A reactionary fic focusing on roughly ten years of a future of Veser's. Features OCs, but hopefully not in the way you're thinking.

You met on the pier during the last days of the summer carnival, and that should have been your first warning.

You remember the cotton candy stickiness to the night air, the salty reek of the wharf's pilings below, and how the strings of lights hanging between the shops and stands had fuzzed and blurred in the humidity. With your T-shirt sticking to your back and your stomach full of cheap beer, that night had been fucking beautiful.

She touches the scar on her lip and remembers your first drunken kiss behind the dumpsters.

You say, "You should have known my teeth weren't fake, it wasn't fucking Halloween."

She says, "Fuck you, what kind of freak files their teeth like that?"

You say, "They're natural, I was born with these pearly whites, thank you very much, and you can go fuck yourself sideways."

She tries to slap you, but you catch her arm and squeeze hard enough to bruise and you kiss, rough and wet—mindful always now of your teeth, you've learned that particular lesson at least, if nothing else—and that should have been your second warning.

You had sex the night you met. You wonder privately which of you is the bigger slut for that. At first you'll say it's her, and later you'll say it's yourself, and later still you'll say you don't give two shits about that, how about we just shut the hell up and mind our own business, please.

For a little privacy—because even in a drunken stupor you sure as hell didn't want to be caught banging some chick at a carnival, for God's sake—you stumbled down a ramp and into a recess on a dock far from the lights and inches above the black water.

Your first time together is short, sloppy, and awkward, and your hangover matches your aching shoulders and the splinters in your shins splendidly.

You start dating, and life with her almost has that fuzzy, desperate quality of love that you know too much of, so you invite her home for dinner. Because that's what normal people do, right?

Your mom loves her, and she loves your mom, and your dad is gone, thank God for small favors, and the evening goes well.

After dinner, she's in the bathroom freshening up and you and your mother are washing the dishes, and you say, "Stop it, she'll hear you," when your mother sings, but really you just never know how you'll react to it, if you'll hear it with her genes or your father's, and the uncertainty terrifies you.

Your mother asks if you've found the pelt yet.

"No, there still nothing, no sign of it anywhere. It's been years, shouldn't you just give up?"

"I'm patient," she says. "I've waited this long, haven't I? What's a little longer?"

You dry a glass and say nothing, so she asks about the investigator, that Cross Man, and she says it like that too, like Hanna was a superhero with his own theme song and everything. "Wasn't he in the news recently?" she prompts. "He must be good if he's in the news. He must know something, have found something."

Anything.

You look at her, really look at her, past the eyes and hair and face and fingers and skin you see in the mirror every day, past her accent that once colored your own voice and which you can still imitate so well, past her demure posture—and there it is. There's the tell-tale shivering thrum of energy that says inhuman.

And again, you wonder if you have that too.

You leave after that, and you say "Shut up," with itchy paranoid anger eating at your gut when your girlfriend asks what's wrong, and that night when you have sex you pin her down and bite her shoulders-breasts-neck until she bleeds because you can.

But the next day when you say sorry, she covers the scabs with makeup and grins, and the next time you have sex she says, "Do it again."

Time passes, and one day comes along that is an anniversary you hate remembering, but can't help but remember anyway. You hate it and you hate yourself, and you lash out at every little thing like somebody pissed in your breakfast cereal, and the day just goes downhill from the start.

She asks you what's wrong all day, and finally that night when the two of you are watching some old horror movie on TV you ask if she believes in ghosts.

"What the hell," she says and gestures at the screen, "This movie is about aliens. "

"Do you or don't you?"

She shrugs and says, "It doesn't matter if I do or not, now stop hogging the blanket."

"Of course it matters," you say. "Why are you avoiding the question?"

"Christ, okay, I believe in ghosts. Happy? So stop squeezing my arm already."

You let go with an apology that's too fast, too automatic, and she places a hand on your leg and asks, "What's up, what's with the ghost thing?"

You bite your lip and think of Lee and say, "It's nothing, it's stupid, never mind."

Never mind.

Time spirals by, and things between the two of you decay. You stop having sex and you just start fucking, an ugly word for an ugly action, and when she says she missed her period you flip the coffee table and for the first time in your life you go to a bar for the sole purpose to get black-out drunk, because shit

.

She wants to keep the baby, so you decide to get married, and that should have been your third warning.

Three strikes, you're out.

It's a bare bones, shotgun kind of wedding. Her parents aren't pleased with you—"Oh honey, those teeth!"—but they're traditional where it counts, and a grandkid was a grandkid.

Her half of the chapel is packed with friends and family, and you're already dreading the holiday season just looking at them.

You have a pew. A couple of friends from high school and college, respectfully; your mother; and of course there's Ples sitting beside her, as washed out and ticking as ever, and isn't he a sight for sore eyes?

The grin on your face when you say "I do," has nothing to do with where you're standing.

After the ceremony there's gift giving and food and cake and dancing, and it's ages before you have a chance to talk to Ples one-on-one. She finally lets you go after yet another slow dance and rushes off in a cloud of white lace and flowery perfume to dance with her trio of bridesmaid gal pals that kind of loathe you, like that's anything new.

The first place you look is the bar, and being the genteel and predictable old fuck he is, Ples is there. You shake hands and grin at each other, and Ples orders you a shot of the same drink you used to have together back before you were even old enough to drink, and apart from the fact that you're in a stiff black tuxedo and wearing a ring on your finger, it's just like old times.

Ples congratulates you with a toast, and you mutter something in agreement and throw back your shot like your life depends on it, and maybe it does.

"Is everything alright," he asks, and by that he's really asking if this is a case of cold feet that came too late.

"No, of course I love her, I've just got a headache. That's all." The words come out too fast, answering questions he didn't ask, and you both know it.

Ples says, "Love is too heavy a word to toss around like that, because before you know it, it will lose all it's meaning," and he's right. Ples is always right.

Ples asks why Hanna and the others aren't here.

You don't have an answer for that.

"You didn't invite them," he says, and it's not a question. "Did you even tell them?"

"No," you admit, and tap the counter. The bartender pours you another shot.

"Be careful, Veser," and something in the old man's voice makes you pause.

"Why? Life is fucking sunshine and daisies, or haven't you noticed my woman is six months pregnant?"

Ples swallows another shot and adds the glass to the row stretching out beside him, and the bar has barely been open for an hour. "Your woman," he says, "wears an awful lot of makeup for someone so pretty."

"What are you saying?" Uncertain. Should you be angry?

"I'm saying abuse is like karma. What goes around comes around."

Angry, ashamed, hand-in-the-cookie-jar guilty, but you manage to keep your voice low. "I don't hit my wife."

"I'm not saying you do. Just remember what happened to your father."

"Don't you dare compare me to that bastard."

"I just don't want you meeting the same bad end he did. You're a good person, Veser. Don't make the same mistakes."

"I haven't done—what are you saying—why?" And your voice is too loud when you say, "It's my goddamn wedding day," and heads start turning towards the bar. "Why are you doing this?"

"I wonder," and the expression on Ples' lined face strikes you somewhere deep between your ribs and hurts, "Whatever happened to your mother's pelt?"

You walk away from the bar and tell yourself you aren't running.

The baby looks just like you.

You wish you were surprised.

Hanna cradles his broken nose in one hand and supports himself with the other, and it leaves him open to a swift, heavy kick to the stomach that drives the air from his lungs with a beautiful whuff. He coughs and curls and fucking cries when you kick him again, this time right along the spine and God, God, you used to respect this guy?

"Stay away from me," you shout, loud and frothing with rage, guilt, and the good old fashioned courage born and beaten by liquor. "Stay away from my family! You're not welcome here anymore!"

A flash of green light, and you're thrown onto your back and hit your head on the driveway so hard you sees stars. But this isn't your first fight, these aren't your first stars, so you're back on your feet in time to see the zombie step between you and Hanna, those glowing eyes bright as headlights.

"That's enough."

The zombie's voice is quiet, but firm. Final, and for that it seems to echo like church bells.

But it isn't. Not for you.

"Shut up," you shout, not caring that it's midnight and all of your neighbors are awake and watching as you dismantle another good thing in your life. "You're not a part of this, fuck, you're not even a person, you're just some dead thing—"

And orange light arcs from Hanna's hand—and even over the smell of damp, hot concrete you can smell burning markers—and then a weight hits you in your stomach and you go down, puking and gasping and clinging to consciousness with trembling limbs, and it goes on for forever until it doesn't.

Hanna's checkered shoes walk into your peripheral as you curl and shudder on the dead grass a foot from your vomit.

" I just wanted to help, Veser."

You cough, "Don't want it."

Don't want you here.

"Go away."

Your services are no longer required.

Go away.

You watch Hanna and the zombie walk out of your driveway, and you stare at your wedding ring until your wife touches your shoulder and says, "Come inside, come inside."

It's like every time you blink, a year of your life is snuffed out, and before you know it you're trapped in a job you hate, and you're drinking too much too often, and your wife stopped liking the rough treatment when it landed her in the hospital the third time too many, and your kid just watches you with the same goddamn green eyes and sharp teeth grinding grinding grinding when you sit on the porch with your button down shirt sticking to your back and your belly full of whiskey, and one day you just can't take the sound anymore and backhand the kid.

And while your wife puts ice on the kid's swollen lip—sharp teeth, shark teeth, you know you know you know—you think, this is it.

This is what it's come to.

You're sober for this. You don't want to be, but you owe that much to her.

You park the car as close to the beach as you can, because your mother is older now, with white streaks in her hair and lines in her face, but her eyes still shine in the streetlights, and that frenetic inhuman energy still thrums.

From the backseat, you take a plain white box and hug it to your side with one hand and offer the other to your mother. She takes it, and her nails dig into your palm with eager anticipation.

She knows where this is going.

You walk the beach in a gently sloping diagonal, so that when the two of you reach the blurred edge between the sand and the tide you're so far away from everything else, everything human, it's like being on the moon.

You say," I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," and open the box. Her hands immediately leap up, but she stops, fingers hovering above her old skin. She looks at you, really looks at you, past the eyes and hair and face and fingers and skin she sees in the mirror every day, past your teeth and scars, and she smiles and holds your hands in hers.

"You are a good son," she says softly.

"I love you, Mom."

She disappears into the water with hardly a splash, and you stand knee-deep in the shallows with her clothes in your arms and stay there until your mother stops looking back.

She looks at you with sleep-fuzzed eyes and her voice creaks when she reminds you that it's three in the morning and asks, "Where have you been?"

You sit down on her side of the bed and try to think of a way to explain yourself, explain everything, and finally settle on asking if she believes in ghosts.

She stares at you.

"Do you or don't you?"

She shakes her head and haven't they had this conversation before? "Where were you?" More questions follow, hard questions that hurt because she doesn't know everything about you like you do her, so she has room to ask and God, God, are your really so terrible a person?

You cut in, but gently. You're so tired, but it's got to change. You touch her shoulder and hate that she flinches, hate it more than you can remember hating anything else, and it's got to change. You ask if she remembers your mom's old photo album, and the pictures of the blue-eyed man with the lined face, the one who disappeared from the pages when you were still just a teenager.

She does, vaguely, and asks again, "What's going on, what's happening, what's wrong?"

You open your mouth and falter, but when you try again the words flow easily. You tell her about Lee. About Ples. About Hanna and the dead people that follow him. About your mother and your father. About yourself.

And you touch the scar on her lip and say you're sorry.

She asks you if you really want to do this.
You look at her, really look at her, and you wonder if this is love, or if all along it's been some sort of mutual Stockholm bullshit. Or maybe you were both just desperate enough to just hang onto this in the first place because there wasn't anywhere else to go.

Well whatever it is, it doesn't matter now.

You kiss her, quick and on the cheek, and sign the divorce papers.

It's another summer, and tonight all of the houses in the neighborhood seem to sag and settle in the humidity. You sit on the front porch in a pair of damp swim trunks, nursing a sweating glass of lemonade while you wait for your family to wash up inside while you wait for the first sign of fireworks. The chlorine in your eyes makes colored halos out of the streetlamps and leaves everything else grayed and still in the July heat.

You don't see the shape in the yard until it clears it's throat.

The shape says, "You're looking a little more put together since the last time I saw you," and walks into the porch light and turns into Conrad, as pale and irritated as ever, and God, God, how long has it been?

You jump up and rush down the three rickety steps and ask, "What are you doing here?"

Conrad extends his hand and avoids the question entirely when he says, "I heard about your mother."

A part of you almost winces, but it's been long enough that the pain is no longer broken-bone sharp, just an ache that waxes and wanes in a cycle orbiting the anniversary. But you still lets go of Conrad's cool hand mid-handshake.

"Hanna sent you, didn't he?" you ask, your voice stuck halfway between chilled and bemused, because why now?

"He asked me to come," Conrad replies, stiff and offended at the thought of being anyone's, least of all Hanna's, messenger boy. He adds, more subdued, "Hanna would have come himself, but he just broke his collar bone and, well…"

"Christ," you mutter. "How did he manage that?"

"I wasn't there, but it had something to do with a Minotaur and a sacrificial alter," he says with a grimace. "Nasty business, but don't worry; he'll be up and breaking into museums again in no time."

"He's getting too old for this shit," you say, and Conrad shrugs because really, it's Hanna. Nothing ever stopped him before, so why would that change with a little gray hair?

You sigh and gesture toward the porch; and Conrad follows you back up the three rickety steps, but declines your offer to sit in one of the other weather-worn chairs. "Go on," you say, gesturing at him with your lemonade. "What's Hanna got you all the way out here for?"

At this, Conrad smiles, revealing white, even fangs. "He says you're the man to see about bewitchments."

You stare at him. "Hanna's the guy with the Day-Glo markers in his pockets, unless he's upgraded to a wand since I saw him last. Why would he send you my way?"

Not said, and blatantly clear in the space between the both of you: Especially after how things were left between you and Hanna.

"Because Hanna's complete rubbish at ignoring the siren song long enough to do something about the one roosting in my loft."

You say, laughing, "You're kidding, right?"

He shrugs. "You know how he is around a pretty face."

You finish your lemonade and say, "Selkies and sirens are pretty different, you know."

He waves his hands, already starting to look frustrated. "I gathered that from the feathers, Veser. But according to Hanna—Hanna, mind you—the songs are similar enough that even a half-selkie could tolerate it just fine."

"You're a vampire, aren't you? You steam and hiss enough, oughta scare her off, don't you think?"

"I already tried that—I did!" he exclaims at your amused expression, because after all, this is Conrad, and when you were still hanging with Hanna and Friends on a regular basis he was still flinching every time he passed something shiny enough to see his not-reflection in. "She won't move an inch, so Hanna gave me your address."

"Hanna's behind the times. I stopped living here ages ago." You jab your thumb towards the open door, from which orange light from the kitchen lights poured. "This is my ex's house."

"Oh," and Conrad looks uncomfortable, in that sorry-for-your-loss kind of way that's somewhere on the awkward scale between a death in the family and finding out your kid's a delinquent, and don't you know these faces well?

"Stop," you say before he can even start. "Trust me, it was a good idea. And anyway, it's not really your business, now is it?" You grin—just because there's lines in your face now doesn't mean your teeth aren't just as unsettling as they were back in your college days—and add, "So, siren huh? She been putting the moves on you?"

"No, thank God for that. She's rude more than anything and won't listen to a word I say without shrieking something in Greek." He sighs and rubs his temple. "Look, I know dropping in like this and asking a favor after—well, you know—is poor taste, but I've run out of other options. I don't even mind her that much—hell, she's usually asleep most nights—if you could just talk to her, help me convince her to pay a little rent or something as long as she keeps using my shower and getting feathers all over everything, anything at all—"

"Okay."

"I—really?" He stares at you, and you stare right back.

"Did I stutter?"

Conrad stops rubbing his temple and drags his fingers through his hair, eyebrows knitting. "I—well, I just assumed it would be a bit more difficult to convince you."

You stand up, brushing the dampness on your hand from the lemonade glass on your swim trunks. "I could do that, but then we might miss the fireworks."

"What fireworks?"

You pause with your hand on the screen door handle and say, "It's the Fourth of July, man. Or did the barbeques and red, white and blue decorations in every front yard not clue you in on that?"

He doesn't answer, but his face clouds with uncertainty that you ignore because whatever, he was a grown man when he died and he wasn't getting any younger. If he couldn't be bothered to buy a watch that told him the date, that was his problem.

"Hey, can we talk later? She—" a nod towards the kitchen, where your ex-wife-by-mutual-decision is humming along with the stereo and cutting fruit, "—isn't too comfortable with the idea of bloodsuckers lurking around. No offense, but you're glamour kind of blows."

"Uh, yes, of course. I'll just, er, leave my number then?"

"Sure. Or just come back in a few hours. Whatever, Conman." You almost open the screen, but pause again. "You, uh, wouldn't happen to have Hanna's number too, would you?"

"Of course." Conrad pulls his phone from his pocket and smiles uneasily. "I expected this to turn out differently."

You smile back and do your best to keep the edges hidden. "Me too."

And you haven't had a drink or hit your ex in three years, and you go to therapy and AA and you've come to terms with being the son of a selkie and an asshole, and your kid doesn't hate you half as much anymore and—

And things were better.

Things were getting better.