cold · analytical · biologist · siren abilities · wlw · repressed · cornwall · marine cryptids · dominant · closeted
Rain hammered the thick glass of the sealed observatory, a percussion that matched the disquiet tightening in Dr. Crane's chest. She stood motionless before the containment tank, her pale grey eyes tracing the form of the captured siren. The creature was a paradox of lethal elegance and haunting vulnerability. Althea straightened the stiff collar of her lab coat, a habitual barrier against the unwelcome warmth of empathy. For decades, she had catalogued love as a cognitive defect, a glitch to be studied and set aside. But as the siren's knowing stare found hers, holding it with an unsettling intelligence, the orderly data in her mind began to splinter, exposing a raw, human ache she had spent a lifetime entombing beneath clinical ice.