly qualified as a surprise when there was a knock on the door, late at night, and Shiro pulled himself out of Keith’s embrace with a murmured apology to go answer it. Keith followed, watching as Shiro opened the door to find Morishita on the other side holding a pitchfork. The shapes of many of the other villagers loomed behind him.
“What is this about?” Shiro said, narrowing his eyes. “Surely it can wait until morning.”
“Hand us the creature,” Morishita said sharply, and Shiro crossed his arms and straightened his back. “We know that you have done well by us, Shirogane-sama, but—”
“There will be no but, ” Shiro said icily. “Keith is a living person, not a creature, and I will not hand him to you.”
“You know that we have faced shrinking hauls since that thing washed up on our shore,” Morishita said. “It is clear that Susanoo wishes for us to destroy this beast, and has been punishing us for our failure to do so.”
“Or
perhaps,”
Shiro said, “as I have been the only one not affected by this, and I am the one housing him, the message instead is that you are being punished for your failure of hospitality.”
“It is a plague,” Morishita said, and he smacked his pitchfork against the ground. “You have been spared because of what you are, Shirogane-sama. Susanoo would not risk angering Inari by cursing one of his messengers, surely.”
Keith made a tiny, querying noise. Who was Inari, and why would a sea god fear angering him? Another deity, it had to be, but Shiro was just a human, wasn’t he? Not some kind of godly messenger?
“What I am.” There was a laugh in Shiro’s voice, cold and mocking. “Perhaps you need to be reminded of what I am.”
The air around Shiro seemed to flicker, and he was briefly surrounded by a soft silver glow.
When it faded, Keith gasped softly. Shiro was, before his eyes, changed.
Gone was the loose yukata Shiro had thrown on to cover himself when he went to answer the door, replaced by an elegant silver kimono embroidered with gold thread. Shiro’s hair had gone completely silver, and perched on his head were two perked up fox ears of the same shade. Behind him, nine bright silver tails undulated casually.
Morishita let out a tiny gasp, and took a step back.
“Shirogane-sama—” he began, nervously, but Shiro silenced him with a glare.
“For centuries, I have protected your village, brought good fortune and good harvests, and I have asked little in return. A place to stay, and to be allowed to live as I choose.” His ears flicked, and then pinned back. “Now, I ask for but one more small thing—for you to extend kindness to a broken, battered stranger who has done no harm—and instead, you wish to kill him , because in your foolishness you cannot see that he is a blessing, not a curse.” Shiro shook his head, and Keith swore he could feel the anger radiating off of him. “Leave. And do not speak of this foolishness again. I like this village, and I like many of you, and the home I have made here. Do not force me to leave.”
“But—” Morishita began, but a hand reached out of the crowd and gripped his arm. Keith recognized the woman; he was fairly certain that she was Morishita’s wife.
“Hibiki, no,” the woman said softly, and she tugged him backwards. “We are truly sorry, Shirogane-sama. Your words shame us. It is true that you have done much, and asked so little, and we are grateful for everything you have given. We will leave you and…”
“Keith,” Shiro said. “His name is Keith.”
“Keith,” the woman repeated. “We will leave you in peace.”
“Good,” Shiro said, and he shut the door and turned around.
All Keith could do was stare in wide-eyed, silent shock. So many things made sense, now, crystallized with the knowledge that Shiro was not, after all, a human. He was something else, something...divine, apparently. Divinely beautiful, certainly.
“Keith?” Shiro asked, and his expression shifted to worry. “I’m sorry for not telling you sooner, I—”
“What are you?” Keith asked, and he knew his awe had to show in his voice.
“....A kitsune. A long-lived, nine-tailed fox. I was an ordinary fox, once, but I lived an extraordinarily long life, and I….changed.” He exhaled, briefly. “After a few centuries, I caught the eye of the goddess Inari, and she chose me to be one of her messengers.” His ears twitched, and then dropped. “I wasn’t really supposed to stay here long, but the villagers were good and kind, and struggling, and...I decided they needed me. So I never left.”
“I…oh.” Keith wrapped his arms around himself, and looked down. “Then what is someone like you doing being interested in someone like me? I am a monster; I lure people to their deaths.”
“I haven’t seen you do any such thing,” Shiro said, “and you’ve seemed…perhaps I’m wrong, but I thought you were happy here? Content, at least? And I...you’re so clever and brave and beautiful, Keith, how was I supposed to do anything but fall for you?” He stepped forward, and tucked a stray bit of hair behind Keith’s ear, smiling at him in that gentle, soft way that never failed to make Keith’s heart skip. “I know you may want to leave, especially after all that nonsense, but…”
“I don’t want to leave,” Keith said, quickly. “I...I’m happy here. With you. I don’t want to go back to being alone.” Shiro’s face lit up, and he leaned in, pressing a long, slow kiss to Keith’s lips.
In that moment, Keith couldn’t imagine anywhere else he wanted to be.