Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The overcast sky painted over Kildare Island in shades of violet and rust, and the sea rolled in slow, lazy motions like it too had been drinking the whiskey he had drowned himself every evening in. The wind carried the salt like a memory—bitter, sharp, uninvited.

Rafe stood barefoot in the cooling sand, jeans rolled to his shin, staring past the horizon like it owed him something. His hair was damp, curling a little at the edges from where it had grown from his buzzcut, and his jaw was tight with something he didn’t want to name. The water sprawled in front of him like a dark promise, and all he could think about was how quiet everything might be beneath it.

Behind him, Sofia’s laughter rose, soft and unaware as she twirled her fingers in the hem of her sundress and let the waves flirt with her toes. “Rafe,” she said, walking toward him with her sandals dangling from one hand. “You’re a million miles away again. You’re not supposed to think about work today.”

He didn’t answer right away. He kept his eyes on the ocean like he was trying to will it to speak first.

“You ever think about how easy it’d be?” he said eventually, voice gravel low. “Just… to walk in and never come back?”

Sofia’s face changed. Not with fear, but with something heavier. Understanding, maybe. She stood beside him, close but not touching, like she knew he couldn’t handle comfort just then.

“No,” she whispered, a bit worried. “Have you been?”

But Rafe didn’t move. He was caught in it, that ache that lived in his bones, that old, gnawing pull of never being enough. He thought of the water filling his lungs, the silence, the pressure, the sudden nothing. And how in some sick way, it felt like peace.

Then her hand slid into his—soft, slow, patient. “I worry about you,” she said, eyes on the tide. “You know you can talk to me, babe.”

The wind whipped harder then, and Rafe blinked. Not because of the sand in his eyes. Not really. He didn’t squeeze her hand back, but he didn’t let go either.

The waves crawled up around their ankles, cold and insistent. And the ocean waited. But for once, Rafe didn’t step forward. Not yet.

He stood there instead, with Sofia’s fingers in his and the sound of the surf in his ears, and let the weight of the water match the weight inside his chest. And for a second, just one, the buzzing in his head melted into the catastrophic storm of the waves, quieting briefly.

That night, sleep clawed at Rafe but never caught hold.

He lay on top of the sheets, staring up at the ceiling fan, watching it spin slow and lazy like the minutes dripping through his skull. Sofia slept beside him, curled up with the sheets tucked to her chest, the rise and fall of her breathing the only rhythm he could track. She always looked so untouched in sleep, like the world hadn’t tried to crush her a hundred times and failed. Rafe wondered what it would feel like to rest that easy. What it would take to silence the storm just once.

The darkness outside pulsed. And then the pull came again. Not a sound, not a thought, but a tug deep in his gut. Like something under the tide was calling him by name.

Quietly, he slid out of bed and padded down the winding staircase, bare feet soft on the old wood. The backdoor creaked open, and the cool breath of night spilled over him, salt and moonlight washing his skin.

He walked to the dock.

The waves were silver under the moon, breathing steady and slow like some ancient thing. He stood at the edge, letting the foam lick his toes. There was comfort in it—the hush, the weightless dark, the rhythm. It was the only place where nothing demanded anything from him.

He waded in knee-deep. The water wrapped around him like arms, cold and certain. He tilted his head back, eyes shut.

You could disappear.

The thought came like a whisper, soft and obvious.

No more Kooks, no more Pogue fights, no more gold, no more trying to be like Ward.

His chest tightened. The ache came back, sharp, full of teeth—and he stared at the horizon like it might give him permission.

“Shit…” he muttered.

The pull loosened. Not gone, but quieted.

He stepped back. The water didn’t fight him. It just waited.

Morning light peeled across the Wreck’s windows, warm and sharp, too clean for how Rafe felt inside.

Sofia sat across from him at a sun-worn table, wearing sunglasses and sipping iced coffee like nothing was wrong. She smiled at him—soft, sweet, a little sleepy. Her foot brushed his under the table. She didn’t ask why his hair was damp or why the bed had been cold at dawn.

He stirred his black coffee with a spoon he didn’t need, mind thumping with thoughts that didn’t belong in the daylight.

Then laughter. Familiar, nasal, grating.

The Pogues.

They slid into a booth not ten feet away, loud and effortless in their peace. JJ’s laugh broke across the room like a snapped branch. Kie leaned across the table, stealing a piece of Pope’s toast. John B wore that smug grin—like he’d already won whatever game they were playing.

Rafe’s jaw twitched.

He didn’t turn, didn’t make a scene. Just sat there, still, calm, sipping slowly.

But in his head—

He saw JJ’s face meeting the edge of the table.

He saw John B choking on his goddamn smile.

He saw blood and broken glass and silence.

His hand gripped the spoon tighter. Bent it without realizing.

“Hey,” Sofia said, touching his wrist gently. “You’re here. With me.”

His gaze snapped back to her. For a second, he didn’t recognize her face. Then he blinked. It all came rushing back—the waves, the dark, the pull.

He let out a slow breath. “Yeah,” he said, voice hollow. “I know.”

But even as he said it, his eyes flicked back toward the Pogues.

And the storm inside his chest stayed very, very awake.

The air stank of salt, grease, and old fish. He was already pissed before he opened the door.

Rafe hadn’t planned on seeing her. Not really. He told himself it was just a coincidence. Passing through the cut, drifting aimless, figuring he might as well stop by the bait shop where Sarah worked part-time when she wasn’t playing house with John B. Maybe see if she remembered who her blood was. Maybe talk, civil, like they used to.

But mostly, he just needed to see her. Remind himself she was still real.

He parked his dirtbike crooked along the curb, the engine clicking as it cooled in the humid morning. His hands still smelled like the café. Burned toast, cheap coffee, too-sweet syrup, and the violent thoughts from breakfast hadn’t fully gone.

The bell above the bait shop door rang sharp and ugly.

The place was dim, a little too warm, cluttered with cracked coolers, tackle boxes, and the smell of dead things. Rafe looked around slowly, but he didn’t see Sarah behind the counter. No soft blonde hair, no sigh of disappointment, no tired, “What are you doing here, Rafe?”

Instead was JJ Maybank.

Leaning back in the stool like he owned the place, a toothpick in his mouth, messing with the radio. Some distorted reggae track buzzed from the old speakers. He looked up, and Rafe watched the flicker of recognition light in JJ’s eyes—that spark of chaos, of shared history, of danger.

“Well, well,” JJ drawled, grinning like he’d just found a fish in a trap. “Look who crawled in from whatever hole he’s been stewing in.”

Rafe didn’t smile. He stepped forward slowly, controlled, pulse steady despite the fire simmering under his skin.

“Where’s Sarah?” he asked, voice flat.

JJ popped the toothpick out of his mouth and pointed vaguely toward the back. “She’s not here, genius. Said something about meeting Kie for smoothies. Guess she didn’t think you’d drop by uninvited and unhinged.”

That grin stayed plastered on his face—smug, antagonistic. Begging for a reaction.

Rafe’s jaw locked.

He looked around the shop, half-expecting Sarah to pop out and stop whatever was about to happen. But it was just him and JJ. Alone.

And the silence between them was a fuse.

“You know,” JJ said, standing up slow, “I’ve been wondering when you’d come sniffing around again, man. All that Kook rage bottled up, no gold to steal, no daddy to beat. Must be driving you insane.”

Rafe stepped in closer. Inches away now. Close enough to see the salt crust at JJ’s collarbone, the faint bruise under his eye from something recent. Probably another fight. Probably deserved.

He said nothing.

Just stared.

JJ’s smile slipped, just a little.

“You still think you intimidate me, Kook?” JJ asked, quieter now.

“No,” Rafe said. “I think I scare you.”

JJ laughed. Loud, wild, unbothered. The sound cracked through the shop like thunder, and Rafe’s vision narrowed to red.

“God,” JJ said, wiping his eye, “you’re still that same pathetic hot mess, bro. You come in here looking for Sarah, but what? You really just wanted a fight?”

Rafe’s fist curled at his side, tight enough for his nails to prick his palm.

He thought of the waves again. The pull. The quiet. The way JJ’s voice didn’t exist underwater.

Then the bell rang behind him.

Sofia.

Stepping inside, sunglasses low on her nose, confusion on her face.

“Rafe?” she said gently. “Babe, you’ve been in here a while.”

JJ’s grin widened.

And Rafe stepped back, jaw tight, chest rising fast. He turned without a word, brushing past her as he stormed out into the Southern daylight.

The door slammed behind him.

The storm still howled.

They barely made it through the front door.
Sofia hadn’t asked questions. Not when he stormed out of the bait shop like he was being chased by the Pogue’s themselves. Not when he rode back with her on the back of the bike, wind howling, his silence thick and vibrating like a scream held inside the ribs.

She knew the signs by now. When Rafe was too quiet, too still—that was when the storm was closest.

Inside, the air was hot and tense, the door banging shut behind them. Rafe moved fast. He turned to her like he was drowning again, fingers already dragging at the hem of her shirt, mouth crashing to hers with a hunger that felt closer to pain than pleasure.

Sofia gasped but didn’t stop him, she never did.

He lifted her, carried her down the narrow hall, barely navigating the turns. Uncaring if they knocked into the walls, didn’t care if the picture frames tilted. Everything in him was burning and sharp and desperate.

They hit the bed hard.

His hands were rough. Possessive. Like he needed to claim something, anchor himself to anything that wouldn’t drift away. That wouldn’t let the thoughts inside his head mold him until he was nothing but a spiteful, violent presence.

Her dark hair spilled over the pillow like a halo, and he kissed her like he was trying to erase someone else’s voice from his skull.

JJ’s laughter. Sarah’s silence. His father’s shadow.

The mattress creaked under the weight of it. Of him.

Of all the things he couldn’t say.

Sofia clutched at his shoulders, fingers tight, her breath broken and raw.

He wasn’t gentle. But he wasn’t cruel.

It wasn’t about sex. It never really was.

It was about forgetting.

About destroying something in the moment just so he wouldn’t destroy something else. 

Afterward, he lay on his back, chest heaving, sweat cooling on his skin. The room spun a little, the ceiling fan humming like distant bees.

Sofia curled into his side slowly, her cheek on his shoulder. She said nothing. She knew better than to ask what had happened.

But even in the silence, even in her arms—

Rafe’s jaw was tight.

His eyes were open.

He was still in the water.

Still thinking of how good it might feel to stop drifting.

And how close he’d come.

It was 3:17 AM.

Rafe sat in the cab of his truck, windows halfway down, engine off, a joint glowing between his fingers like a fuse burning toward something inevitable. The world outside was silent, suspended—like the whole island had stopped breathing.

He didn’t know what pulled him out again tonight. The air? The feeling in his gut? The way sleep hadn’t come in days and when it did, it came jagged and cruel—nightmares in flashes: waves, fire, his father’s voice.

So he drove.

Back roads, dirt trails, the sound of tires crunching grit and gravel. Music turned up high so he didn’t have to listen to his thoughts. He didn’t realize where he was going until he saw the water again. The beach. Of course. Always the goddamn beach.

He pulled up beside the dunes and killed the lights. The sky above was heavy with clouds, the moon only a sliver, the waves black and glassy. He rolled his window down fully and lit another joint, letting the smoke coil into the night.

Then he saw it.

A figure, far off wading into the water. Shirtless. Barefoot. Slow, like sleepwalking.

Maybank.

Rafe narrowed his eyes, body stiffening.

What the hell was the Pogue doing?

JJ moved deeper and deeper until the tide swallowed his ribs. Then his chest. Then—

Gone.

Just like that.

No splash. No struggle. Just disappeared below the surface.

Rafe dropped the joint into the cupholder and sat forward, gripping the steering wheel. He waited. Thirty seconds. A minute. Still nothing.

After three full minutes passed and JJ still didn’t resurface, Rafe flung the truck door open. He stood there for a long time, just staring at the water, breathing hard, fists twitching like they didn’t know whether to fight or pray. But the tide stayed still. Flat. Silent. Like the ocean hadn’t just swallowed someone whole.

Then a flicker. Movement.

Far down the shore, JJ staggered out of the surf like he’d been spit out. His blond hair hung over his face, and his hands were pressed to his knees. He vomited seawater onto the sand.

Rafe watched long enough to be sure the Pogue was alive—shaken, yeah, but breathing. Then he turned. Got back in the truck.

He didn’t start it right away.

He just sat there, staring through the windshield at the moonless night, letting the cold creep in through the open window and wrap around his bones like a warning.

By the time he made it back to his place, it was nearly 4 AM.

Sofia was still asleep in his bed, one arm flung across the empty space where he should’ve been. Rafe moved like a ghost through the dark room—peeled off his hoodie, his jeans, climbed in beside her and pulled the blanket up to his chest like maybe it could keep the water out of his head.

It didn’t.

The nightmare hit hard and fast.

He was in the truck again, only the windows wouldn’t roll up, and the smoke was thick, choking. He looked out and saw JJ standing waist-deep in the waves, staring straight at him.

Then JJ opened his mouth.

But the sound wasn’t words. It was singing—low, guttural, not in any language Rafe knew. The kind of sound that made your heart stop beating and your skull split open.

Behind JJ, the water split. Something enormous rose from the surf, its shape only half-visible, coils and limbs and ridged, silvery skin. It leaned forward like it was tasting JJ’s voice.

And then it looked at Rafe.

Not with eyes. With knowing.

The truck door flew open. Water gushed in, black and freezing. Rafe tried to scream, but the ocean filled his mouth—salt, sand, and something alive, something slick that wrapped around his tongue.
He was drowning. In the truck. On land.

He thrashed.

He woke up choking.

Bolted upright in bed, sweat dripping down his spine, mouth open like he was still trying to scream underwater. His chest heaved.

Sofia stirred beside him.

“Rafe?” she mumbled, half-asleep, hand reaching out to touch his back.

He flinched. Didn’t answer. Stared at the dark wall ahead of him, blinking hard.

His throat still tasted like salt.

Outside, the wind moved through the trees like waves crashing on distant shorelines.

He didn’t sleep the rest of the night.

Chapter Text

By the time dawn’s blue rays began to creep through the blinds, Rafe was still awake.

Same hoodie from yesterday. Barefoot. Cigarette between his lips but never lit. He sat on the porch steps like he’d been planted there, elbows on his knees, the filter soaking in spit and indecision.

The wind moved across the marsh slowly, but it brought no comfort. Just the scent of the tide rotting and wet wood and that sick-sweet smell of a storm that hadn’t made landfall yet.

Behind him, the house stirred. Sofia’s voice came through the screen door, soft and wary. “You didn’t come back to bed.”

He didn’t turn around. Just said, “Didn’t sleep.”

She hovered for a second longer, then walked away. Rafe didn’t blame her. If he could walk away from himself, he would.

By noon, he was at the bar at the country club, half-listening to Topper ramble about some boat party, holding a Bloody Mary he had no intention of drinking.

The nightmare still clung to him like a second skin. Every reflection of glassware, mirrors, even the surface of the drink seemed like it might twist and show him something else. Something below.

And that sound.

That impossible, inhumane singing.

It hadn’t left his head.

He caught himself staring at the pool—the way the sunlight bent over the water, how the shadows moved just under the surface and something inside him flinched.

A girl splashed. Laughed. The water hit his shoes.

He nearly punched the wall.

“Yo, dude,” Topper frowned. “You okay?”

Rafe waved his hand. “Yeah. Need some air.”

He stepped out the side door of the club into the blinding white glare of early afternoon. The heat hit him hard, wrapped around his shoulders like something alive. The air smelled like sunscreen and chlorine and something else he couldn’t shake. Sharp and raw, like a tide had rolled through the parking lot without leaving a puddle behind.

He lit the cigarette that had been sitting behind his ear since sunrise and leaned against the brick wall, letting the smoke burn its way down to wherever the pressure was building inside him.

He should’ve gone home. He should’ve texted Sofia. He should’ve done anything else.

Instead, he got in the truck.

And drove.

Back to the Cut.

Back to that same quiet street where the pavement cracked like broken teeth and the porches leaned under the weight of rusted lawn chairs and fishing poles long since forgotten. The kind of place you could disappear in if you weren’t careful.

Rafe parked low again, half-shadowed by a sagging oak, engine ticking. His hands sat still on the wheel. His mouth was dry.

He sat there for a while longer, the heat pressing against the windshield like a second skin. Cicadas screamed from the trees overhead, but everything inside the truck was too quiet. Even the hum of the engine after it shut off had faded.

Eventually, he got out.

Shoes heavy on the pavement, limbs stiff from tension he didn’t know how to unclench. His hand hovered near the inside pocket of his jacket, instinctive, familiar. But there was no flask today. He hadn’t brought anything to dull the edge.

He didn’t want to be dulled.

He wanted to feel all of it.

The bait-shop door creaked when he pushed it open. That old, slow moan like the whole place resented being disturbed. The bell above the door had long since rusted, dangling crooked, useless.

Inside, it was dim and wet and stale, just like he remembered.

Rafe stood in the entrance a beat longer than he needed to, eyes adjusting. The old coolers hummed. A stack of crabbing cages sat in the corner, dust-dull and unused. Bait was kept behind the counter in a foggy glass fridge. Everything smelled like thawed shrimp and engine grease.

And it was empty.

No JJ. No employees. No customers. Just that awful silence. It didn’t feel abandoned. It felt left behind.

Like a mouth waiting to be fed.

Rafe stepped in slowly, boots echoing off the floorboards. Each footstep made the shop feel smaller. Closer.

There was a chair behind the counter—slouched and worn, cushions torn, stuffing exposed—and a still-burning cigarette had been crushed out on the counter next to it.

Fresh.

He reached out and touched the ash. Still warm.

He wasn’t alone.

“Maybank,” he said into the empty room, voice low but sharp.

Silence.

He moved toward the back, through the open door that led to the stockroom. It was darker here, the air denser. Dust motes floated in the slanted light. Tools hung from hooks. A bucket half-filled with water sat abandoned beneath a leaking pipe, catching steady drops with dull, rhythmic plinks.

The door to the walk-in freezer stood cracked open.

Rafe stared at it.

For a second, he swore he could hear breathing inside. Slow. Steady. Not his own.

He moved toward it without thinking.

“Jesus, you’re predictable.”

Rafe turned fast, breath caught somewhere between fight and flight from the sudden interruption.

JJ leaned in the doorway to the shop floor, his face unreadable, shadowed in the half-light. No smirk this time. No mocking grin. Just tired eyes and a strange calm.

“You really gonna keep breaking into my place?” he asked. “What, you want me to make you a key?”

Rafe didn’t answer.

JJ pushed off the doorway and walked in, slow, careful, hands tucked into his pockets. “You got a death wish, Cameron? ’Cause if you keep showing up like this, one day you’re not gonna find me in a talking mood.”

“I’m not here for talking,” Rafe muttered.

JJ nodded once. “Yeah. That’s obvious.”

They stood there, the air between them thick and unmoving.

JJ’s voice cut through the tension like a knife, casual and sharp. “Sarah’s not here.”

Rafe’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not here for her.”

JJ lifted an eyebrow like he didn’t believe that for a second. “Right. Just checking in on the bait, then? Making sure the shop’s within Kook guidelines?”

Rafe stepped closer. The light caught the sweat along his jawline, the vein in his temple ticking like a warning. “I saw you, Maybank.”

JJ sighed. “Here we go.”

“In the water,” Rafe said, louder now, voice rough. “I saw what you were doing. That wasn’t swimming. That wasn’t normal.”

JJ’s smirk was slow, condescending. “You sure you didn’t just catch a bad trip? Too much sun? Too much you?”

“I know what I fucking saw,” Rafe growled. “You were gone for minutes. And when you came back, you—“ He stopped himself, jaw flexing.

JJ tilted his head. “I what? Sprouted gills? Grew a tail?” He gave a theatrical shiver. “Ooooh. Scary. Come on, man—I like swimming at night, sue me.”

Rafe scoffed, like the taunt didn’t sting. “I was going for a night drive, I didn’t expect to see you trying to drown yourself at ass o'clock at night. The hell were you doing?”

JJ held his ground, voice still laced with sarcasm, but louder now. “Real question, Rafe, what the hell were you doing watching me? Sitting in the dark like some creep outside my house? This some new Kook pastime I missed?”

“I wasn’t watching you,” Rafe snapped. “I saw you. That’s not the same thing.”

JJ blinked, slow and unimpressed. “Oh, my bad. You just happened to be sitting on the Cut in your daddy’s truck with the lights off, engine cold, in the middle of the night, just in time to catch my grand aquatic performance.”

“I wasn’t there for you,” Rafe bit back, jaw tight. “I didn’t mean to see it.”

“But you did,” JJ said, stepping closer now, eyes narrowed. “And you’re real upset about it, huh? Like it ruined something in that pretty little head of yours. You don’t look okay, Cameron. You look like you haven’t slept since.”

“I don’t need sleep to break your jaw.”

JJ laughed, but there wasn’t anything warm in it. “There it is. The Rafe I know. Always ready to swing the second the world stops making sense.”

“You don’t get to turn this around on me,” Rafe growled, closing the distance, toe-to-toe now. “I don’t care what the hell you’re trying to play at, or what the fuck I saw in that water. You keep pulling that shit near me again, and I swear to God, Maybank, you’ll wish you did drown.”

JJ didn’t blink. Didn’t even flinch.

He just looked at Rafe for a long, unsettling second.

Then he said, voice flat: “Then you better hope you’re right. That you only saw something.”

That threw Rafe off just a little. Enough to make him freeze, pulse roaring in his ears.

But before he could answer, another voice cut through the back of the shop.

“JJ?”

Kie.

“Yo, you in back?”

JJ turned his head slightly. “Yeah.”

Footsteps approached—quick, careless, unaware of the tension hanging like a blade.

Kie stepped in, holding a half-empty tackle box, hair tied back, flip-flops scuffing on the floor. She looked between them and paused, the tension in the room hitting her instantly.

Her eyes narrowed instantly, guarded and sharp. “Why are you here?”

Rafe took a step back.

JJ just gave her a look. “It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not,” she said. “He’s not supposed to be around here. Why the hell is he—”

Rafe turned and pushed past her without a word. He didn’t want to argue. Not with her. Not now. Not when everything inside him was rattling like a cage that had been kicked one too many times.

He stormed out into the daylight, heat swallowing him whole, and didn’t look back.

JJ watched him go, mouth tight.

Kie crossed her arms. “What was that about?”

JJ didn’t answer right away.

“Nothing,” he said finally. “Just Cameron losing it.”

The truck door slammed shut behind him like punctuation. Like a final word he didn’t remember writing.

His knuckles were white on the steering wheel before he even put the key in. He could still feel JJ’s breath on his face, that voice like seawater laced with oil—slick, heavy, wrong. That look he gave at the end, too calm, too steady. Like he knew something Rafe didn’t. Like he was waiting for Rafe to catch up.

Rafe punched the dashboard.

Once.

Twice.

Didn’t help.

Didn’t do anything.

The radio clicked on from the hit, static fuzz and faint notes of some old country song bleeding through. He shut it off with a violent twist of the dial. The silence returned like a wave.

He backed out fast. Tires spit gravel, his vision narrowed.

He didn’t go home.

He couldn’t face Sofia. Not when his hands were shaking, not when he could still feel the chill of the bait-shop air clinging to his skin, like fog that wouldn’t burn off.

Instead, he drove aimlessly through back roads thick with humidity and pine. Past sun-bleached fields and rusted-out sheds. He rolled the windows down even though the air was hot and sour. He needed something—wind, motion, anything to make the world feel real again.

He kept seeing it.

JJ’s face rising out of the water.

No breathes. No panic. Just empty eyes.

That steady, too-long stare that didn’t belong to a person.

Rafe clenched his jaw so tight his molars ached.

He didn’t believe in fairy tales. In ghost stories. Not really. He believed in blood and bone and pain—things that could be measured in bruises and broken ribs.

But this? This was different.

This was beneath logic. Without flesh. In the salt at the back of his throat and the way shadows moved in water that should’ve been still.

He pulled over near a dead end, where the woods thickened and the smell of brackish water crept up through the earth. Killed the engine. Sat in the stillness, twitching.

Then leaned forward, elbows on the steering wheel, head in his hands.

Breathed.

Again.

And again.

But it didn’t help.

He could still hear it.

Faint, almost imperceptible—

That singing.

Not words. Not notes.

Just pressure.

Rising.

Sliding.

Slick.

He pressed his palms to his temples until stars sparked behind his eyelids.

No.

He wouldn’t lose it here. Not like this. Not alone in the swamp with nothing but that sound gnawing at his spine like an infection.

He looked at the woods ahead, then the water beyond—half-hidden through the trees, black and slick and waiting. There was something ancient in that stillness. Something that didn’t care if he was a Cameron. Something that might call him closer just to split him open and see what he was made of.

He should’ve let it go.

He should’ve turned around, driven home, wrapped his arms around Sofia and begged her to ground him before the current took him under completely.

But Rafe didn’t move.

The marsh pulsed in the distance. Still. Silent. Watching.

It didn’t make sense with the way it pulled at him. The way it knew him. He felt it in his bones, in the throb behind his eyes, in the sweat that wouldn’t dry on his neck. There were no answers out here. Just questions with teeth.

Rafe muttered under his breath. “What the fuck is wrong with me?”

But the silence didn’t answer.

The marsh just blinked, slow and patient.

By the time he got back to Tannyhill, the sun was sliding low, spilling gold across the water. Mosquitos hummed around the porch light even though it wasn’t on yet, and the island buzzed with that familiar dusk rhythm—too alive to be peaceful.

Sofia was on the porch swing, barefoot, one knee drawn up to her chest. She didn’t look at him right away. Just kept watching the horizon like she was expecting something to crawl out of it.

He walked up slow.

Sat on the steps again. Same spot. Same pose. Like nothing had changed. But everything had.

She didn’t speak.

He didn’t either.

Not for a long time.

Then, finally, she said, “You smell like the swamp.”

Rafe exhaled through his nose, sharp. “Been worse things I’ve smelled like.”

“I called you,” she added, voice soft. “Three times.”

His jaw worked.

“Didn’t hear it.”

She looked at him then. Really looked. Her eyes were dark in the fading light, full of something sharp and tired. “You didn’t answer because you didn’t want to.”

He didn’t argue.

Didn’t lie.

Sofia leaned forward, resting her arms on her knees. “I know something’s wrong. And I’m not asking you to explain it. I’m not stupid. You’re having some sort of breakdown.”

He looked straight ahead. “I’m not having a fucking breakdown.”

“You are,” she said. “You’re just pretending it’s like a routine. I can tell when you’re in a weird headspace, babe. Why don’t you ever let me help?”

He ran a hand through his hair, rough. “Maybe I’m just tired.”

“Tired people sleep,” she said. “You haven’t.”

A pause.

Then, almost too quietly—“Are you seeing things again?”

That made him flinch.

It was an old question. A dangerous one. One that echoed with too many buried nights and pills he never took.

He didn’t answer.

Sofia didn’t press.

Instead, she leaned back, the swing creaking under her.

“I’m not gonna make you talk, Rafe,” she said, voice suddenly cooler. “But if you’re gonna come home soaking wet again, smelling like rot, with that look in your eyes? You better decide real quick whether you want me here when whatever’s eating you decides it’s still hungry.”

That landed.

Hard.

He turned to her, finally. And for a second, he thought about telling her. About his nightmares. About the lull to the water. About JJ Maybank, and his sudden growing pull to him.

But the words stopped at his teeth.

Because even if he said it out loud, it wouldn’t change what was waiting in the dark.

Instead, he said, “I’m trying.”

Sofia stood. Walked to the door.

Before going in, she looked back once, eyes rimmed in something that could’ve been hope or warning.

“Try harder.”

Then she shut the door behind her.

And Rafe was alone again, with nothing but the sound of the waves moving.

And somewhere, faint but steady—

That same impossible song.

Still singing.

Chapter Text

It started small. A glance. A coincidence. A habit he told himself wasn’t a habit.

But it didn’t stay that way.

First, it was the docks. Rafe sat in his truck with the seat leaned back just enough to disappear, watching as JJ hauled crates or swept the deck or smoked like the world was something he barely acknowledged anymore. He never stayed long. Never looked around. Always moved like someone on a timer.

Later, it was the bonfire on the south end of the island. A Thursday night thing, Pogues only. But Rafe stayed just beyond the tree line, unseen, the flamelight flickering across JJ’s profile from a distance too far for comfort and too close to be innocent.

He watched JJ laugh with people he trusted. Watched him look over his shoulder once, and only once.

It was enough.

The next day, Rafe woke up sweating, gasping, sheets tangled around his ankles like vines.

The dream was back.

Except now it was worse.

JJ’s body in the surf, twitching wrong. The sound—that noise—coming from his mouth like the sand had rooted in his throat. Scales glinting like blood beneath torn flesh. His hands weren’t hands. They reached for Rafe anyway.

And the song.

Always the song.

Rafe screamed when he woke, a short, strangled thing that died in his throat. Sofia had left hours earlier. He didn’t remember her leaving.

He spent that morning drinking vodka from a coffee mug.

By afternoon, he was following JJ again.

Like clockwork.

But something had change. JJ was harder to track now. He moved less predictably. Like he knew.

Rafe caught glimpses. A shadow through the trees. A figure disappearing between buildings. Once, he was sure he saw JJ sitting along the shore behind the fish market, just sitting there, unmoving, clothes soaked through, but when Rafe turned the corner, he was gone.

It became a ritual.

Wake up, half-drunk and drenched in seawater sweat.

Watch JJ.

Sleep badly.

Repeat.

And still, he didn’t stop.

The party was already in full swing when he arrived.

Music too loud. Lights too bright. A haze of sweat and perfume and privilege thick in the air.

A Kook party. One of those bloated things held in a beachside mansion that wasn’t even owned by the host. Liquor spilled from plastic cups. Girls with lipstick stains on their teeth draped themselves over boys with yachts in their names.

Rafe wasn’t supposed to be there.

He didn’t even know whose house it was.

He just needed the noise.

He needed something to drown out the hum beneath his skin.

Rafe grabbed a beer from a cooler and drank it in several gulps. Didn’t taste it.

Didn’t want to.

He stood on the second-story balcony, looking out at the ocean.

He didn’t notice them arrive at first.

The party had thickened—bodies crowding the hallways, basslines turning ribcages into drums. Drunken laughter spilled across every room. And still, Rafe stood on the balcony, watching the ocean roll in like it had a personal vendetta while feeling sorry for himself.

Then he heard it, somebody jeering from downstairs. A voice too uncaring to belong to a Kook. A familiar rasp that cut through the blur like a knife.

“Aw, c’mon, Pope! Just one drink. You gonna die sober?”

JJ.

Rafe froze.

He turned slowly, leaned over the edge of the railing, and there they were like something summoned.

The Pogues.

JJ, flushed and smug, a joint half-burned between his fingers. John B beside him, Pope looked wildly uncomfortable in a borrowed shirt, clutching a solo cup like it might shatter. Kie was already halfway up the stairs, clearly drunk, dragging Sarah behind her by the wrist and shouting something about “claiming the liquor cabinet like colonialism never happened.”

They weren’t supposed to be here.

And yet there they were—dripping laze and sweat into a party meant for the golden-blooded. No one stopped them. No one dared.

Especially Rafe.

Not yet, anyways.

He stepped back from the edge, retreating into the shadow of the balcony doorway. Watching.

JJ didn’t look up, didn’t glance around. But Rafe felt it in his gut he knew. Somehow, JJ always knew when Rafe was watching.

Down below, JJ took a long drag from his joint and exhaled without looking away from the outside.

Rafe followed his line of sight.

The water was still.

Too still.

Someone shoved past him, laughing. A girl in a sequined dress. Rafe barely noticed. He was moving before he knew it down the stairs, across the room, navigating through bodies like a ghost.

When he stepped outside, the air hit him like static.

JJ was alone by the pool now, crouched at the edge, fingers trailing through the surface.

Just the two of them. Again.

Rafe approached slow.

“Wrong crowd,” he said once he was close enough to be heard.

JJ didn’t look up. “Party’s open. We all crash the wrong places sometimes.”

His fingers still traced the water. Rafe wanted to push him in. Maybe hold his head underwater.

“You’re not here for Sarah?” JJ added, casual but cutting. “Figured that’s the only time you follow your dick into a disaster.”

“I’m not here for her,” Rafe said, the words clipped, “don’t be disgusting—and I’m not here for you.”

JJ grinned, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “No, you’re just always where I am, man. Like a rash. Or a fly. Mosquito. Mosquito—Cameron, ha.”

Rafe didn’t reply.

He couldn’t.

Because something in the water moved.

Just for a second.

Like something flicked beneath the surface.

JJ’s hand stilled.

Rafe flinched.

The music roared behind them, but out here by the pool it felt like everything had been turned down. Or pulled under.

JJ looked up at him, finally, and said, too quiet: “You should stop following me, Cameron.”

Rafe’s jaw twitched. “Why?”

The screen door slammed open behind them before JJ could respond. Kie’s voice broke the spell.

“There you are. Jayj—come inside, John B’s about to fight someone for putting mayo on ribs.”

JJ didn’t move. Didn’t break eye contact.

Rafe could smell salt.

JJ leaned in, close enough that Rafe could see the glint of moisture at his temple, the way the porch light caught the curve of his thin lips. His breath smelled like smoke and something briny that didn’t belong at a house party.

His voice came soft, threadbare with amusement—but beneath it, something mean flickered. “Keep following me like this,” JJ murmured, “and people are gonna think you’re wanting to mack on a Pogue.”

Rafe’s blood turned to fire.

He didn’t move, didn’t speak, but his whole body tensed like a lit fuse, jaw clenching, fists curling so tight his knuckles cracked. JJ didn’t flinch. Didn’t pull back. Just smirked, the corner of his mouth twitching like he could already taste the chaos he provoked.

A beat passed between them, razor-thin.

JJ tilted his head just slightly, the way you might when teasing a dog you weren’t sure would bite or whimper.

Then he leaned in closer—close enough that Rafe could feel the heat of him, the damp brush of his shoulder. His voice dropped, syrupy with venom: “Who would’ve guessed rich boys liked their meat scrappy and wet.”

That did it.

Rafe moved before he thought, one hand bunching the fabric of JJ’s shirt, the other slamming hard into the wall behind his head with a crack that made the string lights above them tremble. Not a punch. Not yet. But close. Close enough for JJ to feel the threat in the tremor of Rafe’s breath against his cheek.

JJ didn’t blink.

Didn’t move.

He grinned.

“Can’t tell if you’re gonna kiss or kill me, Cameron,” he whispered, all teeth.

Rafe’s lip curled. “Keep talking and find out.”

They stood there, inches apart, locked in something too sharp to be tension and too electric to be the hatred they’ve only ever known with each other. The pool gurgled behind them. A beat in the music dropped and surged again. But in this moment, the whole world narrowed down to heat, breath, eyes.

Then a voice called from inside.

“JJ! Bro—seriously, John B just threw the mayo. It’s all over some Kook girls. You’re missing it.”

JJ didn’t move right away. He just stared at Rafe, that maddening, crooked grin spreading slow.

“You always this fun at parties?” he muttered.

Rafe shoved him back, not hard, just enough to break the spell.

JJ staggered one step, but caught himself easily. He smoothed his shirt, gave Rafe one last, lingering look, then turned and strolled back toward the house like nothing had happened.

He paused at the sliding door.

Turned halfway back.

“Oh,” he added over his shoulder, “you should really do something about that twitch in your eye. People might think you’re unhinged, dude.”

And then he disappeared inside.

Rafe stood frozen by the pool, fists still clenched, heart thundering like something alive in his throat.

The water rippled.

And for just a second, the surface whispered back.

He left the party behind, footsteps echoing over sand-streaked floors and broken bottles.

When he reached his truck, the night air felt denser—thicker, heavy with self-hatred and dread. Every breath was a struggle. Every shadow spilled secrets.

He hardly noticed the drive back. The engine purred hypnotic, tires humming across familiar back roads. The stink of stale beer and salt on his clothes washed over him. He didn’t turn off the truck. Just sat there in the driveway.

Stars hung low above the marsh, and Rafe saw them shaking. Each one a flicker of something unresolved. Below, the marsh water glimmered like spilled ink.

Eventually, he trudged inside, kicking the door shut behind him. The house was pitch-dark, even darker than the marsh.

He made no move to kill the lights. Just padded to the bedroom, collapsing onto the bed. The sheets were cool, untouched… empty without Sofia there to hold him.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

But sleep never came easily.

A wave hit him like a fist.

It wasn’t just water, it was flesh and weight and something with a beating heart pressing into his skin.

He was standing on that same dock.

The Pogues were gone. Except for JJ, crouched at the edge. Fingertips trailing in the water again.

Rafe walked toward him, but the wood creaked differently like it was rotting from below. His foot plunged through the deck. He fell in, shoes filling with water, icy and thick.

Beneath, everything was moving. Eddies of black shapes moving just below his feet. A pulse. A heartbeat.

Up above, JJ’s silhouette twisted. He opened his mouth—it wasn’t speaking. It was singing again. A guttural, twisting note that pulled Rafe downward.

Rage seared through him. He lunged, grabbing JJ’s ankle. But JJ’s leg stretched impossibly long, morphed into something with scales and slipping away like smoke.

The water around Rafe was alive. Fingers glittering with scale reached through the murk, pulling him deeper.

“Wake up,” he screamed. “Wake up!”

He thrashed, but the dock boards felt like quicksand, sinking, tilting—

He gasped and shot upright.

He woke drenched in sweat, gasping with tears that threatened to fall. The sheets were tangled, heavy like the thing that tried to drag him. Cold. He kicked them off onto the floor, needing to feel the air against his heated skin.

Light filtered weakly through the blinds. The house was too quiet.

He heard her first—soft, hesitant footsteps.

Sofia entered the room. Her face was pale, softened with worry.

Rafe’s throat was raw. He could still taste the marsh, the metal of dread.

“Another nightmare?” she asked gently. She came to the bed, sank down beside him.

He didn’t answer.

She didn’t push.

They just lay there. An island of stillness in a sea of noise.

Rafe’s knuckles ached from the dream. From the weight of whatever had sunk its teeth into his skull and wouldn’t let go. He needed something—anything—to shut it off. To burn it clean.

Barry’s place hadn’t changed. Same warped door, same stink of sweat and dogs and synthetic despair. Rafe didn’t knock. Just walked in like he used to.

Barry looked up from the couch, remote in one hand, beer in the other. “You look like shit, man.”

“I need something,” Rafe said.

Barry raised a brow, slowly sat up. “What, you back on that now? You clean for what—two weeks? Month?”

“I said I fucking need something.”

“You don’t need shit. You need a shrink and a padded room.” Barry stood, jaw tightening. “I ain’t selling to you, Rafe. Not when you’re like this.”

“Come on, man.” Rafe’s voice cracked. “I just—I just need a night. A second to breathe.”

Barry shook his head, grabbing a half-empty pack of smokes off the counter. “Nah. I seen that look in your eye before, country club. You ain’t lookin’ to breathe. You’re lookin’ to bury.”

Rafe took a step closer. “Don’t do this to me, bro.”

Barry shoved a hand against his chest, firm. “Get the fuck outta my house.”

Rafe stared at him for a long second. Just long enough for Barry to flinch and then he turned. Walked out without another word, slamming the door hard enough that the whole trailer rattled.

The truck roared with a scream.

He tore through back roads like they’d wronged him, tires screaming against asphalt. Music blasted, but it didn’t cover the static in his ears. The singing was still there—it lived in his skull now.

Sweat poured down his temples. His mouth was dry.

A red light blurred past. Didn’t matter.

He floored it harder. Heat rose from the engine, the smell of rubber, the phantom sense of something crawling beneath his skin.

He came around the curve past the marina, tires shrieking under the weight of his rage—

—and slammed to a stop.

Because there he was.

JJ.

Dragging his feet along the water’s edge like his feet were stuck. Like the tide rose just to meet him.

Loose ratty shirt sticking to his back, hair dark and dripping, his silhouette caught in the bruised pink of sunset like something half-remembered from a fever.

Rafe’s breath caught. Froze in his chest.

There was a stillness to JJ now, something not-boy, not-man. Something wrong. Or worse. Something right in a way the island hadn’t accounted for.

His hands slipped on the steering wheel, palms slick with sweat.

Rafe didn’t think.

Didn’t breathe.

He just shifted the truck into gear and rolled forward, headlights off, engine low like a baited breath.

JJ didn’t look back. He didn’t have to.

He moved like he already knew he was being followed like he didn’t care.

The road narrowed the farther they went, sloping down toward the edge of the marsh, where asphalt turned to dirt, and the air grew thick with salt and the scent of rotting seaweed. The last of the sunset bled out behind them.

Rafe killed the engine halfway down and coasted, tires crunching soft over shell and grit.

He watched JJ drift along the edge of the water like he was waiting for something. Or someone.

Maybe the tide.

Maybe the dark.

There was no one else around. No boats in the slips. No herons in the reeds. Just the lapping of black water and the sound of JJ’s boots against wet sand.

And Rafe hidden in the truck’s shadow, jaw clenched, hands shaking.

The wind off the sound was cold now, colder than it should’ve been in July, and it cut through his shirt. He didn’t care—he stepped out of his truck.

One hundred feet.

Fifty.

JJ still hadn’t looked back.

He moved down to the far end of the dock where the planks warped and groaned, half-swallowed by tide. And then, like it was the most natural thing in the world, he stripped off his shirt and stepped out of his boots.

Rafe’s heart kicked.

The scars on JJ’s back caught the light—long and pale, like something once tore out of him instead of into him.

Then he walked into the water.

Not jumped.

Walked.

And the tide took him without resistance. Silent. Effortless.

Until there was nothing left above the surface but rings.

Expanding.

Fading.

Rafe didn’t move.

Couldn’t.

He stood on the edge of the grass, blinking into the dark like maybe it would explain itself.

But the marsh didn’t care.

He was alone.

Again.

Only this time, he knew it.

And he knew what he saw.

Even if no one else ever would.

Chapter Text

It began with the sound of water dripping. One drop at a time. Like a leak somewhere in the ceiling of his skull.

Rafe didn’t know where he was. The marsh? A shoreline? The sky overhead was black and low, pressing in like it had weight. Mist curled around his ankles. He was barefoot, shirtless, pants soaked to the thighs like he’d waded in too far and forgot how to swim back.

And then he saw him.

JJ’s arms rested lazily over a half-submerged log. The water shimmered around him, smooth, and his eyes glowed faintly beneath the reeds that haloed his head like seaweed.

Rafe stared, his throat dry, a slow ache blooming in his chest like lust. Every instinct in him screamed to back away—to run from this thing, this creature in JJ’s skin but he didn’t run.

Instead, he knelt deeper, his palms sinking into the mud, drawn closer by a magnetism that hummed behind his ribs. His breath shook. He didn’t know if it was fear or thirst or some awful third thing with no name.

JJ smiled.

And Rafe went to him.

JJ floated back, just a little, beckoning not with hands, but with the way his head tilted, the bare flash of teeth too sharp in his mouth.

When Rafe reached him, the marsh fell silent.

JJ’s webbed hand reached out, touched his jaw. “You shouldn’t be here,” he murmured, but he didn’t sound angry. “Dreaming again?”

“I had to see you,” he said, though he didn’t remember deciding to speak.

JJ smiled. Slow. Unsettling. His other hand slid around the back of his neck, pulling him closer, breath warm against his cheek. His skin shimmered under the moonlight like he wasn’t fully there.

“You keep coming back,” JJ whispered. “How?”

Rafe’s fingers dug into JJ’s waist, but they met something unyielding too smooth, too slick, like gripping flesh and stone at the same time. JJ made a sound then—not pain, not pleasure, something more primal. A hiss, maybe. Or a groan filtered through marsh.

His eyes flashed.

JJ leaned in close, his lips brushing Rafe’s ear.

“You’re gonna ruin yourself for this,” he whispered. “You know that, right?”

And before Rafe could pull away—before he could even breathe JJ kissed him.

But it wasn’t a kiss.

It felt like drowning.

It was teeth. And suction. And something curling behind Rafe like pressure from the deep.

He tried to scream. No sound came. Only bubbles. He tried to pull back, but JJ’s hand was already on the back of his neck, fingers too long, too strong. He tasted blood and salt and something sweet.

And then JJ said something else but not in English.

Not in any known language.

It vibrated through his skull, splitting behind his eyes, buzzing into the base of his spine like a tuning fork jammed into his bones.

He gasped, then—

Rafe woke in a cold sweat.

Sheets twisted. Heart racing. Mouth open.

Without a scream.

Only… heat.

Confusion.

Arousal, thick and unshakable, even as the fear clung to the edges of his chest.

He rolled onto his side, clutching his pillow so hard his fingers went white.

It wasn’t the drowning that scared him most.

It was how right it had felt.

He didn’t sleep the rest of the night.

Just lay there in the dark, eyes open, heart thundering like waves against rock, and listened to the faint sound of singing that wasn’t coming from any dream.

His breathing never really returned to normal.

He lay there, throat tight, the shame creeping in slow, acidic.

You liked it.

You wanted it.

You woke up craving how his lips felt.

He stared at the ceiling until the first rays of light started to drag across it, and when Sofia stirred beside him, he didn’t move. When she reached for him, mumbled something soft, he slipped out of bed like a ghost, pulled on yesterday’s jeans, and left without a word.

By mid-noon, he was parked outside the bait-shop. Not on purpose, he told himself. Just passing by. Just driving around.

Through the dusty windshield, he watched.

JJ was out on the dock, arms bare, broom in hand. His hair messy and damp at the edges like he’d just come from the beach. Like he lived in water. The sight of him twisted something low in Rafe’s stomach.

Every time JJ smiled at an entering customer, Rafe’s hands tensed on the wheel.

It wasn’t the kind of smile he’d seen in the dream.

This one was real.

Effortless.

Easy.

You don’t get that one, something inside him whispered. You get the monster. You get the thing underneath.

Rafe rolled the window down, just enough to breathe.

He watched.

And watched.

And hated himself a little more each second.

Until finally JJ turned.

Like he felt Rafe watching.

Their eyes locked across the parking lot.

And for a flicker, just a skip of a moment, JJ’s face went still.

Then he turned back inside without a word.

Didn’t even acknowledge him.

Rafe sat there.

Motionless.

Knowing he should leave.

Knowing he wouldn’t.

Because that song, the one from the dream was starting again.

Somewhere far off.

Faint.

But rising.

The screen door groaned as Rafe pushed it open, that same wheezing, rust-choked sound like the building was sighing in protest. A damp breeze rolled in from the water, stirring the scent of fish guts and motor oil that clung to everything.

JJ was behind the counter, sunburn peeling at the edges of his neck. He was restocking lures in a glass case, the little hooks catching the overhead light like teeth.

He didn’t look up when he spoke. “You ever think about knocking, or is breaking and entering just your thing now?”

Rafe ignored the question. Closed the door behind him. It clicked shut with finality.

“You stalking me now, psycho boy? Gotta say, kinda flattering.” He looked up. “Didn’t think you had the attention span for anything that didn’t come with a trust fund or a body count.”

Rafe stepped further in, voice low. “Thought maybe we could talk.”

JJ shut the glass case with a click, slow and deliberate. His expression didn’t shift much, but something in the set of his jaw said he wasn’t in the mood for games.

“Talk,” he echoed, dragging the word like a dead fish across the floor. “You drove all the way out here to talk?”

Rafe stayed where he was, hands shoved in his pockets, tension wound so tight in his shoulders it looked like he’d splinter if touched. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

JJ let out a dry laugh. “Avoiding? Man, I’ve been doing everything short of throwing holy water at you.”

Rafe’s gaze didn’t break. “So you admit it.”

JJ tilted his head. “What exactly do you think I’m admitting to?”

“You tell me.”

Silence stretched between them like fishing line pulled taut, thin and dangerous.

JJ leaned back against the counter, arms folded. “Let me guess, man—you’ve got some grand theory. Some weird, twisted little idea about me. What I am. Whatever I did.”

He stepped forward now, elbows leaning against the counter that separated them, and Rafe didn’t back down.

“You saw something,” JJ said, voice lower now. “Fine. Let’s pretend I give a shit about your weird drug hallucinations. What exactly do you think you saw?”

Rafe didn’t answer right away. He stared at JJ’s throat, the pulse there. Imagined brine under his skin instead of blood. Imagined gills, slits, something shifting just beneath his flesh.

The air between them was humid, tense. The freezer hummed behind them. A hook swung slowly on a chain from a beam overhead.

“You keep acting like it didn’t happen,” Rafe said. “Like I didn’t watch you crawl out of the water like something that didn’t belong on land.”

JJ stepped around the counter, closing the distance in two strides.

“You’re seriously fucked in the head, you know that?” he said, low and furious. “What do you want from me, Cameron? You want me to say it? That I’m some sea creature you saw in your dreams? To encourage whatever creepy stalker phase you’re going through?”

His voice was sharp, but beneath it something else.

Something darker. Almost daring.

Rafe’s breath caught. “Don’t tempt me.”

JJ flinched like he’d been slapped.

Then began to walk past with the intent to leave, muttering under his breath. “You’re disgusting, dude.”

“Is that what this is?” Rafe called after him. “Disgust? Or are you just mad I didn’t fuck you at the party?”

JJ turned then—eyes blazing.

“You’re not funny. You’re not clever. You’re not in control. You’re just a sick, repressed rich boy with a drug problem you’re making my problem.”

They stood there, breaths tangling in the thick, humid air of the bait shop.

Then Rafe, voice tight: “That’s the thing—I think you want me to be obsessed. To follow you.”

JJ blinked slowly, lashes damp with sweat. “I think you already are.”

That did it. Rafe’s hand twitched at his side, fingers curling into a fist, but JJ was already stepping back, turning away like none of it mattered.

“Get the fuck out of my shop.”

“Make me.”

JJ spun back around. “You want a fight? You want me to break that entitled little skull of yours against the floor, see what kind of shit comes spilling out?”

Rafe smiled like he’d been waiting to be hated. “Maybe.”

JJ stared at him, chest rising and falling hard, like he’d been holding something in and it was finally starting to loosen.

“Fuck you,” He snapped, voice cracking like a whip. “Stay away from me.”

He shoved past Rafe, hard, shoulder hitting his chest like a wave hitting rocks. Rafe didn’t move. Just turned as JJ stormed through the back door and vanished into the light.

The door slammed behind him, the sound echoing off the bait shop walls like a slap that came a second too late. Rafe didn’t flinch. Didn’t move. Just stood there, eyes fixed on the empty space JJ had just filled, like he could still see the outline of him, wet and bright and wrong.

The air was thick. Hot. But Rafe felt cold.

Like the tide had followed him in.

He finally exhaled—ragged, unsteady—and dragged both hands down his face, palms scraping over stubble, jaw clenched so tight it ached. There was a dull buzz behind his ears, and his chest felt tight, like he’d been holding his breath for hours.

He’d come here to play the game. To get under JJ’s skin. To manipulate him like he always did when something scared him enough to want control.

But this time, it hadn’t worked.

JJ hadn’t bent. He hadn’t snapped. He’d flared—glowed like phosphorescent algae stirred up in dark water. Bright and alive and impossible to touch without consequence.

And Rafe had liked it.

That’s what made him sick.

He’d come in expecting another win, maybe a stumble, maybe some hurt. But what he’d found was something much worse. Something ancient, untouchable and deliberately human in the wrongest ways.

He backed up slowly, like the room was still watching him. The bait shop had that kind of silence again, the kind that listened, that waited. That took things in. Rafe’s shoes scuffed the floorboards as he moved to the door, hand on the knob.

Rafe swallowed. Hard.

He didn’t remember walking to the truck. Just that the next time he blinked, he was behind the wheel, knuckles white again. The windows were fogged from the inside.

He could still smell the bait shop. Could still feel the way JJ’s words had crawled into his skin and made itself comfortable.

And it made him want to tear something apart.

Not just because JJ had stood his ground.

But because JJ had felt good to stand that close to.

Rafe slammed the wheel with both palms.

“Fuck.”

It wasn’t just the obsession anymore. It wasn’t even just lust.

It was the not knowing. The feeling of standing ankle-deep in something massive and dark and shifting beneath the surface and realizing it might not just drag him under.

It might want him there.

And Rafe wasn’t sure he’d fight it next time.

He drove.

Nowhere in particular.

Just… drove.

Through the Cut, past the bait shop again, past the rust-bitten shacks and sinking piers and that one corner store that sold teenagers menthols under the counter.

He didn’t stop. Didn’t dare. Not with the way his hands kept twitching on the wheel, not with that feeling crawling up the back of his neck like guilt.

Everything felt too loud.

The sunlight.

The roads.

Even the air had a texture. Wet and hot and pressing like being held down.

He ran a red light and didn’t notice. Swerved once when he thought he saw someone walking along the shoulder. Blond hair. Bare feet. No shirt.

But when he turned to look there was no one there.

By late evening, he was back at Tannyhill. Sofia had made something in the kitchen. Pasta, maybe. He barely looked at her. She barely asked.

“You eating?” she called.

“Later,” he lied.

She stared at him for a second too long, eyes narrowed, lips parted like she almost said something then went back to scrolling on her phone.

He sat at the edge of the couch and stared at the TV without turning it on.

The cushions were wrong. Too soft. His own skin felt like it didn’t fit him. He swore he could still smell dead fish in his hair.

He didn’t say a word until sundown.

Rafe stood out on the porch smoking, watching the sky turn from that peachy Carolina pink to a darker, deeper blue. The kind of blue that bled. That reminded him of underwater silence.

He thought about driving again. Just going. Just following the scent of tide rot until the truck ran out of gas or he did.

But he didn’t.

He just smoked the cigarette down to the filter and let it burn his fingers before flicking it into the dark.

Sofia had gone to bed. Left the porch light on for him like it was safe for him to come home.

The house was dead quiet when he finally climbed the stairs. He paused outside the bedroom door, hand resting against the frame like it might stop him.

The door was cracked.

Sofia was curled beneath the sheets, facing the wall, slow breaths lifting the blanket. Peaceful. Human.

Rafe couldn’t stand the sight of it.

He backed away.

Went into the guest room instead. One of the rooms that still smelled like paint and dust and hadn’t been touched since Ward’s “renovation project” stalled out.

He lay on the bed. Arms crossed over his chest like a body waiting for burial.

The ceiling fan above him ticked slow and lazy, casting long shadows across the walls.

And for a while—just a while—he thought maybe he’d get lucky. Maybe sleep wouldn’t come.

But it did.

Eventually.

Heavy and cold and thick like the marsh air.

It started with the sound.

Not singing, not really. Just a hum. Low, submerged. Like a voice that had been pulled underwater and never came back up. It made the reeds tremble. Made the earth ache beneath him.

Rafe didn’t remember walking to the marsh. Didn’t remember kneeling.

But there he was.

Mouth dry. Knees deep in black water that sucked at his calves and tried to pull him under.

And JJ was already there.

Sprawled across a half-submerged tree trunk like some fallen God, his skin gleaming slick in the moonlight, hair clumped and dripping, eyes catching every glint of silver in the dark. The reeds wrapped around his shoulders like a shroud. His chest rose and fell barely. Lazily. Like breathing was optional.

And below that…

There were no legs.

Just a tail.

Monstrous and mesmerizing long and powerful, muscle shifting beneath iridescent scales that glistened like broken glass and bone. The fins curled at the edges like torn silk, twitching with a life of their own. And it moved—he moved—like something bred not for land or mercy, but for luring.

Rafe’s mouth went dry.

“Back again,” JJ said, voice thick. “Didn’t get enough the first time?”

His smile split his face too wide. Not human. Not even trying to be.

Rafe crawled through the water. Hands sinking into mud. He didn’t speak, didn’t trust himself to. Everything inside him had gone tight and hot, pulled into one single need: touch him. Have him. Split him open if he had to.

JJ tilted his head, eyes glowing faintly like the reflection of fish eyes in dark. His tail curled around Rafe’s thigh like a serpent, cool and slick, leaving wet trails against bare skin.

“You’re hard,” JJ whispered. “And you don’t even know what I am.”

Rafe didn’t care.

He surged forward, crashing into JJ like a man starved. His mouth found JJ’s chest, then lower, kissing, biting, devouring. The taste was wrong—heavy, copper and sweet, like rotting fruit. Rafe drank it in.

He wanted to sink his teeth in. To leave marks. To leave proof that he’d touched something this unreal.

JJ moaned, a sound that echoed in the water, around the trees, through Rafe’s bones.

And then the tail moved.

It slammed around him, coiled tight, dragging him flush between JJ’s legs, if they could even be called that now. The scales parted like petals, slick and pulsing, and Rafe barely had time to think before his fingers were inside.

JJ gasped—sharply, then laughed—head falling back against the log, throat bared to the moon. “You’re disgusting,” he hissed. “Fucking perverted little Kook. You wanna fuck a monster?”

Rafe didn’t answer. He was panting, rutting against JJ’s tail, hand still moving, lips still tasting every impossible inch of him. Every ripple. Every slit. Every part no man was meant to see.

JJ shuddered, the water around them glowing faintly like something was waking up beneath the surface. Like something starving had just been fed.

He clawed at Rafe’s hair, dragging his mouth lower. “Do it right,” he growled. “Put your tongue in. Prove it.”

And Rafe did.

The moment his tongue slid in, the world shifted.

The taste was overwhelming, thick, salty, cloying. Like syrup left to ferment in seawater. It clung to Rafe’s mouth, coated his throat, invaded his lungs until he couldn’t tell where the air ended and JJ began. His fingers flexed involuntarily, digging deeper into the soft, pliant ridges that pulsed around his knuckles. It was like being inside a mouth, like worshipping something alive and sentient and not at all human.

JJ groaned long and guttural, his tail coiling tighter around Rafe’s waist like a snake drunk on heat. His spine bowed, eyes rolling back until only whites showed, his gills flaring open along the sides of his neck in soft, rhythmic pulses. Rafe saw them move, wet and red and vulnerable. He wanted to bite them. Mark them. Claim them.

“Deeper,” JJ rasped, a command more than a plea. His claws tangled in Rafe’s hair and forced him closer, until Rafe’s nose was buried in the slick, twitching folds that pulsed and contracted with every flick of his tongue. “You’re fucking mine, Rafe Cameron. You hear me? Say it.”

Rafe tried. Tried to speak, but all that came out was a choked moan. JJ’s body gripped his tongue, sucked him deeper. He was drowning but it was ecstasy, not fear, that made his chest tighten.

The water around them boiled. Not hot, but thick—a shimmer of life rising from the mud below. Glowing veins of light traced through the marsh like circuits. And something moved beneath. Watching. Listening.

JJ arched suddenly, his voice shattering the night like a struck bell. “Yes—fuck—right there, keep going—”

Rafe obeyed. He didn’t know how not to.

His mouth worked greedily, messily. His chin dripped with JJ’s slick, his own cock aching where it rubbed against the scaled bend of JJ’s tail. Everything blurred—taste, pressure, need until it felt like his own body was dissolving into JJ’s. Like if he kept going, he’d be pulled inside. Unmade. Reborn.

JJ’s laugh was broken. Frenzied.

“You don’t get it,” he panted, clawing at the log behind him. “You’re not fucking me—I’m feeding on you. You’re mine now. You’ll never get clean. You’ll never forget how I taste.”

Rafe came with a groan that shook his whole bodywet and messy and desperate. But he didn’t stop. He didn’t move. Even when JJ’s inner muscles clenched down with an impossible tightness, locking him there, milking his tongue, his devotion.

JJ came with a strangled sound, head thrown back, tail flailing, water crashing up around them in a sudden wave of force that knocked the breath out of Rafe’s lungs. He held on. Bit down.

The wave settled.

So did JJ.

So did Rafe, breathing raggedly, lips slick, thighs shaking in the mud.

JJ looked at him, his smile crooked and familiar. “You’ll come back again,” he said. “You always do.”

Rafe smiled.

He woke in bed, soaked in sweat, hand down his briefs, panting into the dark like he’d run ten miles through a thunderstorm.

His thighs were slick. His jaw ached from clenching. He didn’t scream.

He came.

Hard.

With JJ’s voice echoing through his skull like seawater in a shell.

“You always do.”

Chapter Text

The mornings no longer begun anymore. They just bled forward—night into day, limping and slow. Rafe woke, if it could be called that, half-laced in a hangover and the cloying stink, body glued to the sheets with sweat and half-dried semen. The dream clung to him. He could still taste it. That syrupy, filmy gloss across his teeth, behind his molars. No amount of toothpaste helped. He’d brushed until his gums bled. Still it lingered.

So he didn’t try anymore.

He poured gin into his orange juice before he even dressed, shaved half his face, and left the rest stubbled. Sofia asked if he wanted to go out, he grunted something that might’ve been a yes, and when she came downstairs in a sundress, he just blinked at her like a man trying to place a name to a face from an old crime scene.

“Where are we going?” she asked brightly, full lips lacquered pink, sunglasses already on despite it being dusk.

“Anywhere,” he muttered. “Don’t care.”

She didn’t ask again.

They ended up on the back patio of a beach bar, the music so loud the speakers cracked. Rafe drank until the sea air tasted like gasoline. Until his lips went numb and his throat burned raw, and Sofia’s voice blurred into the static of bar chatter and bass lines. Her laugh hitched sharp against his ear, too bright, too close, like broken glass shoved under skin.

She danced like she didn’t know what pain was.

Twisting her hips, flashing her teeth, pushing his hands where she wanted them with a kind of practiced entitlement that once might’ve excited him. She tasted like cherry chapstick and lime from the rim of her drink, sweet and sour, warm where her sweat met his jaw. She wanted him to want her. Wanted him to play the part of a good rich boyfriend who forgot all his issues for one Friday night. And he tried. God, he fucking tried though JJ’s mouth wouldn’t leave him.

JJ’s tail. That ripple of slick muscle under moonlight. The taste of him being like Rafe had dug from the seafloor and swallowed whole.

He gripped Sofia’s waist, ground against her in time with the thump of music like it might shake something loose from his chest. She arched into him, hands sliding down the front of his jeans, and he bit back a noise somewhere between a groan and a plea. But it wasn’t her that made his skin crawl.

It was the way she smelled. The way she moved. Human. Warm. Clean.

And he didn’t feel clean anymore.

“I missed this,” she murmured, tongue brushing the shell of his ear. “Missed you. You’re different now. More quiet.”

His jaw clenched.

She nuzzled closer. “What happened on the mainland?”

He pulled back too hard, the scrape of metal chair legs biting the wood beneath him. “What?”

“I just mean—rehab. Or whatever it was. You don’t talk about it. Feels like we should…”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

She tilted her head, glossy hair catching the lamplight. “You sure about that?”

“Yeah.” He tipped the rest of his drink back, swallowing like it might drown her question. The vodka singed. Not enough. Never enough. “I’m sure.”

Sofia stared at him a moment longer, that perfect Pogue-bred frown tightening on her lips. Then she stood, brushed her dress smooth. “Gonna get another drink.”

He didn’t watch her walk away.

Didn’t watch her hips sway or check to see if some tanned tourist at the bar was already looking to take his place. He just sat there. Alone in the noise. In the glow of tiki torches and cheap bar lights and the stink of sweat and sunscreen and beer-soaked wood.

And the taste came back again.

That familiar taste. Like communion served in saltwater. It filled the back of his throat. Made him salivate. Made him gag.

He stood abruptly.

Chairs scraped. Someone cursed. He ignored it.

He made it to the sand just past the back deck, stumbling down toward the edge of the surf where the tide whispered soft against the shore. Wind slapped his face, and he breathed it in, deeper, like the he might live here too—like he might be waiting. Somewhere under the black water, glowing. Always watching.

Rafe bent double and vomited.

It felt like his body was rejecting something that didn’t belong. Like he’d tried to overwrite instinct with liquor and it hadn’t taken. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, tasted blood. His knees hit the sand next, hard enough to ache.

The moon looked sharp overhead. Cold. Indifferent.

And the waves whispered: Come back.

“You’re not fucking real,” he muttered. “You’re not—”

Something brushed his ankle. Cold. Wet.

He flinched, stumbled back into the dunes. A piece of seaweed clung to his shin, but his breath wouldn’t settle. His pulse jackhammered in his throat.

Sofia called his name from the bar. Once. Twice.

He didn’t answer.

He stayed on the sand, trembling, staring into the surf like it might pull him under again. Like it wanted him to give up.

And he was so close to doing it.

He didn’t know how long he stayed there.

Didn’t know how long it had been since he last blinked, last moved, last breathed without that taste crawling up his throat. He only noticed when Sofia appeared beside him, feet sinking in the sand, her hands fluttering uncertainly.

“Jesus,” she said. “Are you okay? You usually don't get this sick.”

Rafe didn’t even look at her. The only voice he heard was JJ’s. Faint. Distant. Dripping with hunger.

Say it. Say you’re mine.

He wiped his mouth. Got to his feet. Didn’t speak.

Sofia followed. The slap of her sandals in the sand grew frantic, uneven. She called his name again, sharper this time, but he didn’t turn. Just moved stiff-legged toward the bar lights like something half-drowned dragging itself back to shore.

“Rafe,” she hissed, grabbing his arm when they hit the bottom of the deck steps. “What the fuck was that?”

He yanked away, too hard. She stumbled. He didn’t stop.

“What’s wrong with you?” she demanded, catching up. Her voice dropped to a hiss, eyes darting around at the cluster of heads turning their way. “You won’t look at me, you won’t even sleep in the same bed as me anymore. I don’t understand, I can’t—don’t lie to me again, are you on something?”

He froze mid-step. The world tilted.

“Don’t—” he began.

“Because if you are,” she cut in, “just fucking say it. I’ve dealt with this before. I know what it looks like when someone’s falling off the wagon. I’ve seen it, Rafe. I’m not stupid. You can talk to me—“

“I said don’t.”

“Then tell me the truth!”

His fists clenched, veins bulging white against flushed skin. His mouth opened, but nothing came out. His throat clicked.

The window beside the patio caught his eye—glass darkened by the night, rimmed in string lights and fogged from inside. People moved behind it. Shadows and shapes. Normal. Human.

And then a flash of something pale and gleaming, too still. Too direct.

JJ.

No, not JJ.

Not with those eyes, empty and glowing, fish-pale and lidless, staring straight back through the glass.

His face was half-submerged, floating just beneath the reflection’s surface, curls slicked to his cheeks, gills pulsing open on his throat like a second mouth. His lips moved slow, silent.

Come to me.

Rafe stumbled.

The world dimmed at the edges. He reached out and caught the railing, but it felt far away, like his body wasn’t his anymore. Like his limbs belonged to something borrowed.

“Rafe?” Sofia’s voice cracked. “What—what is it?”

“He’s there,” he breathed. His voice came out small. Choked. “In the glass.”

Sofia stepped in front of him, eyes wide now, hands rising like she was approaching a wounded animal. “There’s no one there, babe. You’re just—look at me. Rafe, look at me.”

“I saw him.” His knees buckled. He sank to the boards, shoulders heaving. “He was there. In the fucking window staring at me.”

She turned. The patrons at the bar quickly turned their curious gazes away. Sofia swallowed, grabbing his face in both hands, trying to force his eyes back to hers. “Babe—“

“I’m not using,” he spat, tears pricking hot and unwanted at the corners of his eyes. “I’m not. I haven’t. Not since I got back, but he’s still there. He won’t go away. He’s in my head, in my mouth. I taste him every time I fucking breathe—”

His voice cracked. He turned away from her, hand over his mouth like he might scream or throw up again or both.

Sofia pursed her lips as she watched something in him snap like a bowstring—watched the sharp edge of Rafe Cameron give way to something broken and completely unmoored.

He sobbed.

Not loud. Not ugly. Just… tired.

His shoulders jerked, chest caved in, and a single guttural sound ripped from his throat before he collapsed forward, arms around her waist like a man drowning.

Sofia held him.

Her arms came up slowly—hesitant at first, unsure, like this wasn’t the man she knew, like he might bite her if she touched the wrong part of him—but they closed around his back anyway. Tight. Firm. Warm.

“It’s okay,” she whispered, even though it wasn’t. “I’m here.”

He buried his face in her stomach, jaw clenched, breath coming in gasps. “I didn’t want this. I didn’t ask for any of this.”

“I know.”

“He’s real. I think he’s waiting for me.”

Her hands froze.

Then resumed their slow, careful motion across his spine. She held him like he was still someone she recognized. Her hands moved slow across his back, thumb rubbing slow circles like she could knead the madness out of him, like maybe if she touched him long enough, the rot would peel away.

But the rot was inside him now.

It had nothing to do with what he’d smoked, snorted, or swallowed before.

It lived deeper. In the marrow. In the wet, twitching place beneath his ribs where his breath stuck. In the place where JJ’s voice now culled always, not a memory, not a delusion, but presence. Constant. Humid. The voice of the tide when it’s full of bodies.

“I believe you,” she said quietly. “Even if no one else does. We’re gonna get you help, okay?”

And still, behind her, the window reflected only Rafe’s trembling silhouette.

But in the distance too faint to be anything but imagined—the sound of water lapping against wood echoed through the dark like a lullaby with teeth.

He left before dawn.

Didn’t say goodbye. Didn’t even pretend to sleep. Sofia woke to cold sheets and the pillow flat where his head should’ve been. His phone was gone. So was her trust, whatever sliver of it had still remained after everything she’d tried to convince herself about him. He’d never forget the fear in her eyes. Either for him or of him. He couldn’t handle the embarrassment of breaking down in her arms. She called once. Then twice. Then again. Voicemail. All he wanted now was to forget.

He looped the island until the sun rose too hot through the windshield and the alcohol wore off enough to sting. He stopped at a gas station to piss. Bought liquor store vodka with a stack of tens and a dead look in his eyes. No one carded him. No one even looked twice. Not anymore. Rafe Cameron was just another rich boy burning out at the edges, and the Cut had seen plenty of those.

By noon, he’d finished half the bottle. By two, he’d forgotten what time was.

He ended up at a cookout, Topper’s, probably. Somewhere out past Figure Eight, where the lawns were trimmed and the beer was always cold and the music was just loud enough to keep people from thinking too hard.

He drifted through the barbeque like he didn’t weigh anything. Shirt stained at the collar. Eyes sunken. His breath stank of alcohol, the bottle tucked halfway down in his jacket like a flask for mourning. He barely registered the people talking to him—Kook girls with fake tans and shark-tooth necklaces, Topper’s newest friends from UNC home for the summer, someone’s cousin in board shorts asking if he wanted to go wakeboarding.

Rafe just blinked. Nodded when it seemed right. Sipped when they passed him something. Smoked what they handed him.

He didn’t feel high. Didn’t feel drunk.

All he felt was wet.

Even now. Even here, in the middle of a manicured backyard with a fire pit and lawn chairs and the sound of country music fuzzing through Bluetooth speakers, he still felt the water clinging to him. His skin itched. The ridges of his teeth ached. His lungs burned like they’d never held real air since that night. Like they were still filling with water in slow, invisible increments.

Topper found him standing at the edge of the dock, staring down into the shallows where minnows darted through brackish weed.

“Yo,” Topper said, cracking a beer and offering him one. “You good?”

Rafe didn’t look at him. “What?”

“I said—you good, man? You’ve been weird as fuck since you got back.”

“I’m always weird,” Rafe muttered.

“Yeah, but this is, like… extra.”

He leaned on the railing beside him. “Is it Sofia?” Topper asked after a moment. “I saw her the other night. She asked me to check on you. I figured you’d tell me to fuck off like you’re doing now.”

Rafe’s jaw ticked.

“You want to talk about it?” Topper offered. “You want, like… advice or some shit?”

Rafe turned his head slowly. “From you?”

Topper scoffed. “I mean, fuck you, but yeah. I’m trying, bro.”

“I don’t need advice.”

“Okay. What do you need?”

Rafe took a long pull from the bottle, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “To forget.”

Topper was quiet a second. Then nodded with a contemplative expression. “Yeah. I get that.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I—”

“You don’t get it, Top. You don’t know what it’s like to see something that shouldn’t exist. To touch it. To want it more than your own fucking skin.”

Topper blinked. “Bro, what are you—”

“Do you know what it feels like to fuck something that isn’t human?” Rafe’s voice was quiet. Almost reverent. “To be inside it. To have it inside you—not just body, but my fucking mind. To taste it on your teeth weeks later like it lives there now?”

A beat. Topper stared. “What the fuck, man.”

Rafe laughed. Sharp. A bark of sound that didn’t belong in his own throat.

Topper shook his head. “You’re high. Again. Or you’re losing it.”

“Yeah.” Rafe’s smile was wide. White. “Maybe I am.”

He left the dock before Topper could say anything else.

Walked past the beer coolers, past the grill, past a girl in a blue bikini who looked just enough like Sarah that he almost threw up on her feet. The world around him blurred at the edges. Everything was golden and alive, and it made him sick.

It was all bullshit.

These people—these assholes with their keg stands and their backwards hats and their overpriced sunglasses—they didn’t see it. They didn’t know what lay just past the edge of the water. They didn’t hear the hum. Didn’t feel the eyes watching from beneath the surface. They thought the world was safe because they’d never had it open for them.

But Rafe had.

And it would never close again.

The roads were empty by then, wind curling in through the cracked windows, his hands sticky on the wheel. The bottle was gone. Thrown somewhere into a ditch outside Topper’s neighborhood. His stomach rolled. His mouth tasted like salt again. His nails were chewed raw.

He was walking now along the old wooden pier off Goat Island, the one half-collapsed at the end and choked in crab trap rope. Boards creaked under his weight, water glinting black on either side, no stars overhead. Just low cloud and mist. The marsh behind him murmured with invisible things.

He walked slowly.

Feet dragging like something pulled at his ankles.

It wasn’t cold, but his skin prickled. Damp. Uncomfortable. The air tasted like copper now, like old blood on a penny. The wind carried salt and seaweed that itched the back of his throat.

He passed a pile of gear—waders, a rusted bucket, empty beer cans crushed into the pier’s edge and kept going. Further out. Toward the deeper water, where the bottom dropped and the crabs grew fatter on dead things. His shoes stuck once in the mossed wood, then again, and he nearly tripped. His hands braced against the railing. Breath shuddered.

Then came the splash.

Behind him. Sharp and wet. Like something heavy falling into water.

He didn’t turn.

Didn’t even blink.

Fish. Otter. Something else. The marsh made noise. It was always making noise. If he looked every time something shifted out there, he’d never sleep again.

Another splash.

Louder.

This time followed by a low, sick thunk of wood against wood. Like something bumped the underside of the pier.

Then came the thrashing.

Not rhythmic. Not playful. Violent. Like whatever it was had gotten caught.

Rafe’s head twitched toward the sound.

More splashing. Sharp and guttural. Wet noises like fists slapping mud. The pier swayed slightly beneath his feet.

He moved forward. Slowly. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. He reached the edge and gripped the railing, fingers white-knuckled, breathing shallow.

There, tangled in a fisherman’s net strung loosely over the piling, was something alive.

No.

Not just alive.

Bleeding.

The net heaved, strands pulled taut over something muscular, twitching—fins or limbs or both. The water around it churned, red spilling in slow ribbons from its side. A blunt tail or maybe an arm, struck the wood hard enough to make the whole dock shudder. And then it groaned.

Rafe leaned over.

The moon broke through for a second.

And in that thin, sickly light, he saw eyes.

Milky. Glazed. But watching.

A flash of scale. Muscle. Skin too pale. Then gills flaring open—pulsing wet red just beneath where a human neck might’ve been. A hand gripped the edge of the net, claws curling around the cord. A mouth opened, too wide and sharp.

Rafe staggered back.

Not because he was afraid.

But because he knew that shape.

He knew the dip of that collarbone, the slope of that shoulder, the broken, trembling way that body folded under pressure. He knew the line of that jaw, even with blood pouring from it.

The creature thrashed harder, snarling low, caught and wild, its voice bubbling through water like a man drowning through his own teeth. The net was cutting deep now into hip, into shoulder, into gill. The blood seeped thicker.

Rafe dropped to his knees.

“Maybank?” he whispered, even though the name felt foreign in his mouth now.

The eyes rolled toward him. Focused. Just for a second.

And the creature stilled.

Only the water moved then. Lapping against the pier. Against Rafe’s shoes. Against the body below.

Then the net jerked hard. Something below pulled tight. Rafe saw a glimpse of something else—a hook, a rope, a pulley half-lowered into the water. Left behind by a local fisherman, maybe. But something had snagged this thing tight, dragging it toward shore like meat on a line.

“No,” Rafe said, breath catching. “No, no, no—fuck, fuck—”

He reached out. Grabbed the edge of the net. Tried to pull it up. Tried to free whatever was in it.

The creature screamed.

The sound shattered the quiet like a window breaking underwater. Pure agony. Pure rage. It thrashed violently, twisting onto its back, tail flailing, blood spilling across the water in a glossy fan.

“Stop! Shit, just let me—”

Rafe’s grip slipped. The net tore.

For a moment, it seemed like that was it. Like whatever thrashed below the dock would be lost again to the black tide dragged down by the weight of its own pain, gutted open by careless fisherman line, gone back into the silt to decay or heal or wait. The slick, scaled thing—the thing that might’ve once been JJ—twisted like a wounded eel, tail slapping water so hard it stung Rafe’s face with spray. He could see bone now, he thought. Could see the muscle torn where the hook had pierced him, white tendon glistening beneath membranes like wet tissue paper unraveling in rain.

But Rafe didn’t let go.

His hands burned. Rope-cut, slick with blood not his own, knuckles scraped raw where barnacles bit at the edge of the wood. He grabbed the net again, yanked harder, braced one knee against the post and pulled, grunting like an animal. He could feel something tearing inside himself with every lurch, emotional, yes, but physical too. Like a muscle stretched past what it was made for. Like his own body was cracking under the weight of the thing he was trying to save.

And then suddenly JJ came up.

Not like he surfaced on his own. Not like he wanted to.

Rafe dragged him onto the dock like a drowned body. Like a catch.

The weight of him hit the wood with a slick thump, and for a moment he didn’t move. Just sprawled there in the halo of red water that bled from his side, gills fluttering weakly, eyes rolled back and glassy. His tail twitched once—long and coiled and ugly, scaled with slick iridescence that shimmered under the moonlight in shades of oil and bruises. The edges of the fins were frayed. Ragged. One looked torn through entirely, still caught in the net’s remains.

“Jesus Christ,” Rafe choked, crawling toward him. “JJ—fuck, what did they do to you—”

He reached out to touch him. Just fingertips.

JJ moved.

Fast.

A snarl tore up from his throat, and before Rafe could flinch, he was on him, clawed fingers at his collar, baring his teeth, gills flaring wide open in a grotesque rhythm. But he wasn’t strong. Not anymore. He slumped before he could sink those nails into Rafe’s chest. His weight collapsed forward, and Rafe caught him, arms around too-thin shoulders.

JJ writhed.

Body twitching violently now, seizing almost. One leg kicked out—leg, not tail—and Rafe saw the shift happen right there under his hands.

The scales shimmered, then peeled.

Slick flesh gave way to something softer, paler, human. The long sinew of a siren’s tail retracted like it was going inside him, trying to shed its own skin in reverse. Bones cracked. Hips snapped back into new sockets. Feet bloomed from the tail’s ruined tip, raw and wet like a newborn’s. JJ let out a scream, a broken, animal sound that made Rafe’s ears ring and his stomach seize.

It split the dark like a live wire. Sharp, electric, and full of pain. Something bred from the marrow, deeper than any scream a human throat should’ve been able to make. It came from somewhere low in JJ’s chest, clawed its way up through the raw column of his throat, and tore free in a sound that tasted like the blood in the back of Rafe’s mouth. He felt it in his fucking teeth. In his bones. In the soft, delicate meat behind his eyes that pulsed with every heartbeat like it was trying to crawl away from what it was witnessing.

JJ’s body spasmed again.

A whip of muscle and bone, back arching clean off the dock. His head cracked against the wood once, then again. His fingernails tore splinters from the boards as he convulsed, back bowed like he was mid-exorcism. And the sounds—wet, gurgling and wrong. Skin stretching. Bones shifting. The slick pop of joints being yanked from the wrong sockets, only to snap back in new ones. Rafe could see the outline of JJ’s spine as it twisted beneath the paper-thin layer of muscle clinging to him now. See his ribs bulging outward. His stomach swelling, then flattening, like something inside was pushing from within

It was fucking horrifying.

Rafe didn’t move.

He was frozen, knees slick with blood, the marsh wind sticky against his face, his mouth open but soundless. His eyes refused to blink, couldn’t tear themselves away from the sight. He couldn’t even tell if what he was seeing was real. His brain was rejecting it in pieces. Tearing the image into fragments that refused to be made whole. JJ’s skin was peeling—no, shedding. Wet, glistening sheets of silver and pink and raw meat sloughing off his torso in long, translucent ribbons that clung to his arms like a second skin trying to hold on. His legs were back now, sort of, but malformed—twisted, knees bent the wrong way before they cracked forward with a sickening snap. One foot flexed. The toes bled. Webbing hung loosely between them.

Rafe could smell the iron from JJ’s torn gills. Could smell the stink of wet decay wafting off the dock, like something long-dead had been dragged from a net and left to dry. His tongue tasted acidic. His stomach clenched. The bile rose fast. He turned his head just in time to vomit over the edge, retching until his vision blurred.

When he wiped his mouth, hands trembling, he looked back and JJ was still.

Not peaceful. Not resting. Just still. Slumped on his side in a heap of his own discarded skin, limbs trembling faintly in the aftermath of whatever the fuck his body had just done to itself. His chest rose and fell in shallow, ragged jerks. Blood trickled from his nose. His face was turned toward the dock, half-hidden beneath the matted curtain of his wet hair.

Rafe reached for him.

Slowly.

His fingertips touched JJ’s wrist—cold, pulsing. Alive.

He flinched.

He reeled back like he’d touched a live wire. His heart jackhammered, breath catching in his throat.

“Fuck,” he whispered. “What the fuck are you?”

JJ didn’t answer.

Didn’t even twitch.

His eyes were open, barely. Glazed. Unseeing. The same way they’d looked the first time Rafe had seen him in the marsh, half-submerged, limbs trailing behind him like sea grass. But this time—this time—they were red around the edges, blood vessels burst from the pressure of shifting from something inhumane.

Rafe couldn’t look away.

This was JJ and it wasn’t.

This was the boy he would beat the shit out of for talking back. The one who never stayed down. The one who laughed too loud and hit back harder and ran when he should’ve fell.

And now?

Now he looked like something caught between myth and death. A drowned creature in the shape of a boy. A relic that bled.

Rafe couldn’t breathe.

His chest constricted like he was underwater again. Like the salt had come back to fill his lungs. He pressed the heel of his hand to his sternum, trying to make the ache stop. But it only grew. A deep, burning tightness that curled behind his ribs and spread like smoke, like the breath he wasn’t taking was trying to claw its way out through his skin. It wasn’t just panic, it was memory, too. Not one he could place, but something old. Primal. From the marsh. From the dock. From him.

From JJ.

Rafe’s eyes dropped back down to the body at his feet. Still. Slumped in a puddle of its own shed skin and blood and waterlogged breath. JJ looked like a corpse, pale, gray-lipped. But there was a flicker of something still beneath the surface. A pulse. A flutter. The barest twitch of a tendon under skin too thin to hold it.

“JJ?” Rafe croaked, his voice splintering against the wind. “Hey—hey. Come on, man.”

Nothing.

He leaned down. Palmed a shoulder, slick and trembling beneath his hand.

“Hey. Look at me. Come on, I fucking dragged you out of that water, the least you can do is open your goddamn eyes—”

Still nothing.

Rafe’s hand slid from his shoulder to his cheek. Cold. Too cold. Clammy in a way that wasn’t right for a human body. His thumb brushed the edge of JJ’s mouth, felt the dry crack where saltwater had crystallized on his lips. His own breath came too fast now. Sharp, shallow. Dizzied by proximity and memory and the weight of what the fuck he had just witnessed.

“Don’t do this,” he whispered. “Don’t fucking do this to me.”

He didn’t know what this was.

Death?

Sleep?

Some stage in between?

Maybe JJ’s body was resetting. Slipping out of one skin into another like a snake that didn’t know where it belonged anymore. Maybe he was healing. Maybe he was dying. Maybe both at once. Rafe didn’t know. He didn’t even pretend to. All he knew was that the blood was still coming. Slowly now. Oozing in long, syrupy trails from beneath JJ’s back and from the base of his spine, where bone met muscle met something still too wet to name.

“I’m not—I’m not leaving you here,” Rafe said aloud, like saying it made it real. His hand tightened on JJ’s cheek. “You hear me? I’m not fucking leaving you out here like—like—yeah, man…”

The dock groaned beneath them.

The wind picked up.

Something splashed, far off in the reeds.

Rafe looked over his shoulder once—back toward the shore, toward the marsh road, the curve of headlights long gone, the world empty again and then turned back. His hands found JJ’s arms. Slid under them. JJ didn’t move. He was all deadweight now, all bone and water and heat. The moment Rafe tried to lift him, his knees nearly gave. The slickness made it harder—JJ’s bare skin was slippery, like warm fish guts in his hands, and the net still clung to one thigh where it had embedded into the flesh.

“Shit. Sorry, fuck—” Rafe muttered as he tried to peel it away. The fibers made a wet sucking sound as they pulled loose. JJ didn’t so much as twitch.

He gritted his teeth, hooked his arms under JJ’s back and knees, and lifted.

The weight was staggering.

Not because JJ was heavy—he wasn’t—but because Rafe’s whole body screamed in protest. His arms shook. His vision spotted. The coppery taste of bile rose again, but he swallowed it down and moved, feet thudding wetly across the dock as he carried JJ’s limp, shivering form toward the truck parked haphazardly along the marsh road.

He staggered. Twice. Nearly dropped him once when JJ’s leg twitched violently mid-step and his foot smacked Rafe’s hip. Rafe snarled. Held on tighter.

“You do that again and I’m leaving you here, I swear to fucking God.”

No response.

Just dead air and the distant hum of insects.

By the time he reached the truck, Rafe was soaked with sweat, blood, water. His shirt clung to his back. His hair dripped into his eyes. His hands were raw from the net. He got the back door open with an elbow, maneuvered JJ inside, and laid him across the seat like a corpse being returned to the family.

He stared at him a moment.

The way his lips had begun to pink again. The way one of his hands twitched faintly now, like nerves firing in sleep. Rafe pressed a shaking hand to his own chest. The tightness had eased. Just slightly. Enough to breathe again.

He closed the door.

Rounded the truck.

The gravel crunched beneath his boots, damp and sticky with blood he wasn’t sure belonged entirely to JJ. Rafe climbed into the driver’s seat, hands trembling as they found the wheel. For a moment, he didn’t turn the key. Just sat there. Listening to the faint wet sound of JJ’s breath rasping behind him. His own reflection in the windshield looked alien—eyes too wide, jaw clenched like he was bracing for another wave.

When he started the engine, it sputtered once, then caught. Headlights lit the reeds in a sharp, sterile glow. Rafe didn’t look back at the dock. He didn’t need to. The smell was still in his nose. The weight of JJ’s half-human body was still in his arms. The taste of salt still bloomed at the back of his throat, thick and permanent. He shifted into drive and pulled away slow, gravel hissing beneath the tires.

Behind them, the marsh swallowed its secrets again.

Chapter Text

The tires crackled across the gravel of Tannyhill’s private drive like old bones grinding. Pale light bled through the curtains upstairs, just enough to make the place look lived-in though inside was colder than it had any right to be. The house sat like a carcass, gutted and echoing, its marble and wood soaked in decades of things ignored. Everything here was old and rotted beneath the polish. Rafe had known that since he was a boy. He hadn’t stepped inside as a son in years. He was something else now. A shadow let in through the side door. A bad habit the walls didn’t bother spitting out anymore.

JJ made no sound as Rafe carried him in.

The boy’s weight had shifted somehow during the drive, gone from limp to heavy, like the water inside him had thickened, turned to silt. His arms hung loosely, his fingers twitched. Rafe tried not to look too closely. He focused on the path instead. The kitchen tile, the hallway’s faded runner, the dark bloom of old blood on the doorframe leading into his bathroom.

He laid JJ on the bathroom floor, cradled him down. The tile was cold. JJ didn’t react. Didn’t flinch when the porcelain kissed his spine or when his head knocked softly against the cabinet beneath the sink, the only movement was the faint shudder of his ribs.

Rafe knelt beside him, and sat.

For too long.

Staring.

His breath trembled. His hands still wouldn’t stop shaking, and now that the adrenaline had worn off, he could feel the wetness of it all—the blood slicking his palms, the half-dried slime under his nails, the sting of tiny cuts across his knuckles. JJ’s scent was in everything now. That feral smell. Like dead fish left too long in the sun.

And he was injured.

Rafe could see it now, under the full light of the overhead fixture, a bulb that flickered once before buzzing steady. JJ’s skin was torn in a dozen places. Not just scrapes or bruises but deep lacerations. One along his left side where the net had dug through meat and tendon. Another across his collarbone, scales flaking like dead bark. And his back—God. His back looked flayed. The place where the tail had been, where it had ended was still half-open, like the flesh hadn’t decided what it wanted to be yet. There were ridges there, not quite spine, not quite fin. They twitched under Rafe’s gaze.

He gagged. Hand over his mouth. Breathed slow through his nose.

Then moved.

He got towels first. Bandages. Whatever medical shit he could find from the rusted old kit under the sink. Most of it was expired, the box crushed in the middle like someone had kicked it once. He found rubbing alcohol, nearly empty. Grabbed it anyway.

Back on the floor, he folded one towel beneath JJ’s head. Another under his hip, where the blood had started to pool.

“Okay,” he muttered. “Okay. Just… fuck.”

His voice sounded foreign. Useless.

He poured the alcohol over a cloth and pressed it to the wound on JJ’s side. The boy twitched violently. His body seized for a second, lips pulled back in a snarl, a rattling growl crawling up his throat like a dog about to bite. Rafe flinched but didn’t pull away.

Tried to clean the wounds, tried to ignore the patches of skin that weren’t quite skin. The webbing beneath JJ’s left arm hadn’t disappeared. It fluttered when he moved. There were slits at his ribcage that still pulsed, faint and damp. Not open wounds—gills. Rafe had no clue if they were functional anymore. If JJ even needed them. His body was caught between things. Changing slowly, incompletely, like he hadn’t finished shifting before the net had cut him down.

“I don’t know what the fuck you are,” Rafe murmured. “But I’m not letting you die in my bathroom like this. Not after—not after all that. You hear me?”

No response.

But Rafe kept talking anyway.

“I dragged you out. You let me, didn’t you? That wasn’t an accident. That was—you wanted it. You were watching. You knew I’d come, man.”

He paused. Wiped sweat from his temple with the back of his wrist.

“You knew, didn’t you?”

JJ shivered. Not violently, but enough to make his teeth click faintly together. Rafe leaned closer. Watched his mouth. His eyes. The faint pulse under his jaw. The stillness unnerved him now, more than the noise. Because he knew JJ. The real one. The one with too many words and no filter and hands that always twitched like they had something to prove. This half-dead thing on his bathroom floor wasn’t him.

Rafe dipped the towel in warm water, gently wiped the blood from JJ’s throat.

His hands were steadier now.

He cleaned. Dressed what he could. Covered JJ’s shaking body in a blanket from his bed. Sat with his back against the door.

And waited.

It was almost morning.

That gray-blue hour where the world stopped pretending it was asleep and started unraveling instead. The light through the guest bathroom window was dull, bruised, the color of wet concrete and old ice. Rafe hadn’t moved in hours. He sat slumped against the door, knees bent, head tipped back against the paneling, the faint ache in his tailbone long since has gone numb.

The room stank.

Saltwater, blood, piss, and bleach. The remnants of JJ’s body, whatever it had been last night, had dried into the tile and towels. The gills were closed now, though still visible. His legs—legs, real, human, twitched once beneath the blanket. His lips were cracked. His fingers curled and uncurled like a twitch in a dream.

Then a sound.

Not speech.

Not a scream.

Just a scrape. Nails dragging weakly across the tile.

Rafe bolted upright, spine creaking. His eyes shot to the figure on the floor. JJ’s head had turned. Just barely. One eye open. Glazed, but awake.

Another scrape.

This time more deliberate. A hiss of breath. A flicker of movement beneath the blanket.

JJ lashed out. Weak, uncoordinated. But fast enough to make Rafe jerk back. An arm shot toward him, hand clawed like he’d forgotten what fingers were for, and caught his shirt. Nails scraped skin. Rafe staggered, grabbed the edge of the sink for balance, breath catching hard in his throat.

“The fuck—“

JJ snarled, but it came out half-choked. A wet, raw sound from a throat not fully healed. His lips peeled back like a threat, or a plea. His whole body shook with the effort.

Rafe stared down at him. Heart hammering. Fight-or-flight writhing under his ribs like a second heartbeat.

JJ panted. Hard. Sharp. Eyes wild.

His other hand scrabbled against the tile, trying to get purchase. His legs kicked under the blanket, one half-wrapped in gauze that Rafe had run out of tape for. It looked like he was trying to crawl toward the door. Or away from it. Or maybe toward Rafe. There was no way to know. No logic in him yet, only instinct.

“Look who’s awake,” Rafe said, voice hoarse but steady. “And just as fucking charming as ever.”

JJ let out another snarl. This one almost had shape. His eyes rolled upward briefly, then blinked hard, focus struggling to catch up with consciousness.

“Where the hell are your manners, Maybank?” Rafe sneered. “After all I did for you? Dragging your ass out of the water? Bleeding all over my fucking floor?”

JJ groaned low, shifting onto one elbow, the movement stiff and uncoordinated.

“What?” Rafe tilted his head. “You gonna bite me? Already tried that, remember? Not impressed.”

JJ coughed. The sound was horrible. Wet. Something came up with it—thick and red and shot through with mucus. It hit the tile with a dull splat. Rafe’s grin faltered for a breath.

He tried to speak then. His mouth moved, but no words followed. Just another guttural sound. His teeth clenched. His hands dug into the floor. He pushed just enough to lift himself an inch off the ground before he collapsed back down with a choked cry of frustration.

Rafe watched him for a moment. Silence stretching. Then he crouched down, careful, just out of reach. Rested one arm on his knee. Looked at him like he was studying roadkill that hadn’t stopped twitching.

“You’re gonna burn yourself out if you keep that up,” Rafe said softly. “I saw what your body did. What it turned into. You’re not fooling anyone, man. You’re fucked. Inside and out.”

JJ’s head snapped toward him, a flicker of hate flashing under the exhaustion. His lips parted again, and this time there was sound, a single threat, ragged and rasped.

“Kill… you…”

A beat. Rafe smiled, nervously. “I think we’re a little past threats, don’t you? You’re half-dead on my floor, still bleeding. And I—” He tapped his chest with two fingers. “I pulled you out. I saw everything.”

JJ glared.

But there was fear now.

Rafe saw it.

It curled around the edges of his rage, around the twitch in his hands and the tremble in his thighs as he tried and failed again to lift himself.

Not because he lacked the will. That was never JJ’s problem. No, JJ Maybank had been scraping himself off the floor his entire life, fists swinging even when there was nothing left but blood in his mouth and bones sticking through skin. But this was different. This wasn’t just pain. This was dislocation. His body wasn’t his own anymore, it didn’t know him. Didn’t listen. Muscles flexed at odd angles, twitching in places that shouldn’t exist, as though he still had fins instead of feet, gills instead of lungs.

Rafe watched it all.

Watched the humiliation creep into the boy’s face like slow fire. Saw it in the clench of his jaw, the way his shoulders buckled inward, the way his forehead thumped softly against the tile, not from exhaustion but from shame.

Good.

Let him feel that.

Rafe rose to his feet slowly, knuckles cracking at his sides. The ache in his lower back bloomed as he straightened, but he welcomed it. Welcomed the distraction. The reminder that he was still in his own skin. Still upright. Still himself, whatever that meant.

The silence in the room pressed inward, thick as gauze, heavy with the stink of salt, iodine, and blood. JJ hadn’t moved again. Still curled beneath the blanket, bones barely holding together, skin twitching with residual muscle memory of things that didn’t belong on land.

Rafe rubbed the back of his neck, fingers working along the ridge of tension anchored there like a second spine. His jaw ached. His head throbbed with the dull pulse of another headache coming on. But none of it mattered. Because the real pressure he couldn’t escape lived behind his eyes. Inside his skull. The part that burned when he blinked too long in the dark. The part that whispered every time he closed his eyes.

He glanced down again.

JJ stared back, expression unreadable. 

“You’ve been in my head,” Rafe said again, quieter this time, but not softer. There was no softness left in him. Not here. Not after the dock, the blood, the transformation that was still drying into the grout beneath his feet. “You know you have.”

JJ’s brow twitched. Nothing else.

But his eyes didn’t leave Rafe’s.

Wide and raw, sunken into the sharp edges of his face, still ringed with shadow. Still glinting with that thing that Rafe couldn’t unsee now. Something that wasn’t just JJ. That couldn’t have been JJ in that water. Those weren’t the eyes of a Pogue, or a boy, or even a victim. They were deeper. Hollowed. Fucking inhuamne.

Rafe stepped closer, the towel beneath his foot making a wet sound.

“I’ve seen you,” he said, dragging the words from his throat like a confession. “In my sleep. Every fucking night. You under the water. Smiling. Humming like it’s fun. You know how fucked that is?” He laughed once, dry and bitter. “I used to dream about normal shit. About girls. Money. Waves. My dad’s boat. Dumb shit. You ruined that.”

He stared hard at the boy on the floor. Still, JJ said nothing. But his gaze burned.

“And it’s not just dreams,” Rafe said, stepping around him now, pacing like an animal trapped in a room too small to pace in. “I wake up choking. I smell the saltwater in my sheets. Sometimes I can’t breathe unless I open my windows. And that song—Jesus—” He dug the heel of his palm into his temple, grinding against the pain blooming behind his eye. “I still hear that fucking hum when the house is quiet. You know how sick that makes me feel?”

Silence. Fucking shocker.

“You did something,” Rafe growled, turning on him. “You put something in me. That night. You pulled me into that water and you—fuck, I don’t know what you did, but I can’t fucking forget it.”

JJ didn’t deny it. Didn’t even flinch. And somehow, that was worse.

Rafe crouched down again. Not too close this time. Just near enough to force eye contact. “What are you?” he demanded, his voice dropping into something cold. “What the fuck are you?”

JJ licked his cracked lips. His chest rose once, shuddered. A breath that sounded like it hurt. But he still didn’t speak.

“You just spoke before,” Rafe hissed. “So don’t pretend you can’t now.”

Still nothing.

Rafe grabbed his shoulder.

Fingers digging in, not cruel, but firm like he could squeeze an answer from muscle and bone if he just held tight enough. JJ didn’t flinch. Not even a twitch. Just lay there, chest stuttering with every ragged breath, eyes dull and half-lidded like he was miles underwater again. Like Rafe wasn’t even worth acknowledged to him anymore. Like showing even an ounce of gratitude would kill the Pogue.

That was worse than being hated.

Worse than the lash of JJ’s tongue or the wild, vicious way he used to bare his teeth like he had something to prove.

Because this—this stillness, this hollow quiet felt like he was mishandling a corpse.

Rafe’s mouth curled.

“No,” he muttered. “Fuck that.”

He shifted, grabbed higher, gripped JJ’s face now, rough, callused fingers pressing hard against soft cheekbones. His thumb dug into the soft spot below JJ’s eye. His other fingers curled beneath his jaw, forcing his head up off the tile. Rafe leaned in, too close, their foreheads nearly touching. The angle twisted JJ’s neck slightly, lips parting without permission from the way Rafe’s palm angled his jaw open.

“Don’t you fucking look through me,” Rafe snarled. “Don’t drift off. I want you here. Right now.”

JJ blinked.

A slow, reptilian drag of lashes over those glassy, storm-dark eyes. Blood had crusted at the edge of his mouth, flaked against his chin like rust. A wet sound built in his throat. His jaw flexed, trying to fight the grip but only weakly. A reflex more than resistance. His hands didn’t lift. His legs didn’t brace. He just looked up at Rafe with that eerie, fathoms-deep expression—eerily calm, and so unlike the JJ Maybank that Rafe knew he was beginning to wonder if this was just a creature that stole the Pogues face.

“You’re gonna tell me,” Rafe growled. His voice dropped lower, heavier, as if the words themselves had weight. “What you are. What the fuck you did to me.”

His grip tightened, thumb pressed into the hollow just below JJ’s cheekbone, fingers biting into the hinge of his jaw. JJ finally made a sound, a groan, low and wet, half-gargled like his voice was dragging itself up from seafoam. Rafe felt it against his fingers, felt the vibration in his palm, but still, no words.

No answer.

Just the heat of his breath, sick with dried blood and drool spilling from his parted lips onto Rafe’s skin.

“You think this is some kind of fucking game?” Rafe hissed. “You think I’m just gonna play nurse while you rot on my floor and never tell me why I wake up with your voice in my head?”

JJ swallowed. Still sprawled on the tile, half-naked under the bloodied towel, chest twitching with shallow breath. His eyes didn’t meet Rafe’s anymore—not out of fear, not even defiance. The kind of look someone gives when they’ve seen a version of you, you haven’t even admitted to yourself yet.

Rafe laughed low and sharp, a bitter curl of sound that didn’t reach his eyes.

“You forget what I’ve done to you?” he asked, voice dropping. “You forget how many times I’ve put you on the ground, Maybank? How many times I’ve split your lip or slammed your face into the side of a fucking truck?”

He crouched again.

Slower this time.

Dangerously calm.

“You remember a few months ago?” he asked, almost conversational. “You pulled that little pocket knife on me after I knocked your shit into the mud.”

He tilted his head.

“You were trembling like a leaf, trying to look hard. So I kicked your legs out. Sat on your chest. Spit in your face. Everyone saw.”

He was close now. Close enough to feel the cold, sick steam of his breath against his own face.

“You remember that, don’t you?”

JJ blinked slowly. His lip curled. But still silence.

“You didn’t talk much after that,” Rafe went on, almost with a smile. “Didn’t look at me for a week. Everyone thought it was the broken rib. But I knew. I fucking knew. You were so humiliated, you couldn’t even talk back.”

Rafe’s voice turned to venom now, slow and deliberate.

“And now look at you.”

He reached out again, gripped JJ’s hair, matted and salt-crusted at the scalp, and tugged his head up just enough to force his gaze.

“Back on the fucking ground.”

JJ made a weak noise, throat dry and strained, but not submission. Not quite. It was like a sound half-born from anger, maybe. Or fear. Or both, twisted together the way only JJ Maybank could manage. His eyes rolled toward Rafe’s, unfocused but burning bright now. That flicker of defiance behind them started to flare again.

He hovered above JJ like a closing casket, casting shadow over the ruined mess of boy and salt-clotted myth that lay sprawled on the tiles. His face was pale in the sick bathroom light, jaw locked, lips curled—not in cruelty exactly, but in something uglier. Something personal. Like betrayal. Like addiction. Like the desperate kind of rage reserved only for the things you want too much and understand too little.

JJ didn’t look away.

His eyes clouded, bloodshot, still gleaming faintly at the edges now tracked every inch of Rafe’s face. The slight tick of his cheek. The dark rise of veins near his temple. His mouth, slightly open, exhaling heat across JJ’s wet skin.

And still, he said nothing.

Couldn’t. Or wouldn’t.

But it didn’t matter because Rafe could feel the pull again.

That awful, silent magnetism that had driven him to the marsh in the first place. That had pulled him out of his truck in the dark like strings stitched behind his ribs. It was thick in the room now between them, an invisible tide that only rose when they were too close. Rafe hated it. Hated the want of it. The hunger that bent logic into strange shapes and made his hands curl without permission.

“You know what the worst part is?” Rafe murmured, breath brushing JJ’s jaw as he hovered there, voice low and sharp. “It’s not what you are. It’s not the gills or the fucking fins or finding you trapped in that goddamn net. It’s that you looked at me when it happened. You looked at me like you’ve been waiting on me to show up and find you.”

His hand hovered, then settled not gently against JJ’s chest, just below the collarbone. The skin there was warm, still fever-hot and damp. It twitched beneath his touch, like something alive still wriggled just under the surface.

Rafe pressed his palm down harder.

JJ tensed.

“But you didn’t just want me to look, did you?” Rafe went on. “You pulled me in. You made me a part of it. You’ve been inside my skull ever since. Like a hook I can’t cut loose. Why?”

JJ’s fingers flexed, slow and feeble. His breathing hitched. His body quivered, like the last ragged edges of transformation still gnawed at his tendons.

Rafe’s thumb slid across his skin, up to his neck, to the faint ridges where the gills had tried to close completely. They pulsed beneath the touch. Responding, like they recognized him.

His mouth twisted.

His hand left JJ’s face. Traced down, dragging a smear of damp across his throat, resting at his jaw. More gently this time. The boy’s pulse fluttered there, rabbit-quick. So faint Rafe could barely feel it at first, just a frantic little thrum beneath the thin skin of JJ’s throat. But it was there. Proof. That he was alive. That he was still something after everything. Still breathing in the shallow, broken way that only half-rebuilt lungs could manage. Still trying. And that made Rafe furious.

Because JJ shouldn’t be trying.

He should be begging.

Rafe’s fingers curled tighter, slow and deliberate, his thumb sliding up to the underside of JJ’s jaw, tilting it just enough that the boy had no choice but to look at him again. The skin beneath his palm was slick with sweat and seawater, tacky with blood. JJ’s body trembled faintly, whether from the pain or the pressure, Rafe didn’t care. It was a reaction. And that’s what he’d come for.

“Yeah,” Rafe muttered, eyes narrowing, thumb digging into the edge of JJ’s jaw hinge until his mouth parted involuntarily. “That’s what I thought.”

His throat worked against Rafe’s grip, swallowing hard, shallow breaths hitching—but still, no words. Just wide, wet eyes and a stubborn glint buried under the exhaustion. Still himself, somewhere in there. Still defiant. Still daring Rafe to press harder.

And Rafe almost did.

He could feel the fragile shape of JJ’s windpipe under his palm, the way his pulse surged against the pads of his fingers, the faint, sticky resistance of half-healed skin as it buckled under pressure. He could snap it. Right here. Right now. Just a quick squeeze. Just enough to remind him who dragged him from the water. Who finally controlled this moment.

“You know what I think? I think you’re hiding something. Deep. Whatever you are it’s not gonna stay hidden forever,” he hissed. “You brought it back with you, didn’t you? Into my house. Into me.”

JJ wheezed. A single, strangled breath.

“You should’ve stayed in the water,” Rafe whispered viciously, breath trembling with rage. “You should’ve fucking drowned. Because now you’re mine, and I’ll peel back every disgusting inch of you until I see what’s underneath.”

He stared a moment longer to watch as the color drained from JJ’s face, the lines around his mouth twist in something that wasn’t quite pain and wasn’t quite pleasure either. Something caught between surrender and hunger. It made Rafe’s stomach churn in ways he didn’t have names for.

Then, just as slowly as he’d started, he let go.

JJ crumpled back against the tile with a soft, gasping sound, one hand rising weakly to his throat. Rafe didn’t offer help. Didn’t pretend to feel sorry.

“You don’t want to talk?” he said, stepping back, brushing his hands clean on his jeans like they were stained with something more than blood. “Fine,” his hand closed around the doorknob. “You can keep your little secrets, Maybank. I’ll rip them out if I have to.”

Rafe didn’t wait for a reply. Didn’t need one. He stepped out, pulled the door closed behind him, and left JJ in the dark.

He stood motionless outside the bathroom door, his palm flat against the wood, breathing shallow, chest heaving. His heartbeat hammered in his skull, a brutal drumbeat drowning out rational thought. Something hot and thick rose in his throat, he swallowed it back, teeth grinding until his jaw ached.

He turned sharply, pacing the hallway in erratic strides. The walls felt closer now, pressing inward, pulsing like veins beneath thin skin. The house shifted around him—bones of timber and plaster creaking softly, breathing, laughing at him. Mocking his weakness. His obsession.

Rafe saw it then, just for a second as he glimpsed away from the bathroom door, like a hallucination: Sofia, standing in the hallway, mouth parted in horror, her silhouette lit from behind by the weak gray morning light. Except she wasn’t there. Couldn’t be. He was alone. Still, the shame burned like acid. What if someone had seen? What if someone ever knew? He felt cracked open, feral, lunatic. He wiped his face hard with the back of his hand, smearing sweat and JJ’s blood.

He could already hear Ward in his head. The condescension. The cold, disappointed silence before the lecture. You’re not well, Rafe. You’re not thinking straight. You’re a Cameron, act like it. And he hadn’t acted like a man and cried. He remembered that now. Remembered his knees hitting the grass, his voice breaking in Sofia’s arms like he was ten years old again. Jesus Christ. What the fuck was happening to him?

He stopped.

Eyes drawn to the bathroom door again. He could still hear JJ’s ragged breaths, faint scrapes of fingernails against tile. The sound twisted through him, a sick coil winding tighter and tighter in his gut until it was worse. Until the silence was unbearable.

He hissed under his breath.

He stumbled from the bathroom door, gripping the walls, breath ragged. The quiet crept back, seeping from the corners, flooding the house like dark water. But JJ’s rattling breath followed him, echoing through the halls, seared into his memory now.

He clawed at his scalp with both hands, fingers knotting in his hair like he could pull the thoughts straight out. Something was wrong. Deeper than wrong. Like his brain was rotting from the inside out. He caught his reflection in the hallway mirror—blood down his neck, shirt soaked, eyes wild. He looked like someone who’d eaten another person alive. And maybe he had.

He stepped backward like the mirror might bite him, breath shallow. He had to get out. Had to leave before the house consumed him with its mold and guilt and the sound of JJ gasping in that bathroom like something still half-drowning.

Rafe stumbled out of the room, down the hall, and into the wide yawning dark of the stairwell. He didn’t look back.