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A silky hand reaches out of the water to touch the face of a sailor, darkness shrouding the two.
The sound of the waves crashing blocks all noise, the lights of the harbor are just pinpricks of light now.
Nobody would ever come here, the jagged rocks and fish less water made mankind turn their eyes away. The rowboat was stashed in between some stones, safely kept away from the grasping hands of the water, always wanting more than it already has, even if it hurts them.
The young sailor still had a face of a boy, round, soft pink cheeks, pale skin with the splatter of freckles on the bridge of his nose, and curling brown hair.
However, his eyes were like the sea, stormy, rough, easy to get lost in.
He wore nothing but a dampened cotton shirt and brown pants, thin leather shoes falling off of his feet.
Braeden Vanderbilt, nephew of porn fishers, watches as the hand glides back into the water. In the murky sea, a face comes into form.
The merman has delicate features, big brown eyes that flickered around, a wide mouth full of sharp teeth, algae-brown hair, long and smooth, floating in the water like some sort of dead animal.
He had a small build, but was still a creature of the deep ocean, a creature one should always question and be wary of. Braeden knew this.
But still, how he shivered when the merman, Waysa pulled himself onto one of the boulders, the pale moonlight glinting off of his skin.
His tail almost glowed in the moonlight, the scales reminding Braeden of the fish he catches on a daily basis.
"You come alone again.", his voice, deep and husky, echoes across the waters.
"We both know this is about as dangerous for me as it is for you. If they catch us, they'll kill us."
Waysa's arm curls affectionately against his, as he leans in close. Braeden feels the gills rubbing against him, the smell of the salt on Waysa's breath as he whispers-
"But first, my love, they must catch us."
Braeden feels his heart pound, and Waysa must feel it too, as he places one hand, fingers with nails sharp enough to rip out his heart, on his chest.
He doesn't know what to say. He seems to never know what to say, around him.
So he just lays there, in his lover's embrace, knowing that their love will never advance to more than this, that the rest of their lives it will always be this island.
Their love is a cage, a beautiful cage, but a cage nonetheless.