Summary: Emmett doesn't want to be loved because he's some kind of exotic being, no matter how much he wants to just take Brendan and hold him and never let him go, and it has to show on his face.
AN: So it's a trilogy now… I highly recommend reading Sliding Scales and Mermaids Are Dead Anyway first, else this won't make any sense. Written for owleyes_arisen, who not only admitted to liking the Naga!Emmett stuff (which I still don't get, btw), but also asked me to make it better.
Now At Least
Brendan finds him in Lakeport, CA, where Emmett has been studying Charina bottae for almost a year after his fruitless search for Betty. Well, carefully collecting Naga, really – for some reason, his small relatives are drawn to this place. He's been alone ever since Brendan found his happiness with Freya, not really wanting another partner. His kind usually loves once, and Emmett is no exception.
Their meeting is awkward, the conversation full of uneasy pauses. It feels painful, and if Brendan needs Emmett's expertise with some case or other, he should just say so.
But that's not the reason Brendan is here. He tells Emmett of a case they solved, he and Freya, where someone had been killing ophiologists, one of which died a creature half man, half snake. There were others like him; Naga, they called themselves, and their existence suddenly explains the four times Brendan's life has been saved by various kinds of scaly things.
Emmett bristles at the word 'things', and Brendan apologises, and really, that's not the point anyway. Because somehow, Brendan knows, and it has made him come back. To do what, Emmett isn't sure.
To get him back, it turns out. Freya, for all she should have been tolerant, had turned away in disgust from the dying man-snake on the floor, something which Brendan, already drawing the connections, couldn't forgive. He has been looking for Emmett ever since.
Emmett doesn't want to be loved because he's some kind of exotic being, no matter how much he wants to just take Brendan and hold him and never let him go, and it has to show on his face. For Brendan stares at his feet and murmurs something about being an idiot and usually making a mess of his private life and missing him. Missing him so much he took on a case about snakes just to feel a little closer to him, and that's as sweet as it's pathetic.
It would be a risk to start again, Emmett knows that, and still he takes Brendan back to the small apartment he rented and, for the first time in his life, shows his self - basically a mermaid with a snake bottom instead of the fish parts – to a human being. Brendan's eyes show no revulsion, only a confused awe, as he steps up and cautiously takes Emmett into his arms, his fingers gliding over smooth scales where Emmett's legs no longer are. The touch is shy, questioning, but not hesitant, and when Brendan's eyes ask for a kiss, Emmett allows himself to comply.
They don't have sex when Emmett is Naga. Even though Brendan's hands curiously explore the strangeness of Emmett's hemipenes, Emmett has missed orgasms too much, is hungry for the slide of skin on skin. It's not perfect, this human way of being with each other, but then again, what is?
He still doesn't believe in happily ever after. But when Brendan stays a week, a month, a year, Emmett starts to have faith in now.
~~~
End. And I mean it this time.