Chapter 29

Hope squeezed at Casey's heart and he felt like he would explode as warm, moist lips teased his in a gentle kiss. His eyes shot open in shock, blinking rapidly as he stared up at Shawn's smiling face hovering over him. It took him several moments of bewilderment to register that Shawn didn't look disgusted or horrified at all.

He shook his head as if to make sure he was really awake and seeing clearly. Shawn wasn't...repelled? Maybe he didn't realize...?

"You can't really..." Casey muttered, unwilling to believe that all the vulgarities that his uncle had called him, had told him others would see him as, weren't true.

"Can't really what?" Shawn smirked. "Still love you now that I know your secret?"

Casey couldn't bring himself to speak. Tears were leaking from his eyes as Shawn gazed down at him, blocking out the sun and creating a halo effect around him.

"You're beautiful, Casey. As a man and as a--"

"A fucking fish?" Casey snapped angrily, his voice cracking with emotion. "How can you say that? I'm a freak!"

"That's not true, you idiot!" Shawn retorted. "No fish would have raced out there and saved my ass from that riptide! You're a fucking miracle."

Shawn sat back on his heels, resting his weight across Casey's hips, as Casey blinked up at him.

"You really think--? I didn't think that you'd--"

"You didn't give me a fucking chance!" Shawn shouted and immediately seemed to regret it when Casey winced. "God. You idiot. I love you!" He shoved at Casey's shoulders with a wide grin, and Casey slowly let the words really begin to sink in. "And I'm not just saying that because you pulled a Little Mermaid out there and saved my ass. I've been trying for the last two days to tell you! But you wouldn't fucking listen."

"I--" Casey swallowed, words stuck in his throat. Then he frowned at Shawn's words and quirked an eyebrow. "A Little Mermaid?"

Shawn grinned widely. "Yeah, you know how she saves the guy from drowning. But you're much cuter than she was."

Casey rolled his eyes. "Only to you."

"And probably every other gay guy in the world. Not that I'm sharing," Shawn smirked.

Casey laughed, slowly beginning to accept Shawn's words as truth. The man really didn't care about Casey's mer side. Shawn still saw him as the same man he was, just with a little quirky addition.

Shawn finally moved to maneuver off of him, and Casey abruptly realized that he was naked. And as much as he had enjoyed being naked with Shawn in the past, he really didn't think he wanted to be having this conversation in the buff.

"So, are you like a werewolf and you can, like, turn me into a merman too with a bite or something?" Shawn teased.

Casey snorted in distaste, abruptly shoving Shawn in the chest as he cackled and fell over in the sand.

"Werewolves? Really?"

Shawn shrugged amid his laughter, and Casey knew that the man was trying to make sure Casey really knew that he accepted him wholeheartedly. But then Casey realized he did shift with the full moon like werewolves supposedly did, so maybe that comparison wasn't too far off.

"I do have to shift during a full moon," Casey admitted, as he found his shorts on the beach and shook them out before yanking them back on. "But that's as close as I get."

Shawn regarded him for a long moment, squinting in the sun, and Casey had a flash of worrying if Shawn was rethinking his acceptance. Casey plopped back down in the sand next to him. Shawn rubbed a hand on Casey's thigh, and Casey shivered in nervously. He glanced up at Shawn again, having to constantly convince himself that this all was real, that Shawn still looked at him the same way. Of course, Shawn seemed to know what Casey was thinking and squeezed his thigh in reassurance.

"So the cave...with the gate. That night was a full moon, right?" And Casey could see Shawn putting the pieces together. Or maybe he already had and was looking for confirmation, so Casey just nodded. It would be a relief to finally let it all out, and it all felt a little surreal right now. Shawn knew. Shawn really knew. And he didn't care.

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"Okay," Shawn said slowly, trying to figure out exactly what he wanted to say, because he was sure he wasn't going to like the answer. "So you had to shift that night, right?"

Casey nodded again, apparently just letting him ask his questions. He had tons of them, but they had time later to delve into most of them, for Shawn to learn more about Casey's mer side.

"And you were locked in the cave...why?"

Casey sighed. "Uncle Martin gated it to keep me safe. After Uncle Thomas died, Martin didn't want take me out on full moon nights, like we used to do. The cave gives me the opportunity to be in the ocean, under the moon."

"But why does he lock you in? Damn, Casey, you nearly drowned that night."

"He locks me in so I don't wander too far off. The lure of the moon is strong, and he's afraid something will happen."

"Like what?"

"A fishing boat, or a net or something," Casey muttered. "Or that the moon's pull will be so strong, that I'll get so far out that I won't come back. That's what he says he's afraid of, anyway."

Shawn snorted. "You're smarter than that, and you know it. Locking you up in a cave like that just means he's treating you like an animal, like you can't think for yourself. Hell, you came back the night I let you out, right?"

Casey looked up at him sharply, his hand trembling slightly as it lifted to his neck. "Yeah. Yeah. I did come back," he swallowed.

Shawn frowned, his eyes following Casey's thin fingers to where they had briefly touched the silver chain before dropping back into his lap and fisting in his shorts. What the hell? He narrowed his gaze, squinting at Casey's neck. He hadn't noticed before when he was sitting on the man trying to get him to listen to reason, but now he could see the red, blistered and irritated skin under the chain.

"What the hell happened to your neck?" Shawn snapped.

"Noth--" Casey started, but Shawn glared at him and he stopped short. Instead, he just sighed heavily. "It's just a little raw."

"Why?" Shawn demanded. "Take the damn thing off for a while then. Let it heal."

"I--I can't," Casey finally muttered, drawing up his knees and dropping his forehead on them.

"What the hell, Casey? It's just a necklace. Thomas would understand if you took it off for a bit. He wouldn't want you to suffer."

Casey's choked sob shocked Shawn. "I...It's not from Uncle Thomas," Casey finally said. "It's from Uncle Martin. It's...it's a perimeter collar."

It took a second for it to dawn on him what Casey was really saying. Casey had lied to him about the necklace and why he wore it all the time. Thinking it had been a gift from Casey's dead uncle was one thing; knowing now that it wasn't... Shawn glared at the offending thing as the words Casey said sunk in. Perimeter collar. Like ones people used on their dogs? Was it a fucking shock collar?

He fisted his hands as he tried to control his voice. Maybe he was jumping to conclusions. "Perimeter collar? Like ones people use to keep their dogs from wandering too far?"

Casey gave a short nod, not looking at him, which was probably good, because Shawn was sure he looked pretty fucking angry right now.

He drew in a deep breath. "Those kind of collars shock their wearer," he ground out. "Does this one--" He wasn't sure he wanted to say the words, but Casey was already nodding.

"Yeah," he whispered, "when I get too far from the controller."

Shawn didn't think he could hate Martin more than he already did for locking Casey in a damn cave to drown. But he abruptly realized he absolutely could. He felt his body flush with fury, his jaw clenched and his temples pounding. Martin had put a fucking shock collar on Casey?!

"What the fuck?" Shawn yelled, scrambling to his feet, feeling the need to pace off his frustration as he stared down at Casey. He wasn't sure what he wanted to do next: run and strangle Martin or gather Casey in his arms and drag him home never to let him go again. Maybe both.

When those soft gray eyes finally looked up at him, Shawn was crushed by the look on the younger man's face as he fingered the silver chain. Oh, god.

"H-he just...it's to keep me safe," Casey tried to explain, but Shawn could tell even Casey wasn't so sure it was necessary. It was obvious that Casey wanted to believe Martin was only using it to look out for his welfare. "So I don't get lost."

"Shit," Shawn's voice broke as he dropped to his knees next to Casey.

Casey hurriedly rushed on, obviously concerned by the devastated look on Shawn's face. "It's only gone off a few times since he put it on. Once when I was chasing a dolphin or sea turtle or something and didn't know how far I'd--"

"How long?" Shawn ground out through gritted teeth.

Casey sucked in a breath at the tension and anger radiating from Shawn. "Since Uncle Thomas passed away. Uncle Martin doesn't like to go out on the boat, so this allowed me to go on my own. And kept me from... straying too far."

Shawn was already dredging through his memory to recall exactly when Casey said that his uncle had died. His stomach churned. "So five years? He's treated you like a fucking dog for five years?"

Casey jerked at the vehemence in his voice, but Shawn could barely control his raging hate for the man Casey had lived alone with these last five years.

"I don't think he really meant to--" Casey flushed, but Shawn could see the truth in the watery gray eyes. He could tell Casey didn't feel it was necessary either, no matter what Martin had tried to make him believe. And once Martin had Casey chained, only Martin could release the lock.

Shawn's hand swept aside the blond hair, his fingers ghosting over the reddened skin. "And all this is from...?"

Casey swallowed. "The night of the storm. I just swam. I would have kept going, even with the...the... shocks." He winced when Shawn sucked in a sharp breath. "I was just so scared. You'd just seen me... I was sure the look... I thought you were repulsed by the thought of me... like that. I couldn't... I didn't want to face you again."

Oh, god, Shawn breathed. Casey would have disappeared that night, and Shawn might never have seen him again. And it would have been his fault.

"I was so angry at my uncle for not coming when the storm started. That you had to see me like that. To know..." Casey growled, his voice hardening. "I tried to rip the damn thing off when it went off. Which probably made all this worse." He gestured at his neck. "Eventually, I gave up and drifted back in on the tide. And the sad part is Uncle Martin didn't even fucking know anything was wrong that night. He slept through the whole storm AND the alarm on the damn collar going off, drunk off his ass in his office."

Shawn could hear the heartbreak in Casey's voice at the thought of his uncle not caring enough to stay conscious when he'd locked his nephew in a watery cage.

"This is bullshit," Shawn muttered to himself. "Get up." He reached down and grabbed Casey's bicep. "You don't belong to that asshole, and we're fixing that right now."

"What--"

"I'm getting that fucking collar off right now. You are a man, a grown man. Not a fucking dog. I'm not going to let him continue to treat you like one."