Chapter Text
Even here, with distance between them, the sun reminds him every single day
Of everything that he misses,
Everything else that it shines down on:
The same sun,
The same light,
The same warmth,
That feels so impossibly cold against his skin now,
Probably feels like ice for him, and him alone.
He tries to ignore its reflections
Skimming along the surface of the water, scattering images into the sky:
Sharp teeth, cutting into soft skin
And sharper eyes, cutting into softer spaces,
Places other people weren’t ever supposed to see.
Don’t
Make promises you can’t keep,
He tells himself, but it’s too late for that, and too
Late for so many other things.
The sand beneath his feet scratches, trying to drag
The memories right out of him and he knows,
He leaves a trail of bitterness in his steps,
But the sand is sweet and warm and impossible to fight.
The waves breaking along the coast beckon -
There are sharks waiting in these waters.
But sharks are nothing new, he’s already seen one
With all of its hunger,
All of its everything,
Everything that he doesn’t deserve and doesn’t understand,
Jaws wrapping around him
Like the hunger is directed here, and here alone,
Like he is something
That matters.
So he swims with them, dives headfirst into crashing waves that
swallow
Like jaws lined with so much danger.
It’s dangerous to go alone;
But his bubbling laughter beneath the surface blows
The warning away into the depths.
If they smell weakness,
They will come.
And he is so,
So,
Very weak,
He knows this,
So very weak, and they flock to his offering in gratitude.
So he plunges deeper into the den,
Den swirling with countless gnashing teeth,
Teeth that drag against yielding flesh,
And salt seeps into open wounds
As if trying so desperately to burn away that which is no longer of use.
It’s dangerous.
But it was dangerous from the start, he reminds himself:
The danger isn’t now, it was years ago,
In that first flash of crimson against the sun,
In the first loud snap of a jaw into the summer air;
The rest is just the taking of what is rightfully theirs.
And it’s only after he’s dragged his body back out of the water’s grip
(And it pulls, pulls so tightly against him, because he is already theirs)
That he feels the throbbing in his shoulder again.
He wants to laugh, loud and harsh against the glare of the sun but he
Can’t,
So he doesn’t;
Just lays against the greedy sand, pulling his pain to the surface again already,
And watches the sunlight that turns into radiance and laughter where it meets the ocean.
He’ll be back tomorrow,
And again, the next day,
And it will go on and on this way, until he sees it, finally,
The one face that he hopes he might find within their frenzy,
Red eyes
To drag him back down into the depths where he might stay,
Devoured in that hunger that calls out to him,
And him alone.