Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I can't be with you, Hinata," Komaeda had said darkly when you had first kissed him, before the salt had even registered on your lips. "It's against my nature."

You remember laughing slightly. It wasn't as if you weren't kissing a selkie, his mouth cold as the sea even as the two of you rest on the warm sand. Still, the magic, the idea that Komaeda is fundamentally different from you somehow, is--a little tough to swallow, even now. His eyes, green and swirling like the tide, lifted from finger-drawn sand doodles and pinned you down. You'd never been so in love. “Because I'm a human, right?"

His mouth had hardened into a grim slash in his face. “Yes, because you're human, but mostly because I'm—I'm not.” He stared up into the sky. You imagine it's so different from looking up at it from underwater every day, clouds unbroken by ever-churning waves. You could almost have missed how his hands tightened in the sand. “As much as I might want to be." His eyes slid over to you, arresting as ever, especially when they got dark and serious like that. Your half-amusement died and you felt its corpse stick in your throat.

“Hey," you managed. You took his hand, pried it open and let the sand fall out of it, then pressed your palms and fingers together. His white skin was dappled like the seafloor in the afternoon light. “I’m not scared. I know what you are."

"Do you really?" he’d muttered, almost like he didn't want you to hear.

"I do," you insisted. "And I still love you, Komaeda. I love you."

He'd shaken his head softly, but his eyes were wide and focused on your fingers as if mesmerized. "Hinata... no. I can’t... I mustn't love you."

“You can," you insisted. Your heart had been so full just looking at him; you were already so used to his reluctance to let himself have anything, so what was one more self-denial to coax him out of? “You do, don't you?” You gently shifted your fingers to twine together with his. “You love me. I know you do."

He looked back to the sea. “It will... I'll end up... I can’t," he'd whispered.

It had been so easy to kiss his protest away.
--
As soon as you come back from hiding the pelt (away from the house, in a little hole in the hills above the cliffs), the misgivings are as gone as they could really ever be, knowing him; the point is, the adoring Komaeda you met is back.

You know he must have given his pelt up before, but damned if Komaeda doesn't act like it's the first time he's set foot past the shoreline. If there is one thing he loves more than showering you with affection and praise, it is learning everything about human life.

You take him to the market and he is lost in the colors and sounds and smells--no smells or sounds like these (or hardly at all) underwater, he tells you, somehow getting a matter-of-fact tone in past his raw delight. You watch him sway captivatingly to the music of a nearby guitarist even as he sticks his head in a stall selling spices, enraptured by the smell.

You buy him his own clothes, but even though you buy them in all the colors and styles he can get his hands on, he ends up deciding he would rather wear yours after all. You are hard pressed to complain with the way the shirt is just short enough on him to show a precious sliver of skin when he stretches his arms up.

He watches with wide eyes while you cook, sits on the counter and asks questions about drying and preserving and canning. All at once it is weeks later and he knows the basics and finds his interest more readily captured by his self-invented game of wrapping his arms around you from behind and trying to distract you. He kisses and nips all over your shoulders until you're too flustered to keep cooking and let him drag you back to bed. You're always too enamored of his peals of victory laughter to be all that upset.

You teach him to dance in the kitchen, and nobody has ever been as studious as he is in that moment. You sing a song to dance to, and you're not any good at dancing but of course neither is he, and the two of you wave arms and spin and laugh, delighted in each other. Somehow you end up catching each other and you kiss him thoroughly before taking the opportunity to teach him to slow dance. The sun goes down with the two of you in each other's embrace, swaying to a melody both familiar and alien that Komaeda hums for you.

One day you come down the stairs to find him staring out the window at the ocean, grey like the dawn, grey like Komaeda’s eyes go when he thinks like that. You softly pad up to him after you’ve looked your fill of him looking pensive, wistful perhaps, and wrap your arms around him and nuzzle into his hair. He doesn’t respond.

It’s the beginning of the end.
--
“Come back to bed," you whisper, going to your knees on the floor in front of the window beside him. He barely turns to look at you, but at least this time he doesn't shake you off when you put your hand in his hair.

He never slept a lot, really, but these days rather than toss and turn his feet carry him unfailingly to the living room and he just sits here for hours. Your living room is much too cold at this time of night for him to be doing this, and you wish you’d thought to bring a blanket to put around the two of you in case he draws this out. You know he gets so cold without his pelt to warm him. Is that your fault? Does he blame you? You rub your thumb over the nape of his neck and ache.

“Komaeda," you murmur, and it might as well be to yourself for how distant he is. There’s a book, open but unregarded, at his feet. He’s a quick study at reading, and you got him some simple books to practice, but even if he gets them out in the intention of looking through them, he quickly gets distracted, would much rather stare out at the distant waves. You gently close the book with your free hand; it’s just a symbol of something you can feel slipping away.

You take his hand and pull him up to his feet. You kiss all over his face until his eyes finally focus on you and he kisses back.

“I love you, Nagito," you remind him.

“I love you too," he says, and he says it like a farewell.
--
Komaeda's surly today. He's surly every day, lately. His face is stormy as the skies as you place a bowl of hot stew before him. He used to take the other seat at the table; now he insists on the one more opposite the door. Neither of you mention that it's the only way he can see out the window.

“We can't go to the beach today," you tell him gently as you take your own seat, knowing he is going to ask yet again before he opens his mouth. You say around your first mouthful, “The weather's awful. We'd drown."

"You'd drown," he says, fingers tightening on a spoon he’s been fiddling with but not actually using. But you know Komaeda, know he can be cruel as any of the fae when he wants to be, so you swallow the pain along with a gulp of stew.

“You'd drown too," you remind him, keeping your voice even. You wonder how you became the sensible one, when Komaeda was always such a source of calm in your life. “You're human, remember?"

Komaeda slams his hands on the table in the same fluid, always fluid, motion he uses to stand. Stew flies everywhere. You try not to wince, try not to give him the reaction he wants, the go-ahead to start pushing further. “And whose fault is that?" he snarls.

“Nagito," you say softly, but when you reach a hand out to touch him, he rips his arm away from you. He looks at you and makes a noise like you disgust him and thunders off.

It's scary how resigned you feel.
--
You do go to the beach, often. You have to. It's the only time you see Komaeda happy anymore. The two of you go in the morning and picnic on the beach, or at least you do, alone mostly, calling back and forth as he plays in the water, tireless.

Still, it’s fun to go to the ocean. It’s so easy when you’re here. You swim with him and splash each other and it’s like you have your old Komaeda back. He kisses you in the brine like he’s never had a bad mood in his life, and you thread your hands through his hair and kiss him back like you’re not scared.

When you tell him it's time to leave, his expression twists. When you remind him that he promised to go into town with you at this time, his eyes go dark and he nods sulkily, waves you off and says he'll be after you in a minute, just a minute more in the ocean. “Komaeda," you say warningly, but he promises you he’ll be out after just a few moments.

Still, you don't want to fight, are thinking about ways to mollify the fight if it is coming (and isn't that all you think about these days). So you go to shore and dry off and clean up all the things you brought that Komaeda never so much as glanced at after setting foot on the sand. You go slow, but even so, he's still out there when you finish.

“Komaeda,” you call, your heart sinking even through your annoyance. “Dammit, Komaeda, you promised!”

He sinks sullenly back into the water until just his messy white hair is visible.

"Komaeda," you say, stomping to the edge of the water. "We have to go into town today. There's shopping to do. I swear I'll leave you here."

"Maybe you should," he sniffs, loud enough for you to hear and quiet enough for him to deny he meant you to.

You do get him out eventually, but you keep running that moment through your head over and over anyway. Maybe you should have left him. Maybe he wanted you to.
--
Another fight tonight, started about the window or not going to the beach or something about the fucking ocean again. But this time the fight is worse. There's a fire in Komaeda's eyes. He's smashed cups and torn clothes. Your cottage is too small for his rage. You are small, too, in the face of his ethereal fury.

Still, you've got to try. You've got to do something, but you can't touch him; partly because you think it would anger him worse, and partly because, well. Some part of you is afraid.

"Calm down, Komaeda," you say anyway, watching with a longing ache his restless caged-tiger pacing.

"Don't tell me to calm down, you nasty, awful creature!" he snaps. His voice is coming through distorted, like from far away--like from above. Or from below.

"You don't mean that," you say with your arms crossed tight to keep you from shaking.

"Of course I do! You disgust me! Now where is it?" he demands.

"Where's what?" you ask, your stomach sinking. Neither of you mention it, not that directly, let alone talk about giving it back. He’s supposed to be human. He’s supposed to have moved on.

“You know what! My pelt!" You take a step back in shock and horror just hearing him say it. "You’re horrible, imprisoning me here, keeping me in this godforsaken land-bound misery!" He smashes another cup against the wall to punctuate the phrase. You shake all over.

"I'm not," you whisper. You want to shout, you want to bang your fists and fight, but whispering's all you've got in the face of this. You clench your fists so hard the nails dig into your skin, which is supposed to somehow route directly to your tear ducts and get them to stop. "How could you say that? You—you wanted—" You realize you don’t know what to say, don’t know what could change his mind. You settle on the important thing, the thing he really needs to know, even if it's too late for him to listen. “I love you."

"Love," Komaeda hisses. He starts cackling, a chilling, otherworldly sound. "Love! You can fucking keep it! I don't want it!" He kicks a chair over and the wood nearly splinters with the force of it. “I hate it here! I hate this body, I hate the smells and sounds and people, I hate all of it! I hate you most of all!" He twists his hands in his hair and growls, really growls, like a wild animal. You take an instinctive step back. He's not human at all, of course, and you were a fucking idiot to think he could be, could ever lower himself like that, could ever really love someone like you.

"Give it back to me," he says, shaking his head, pacing again. He looks more and more bestial by the moment. "I need it back. I can’t live like this." His skin doesn’t seem to fit him quite right. Instinct, electric impulse running up and down under your skin, tells you this is not safe. That he is not safe; a predator.

"Komaeda," you choke.

"Give me my PELT!" the thing called Komaeda roars, and he pounces at you, all claws and teeth and slitted eyes and none of the human lover you know. You sob, a noise of pure involuntary fear, and scramble out of the door.

You cry the whole trip up to the hills, running on bare feet because you were too frightened and hurried to grab your shoes, stumbling and cursing yourself. The slap of your feet on the rocks sets a rhythm for your self-hatred and despair; stu-pid, stu-pid, nev-er rea-lly loved you, stu-pid.

You want to stop and breathe when you get up to the cliffs, you want to throw up, you want, for a wild moment, to throw yourself off the edge. You go to the hole and brush dirt off the shiny, dappled grey pelt you once admired, before he was really yours (Was he ever? Is he now?), worn around his shoulders on days out on your boat or spent lying on the beach in reach of the waves.

You want to hold it for a while, breathe in his scent and cry, but you think of how wild and angry he was, you think of him tearing apart your cottage and growing less and less contained as he waits. You think of him attacking you, or worse, other villagers. You really need to get back.

You heave yourself up and clutch the pelt close to yourself as you run, so agonizingly aware that it is the last you will ever know of Komaeda. But you can't keep it from him, imprison him in life with you. That was the word he used. Imprison. You imagine yourself as an unknowingly cruel warden, his love only the twisted affection of a hostage to their kidnapper. Your legs shake even as you run.

Your cottage comes into view and your first thought is that you wish the path was longer, so that you could only have more time. Time is dangerous now, of course, and you are supposed to be trying to be faster, to cut down the time you are taking. Still, you can't help but wish desperately you had one more day, even one of these miserable ones, just because it would be another day with Komaeda.

You stand in front of your own door, trying to think of something to say, anything at all, a goodbye or—but it’s too late. He’s seen you, and throws open the door. He snatches the pelt and throws it around himself and is pounding off with superhuman speed toward the ocean. There’s no way you can catch up, and in moments he’s gone.

“I love you,” you whisper, too late, always too late, and sink to the ground and weep.

Chapter Text

Even weeks later your life is full of reminders of Komaeda, but what sends a real chill down your spine is that your house is not. It looks nothing like it’s been lived in at all, let alone by two people.

It must be a result of the magic, but it’s eerie—the cups he used and smashed, scattered around the place, are dusted over in the cabinet. The books he was learning to read are neat on the shelf, the ones you didn’t have before now mysteriously missing. The chair he kicked and nearly broke is upright and unassuming.

One night you have a horrible thought: that none of it was ever real. That’s what the fae are like; they’re in and out like they were never there, whether it's in and out of your life or in and out of your mind. How are you supposed to know the difference?

The fact is, you don’t. By morning you have entirely convinced yourself that you have been tricked and summarily betrayed by the fae, because that’s what they do to stupid, perfectly average humans like you. It would be impossible to believe anyway; beautiful men like that don’t fall in love with men like you, much less magical ones who could hypnotize and have anyone they wanted.

Any time you think about it too much you get horribly upset and have to wipe away tears. You feel stupid for being tricked. You feel stupid for falling in love with a daydream. Most of all you feel stupid for still being in love after you’ve realized it was all a deception.

You try not to think about it. You try to get up and live your life and prove that you are stronger than this. Yet somehow all at once it’s months later, and you don’t know why you can’t move on.
--
You still go to the ocean. You still love her; you could never stay mad, not really. You always knew she was full of cruel things, and Komaeda is just another one of them. She's part of life in your village and you can't turn your back on her. Even so, you’ve sold your boat—that was how you met Komaeda, lazy days out on the boat and damnable fae curiosity--and you got a job in town so you don't have to fish.

You’ve thought of moving away entirely, but the ennui is so heavy over your shoulders that it roots you in place. Maybe it's because you're hoping for the daydream to return. Maybe you're that pathetic, that you would accept even being spellbound just to have the idea of him back. You hope not. You're just trying to live your life, as you always had, as you have been doing all along because, of course, your life with Komaeda was just an illusion, remember?

But life goes on, and you do your best to go on with it. You work at the bakery, almost entirely deliveries so far, but a woman there named Owari clicks her tongue looking at you and tells you you’ve got to get in back soon, your face is so sad it’s going to depress all the customers.

You bristle in outrage, but later as you’re stacking boxes you realize that’s the most emotion you’ve felt in weeks that wasn’t crushing sadness. After that you’re not so much unhappy as perversely grateful to her. You think maybe it won’t kill you to make a few friends.

Some of your customers smile and wave. Some of them remember your name. You start from there. Bit by bit, the color returns to your life. There’s still a hole there, but you can maybe decorate the edges.

You meet an enthusiastic man who works in boat maintenance and practically announces you his best friend after two deliveries. You meet a woman at a toy shop who's soft-spoken and intelligent but has quite the taste for sweets. You even meet a man who immediately declares that he senses you have a connection with the fae, that you are a brave soul indeed for having tangled with the nasty creatures and survived, and also that he ordered fig pie rather than cherry.

One particular day you talk to a man who ordered too many pastries and is very cagey about what he needs them for. He seems aggressive and doesn't want to answer questions, but he relaxes after you make it clear you don’t intend to pry. As a matter of fact he decides he likes the look of you and invites you in for a drink. Halfway through it occurs to you that someday you just might be able to fall in love again.
--
There's a knock on the door one night. It’s a little late for visitors, but you don’t mind as long as it’s someone you like. You get up and run your head through any food or refreshments you might offer—maybe it’s Kuzuryuu? You wonder what he likes—and you open the door and it’s him.

Before you stands Komaeda, blessedly, beautifully human, shivering in the cold night. He tugs his pelt closer around him like a cloak, naked and doe-eyed and so very pitiful. “Hajime," he breathes, reaching out to your face but having to grip his pelt again as it slips down around him; he looks anyway like he's afraid you would reject him if he did touch you. “I love you," he says, the words tumbling out like he's afraid he won't get the chance to say them if he waits even a moment. It's a familiar feeling. “I love you, Hajime, please take me back. I made a mistake. Please."

“Komaeda," you breathe. You can’t believe it. He’s there, in real life, a real person in flesh and blood, dripping water on your stoop and puffing breath into the air. And he’s begging you. He looks so heartbroken. He called you Hajime. He’s Komaeda, your Nagito, and he’s back. There is no second option. You take him in your arms, letting him soak your front in seawater, then close the door behind him and go to stoke the fire.

You can hardly bear to leave him long enough to hide the pelt, but he pushes it into your arms and begs you to take it away, to let him stay, to not force him back out. You hide it under a floorboard in the bedroom, vowing to find a better spot in the morning so you don’t wake up with him gone again.

You come back with all the blankets in the house, stuff them between you and around you both. You hold Komaeda by the fireplace and he snuggles into you, and he’s not even facing the window at all, just clinging to you like he was dying without your warmth. You feel like you can breathe for the first time in months. It’s what you imagine it’s like to be whole.
--
On your way back from hiding the pelt properly, you tell Owari you won’t be in tomorrow, or maybe the next day. She takes your shoulder on your way out and asks you if everything’s okay. She sounds so genuinely concerned it throws you off for a moment.

But then you smile. "Yeah, everything’s okay," you tell her, and this time you actually mean it.

Komaeda’s waiting at home like an eager puppy, and indeed smothers you in kisses when you get inside the door. It's exactly like old times, only with you actually going outside on your own much more often.

You sweep him up into your arms like your new bride and insist on carrying him around the house for the rest of the day, threatening for it to be the rest of the week. “And if I ever have to go more than a week without you again, I’ll carry you to work and everywhere with me, and I'll never let you go,” you tell him, kissing all over his face and throat.

Komaeda kicks his legs and giggles, clinging to your neck and telling you how horrible you are, how he’s going to waste away in your arms. You promise to take him swimming to keep him fit and his eyes light right up.

You finally concede to let him down when he begs for the chance to dance with you. You sway together until the sun begins to set. You remember how it was before, and how it's been since, and it’s finally too much; you begin to cry. Komaeda holds you and pets your hair and murmurs apologies all the way through it. You almost think he’s going to promise never to leave you again, but when all is said and done, he doesn’t.

Lying in bed that night, hands clasped together, you tell him about your fear that he was not real. He chews his lip, a gesture still so familiar to you after all these months. "Oh, Hinata," he whispers, taking you in his arms. "I would never put a spell on you. I love you, I truly do."

You want to say ‘I know’. You should say it. You don’t.

Komaeda shakes his head into your chest and his own torso heaves with tears. He confesses he wishes he were human, saying it would be so much easier. “I worry about you,” he sniffles, holding to your hand like an anchor. “I worry about what I’ll do to you."

You hold him in return and kiss his forehead. You have the ugly thought that maybe he should have worried about this earlier, before he hurt you the first time. But it doesn’t matter; you could never--and would never--change that you love him so much it forms an ache in the middle of your chest, spreading out through your veins like poison.

He is right that being human would be easier. You try to convince yourself you want that too.
--
Two weeks later Komaeda tries to attack you again. You handle it a bit better; you don't get the pelt, and instead lock him inside and wait for him to calm down, shaking and holding to the outside the door. You blockade it with everything you can find, because of course your human strength is no match for his.

Eventually he does calm, and stops clawing and pounding at the door. You can finally stop crying when you open the door again and find your lover, human again and looking tired and miserable. The one mercy of it is that he knows his pelt is not in the cottage, so he didn't tear it apart looking. He did tear much of it up in anger, but it could have been worse.

You hold each other in reunion for a long time. When you finally let go you take seats on either side of the table; he's reluctant to take the seat with his back to the window, but you insist, and perhaps it's guilt that makes him agree.

"I don’t want to leave you," Komaeda whispers. "I don’t… want… but I can’t do this. I thought I could… I…" He looks down at his hands, and you realize you have left them empty, and quickly correct it by putting your own hands in them. It occurs to you that he probably wishes just as much as you do that he knew how to stay.

"You love the ocean too much," you mumble.

His eyes go wide and his grip on your hands goes beseeching. "That's not it, Hinata, that's not it at all, I don't love her more than you, it's just--I need--I can't." The word holds so much pain and helplessness. His face begs you to understand, and you wish you could say you didn't. Instead you kiss his knuckles and agree to one more night. You've come to realize your love was always a race against the clock.
--
You insist on following him to the sea this time. Having you and his pelt and the ocean all in the same place has always seemed to make him antsy, but you need to see him off. "Whether you come back again or not…" you say, cradling his face in your hands, so soft, so precious--"I just need to say goodbye instead of…" You can’t make yourself say it, make yourself go back to what it was last time, but he seems to understand.

Tears run down into your hands and you wipe them with your thumbs, achingly aware of how much like saltwater they are. You sense he knows something you don't, but you are too afraid to ask. He is so terribly sad, and your heart sinks; his face holds too much grief for you to think he will ever come back.

When you get there, proximity to the waves soothes his mood, as it always has. It could almost be a day trip to play in the water, except for the rising sun and the pelt in your arms and the tears in your eyes.

You walk together to the edge of the water and he looks out at the tide. "Give it to me," he says thoughtfully. You hesitate, but he turns so he's standing with his back to his ocean, facing you. He smiles softly and covers your hands. "I promise not to run." You look at him, his eyes more chaotic than ever but entirely honest. You slowly hand it over.

Komaeda smiles beatifically and wraps the pelt around your shoulders, still holding either side of it so it's like you're in a seal fur sling. He leans down and kisses you and you kiss back, as easy and familiar as it ever was, except... something's off. He tastes different, somehow musky and wild. Wild is the only word for it; like a wild animal. It reminds you--making you decidedly uneasy--of the night he left, where he transformed into something altogether inhuman.

You realize when you break the kiss that he has been walking you, step by step, at a gentle pace, backwards into the ocean. “Komaeda?" you mumble, looking up into his eyes. “What are you..." You look past him at the ocean. “What's going on?" you decide on. You look back up, and you find you can't quite look away; he is too radiant.

"Isn't it obvious, my darling?" Komaeda's lilting tone reminds you of stories you heard when you were small of fae, remind you of something both alien and primal. There's a manic twinkle in his eyes, wide enough to get lost in, his white sclera rapidly disappearing into dangerous swirls of green. “Isn't this what you wanted?” Komaeda takes a step backwards. “Isn’t this what you were always asking for?” Another step. “By being with me at all?”

You stutter on your words, not knowing what they would have been anyway. You can't bring yourself to look away long enough to glance down at the water, now sloshing around your knees, now your thighs. "Komaeda, what...? No, this isn't... what are you doing?"

"You love the sea," he says, his voice serene like it only is near the water. You stumble forward another step accidentally. "You love the sea, and you love me." One hand is fisted in the pelt around you, and the other hand goes to cup your face, so loving, so saccharine and deadly. "And I love you too, Hinata. And I love the sea, and she loves you."

He narrows his eyes. "You love us because we're dangerous. You love us knowing we could kill you. Well, we will, sooner or later.”

He takes another step, and you follow him, staring into the beautiful torrential eyes you fell in love with. Maybe he's right. Maybe you were always waiting for this to happen. You know you love his wildness; maybe you love that he can never be tamed, even by you, even by the love you share. At least this time you can be sure you do share it, that he does love you as well as he knows how.

“I love you, Nagito," you tilt your head above the waves to say, for once not too late for him to listen.

“I love you too, Hajime," he says, smoothing back your hair as it wets. “And I'm sorry," he whispers, so quiet you might have imagined it. “I tried."

The saltwater washes tears from his and your eyes. Komaeda pulls you gently, slowly, down into the water, and he holds you on the seafloor until you're gone.