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In the sea, Jade was never a prey animal, never swam far enough from the reef to be attacked by sharks or barracudas, but he feels unsteady on land, feels the way Azul must have underwater. And he has never felt more like a prey animal than he does today, limping away from Vargas’s office with a deep ache spreading through his body and the entirely unfamiliar sensation of tears on his face. Floyd cried often since becoming human, always caught up in the throes of some wild emotion, but Jade wipes at his eyes desperately, some long-dormant prey instinct telling him to hide all weaknesses.
“Oh- are you alright, young man?”
He jumps at the voice, curses himself for not realizing someone was approaching, tries to smile at Lilia. He looks ridiculous, has obviously just been- hurt, somehow. Another barbaric human custom, one he hasn’t heard about but has no desire to explore further. Lilia is smiling at him, warm and welcoming, and he wants to run.
Lilia is something ancient, something that smiles at Jade while hanging playfully from the ceiling, something that wears oversized clothes to emphasize his tiny stature, something that wants humans to think it’s harmless. Lilia has hard little hands, cold as stone and thrumming with deadly energy. Lilia has always scared him, but right now, Jade finds himself wondering if he could fight him off. He straightens up to his full height, bites his lip at the pain that radiates up his spine, smiles wider.
“I am perfectly fine,” he hears himself say, and Lilia blinks slowly, looks utterly unconvinced.
“Looks like a bruise is forming on your face, there.” Lilia’s tiny hand goes to tap his own cheek, and Jade mimics the gesture unconsciously, supposes Vargas hit his head against the floor harder than he realized. He inhales shakily, decides it doesn’t matter what Vargas did, as long as no other human knows, as long as no one else hurts him, he must never be alone with- “Do you have a concussion?”
Lilia’s deep voice interrupts his thoughts, and Jade keeps smiling, knows he must look ridiculous but can’t think of anything else to do. “No, no, I don’t. I just need to get back to my dorm- Floyd is sick-” Yes, Floyd is sick, has been sick since Vargas held him back and Jade thinks he knows, now, what happened, has to let Floyd know he was right not to tell, they can never tell a human or it will happen again.
“I think you should go to the nurse,” Lilia says cautiously.
“Just a bruise, I fell during flight class, it really is fine-”
“You smell of blood.” It’s an alarming, blunt statement, and Jade laughs, as if there isn’t blood running down his thighs as they speak, shakes his head frantically.
“You’re imagining things, really, I’m perfectly fine! I just need to go, now, I’m sorry to be rude-”
The noise he makes when Lilia grabs his arm is somewhere between screaming and hissing, but Lilia doesn’t jerk away like another student might have, like a normal boy would have. Because he isn’t a little boy, Jade has never been so sure, this child-thing holding his wrist in a delicate doll hand was ancient when he the twins were born, and when Lilia looks up to meet his eyes he stops struggling, he knows Lilia can hurt him, he’s too tired to fight, if this barbaric human custom is normal what’s the point in-?
“What are you doing?” Lilia sounds alarmed, watching Jade fumble one-handed with his pants.
“Just hurry up.” Jade doesn’t recognize his voice, hates how weak he sounds, how weak he must look, but he knows, has seen Azul swim away and hide, giving up can be the only way prey animals survive, and he has no desire to anger this little apex predator peering up at him.
“Jade, stop. Stop that, please, that isn’t- that won’t be necessary.” Lilia sounds confused, sickened, and Jade hesitates, eyes darting around like a trapped animal. “Please, just… did someone hurt you? You need to see the nurse, please.” His voice is steady, too deep for his little body, just like Floyd’s voice has always been too high-pitched. “Let’s go to the nurse.”
“Nothing unusual happened, I assure you, I don’t need a nurse!” Blood is still trickling down his thighs, he’ll be fine if he can get into the water, if he never has to walk again, he hates it here, wants to go home where everyone is afraid of him and his family, no one will hurt him if he goes home, take Floyd and go home and be safe.
“Alright, alright, you don’t have to see the nurse right now, but can you just tell me what happened?”
“Some routine human custom, I don’t understand but it’s fine, really, I’m only overreacting because it’s new, but I don’t need a nurse!” The nurse will hurt him, he’s still not confident Lilia won’t, the only people he can trust are Floyd and Azul, Azul is clever, has a clear head, Azul will know what to do if he can just get away from the monster looking at him with soft, sad, deadly red eyes.
“Routine human custom? You’re in great distress, if you could just-” Lilia loosens his grip, and Jade pulls his arm away, runs as fast as he can, ignores Lilia calling after him. Floyd is in the empty lounge when he gets back, listlessly tracing patterns on the table with his fingertip. Jade doesn’t miss the way he jumps when the door slams, doesn’t speak to Floyd as he runs past him, ignores his brother in favor of getting to the shower as fast as possible.
Lilia follows him the next day.
Jade can’t ignore the red eyes watching him in the halls, in the cafeteria, even in the Mostro Lounge- Lilia shows up that night, keeps trying to pull Jade aside, and finally Jade sits down with a stiff smile, decides to finish the conversation since Lilia is so determined to bother him. “May I help you?” he asks politely. It still hurts to sit, and he wonders vaguely if he really should see the nurse, he’s stopped bleeding now but when he woke up there was fresh blood, if he’s been seriously injured- but then the nurse will only hurt him more.
“I don’t want to upset you, I’m just worried something… something is wrong, and I can help, if you’ll let me.” Lilia speaks with the delicate tactlessness of the very old, determined he knows best and making only a token effort to cover it up with politeness. If Jade were to close his eyes, Lilia’s deep voice, careful phrasing would be less alien, he could pretend an old man was talking to him, not this unnatural boy-creature with a deadly smile and ice cold hands.
“It’s nothing, really. Just a human custom I hadn’t been introduced to, something that startled me.”
“Could you tell me what happened?” Some nervous look must have passed over Jade’s face, some brief slip in his composed expression, because Lilia quickly adds, “You needn’t tell me who… who introduced this custom, if that’s the issue. If you’re afraid-”
Jade shakes his head, clears his throat. Of course he’s afraid, desperately afraid, terrified Lilia will hold him down and hurt him just the same way, the same way Vargas promised anyone would if he told- but they’re in the middle of the Mostro Lounge now, it couldn’t be proper to do in public, he’s never seen it before. “It was only- I don’t know, exactly, but he- I had gone to ask a… a teacher, I had a question, someone held my brother after class and he was acting strange, I just wanted to ask, and he-” Jade swallows, smiles, adjusts his gloves. “He held me down- on the floor- I don’t know how to explain what he did, just that he- it hurt, a little, but it’s over now, and he told me it’s very normal. Floyd said, when I told him, something similar had happened but it- hurt- less, he was angry with me, I believe, and I-”
“Did he take your clothes off?” The question startles Jade, and he wonders how Lilia knows, then remembers he’d tried to take his pants off, make it easier for him under the assumption he wanted the same thing as Vargas.
“Well, he- just my pants, but Floyd said it- the actual- he said it was precluded by a sort of, of physical examination, so, yes, I think we were both- I mean-” He’s crying again, Jade realizes in horror, quickly wipes at his face. No one can see him like this, they won’t respect him, how could he show such weakness in public? “I’m sorry, terribly sorry, have to leave now,” he mumbles, tries to get up, but there’s that iron grip on his wrist again, Lilia looking at him with unfathomably old eyes.
“Jade, that’s not normal,” he says softly. He hesitates, clearly trying to find the right word, and finally settles on, “You’re describing a… a kind of assault, you need to tell me who hurt you so I- so it can be dealt with properly.”
Jade stares at him, trying to comprehend. It’s a relief, on the one hand, that he doesn’t have to expect that again in the future, but he hates the idea of being assaulted, of being hurt, it isn’t right, isn’t the natural order, his parents would be ashamed, and were they both-? He looks over at Floyd, who stands only a few tables away, keeps glancing over at him. Floyd doesn’t like to be away from him or Azul lately, won’t be alone with any human, their father would say he’s hysterical, overreacting or weak, if what Lilia says about assault is true, he mustn’t find out.
“That doesn’t sound right,” he mumbles. “He didn’t hit me, or anything like that.”
“It’s a different kind of assault. It isn’t- I mean, it is common among humans, but it’s a very serious crime- I assure you, if you tell me who did this, he will never hurt you again.”
Maybe it’s his lingering fear, maybe it’s the rising anger that this feeling of violation is justified, but something makes Jade ignore the dangerous gleam in Lilia’s eyes, makes him confess in a whisper, “I- it was Coach Vargas. He said it was normal, he said no one would care and told Floyd anyone he was alone with would-”
“That isn’t true,” Lilia interrupts firmly. “You did the right thing, to tell me.” Jade still has the uncanny feeling that some adult is condescending him, but he pushes it away, nods stupidly and wipes his face again before hurrying to Floyd’s side.
When they return to their room, there’s a note tacked to the door in Lilia’s spidery handwriting, inviting them to the lake at midnight.
Lilia has forgotten his humanity, tells people he’s a faerie because it’s easier than the truth, that he used to be human, never grew into a man but knows he was a boy, centuries ago, hundreds and hundreds of years gone in the blink of an eye, a thousand years watching humans. A thousand odd years as something separate, a thousand years to learn the ways of men he never knew in life. Lilia was fourteen when the sickness came over his village, doesn’t know why he was chosen to live this never ending half-life when the others were just killed, but he doesn’t question it, doesn’t care to remember it.
He hates men like Ashton, has always hated them, hated Ashton in particular even before Jade Leech confessed to him in a shadowy booth of the Mostro Lounge. Ashton has no particular feelings for or about Lilia, doesn’t know he’s a so-called faerie, certainly doesn’t know what he really is, but like any man he’s stupid, too eager, too trusting. Humans don’t have the instincts of merfolk, humans think Lilia’s a precocious little boy, and Ashton follows him to the lake under cover of night, to an overlook far from the beach, to deeper water.
“Nice moon tonight,” Ashton comments, squeezing Lilia’s narrow waist. He can’t hide the excitement in his voice, the expectation, but Lilia barely hears him, too focused on the softly rippling surface of the normally still lake, the quick flash of a long tail just under the surface.
Ashton’s flesh is soft, and Lilia lets his eyes close as he bites him, pulling his head back violently enough to rip the neck open entirely. He came to settle a score, not to feed, and he wastes no time throwing Ashton into the lake, chuckles as he steps forward to watch. A webbed hand drags the doomed man under, and Lilia watches the water churn, licks his lips as a red cloud spreads, barely perceptible in the moonlight, through the dark water.
Floyd winks at Lilia in the hall the next day, flashes razor-sharp teeth in a lazy, sated-predator smile as he ducks into class.