Chapter Text
Ivan never knew how weak he’d be to a beautiful boy until he saw one covered in blood.
It stained his chin red, and dripped onto the sand, dotting it in crimson. Ivan could hear each soft plop in the silence that hung between them—
Him, the beautiful boy, and the body.
Then the boy jolted, as if time caught up to him all at once, and fled into the sea, abandoning the corpse in his wake.
Ivan stood there, enraptured, before the cries of a gull overhead shocked him out of his reverie and he launched into autopilot.
I have to hide this.
He washed the dead blood off his hands in the sea, and let it lap at his ankles as he stared into the crimson streaked horizon.
The boy’s chin had been redder, but his hair was as bright as the midday sun. It nearly blinded Ivan to look.
As long as no one knew there was a monster in the sea, it should feel safe to come back to land. Then, he could try to look again.
“You’re beautiful,” Ivan whispers, like it’s a secret. Like it’s something only he’s allowed to know. If any other human laid eyes on Luka, they’d surely think the same. That’s why they can’t.
There’s also the matter of the bodies, but Ivan takes care of those with much less emotional urgency.
“I eat people,” Luka replies.
“You’d eat me?”
Ivan is smiling, until Luka’s eyes go flat and he grabs the back of Ivan’s neck, yanking him closer.
“If I’m hungry enough,” he says, right against Ivan’s skin, “absolutely.”
The pointed edges of his teeth graze Ivan’s collar. They don’t sink in.
Ivan gently guides Luka’s face upwards instead, then kisses him. He pricks his tongue against’s Luka’s teeth, and lets his blood pool between them.
In his head, there’s a voice. It says the things he wants to believe, but doesn’t want Luka to hear.
Right now, it’s saying:
But you haven’t eaten me yet.
You need a reason to eat me, when you don’t think before killing others.
You could, but you’re choosing not to.
You won’t, because you don’t want to.
As long as he can believe this is true, Ivan can keep ignoring the body count. The only one who can make him stop is Luka.
So he can’t let Luka hear these thoughts.
Instead, he basks in how hungrily Luka sucks on his tongue, even after the blood dries up.
The first time Ivan tried to let the sea swallow a corpse, it spit it back out onto the shore. Ivan found it again, back the next morning to check, and dragged his old rowboat from his shed and pushed it into the water after loading it with rocks and a body.
He nearly threw up on the way out into the ocean from the smell. The wooziness he felt standing up was definitely more than just the rocking of the water, and he was more than happy to jam an anchor against the rotting wood until it cracked.
This time, if the body made it back to land, there’d be a credible story to how it died. Men go out on less-than-seaworthy vessels all the time in the name of some goal or another. Ivan just had to make it back to shore alive to push the narrative.
And if he didn’t—
Well, if that mattered, he wouldn’t have bothered with such a risky solution.
When a wave crashed over his head and his muscles gave out, Ivan let himself be more honest.
If he died, then he died.
If he lived, then he lived.
If the ocean wanted him, then it could have him.
But not before his fantasies conjured a dream of the beautiful boy saving him, like the fairytales that sat on his bedside table.
When he woke up on the beach, sputtering a mouthful of seawater, Ivan knew he was doomed.
As he looked out into the vast, dark expanse of the waves, he thought: Oh, I’m in love.
His fantasy should never have come true.
Ivan has never asked if Luka really saved him that day. He went to the beach every day until Luka finally showed himself and remarked blithely So you’re alive, then assumed what he wanted to from there.
Reality, although fragile, is always so much kinder to him when he fills the blank spaces only with what he pleases.
So he doesn’t ask what happened the day he almost drowned, and he doesn’t ask if Luka thinks he’s special.
Luka comes to land for him.
Isn’t that proof?
Luka doesn’t eat him.
Isn’t that proof?
Luka lets him in close, close enough to kiss.
Isn’t that proof?
It should be. It is.
Today too, Ivan takes Luka’s hand and leads him to the town’s pool after hours with the key he stole, while Luka complains about the unnatural chemicals in the water. But he swims with Ivan.
He pulls him under as a prank, and then lets Ivan surface for air again.
Isn’t that proof?
Ivan tells himself it is, and doesn’t think any further. He laughs and his eyes sting as he opens them underwater, just to see Luka’s blurry form. His vision isn’t as clear as Luka’s, but with a little effort he can get close enough. This can be enough.
Luka kisses him.
And isn’t that proof?
Luka doesn’t visit every day. He can’t, probably. As a creature of the sea, it isn’t healthy for him to be on land so frequently. However, he still does just to see Ivan.
He’s never asked, technically, but this is another thing Ivan thinks to himself so that the days he spends sitting by the shore alone are more bearable.
Luka is making an effort to spend time with him. They’re both trying for each other.
This is just Ivan’s share of the burden—the heavy, deep seated uncertainty that threatens to swallow him like the dark waters of a moonless night.
Hurry, he bids to the sea, give him back to me.
And the sea doesn’t respond.
“What’s bigger: up there,” Ivan gestures to the sky, “or down there?” then to the ocean.
Luka is curled up next to him on the sand, lazily following Ivan’s hand with his eyes. “I’ve never been up there, so I can’t compare.”
“I’ve never been to either.”
“And you never will, so why does it matter?”
“It matters,” Ivan insists. Because he likes making Luka talk. He likes fuel for what he can add to the spaces between the truth. He likes imagining they get a little closer the more he tries to relate.
Luka looks at him, and Ivan looks back.
When Ivan looks at Luka, he sees something impossible. He longs for it.
What does Luka see, when he looks at Ivan?
The question is almost at Ivan’s tongue, before Luka points to the stars.
“That’s probably bigger.”
“Why?”
“Because neither of us know it, so it’s as big as we can imagine.”
Luka says we, and Ivan grins because it makes them sound together.
“You’re right. Our imagination can surpass the sea.”
Luka hums. Then he pushes Ivan’s shoulder and Ivan gives way to him easily, falling onto his back. Under the moonlight, Luka glows like an angel.
“Nothing can overcome the sea. It’s older and deeper than anyone can comprehend.”
It feels like a warning, but as long as Luka doesn’t say it directly Ivan can weave his own meanings into the space in between.
“Even you?”
“Especially me.”
Luka brushes away Ivan’s hair, searching his eyes for… something. Whatever he’s looking for, Ivan hopes he finds it. Maybe it will convince him to stay longer.
“The water beckons me home,” Luka continues. “And there is nothing I can do to resist.”
But if you could, you would. Wouldn’t you?
Wouldn’t you?
More things Ivan won’t say but will desperately believe.
“But you’re here now.”
“…yes, I am.”
It’s something Ivan is objectively happy about, if only Luka didn’t look so conflicted when he said it.
Just because a body is never found doesn’t mean no one notices the disappearances. It starts making the rounds, how strange it is how many people have left for the beach and never came back.
“Be careful,” they warn Ivan. “You could be next.”
It’s with more pride than confidence that Ivan thinks to himself, No, I won’t be.
And even if he is, he’ll at least know what did him in better than any of the mangled corpses he’s cleaned up after. If Luka did choose to eat him one day, Ivan wouldn’t be like the others either. It’d be… a special occasion, or a limited time delicacy. Luka would savor him, right down to his bones.
Right?
“Have you ever wanted to eat me?” Ivan starts with.
Luka looks mildly disgusted, which is surely unwarranted. “Why?”
“I'm curious.”
“Are you scared?”
Luka has golden eyes that remind Ivan of a predator. They don’t shimmer; there’s always been a murky quality about them, something swampy. They’re lazy, but laziness is a luxury that comes from the knowledge that there isn’t anything around that you have to be vigilant for. Only those at the top can afford to be lazy.
Luka pins him with his stare, and Ivan feels like prey. His heart starts to race.
“No.”
Luka squints, then suddenly clicks his tongue. “I bet you’d taste gross. Don’t ask me that again.”
“You didn’t have to say it like that!” Ivan needles, and frankly harasses the siren for another few minutes. When he really starts prattling on, there’s usually one way Luka will shut him up, and this time doesn’t prove any different.
An annoyed wrinkle forms between Luka’s brows, then he says, “Shut up already,” before grabbing Ivan’s hair and shoving his tongue in his mouth.
Luka kisses like he eats—mercilessly, controlling, and unrestrained. Ivan imagines what it’d be like to be on the end of such unbridled hunger, having an arm or a shoulder devoured instead of his lips. The pain wouldn’t matter; in the end, it’s all evidence of how desirable he is.
You want me, don’t you?
It doesn’t matter if it’s as a lover or a meal. If Ivan could ask without fearing Luka would say no, he’d take either.
As it stands, when the night cools down and Ivan is alone in his home, the evidence of Luka’s desire decorating his neck, he recalls with upsetting clarity that Luka never actually answered his question.
It turns out, he never will.
Human blood all tastes the same. It satisfies the hunger in him, and that’s as far as Luka cares to interact with the species that instinctively fears things like him. Deep, unknown, terrifying things.
A shark doesn’t remember every type of fish it eats, but it does know what kind it enjoys.
Luka isn’t a shark either, but the blood in the water strikes him as familiar, and there’s only one human he’s ever tasted the blood of more than once.
The careful, impassive shield he’s always put up around himself crumbles—maybe because he already knows there’s no more use for it. Even amongst the loud chorus of No, no, it can’t be true, he wouldn’t—
Luka knows there’s nothing he could reveal to a corpse that would matter.
The incoming tide caresses Ivan’s body, and his eyes stare emptily towards the horizon.
Ah, Luka thinks, as he lifts Ivan up and slowly retreats back into the ocean with him, I’ll have to kill them all.