Fic: Siren (Sakura x Hyde mythology AU)
Title: Siren
Group: L'Arc~en~Ciel
Pairing: Sakura x Hyde
Rating: Light R
Genre: Angsty fantasy
Hyde is a Siren, Sakura is on a sailing vacation. When Sakura is washed up on his island, Hyde has his first and last enounter with a human...
Ugh, have disgusting cold. So can't concentrate on proper writing (e.g. thesis or somewhat-plotty Naito fic), which means plotless fic and fanart!
Saw an ep of QI last week with a question about Sirens. Turns out they're more like birds than fish, who knew. Ahh, Stephen Fry, you teach me so much!
Anyway, the defining characteristic of Sirens is obviously their voices. And who has the most stupendous voice in all the world? Hyde, that's who! Plus he's a little hottie XD
This fic is based on L'Arc when they were in their 20s, which is why he looks even more like a girl than he does these days :)
Anyway...
SIREN
Hyde's life is a song.
No food, no water, no other creature's lips touch his; only music. Hyde has existed here - he can't say lived - for as many thousand years as he can remember. He saw the Greeks come and go, and the Romans too, from his rocks by the sea; and since then has heard no sound but the crash of the waves and his own voice.
There were three of them, once; he thinks it was three, long ago. But his sisters have been gone ever since the day a living man withstood their song and sailed away to tell the tale. Smarter and stronger than him, still, they threw themselves into the ocean at the shame of it, at seeing that damn Ithican ship pass by, and only the beauty of his own song in his ears had kept Hyde from following them.
And for the last three thousand years he has been alone with the wrecks and the wind.
Until one day something comes.
Sakura knows he shouldn't have taken the boat out by himself; his girlfriend is a better sailor than him, but that morning she had just wanted to lie around the hotel and go shopping, and Sakura was antsy to feel the breeze in his face. Now it's two days later and he knows he is a damned idiot; point of fact, he thinks he's going to die. He's lost, his mouth and eyelashes are crusted with salt, head spinning so he can hardly steer, and nothing but blue surrounding him, below and above.
Then, through the rainbow spray, he sees a rocky shore. His vision is wavering, but it's there all right, if he can only tack quick enough to get to it. He shakes the dark hair out of his face and reaches for the winch.
Hyde is waiting, today as every day, eternity a bleak ocean before him. Ships rarely pass any more, in this wasteland of water so far from the human trade routes, and he's almost glad of it because it's pitiful to see so many living creatures die. Not for them, you understand, but for Hyde himself: he can't stand it, having them come so tantalizingly close, only to disappoint him at the last.
He feels the boat before he sees it, its weight on his little world drawing him towards the shore and opening his throat. He begins to sing, unable to help himself, a spell woven from his own desire and misery. Then he spots it, in the glare of the afternoon sun off the waves: a tiny thing, a single man handling it, and it's still out of earshot but already turning towards the island and its terrible surf. Hyde almost shuts his mouth in surprise, because nobody comes to him of their own free will; the man must be mad.
Sakura curses to himself as he sees the height of the waves, and for a moment seriously considers turning back out to sea because that shore is a killer. But before he can choose, a skirl of sound hits his ears and every thought is washed from his head except that he has to get to it. The current has him now anyway and he lets himself go to it, the richest, sweetest, most unhappy sound he ever heard. He has no control left, over himself or the boat; turning broadside it rises up a wall of water, and as he reaches the crest he dimly sees a figure on the rocks above him, all white oracle robes and billowing hair. The next moment the boat is tumbling with the wave. His eyes and ears full of beauty, Sakura dives.
Hyde sees the sailor fall, and the next second the boat is splinters against his shore; and still he sings, furious tears welling, a lament for the fool of a man and for himself. His eyes close against the sight of another body added to the pile of bones at the foot of his cliff. He's used to the pain, now, has been numbed by the millennia; but he had wanted this one.
When he opens his eyes again he sees a sight so far out of his experience that he cannot, at first, comprehend it: there's a human on the beach beneath him. The breath catches in his throat and his song falters for the first time in his existence; not even the death of his siblings had stopped its sweet and deadly flow. The sailor has somehow come past the fang-like rocks without being torn to pieces, and has washed up on the narrow strip of pale sand between the breakers and the cliffs.
Hyde isn't sure whether he feels more terrified or excited at the sight; strange heart pounding, he slips his way down from his perch, down the treacherous path worn glassy by his bare feet over thousands of years. He hovers out of reach on a rock above the sailor's body. Trembling all over, he takes his first good look at a human.
The man seems big, on a bigger scale than Hyde altogether, and baked gold by exposure to the sun. His hair is black as pitch, wet and gleaming like a seal's hide. Hyde wants to touch it, starts to reach down. Then he's scrambling back up the rock, heart in his mouth, because the body is moving. Alive! He shudders.
Coughing water up from his lungs, Sakura opens his eyes and winces; they feel poisoned with salt, every bone in his body on the edge of fracture from those god-awful rocks. He thinks he's dying, with the pain and the longing to hear that sound again, to find whatever was making it. He rolls over, looks up, and sees an angel.
“...God!”
The creature above him flinches back, its huge eyes wide and petrified, perched on the edge of the slippery rock like a bird. Sakura blinks and pushes himself up on his knees to get a better look; he can't tell if it's male or female, but is certain it isn't human. It looks like one, almost; but it isn't. The little figure is watching him raptly, draped haphazardly in diaphanous, airy cloth like something out of a Greek myth, all damp and ripped around the edges. Its hair is a curling waterfall of brown, skin white as the surf on the breakers, and its face...is exquisite. The small mouth is closed in a worried line, but Sakura is certain that this is what was making that heavenly sound. He feels like he's gone mad, like he crossed into another world when he came crashing onto the beach.
“...Hey,” says Sakura, his own voice hoarse with thirst and exhaustion. “Why don't you come down?” The creature cocks its head like a sparrow as he speaks, looking as fascinated with him as he must with it, but doesn't move. Sakura clambers to his feet, muscles screaming a protest, and stretches out his hand.
The man is talking! Hyde has never heard a human voice before, not close enough to really hear over his melodious death-call; it's rough and undeveloped, the sound of an animal in comparison with his own enchanting tones, but he can understand it, almost. It's amazing. Then the man is standing, looking dazed, and reaching up to him invitingly. For a moment Hyde presses himself back into the stone, because even battered by the sea the man is bigger and stronger by far, and who knows what humans like to do, especially when Hyde is to blame for his predicament in the first place.
“Come on.” The human smiles at him, or at least bares his teeth. Not having many other options, Hyde takes his hand, gasping at the roughness of the man's skin, his warmth. Trembling, he allows himself to be gently tugged down. Standing exposed on the sand and gazing up, he feels very vulnerable; and his fingers are still swallowed up in the human's hand.
“I'm Sakura.” The man's eyes are running over him eagerly, as if he's something absolutely alien. “Sakura,” he says again. “...What's your name?” Hyde blinks at that, dismayed; he opens his mouth, then closes it, because he's not at all sure he can make a noise that isn't his lethal song.
Sakura sees the beautiful little creature part its lips, exposing sharp white teeth, then shut them again. He wants to touch them, see if they're as smooth and cool as the small fingers in his hand.
“Don't be scared,” he says encouragingly, and it tries again.
“...Hyde.”
Sakura wants to laugh aloud, to sing himself at the beauty of that one short sound; he's in no doubt any more, what drew him onto the rocks, and he doesn't care; he could drown a thousand times in that voice and go happily.
“Hyde,” he repeats, a pathetic echo of the music, and raises his free hand helplessly to cup the tiny man's face; male, he's sure now, the voice so deep and rich, though he's a hundred times lovelier than any human woman Sakura ever saw. He's shaking like a leaf beneath Sakura's fingers, enormous eyes transfixed, and his thick hair feels like feathers. “What are you?” Sakura says, because he's desperate to hear him again and he can't think of a smarter question. But Hyde just shakes his head. Sakura wants to hear everything, see all of him.
What is he? Hyde doesn't know the word for himself, hardly understands the question. So he keeps quiet, though the longing on Sakura's face makes him want to speak again, just to please him, to see how the expressions move across his human features. The man is touching him, for the first time in four thousand years and so different from ever before because of his sheer warmth. Hyde leans into the hand as it slides caressingly through his hair, and wants to cry.
“Say my name,” Sakura whispers, fingers now curious against his throat. Hyde obeys him, curling his magical tongue around the foreign syllables, and sees his eyes turn soft. He says it again, his deep voice a lilting song; but he's cut off as Sakura's lips cover his. He freezes with the shock of it, doesn't know what this new caress means, just that the man is suddenly all heat and urgency. It scares him, but he welcomes even that: to feel anything after an eternity of emptiness is intoxicating. He rises up on his toes and returns the touch.
Sakura takes Hyde's lovely little head in both hands and kisses him full on the mouth, a blind, worshipful impulse. For a moment the strange creature is completely still beneath him, then surges up against his lips, moving awkwardly as if he has no concept of what a kiss is at all. He's cool and tastes of salt, but everything does now; and there's something in the texture of his smooth skin that's really not human, not even mammalian.
“Hyde,” murmurs Sakura giddily, nudging his lips apart. Hyde gasps as Sakura's tongue brushes his, the sound as musical as the most flawless aria, but it's Sakura himself who feels the shock; if “shimmer” was a sensation, that's what the movement of Hyde's tongue would be like, the magic palpable in his flesh. Enraptured, he slides his hands down the tiny man's shoulders, and the white gauze falls away like tissue paper to pool at his feet. The wind blows it along the beach, fans Hyde's hair into a torrent after it, and Sakura stares down at him: his body is like a man's but not, the bones of his willowy limbs light and fine as a bird's. Sakura has never wanted anything so badly.
The man is staring at him like Hyde stares at the ships he draws to their destruction: hungry, hungry, and afraid, as if by pulling him closer he could destroy everything. Hyde has small concept of nakedness as such, and none whatever of the desire that sets Sakura's gaze aflame. He makes a small, inquisitive sound; he wants to be touched again, to prove Sakura is really there, to feel the odd human speech that is just silent lips against lips.
Sakura is still looking at his body, seemingly unable to move, so Hyde reaches out himself. He's cautious, curious; there's hard muscle under his fingertips, beneath the complicated array of soaked clothing covering Sakura's chest, and it shivers at his touch. He tugs appealingly at the fabric, wants to learn more, and is rewarded by Sakura's arms around him, making his skin tingle all the way down to his tailbone. Sakura's hands follow the tingles, and an instant later he's on his knees.
“Hyde,” says Sakura rapturously, his lips against Hyde's ribs, “talk to me...Tell me it's good.” Hyde doesn't really understand that, just whimpers as Sakura's mouth moves lower. He's never made such a sound before, and never felt so lost; he winds his fingers into the man's dark hair, coarse and damp, and holds on to anchor himself.
“Sakura,” he sings, the only human word he's been taught, and hears the man give a rumble of something that sounds like pleasure; then Sakura's hands slide between his legs and he almost falls down.
Hyde's moan is enough to take Sakura to the cusp of bliss all by itself. He feels the slender legs tremble and takes hold of Hyde's narrow hips to keep him still; he's so light, even for his size, that he seems he could just float away. Small, sharp-nailed fingers twist in Sakura's tangled hair as he kisses him, down and down, so responsive it's as though he's never been touched before. And maybe he hasn't; the thought leaves Sakura dizzy, with the sheer strangeness of it as much as anything else.
“Aahh...” Hyde's thick, straight lashes cover his eyes and he sighs. He's still shaking. Sakura pulls him down to the sand, lays him out on his back; his strange, ethereal hair spreads across the ground like seaweed. He looks nervous again as Sakura moves over him, but his expression turns interested when Sakura shrugs out of his ruined shirt and the rest of his clothes.
“I want you,” says Sakura, and again, like a mantra. He's hard, and he's never been that for a man before; but this place is so far outside the real world that it seems petty to even think it.
“Want?” echoes Hyde, and Sakura could weep at the sound. He takes Hyde's small hands and sets them on his body. Hyde's eyes gleam and he starts to explore; Sakura knows it's pure curiosity and that he doesn't mean to tease, but those light touches are enough to make him lose control. He leans down and kisses him again, not careful this time but passionate, those cool lips smooth as honey. While Hyde is trying to copy him, lagging behind a bit but doing his best, Sakura glides one hand along the inside of his little thigh, white and pearly as the heart of a shell. Without pausing, without even stopping to think that this is madness, he pushes two fingers into him. He feels Hyde moan sharply against his mouth, and cradles the back of his head soothingly.
Hyde is petrified again at the whirlpool of sensation dragging him into its maw; his raw nerves, having never really experienced pain or pleasure, can't tell which is which, so that Sakura's fingers inside him are ecstasy while his bruising lips feel like a punishment. He doesn't know what all this signifies for humans, what it's supposed to communicate, but every sweep of Sakura's tongue against his own seems rife with meaning he can't quite reach.
His hands are moving, constantly roaming across Sakura's body; it's hard everywhere and feels unnaturally warm compared with his own cold blood. He ventures a touch between the man's legs, just like Sakura had for him, and hears him groan. He closes his fingers and Sakura's teeth sink gently into his lip. Hyde, having no choice but to learn by imitation, bites back. Sakura's blood is red as the poppies in the cliff-top meadow, warm and coppery on his tongue, the first foreign substance ever to pass his lips. Hyde glances up at him, surprised at the stifled noise, but Sakura just shakes his head and kisses him again, another long finger pressing inside him.
“Does it hurt?” asks Sakura between caresses. Hyde thinks he knows what that means, but isn't sure if the answer is yes or no, and it hardly matters because any sensation is to him miraculous. So he doesn't answer, just repeats the man's name in a grateful melody that flows from his lips and turns Sakura's expression feverish.
“I want to be with you,” whispers Sakura against his ear, his breath a luscious prickle over the skin. “…You know?” Hyde is about to nod yes when he continues, “To make love to you…” Hyde has no idea what that means, so he changes it to a shake of his head, his long hair spilling sand. “Inside you,” continues Sakura softly, and Hyde blushes for perhaps the first time since the world began. He doesn't know the word “maiden”, but the concept fills his hollow bones; it is something that had defined the three of them ever since their creation. He turns white again with the magnitude of it.
Sakura can't believe this is happening, or that he can really be here, lifetimes away from his Mediterranean vacation of only days before. And where did he find the temerity to even lay hands on this alien creature, never mind ask to take him? He's sure, now, that Hyde was untouched by human and probably any other hands until he arrived through the surf; and the proposition of having him is both terrifying and so utterly compelling that it's as though he's caught in that hypnotic song all over again, although Hyde's bloodstained lips are currently shut in a silent line.
Hyde is quiet so long and looks so anxious beneath him that Sakura is about to try and steel himself to pull away, though he feels it would rip the heart right out of him. Before he can bring himself to do it Hyde sits up, his elegant nose an inch from Sakura's, and crooks a finger decisively at him. Sakura is on his feet as soon as he can follow, trailing the smaller man up the beach and onto the rocks. There's a path here, of sorts, and Sakura starts up it blindly. Hyde, beside him, seems to float up the cliff face like a feather, and Sakura labours after him, the combination of bone-deep exhaustion and pressing desire slowing his progress.
When he reaches the top it's yet another world: a wild, luxurious plateau of flowers, still lit by the copper disc of the sun where the beach is already in shadow. Hyde tumbles airily into the iris blossoms, releasing a cloud of scented pollen, and reaches up for him.
“Here?” says Sakura; Hyde smiles through his miniature fangs and opens his limbs willingly. Sakura lets his aching muscles go and sinks down into paradise.
This is it, thinks Hyde as Sakura enters him, this is life. It's right that it should be up here, not on the beach that has seen nothing but death. It hurts all through his small frame, so he clings to the man, clear nails leaving sharp little pinpricks like the marks of falcons' claws in his back. He knows this is the end, the end of any divinity he might once have had in him; but he feels like he has lost nothing.
“Sakura,” he sings, and feels a shiver under his fingers, in Sakura's lips against his as the music takes hold. He curls his legs around Sakura's hips and tries not to lose his mind, every movement drawing a different sound out of him and creating a brand new song, one he had never dreamed of before.
Sakura wants to ask if he's all right, if it hurts him, but he can't speak, not with the heavenly sounds spilling from Hyde's throat. He kisses him instead, presses him harder into the flowers. Hyde moans again and clutches at him, Sakura's hands like iron in the soft flesh of his thighs, although Sakura doesn't know if that inhuman skin can even bruise. This is love, he understands as Hyde's cheek meets his, whether it was induced by his supernatural song or not; and the highest pinnacle his life will ever reach.
When Sakura comes Hyde crushes the perfumed violets in his fingers and calls out his name, and Sakura doesn't care if he never hears another sound until he dies but those three syllables, over and over. Hyde is shuddering, on the edge himself, and Sakura can tell he has no idea what to make of the feeling; he looks scared, pleading, and yet overjoyed at the same time, the new expressions sitting strangely on his beautiful face.
“Just a bit more,” murmurs Sakura soothingly. Hyde nods helplessly and Sakura coaxes him into his climax, hands firm and lips gentle on his body. The incandescent sweetness of his cry at the moment he comes undone makes Sakura's head spin. Hyde gazes up at him, dark eyes wide and adoring, his narrow chest heaving and slim calf slick as a snake against his thigh. Sakura falls into that stare, under his spell, and collapses into his arms.
Hyde lies in the meadow under the milky stars, wrapped in a human's embrace, and for the first time feels that the world is not a desert. After a while Sakura goes quiet, eyes closed; Hyde, who has never slept before, finds this fascinating. He lies there and traces the short fringe of the man's lashes, fingers combing through his black hair as his own feathery locks flutter in the breeze with the bloody petals of the anemones.
When Sakura wakes up Hyde invites him in again; he wants to feel it, the appalling intensity of love. That's another word Sakura taught him, fingertips tracing the foreign letters on his stomach before he drifted off. Sakura laughs when Hyde climbs astride him, and Hyde is so charmed that he almost forgets to move. But he does, and it's wonderful.
When Sakura wakes up it's to the antique Mediterranean sun on his face and the sight of Hyde perched naked and dainty at the cliff edge. He feels sated, filled to the brim with adoration for this creature. But he's only human: he's sore and a mass of bruises, and so parched that his lips are cracking.
It doesn't take long to circle the cliff-top field, and it's just that: an incongruous carpet of flowers baking dusty in the heat, and nothing else. Hyde watches him curiously, long hair the dark bronze of a hawk's wing in the light as his head turns to follow Sakura's explorations. Sakura gives up and scrambles his way gingerly down the precarious trail to the beach; the surf is high today, foam white and sparkling against the rocks. Hyde pads after him weightlessly, hand slipping into his.
“…What do you drink?” asks Sakura at last, sitting down in the sand. His body is protesting, exhausted. He considers Hyde's sharp teeth thoughtfully. “What do you eat?” Hyde makes one of his musical questioning noises. Sakura pauses, then mimes the action of drinking. He sees Hyde bite his underlip, eyes wide, then shake his head. And in a rush he understands.
The dismay of it hits Hyde like a wave, and he reads it in Sakura's face: humans are mortal. They eat, and drink. Or they die. He knows this, but can hardly believe it now that he's met one; Sakura is so big, so much stronger than himself; it seems absurd that his existence could depend on such trifles. There is nothing of the kind on these rocks, just the cursed salt water all around; and even Hyde knows better than to imagine a man can eat flowers. He sets his hands helplessly to Sakura's face, wishing he could take him inside himself, consume him completely so that this doesn't have to be.
“...There's no way out of this place, is there,” says Sakura slowly, lips against the palm of his hand. Hyde frowns, but understands as he gestures to the impassable rocks and the empty sea beyond. He shakes his head dully, and is astonished when Sakura laughs; the man almost looks relieved. You'll die, Hyde wants to say, but it's too pitiful. He opens his mouth, and Sakura kisses him.
When Hyde tells him there's no way off this island, Sakura can't help but laugh. A week ago he would have thought himself crazy; but now there is no other path he would take. A choice between death and sinking back into the real world, leaving this creature behind? Sakura shudders at the thought; Hyde is touching him, lovely face desolate, so he leans in and presses their lips together. The thirst is urgent now, but Hyde is like the stream of life itself.
“...I'm glad you called to me,” he whispers. “I'd be dead already if you hadn't.” Hyde's eyes are flickering over his face, and Sakura isn't sure he understands. So he smiles, and sets Hyde's hand over his heart reassuringly. He wants to tell him that life, twenty-five years of life in the world, is nothing to the hours he's spent in this place. But that's too complicated. Sakura licks his dry lips, voice hoarse now with thirst and feeling.
“This isn't your fault,” he says, and takes Hyde in his arms. “But stay with me anyway.”
Of course, he does. Hyde feels as though he's drowning in the sorrow of it. He lies with Sakura again, and later watches him sleep, listens to his rough human voice grow quieter as another day passes. It's bitter, almost unbearably, but at the same time honey-sweet, that the universe has finally allowed him to experience such a miracle. His sisters would be envious; and he knows they won't blame him for what he is about to do.
On the third bright day, when Sakura can barely move or speak at all, Hyde kneels above him on the beach. Sakura opens his eyes and Hyde sees the whole world in them, distilled into a single word. With effort, Sakura cracks a grin, touches his hair.
“Sakura,” says Hyde, his peerless voice faltering but still enough to make the man's weary eyes glow. Sakura draws him close.
“…Sing to me.” Hyde gazes at him avidly, sees him nod, the three words taking the last of his speech. Hyde lets out one musical sob, then gives him a comforting smile, sharp teeth white as the surf, and kisses him. He takes Sakura's hands and draws him swaying to his feet, still so solid that you would never think he was starving. Hyde steps back, the dry sand warm under his feet for the last time. Sakura takes one shaking step after him, then pauses, because death is not easy, after all. What's left of his vision is fixed on Hyde's beautiful face.
Hyde steps back again. Tears spilling over his lashes, he parts his lips and begins to sing, a sound closer to the divine than any he has ever made. And Sakura follows him, the fear wiped from his face in wonder, every step bringing him closer to heaven. Hyde's feet are wet now, the retreating waves drawing him back, salt as his tears and inviting in their fury. Smiling, singing the world's first siren song of love, he leads Sakura into the sea.
******
'Scuse how emo that was! Am not very well this week... XD
Group: L'Arc~en~Ciel
Pairing: Sakura x Hyde
Rating: Light R
Genre: Angsty fantasy
Hyde is a Siren, Sakura is on a sailing vacation. When Sakura is washed up on his island, Hyde has his first and last enounter with a human...
Ugh, have disgusting cold. So can't concentrate on proper writing (e.g. thesis or somewhat-plotty Naito fic), which means plotless fic and fanart!
Saw an ep of QI last week with a question about Sirens. Turns out they're more like birds than fish, who knew. Ahh, Stephen Fry, you teach me so much!
Anyway, the defining characteristic of Sirens is obviously their voices. And who has the most stupendous voice in all the world? Hyde, that's who! Plus he's a little hottie XD
This fic is based on L'Arc when they were in their 20s, which is why he looks even more like a girl than he does these days :)
Anyway...
SIREN
Hyde's life is a song.
No food, no water, no other creature's lips touch his; only music. Hyde has existed here - he can't say lived - for as many thousand years as he can remember. He saw the Greeks come and go, and the Romans too, from his rocks by the sea; and since then has heard no sound but the crash of the waves and his own voice.
There were three of them, once; he thinks it was three, long ago. But his sisters have been gone ever since the day a living man withstood their song and sailed away to tell the tale. Smarter and stronger than him, still, they threw themselves into the ocean at the shame of it, at seeing that damn Ithican ship pass by, and only the beauty of his own song in his ears had kept Hyde from following them.
And for the last three thousand years he has been alone with the wrecks and the wind.
Until one day something comes.
Sakura knows he shouldn't have taken the boat out by himself; his girlfriend is a better sailor than him, but that morning she had just wanted to lie around the hotel and go shopping, and Sakura was antsy to feel the breeze in his face. Now it's two days later and he knows he is a damned idiot; point of fact, he thinks he's going to die. He's lost, his mouth and eyelashes are crusted with salt, head spinning so he can hardly steer, and nothing but blue surrounding him, below and above.
Then, through the rainbow spray, he sees a rocky shore. His vision is wavering, but it's there all right, if he can only tack quick enough to get to it. He shakes the dark hair out of his face and reaches for the winch.
Hyde is waiting, today as every day, eternity a bleak ocean before him. Ships rarely pass any more, in this wasteland of water so far from the human trade routes, and he's almost glad of it because it's pitiful to see so many living creatures die. Not for them, you understand, but for Hyde himself: he can't stand it, having them come so tantalizingly close, only to disappoint him at the last.
He feels the boat before he sees it, its weight on his little world drawing him towards the shore and opening his throat. He begins to sing, unable to help himself, a spell woven from his own desire and misery. Then he spots it, in the glare of the afternoon sun off the waves: a tiny thing, a single man handling it, and it's still out of earshot but already turning towards the island and its terrible surf. Hyde almost shuts his mouth in surprise, because nobody comes to him of their own free will; the man must be mad.
Sakura curses to himself as he sees the height of the waves, and for a moment seriously considers turning back out to sea because that shore is a killer. But before he can choose, a skirl of sound hits his ears and every thought is washed from his head except that he has to get to it. The current has him now anyway and he lets himself go to it, the richest, sweetest, most unhappy sound he ever heard. He has no control left, over himself or the boat; turning broadside it rises up a wall of water, and as he reaches the crest he dimly sees a figure on the rocks above him, all white oracle robes and billowing hair. The next moment the boat is tumbling with the wave. His eyes and ears full of beauty, Sakura dives.
Hyde sees the sailor fall, and the next second the boat is splinters against his shore; and still he sings, furious tears welling, a lament for the fool of a man and for himself. His eyes close against the sight of another body added to the pile of bones at the foot of his cliff. He's used to the pain, now, has been numbed by the millennia; but he had wanted this one.
When he opens his eyes again he sees a sight so far out of his experience that he cannot, at first, comprehend it: there's a human on the beach beneath him. The breath catches in his throat and his song falters for the first time in his existence; not even the death of his siblings had stopped its sweet and deadly flow. The sailor has somehow come past the fang-like rocks without being torn to pieces, and has washed up on the narrow strip of pale sand between the breakers and the cliffs.
Hyde isn't sure whether he feels more terrified or excited at the sight; strange heart pounding, he slips his way down from his perch, down the treacherous path worn glassy by his bare feet over thousands of years. He hovers out of reach on a rock above the sailor's body. Trembling all over, he takes his first good look at a human.
The man seems big, on a bigger scale than Hyde altogether, and baked gold by exposure to the sun. His hair is black as pitch, wet and gleaming like a seal's hide. Hyde wants to touch it, starts to reach down. Then he's scrambling back up the rock, heart in his mouth, because the body is moving. Alive! He shudders.
Coughing water up from his lungs, Sakura opens his eyes and winces; they feel poisoned with salt, every bone in his body on the edge of fracture from those god-awful rocks. He thinks he's dying, with the pain and the longing to hear that sound again, to find whatever was making it. He rolls over, looks up, and sees an angel.
“...God!”
The creature above him flinches back, its huge eyes wide and petrified, perched on the edge of the slippery rock like a bird. Sakura blinks and pushes himself up on his knees to get a better look; he can't tell if it's male or female, but is certain it isn't human. It looks like one, almost; but it isn't. The little figure is watching him raptly, draped haphazardly in diaphanous, airy cloth like something out of a Greek myth, all damp and ripped around the edges. Its hair is a curling waterfall of brown, skin white as the surf on the breakers, and its face...is exquisite. The small mouth is closed in a worried line, but Sakura is certain that this is what was making that heavenly sound. He feels like he's gone mad, like he crossed into another world when he came crashing onto the beach.
“...Hey,” says Sakura, his own voice hoarse with thirst and exhaustion. “Why don't you come down?” The creature cocks its head like a sparrow as he speaks, looking as fascinated with him as he must with it, but doesn't move. Sakura clambers to his feet, muscles screaming a protest, and stretches out his hand.
The man is talking! Hyde has never heard a human voice before, not close enough to really hear over his melodious death-call; it's rough and undeveloped, the sound of an animal in comparison with his own enchanting tones, but he can understand it, almost. It's amazing. Then the man is standing, looking dazed, and reaching up to him invitingly. For a moment Hyde presses himself back into the stone, because even battered by the sea the man is bigger and stronger by far, and who knows what humans like to do, especially when Hyde is to blame for his predicament in the first place.
“Come on.” The human smiles at him, or at least bares his teeth. Not having many other options, Hyde takes his hand, gasping at the roughness of the man's skin, his warmth. Trembling, he allows himself to be gently tugged down. Standing exposed on the sand and gazing up, he feels very vulnerable; and his fingers are still swallowed up in the human's hand.
“I'm Sakura.” The man's eyes are running over him eagerly, as if he's something absolutely alien. “Sakura,” he says again. “...What's your name?” Hyde blinks at that, dismayed; he opens his mouth, then closes it, because he's not at all sure he can make a noise that isn't his lethal song.
Sakura sees the beautiful little creature part its lips, exposing sharp white teeth, then shut them again. He wants to touch them, see if they're as smooth and cool as the small fingers in his hand.
“Don't be scared,” he says encouragingly, and it tries again.
“...Hyde.”
Sakura wants to laugh aloud, to sing himself at the beauty of that one short sound; he's in no doubt any more, what drew him onto the rocks, and he doesn't care; he could drown a thousand times in that voice and go happily.
“Hyde,” he repeats, a pathetic echo of the music, and raises his free hand helplessly to cup the tiny man's face; male, he's sure now, the voice so deep and rich, though he's a hundred times lovelier than any human woman Sakura ever saw. He's shaking like a leaf beneath Sakura's fingers, enormous eyes transfixed, and his thick hair feels like feathers. “What are you?” Sakura says, because he's desperate to hear him again and he can't think of a smarter question. But Hyde just shakes his head. Sakura wants to hear everything, see all of him.
What is he? Hyde doesn't know the word for himself, hardly understands the question. So he keeps quiet, though the longing on Sakura's face makes him want to speak again, just to please him, to see how the expressions move across his human features. The man is touching him, for the first time in four thousand years and so different from ever before because of his sheer warmth. Hyde leans into the hand as it slides caressingly through his hair, and wants to cry.
“Say my name,” Sakura whispers, fingers now curious against his throat. Hyde obeys him, curling his magical tongue around the foreign syllables, and sees his eyes turn soft. He says it again, his deep voice a lilting song; but he's cut off as Sakura's lips cover his. He freezes with the shock of it, doesn't know what this new caress means, just that the man is suddenly all heat and urgency. It scares him, but he welcomes even that: to feel anything after an eternity of emptiness is intoxicating. He rises up on his toes and returns the touch.
Sakura takes Hyde's lovely little head in both hands and kisses him full on the mouth, a blind, worshipful impulse. For a moment the strange creature is completely still beneath him, then surges up against his lips, moving awkwardly as if he has no concept of what a kiss is at all. He's cool and tastes of salt, but everything does now; and there's something in the texture of his smooth skin that's really not human, not even mammalian.
“Hyde,” murmurs Sakura giddily, nudging his lips apart. Hyde gasps as Sakura's tongue brushes his, the sound as musical as the most flawless aria, but it's Sakura himself who feels the shock; if “shimmer” was a sensation, that's what the movement of Hyde's tongue would be like, the magic palpable in his flesh. Enraptured, he slides his hands down the tiny man's shoulders, and the white gauze falls away like tissue paper to pool at his feet. The wind blows it along the beach, fans Hyde's hair into a torrent after it, and Sakura stares down at him: his body is like a man's but not, the bones of his willowy limbs light and fine as a bird's. Sakura has never wanted anything so badly.
The man is staring at him like Hyde stares at the ships he draws to their destruction: hungry, hungry, and afraid, as if by pulling him closer he could destroy everything. Hyde has small concept of nakedness as such, and none whatever of the desire that sets Sakura's gaze aflame. He makes a small, inquisitive sound; he wants to be touched again, to prove Sakura is really there, to feel the odd human speech that is just silent lips against lips.
Sakura is still looking at his body, seemingly unable to move, so Hyde reaches out himself. He's cautious, curious; there's hard muscle under his fingertips, beneath the complicated array of soaked clothing covering Sakura's chest, and it shivers at his touch. He tugs appealingly at the fabric, wants to learn more, and is rewarded by Sakura's arms around him, making his skin tingle all the way down to his tailbone. Sakura's hands follow the tingles, and an instant later he's on his knees.
“Hyde,” says Sakura rapturously, his lips against Hyde's ribs, “talk to me...Tell me it's good.” Hyde doesn't really understand that, just whimpers as Sakura's mouth moves lower. He's never made such a sound before, and never felt so lost; he winds his fingers into the man's dark hair, coarse and damp, and holds on to anchor himself.
“Sakura,” he sings, the only human word he's been taught, and hears the man give a rumble of something that sounds like pleasure; then Sakura's hands slide between his legs and he almost falls down.
Hyde's moan is enough to take Sakura to the cusp of bliss all by itself. He feels the slender legs tremble and takes hold of Hyde's narrow hips to keep him still; he's so light, even for his size, that he seems he could just float away. Small, sharp-nailed fingers twist in Sakura's tangled hair as he kisses him, down and down, so responsive it's as though he's never been touched before. And maybe he hasn't; the thought leaves Sakura dizzy, with the sheer strangeness of it as much as anything else.
“Aahh...” Hyde's thick, straight lashes cover his eyes and he sighs. He's still shaking. Sakura pulls him down to the sand, lays him out on his back; his strange, ethereal hair spreads across the ground like seaweed. He looks nervous again as Sakura moves over him, but his expression turns interested when Sakura shrugs out of his ruined shirt and the rest of his clothes.
“I want you,” says Sakura, and again, like a mantra. He's hard, and he's never been that for a man before; but this place is so far outside the real world that it seems petty to even think it.
“Want?” echoes Hyde, and Sakura could weep at the sound. He takes Hyde's small hands and sets them on his body. Hyde's eyes gleam and he starts to explore; Sakura knows it's pure curiosity and that he doesn't mean to tease, but those light touches are enough to make him lose control. He leans down and kisses him again, not careful this time but passionate, those cool lips smooth as honey. While Hyde is trying to copy him, lagging behind a bit but doing his best, Sakura glides one hand along the inside of his little thigh, white and pearly as the heart of a shell. Without pausing, without even stopping to think that this is madness, he pushes two fingers into him. He feels Hyde moan sharply against his mouth, and cradles the back of his head soothingly.
Hyde is petrified again at the whirlpool of sensation dragging him into its maw; his raw nerves, having never really experienced pain or pleasure, can't tell which is which, so that Sakura's fingers inside him are ecstasy while his bruising lips feel like a punishment. He doesn't know what all this signifies for humans, what it's supposed to communicate, but every sweep of Sakura's tongue against his own seems rife with meaning he can't quite reach.
His hands are moving, constantly roaming across Sakura's body; it's hard everywhere and feels unnaturally warm compared with his own cold blood. He ventures a touch between the man's legs, just like Sakura had for him, and hears him groan. He closes his fingers and Sakura's teeth sink gently into his lip. Hyde, having no choice but to learn by imitation, bites back. Sakura's blood is red as the poppies in the cliff-top meadow, warm and coppery on his tongue, the first foreign substance ever to pass his lips. Hyde glances up at him, surprised at the stifled noise, but Sakura just shakes his head and kisses him again, another long finger pressing inside him.
“Does it hurt?” asks Sakura between caresses. Hyde thinks he knows what that means, but isn't sure if the answer is yes or no, and it hardly matters because any sensation is to him miraculous. So he doesn't answer, just repeats the man's name in a grateful melody that flows from his lips and turns Sakura's expression feverish.
“I want to be with you,” whispers Sakura against his ear, his breath a luscious prickle over the skin. “…You know?” Hyde is about to nod yes when he continues, “To make love to you…” Hyde has no idea what that means, so he changes it to a shake of his head, his long hair spilling sand. “Inside you,” continues Sakura softly, and Hyde blushes for perhaps the first time since the world began. He doesn't know the word “maiden”, but the concept fills his hollow bones; it is something that had defined the three of them ever since their creation. He turns white again with the magnitude of it.
Sakura can't believe this is happening, or that he can really be here, lifetimes away from his Mediterranean vacation of only days before. And where did he find the temerity to even lay hands on this alien creature, never mind ask to take him? He's sure, now, that Hyde was untouched by human and probably any other hands until he arrived through the surf; and the proposition of having him is both terrifying and so utterly compelling that it's as though he's caught in that hypnotic song all over again, although Hyde's bloodstained lips are currently shut in a silent line.
Hyde is quiet so long and looks so anxious beneath him that Sakura is about to try and steel himself to pull away, though he feels it would rip the heart right out of him. Before he can bring himself to do it Hyde sits up, his elegant nose an inch from Sakura's, and crooks a finger decisively at him. Sakura is on his feet as soon as he can follow, trailing the smaller man up the beach and onto the rocks. There's a path here, of sorts, and Sakura starts up it blindly. Hyde, beside him, seems to float up the cliff face like a feather, and Sakura labours after him, the combination of bone-deep exhaustion and pressing desire slowing his progress.
When he reaches the top it's yet another world: a wild, luxurious plateau of flowers, still lit by the copper disc of the sun where the beach is already in shadow. Hyde tumbles airily into the iris blossoms, releasing a cloud of scented pollen, and reaches up for him.
“Here?” says Sakura; Hyde smiles through his miniature fangs and opens his limbs willingly. Sakura lets his aching muscles go and sinks down into paradise.
This is it, thinks Hyde as Sakura enters him, this is life. It's right that it should be up here, not on the beach that has seen nothing but death. It hurts all through his small frame, so he clings to the man, clear nails leaving sharp little pinpricks like the marks of falcons' claws in his back. He knows this is the end, the end of any divinity he might once have had in him; but he feels like he has lost nothing.
“Sakura,” he sings, and feels a shiver under his fingers, in Sakura's lips against his as the music takes hold. He curls his legs around Sakura's hips and tries not to lose his mind, every movement drawing a different sound out of him and creating a brand new song, one he had never dreamed of before.
Sakura wants to ask if he's all right, if it hurts him, but he can't speak, not with the heavenly sounds spilling from Hyde's throat. He kisses him instead, presses him harder into the flowers. Hyde moans again and clutches at him, Sakura's hands like iron in the soft flesh of his thighs, although Sakura doesn't know if that inhuman skin can even bruise. This is love, he understands as Hyde's cheek meets his, whether it was induced by his supernatural song or not; and the highest pinnacle his life will ever reach.
When Sakura comes Hyde crushes the perfumed violets in his fingers and calls out his name, and Sakura doesn't care if he never hears another sound until he dies but those three syllables, over and over. Hyde is shuddering, on the edge himself, and Sakura can tell he has no idea what to make of the feeling; he looks scared, pleading, and yet overjoyed at the same time, the new expressions sitting strangely on his beautiful face.
“Just a bit more,” murmurs Sakura soothingly. Hyde nods helplessly and Sakura coaxes him into his climax, hands firm and lips gentle on his body. The incandescent sweetness of his cry at the moment he comes undone makes Sakura's head spin. Hyde gazes up at him, dark eyes wide and adoring, his narrow chest heaving and slim calf slick as a snake against his thigh. Sakura falls into that stare, under his spell, and collapses into his arms.
Hyde lies in the meadow under the milky stars, wrapped in a human's embrace, and for the first time feels that the world is not a desert. After a while Sakura goes quiet, eyes closed; Hyde, who has never slept before, finds this fascinating. He lies there and traces the short fringe of the man's lashes, fingers combing through his black hair as his own feathery locks flutter in the breeze with the bloody petals of the anemones.
When Sakura wakes up Hyde invites him in again; he wants to feel it, the appalling intensity of love. That's another word Sakura taught him, fingertips tracing the foreign letters on his stomach before he drifted off. Sakura laughs when Hyde climbs astride him, and Hyde is so charmed that he almost forgets to move. But he does, and it's wonderful.
When Sakura wakes up it's to the antique Mediterranean sun on his face and the sight of Hyde perched naked and dainty at the cliff edge. He feels sated, filled to the brim with adoration for this creature. But he's only human: he's sore and a mass of bruises, and so parched that his lips are cracking.
It doesn't take long to circle the cliff-top field, and it's just that: an incongruous carpet of flowers baking dusty in the heat, and nothing else. Hyde watches him curiously, long hair the dark bronze of a hawk's wing in the light as his head turns to follow Sakura's explorations. Sakura gives up and scrambles his way gingerly down the precarious trail to the beach; the surf is high today, foam white and sparkling against the rocks. Hyde pads after him weightlessly, hand slipping into his.
“…What do you drink?” asks Sakura at last, sitting down in the sand. His body is protesting, exhausted. He considers Hyde's sharp teeth thoughtfully. “What do you eat?” Hyde makes one of his musical questioning noises. Sakura pauses, then mimes the action of drinking. He sees Hyde bite his underlip, eyes wide, then shake his head. And in a rush he understands.
The dismay of it hits Hyde like a wave, and he reads it in Sakura's face: humans are mortal. They eat, and drink. Or they die. He knows this, but can hardly believe it now that he's met one; Sakura is so big, so much stronger than himself; it seems absurd that his existence could depend on such trifles. There is nothing of the kind on these rocks, just the cursed salt water all around; and even Hyde knows better than to imagine a man can eat flowers. He sets his hands helplessly to Sakura's face, wishing he could take him inside himself, consume him completely so that this doesn't have to be.
“...There's no way out of this place, is there,” says Sakura slowly, lips against the palm of his hand. Hyde frowns, but understands as he gestures to the impassable rocks and the empty sea beyond. He shakes his head dully, and is astonished when Sakura laughs; the man almost looks relieved. You'll die, Hyde wants to say, but it's too pitiful. He opens his mouth, and Sakura kisses him.
When Hyde tells him there's no way off this island, Sakura can't help but laugh. A week ago he would have thought himself crazy; but now there is no other path he would take. A choice between death and sinking back into the real world, leaving this creature behind? Sakura shudders at the thought; Hyde is touching him, lovely face desolate, so he leans in and presses their lips together. The thirst is urgent now, but Hyde is like the stream of life itself.
“...I'm glad you called to me,” he whispers. “I'd be dead already if you hadn't.” Hyde's eyes are flickering over his face, and Sakura isn't sure he understands. So he smiles, and sets Hyde's hand over his heart reassuringly. He wants to tell him that life, twenty-five years of life in the world, is nothing to the hours he's spent in this place. But that's too complicated. Sakura licks his dry lips, voice hoarse now with thirst and feeling.
“This isn't your fault,” he says, and takes Hyde in his arms. “But stay with me anyway.”
Of course, he does. Hyde feels as though he's drowning in the sorrow of it. He lies with Sakura again, and later watches him sleep, listens to his rough human voice grow quieter as another day passes. It's bitter, almost unbearably, but at the same time honey-sweet, that the universe has finally allowed him to experience such a miracle. His sisters would be envious; and he knows they won't blame him for what he is about to do.
On the third bright day, when Sakura can barely move or speak at all, Hyde kneels above him on the beach. Sakura opens his eyes and Hyde sees the whole world in them, distilled into a single word. With effort, Sakura cracks a grin, touches his hair.
“Sakura,” says Hyde, his peerless voice faltering but still enough to make the man's weary eyes glow. Sakura draws him close.
“…Sing to me.” Hyde gazes at him avidly, sees him nod, the three words taking the last of his speech. Hyde lets out one musical sob, then gives him a comforting smile, sharp teeth white as the surf, and kisses him. He takes Sakura's hands and draws him swaying to his feet, still so solid that you would never think he was starving. Hyde steps back, the dry sand warm under his feet for the last time. Sakura takes one shaking step after him, then pauses, because death is not easy, after all. What's left of his vision is fixed on Hyde's beautiful face.
Hyde steps back again. Tears spilling over his lashes, he parts his lips and begins to sing, a sound closer to the divine than any he has ever made. And Sakura follows him, the fear wiped from his face in wonder, every step bringing him closer to heaven. Hyde's feet are wet now, the retreating waves drawing him back, salt as his tears and inviting in their fury. Smiling, singing the world's first siren song of love, he leads Sakura into the sea.
******
'Scuse how emo that was! Am not very well this week... XD