If You Love Something
He stood knee deep in the cresting waves, occasionally wading out further, only to let the waves push him back towards the shore gently. Gulls cried in the distance, their evening song as they began to stoop in their nests, the sun just beginning to dip into the endless sky, painting the world a soft orange hue.
Arthur had hoped that these evenings spent soul-searching and alone would stop after he had set that bottle free and vowed to let go of his past. But on some days, usually when the sun began its descent, there would be a noise in his mind that wasn't quite there. Arthur didn't even dare speculate as to what it could mean or be. Instead he simply allowed his feet to carry him to the shore, day in and day out, restless and searching, but never finding.
His face and shoulders were covered in freckles these days and not the pink burn of sun that had been ever present while he was stranded. His hair was short again, no longer to his shoulders and only tamed with a bristled shell. In fact, his appearance had changed so much since Alfred had seen him last, what would the merman think of him now?
Arthur sighed loudly. Letting go was so much harder than he had ever thought it would be. Forgetting something like that… it had to be impossible. The sun warmed the back of his neck and he stared, unseeing, into the horizon. Sometimes he thought that he didn't want to let go, and the thought scared him.
With a tired, windy breath Arthur closed his eyes and let the name that had plagued him all these years slip effortlessly from his mouth, "Alfred…"
The entire world seemed to hush as the sound of the merman's name tapered off and disappeared onto the breeze. "It's high time I give up this silly notion, isn't it?" he asked himself, ignoring the emptiness around him. Maybe he was talking to the ocean, he didn't know, but for some reason it seemed valid to do so. "He's trapped out there, in those secluded waters, isn't that how it works?" Arthur gave a hopeless sigh. "It's a foolish thing to hope… to hope Alfred will find me."
He waited for a few more minutes, letting the words of his speech whirl around his brain for just a little longer. When nothing happened (and what would even happen?) he shrugged in defeat and turned back towards the shore. But then there was a splash and Arthur's breath caught and his heart skipped. He was afraid to look – afraid that his hopes (what little of them there were left) would be crushed, and nervous that maybe they wouldn't be. Arthur turned back around.
And there, a few feet before him he saw that wet mop of blond hair and the gem blue eyes that he had dreamed about night after night. "Alfred?" he whispered, disbelieving. A ring of sea foam clung stubbornly to the merman's shoulders as he swam forward through the calming waters. Arthur couldn't believe his eyes, but there was no mistaking it. Unthinking he waded down to his waist, watching as Alfred came closer and closer – but something was off. The merman's face was pale, contorted into a strange mixture of hope and pain. Arthur's heart pounded in his ears as he reached out a hand to Alfred.
As if in slow motion, Alfred lifted his hand to Arthur's, but instead of the webbed fingers Arthur was expecting, it was a human's hand, the blue sheen of rubbery skin around his palms bubbling away into sea foam and dropping back to the ocean water with fat plops.
With an experimental air, Alfred laced his fingers between Arthur's stunned ones. "What's going on? What happened?" Arthur asked in a trembling voice.
Alfred lifted a green bottle from beneath the waves. "I found this bottle," he said slowly from a mouth filled with very white and very human teeth, testing how to pronounce and say things anew.
Arthur's stomach fluttered because, despite whatever was happening, Alfred's voice hadn't lost that watery tone that had followed him even to his dreams. "I… how… but, no. That doesn't matter at the moment. I mean, what's happening to you?"
The merman smiled painfully. "I gave up the ocean."
"You what?" Arthur didn't understand. Alfred had mentioned on several occasions that merfolk were part of the ocean in the most literal and fundamental sense. But as Alfred pulled closer to him, his grip on the bottle white knuckled as they began to go towards shore, Arthur saw what Alfred meant. He watched as the moved towards more shallow water as the once dolphin-esque tail, the moist, rubbery blue skin of Alfred's lower half, literally seemed to melt off of him, becoming hissing sea foam that caught in the lulled waves as they went, and beneath that were legs. Arthur laid Alfred down on the dry sand, shocked and stunned at the human the once merman had become. "But how…?" he murmured, resting Alfred's head in his lap. "I don't understand… Why would you do this?"
Alfred's smile was weak and he wiggled his toes, wincing as he did so. "You love me," he breathed out, pushing the green bottle to Arthur's chest. "You love me and I came for you, because I love you too."
"But why become a human? How did you even leave your territory? Alfred you look to be in so much pain…"
"It will pass." Alfred stared at their interlocked hands, uncaring that he was sprawled out naked on a semi-public beach front. "I gave up the ocean to be free from my territory – to come for you. I had to… find a replacement… but, Frenchmen are easily fooled by beautiful women."
Arthur's free hand pushed through Alfred's drying hair. He wondered what color it was when completely dry, he'd never seen it so. "Indeed they are," he muttered, his voice shaking and eyes stinging. Was this real? Was he going to wake up from this dream? What is reality without love, anyway? "Alfred, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't go back that day. I should have, I know. But… I thought… I just wanted. And now this and I don't know what to do or say –"
Alfred shushed Arthur with a tired wave of his hand. "Can you say that you love me? No magic."
And as Arthur looked into Alfred's eyes, he could tell that nothing about them had changed. They were still the color of the shallow seas, possessing an old knowledge and secrets that would likely die with him. Arthur smiled wanly and softly said, "I love you, Alfred."
The once-merman smiled largely as Arthur leaned down for a soothing, welcoming kiss. "Now, I suppose I'll have to teach you to use those new legs of yours," he mumbled against Alfred's ear, "And then I'll teach you how to use other things, hm?"
Despite the pain the coursed through his body, his nerves aflame with the sensation of losing half of himself and his identity and the wound that parting from the ocean left in his soul, Alfred laughed.
Unimportant Notes: Thank you guys so much for sticking with me during this "write a chapter every day challenge". It was fun, and at times a bit disheartening, but in the end I enjoyed myself immensely. Now I'll be working on the Summer Camp event on LiveJournal for the usxuk community, I hope I'll see some of you there! :D