Archive of Our Own

It started, really, when Michael had the bright idea to poke around Jeremy’s attic.

It was a cold, windy day, the kind of day that painted a fog over every window in the house and left icicles a foot long hanging down from Jeremy’s gutters. An unexpected blizzard had rolled in the day before, barricading Michael and Jeremy alone in the house.

Michael pulled himself up the rickety staircase up to the attic, the spindly wood groaning underneath him. He shivered, and pulled his hoodie tighter around himself, bouncing up and down to hear the dusty floorboards creak underneath him.

“Dude, stop that.”

Jeremy’s head appeared from the trapdoor in the floor, backlit by the yellow lights in the hallway, and was shortly followed by the rest of Jeremy. He grumbled something about the cold and fidgeted with the sleeves of his too-big sweater before he turned around and fumbled for a lightswitch Michael hadn’t even noticed. The lamps buzzed on, offering more light than the one window at the far end of the attic.

Jeremy wandered over to it, hunched so that his head only just brushed the ceiling, and Michael followed, watching his own breath cloud in front of him. The snow was piled high outside, and a couple of branches had already fallen from the weight, their dark outlines harsh against the snow. Jeremy wiped away the moisture at the top of the glass with the hem of his sleeve, and pulled himself onto the windowsill, profile framed in cool, blue light. This high up, they could see all the way out to the boardwalk, and past that, the Atlantic in the distance was a slate grey sheet under a cloudy sky.

Michael sighed and turned away— he’d never had Jeremy’s patience for staring out the window for hours on end, especially when it was this cold. He huffed and buried his nose in the folds of his hoodie. Summer couldn’t get to New Jersey fast enough.

Now that the light was on, he glanced over the attic, picking over the mess. He and Jeremy hadn’t come up here in more than a year, not since his mom left, and definitely not since the SQUIP. Every time it had come up, Jeremy had shrugged and muttered something about “her stuff” being up there, and Michael had let it rest. It was a shame though. When they were kids, it used to be their own, private clubhouse— Mr. Heere refused to put a treehouse in the dying apple tree in the backyard— and when they weren’t chilling in Michael’s basement, they were usually up here. Michael remembered scrambling up here on muggy summer nights and trying to string up the battered Christmas (Hanukkah?) lights around the storage shelves. They had dragged half of Jeremy’s bed up through the trapdoor, desperate to sleep up there despite the hard floor, and had pretended the lights were constellations.

Michael remembered waking up in the middle of the night to see Jeremy staring out past the housing developments and oil refineries and the crumbling pier on the boardwalk to the ocean, eyes a little too wide and face a little too blank.

Michael shivered, not just from the cold, and examined the pile of Heere-related memorabilia pushed up against one of the walls. The room was pretty much the same as it was last time he was here, same mess of old computer wires Mr. Heere was always insisting they might need, same box of old, nostalgic action figures that hadn’t quite met the rigorous standards of Michael’s 90s collection, and the same white scrapes on the wall from where Jeremy had crashed a swivel chair into it when he was five. Well, except for the trunk tucked away against the dark, unlit far wall.

“Hey, Jer.”

Jeremy jumped a foot in the air, looking over his shoulder with the same guilty expression he always got when Michael caught him thinking about the SQUIP. “What?”

Michael nodded at the trunk. “What’s in that thing?”

Jeremy slipped off the window sill and padded over to Michael, squinting. “That’s… mom’s old trunk. She always had it at the foot of dad and her’s bed.”

“Shit man, I’m sorry.”

Jeremy waved a hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it. Hey, you got your lighter?”

“Yeah,” Michael answered, fishing around in the pocket of his hoodie and pulling out the Link lighter Christine had gotten him for his birthday off Etsy. Looking at it made his stomach twist guiltily, but even if she made him gross and jealous, it was still pretty nice. “If you want to hot-box your attic, I have some bad news for you.”

Jeremy rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, mom told you to quit, I know. Quit whining and give it to me.”

Michael tossed it to him and Jeremy snatched it out of the air. He fiddled with it for a moment, and it finally clicked, a little ball of fire fluttering over the top of it. To Michael’s surprise, he walked over to the trunk, carefully stepping over the trash scattered across the floor.

“You don’t have to do this.”

Jeremy sighed and beckoned Michael over. “She’s not coming back. Besides, I don’t think trying to ignore that is going to fix anything. It didn’t during fall.”

Michael put a hand on Jeremy’s shoulder, patting the cashmere, and tried to swallow the lump in his throat. “Okay.”

Jeremy knelt, shining the lighter over the trunk. It was big, with delicate patterns of the flowers Michael always saw down by the salt marshes engraved into the mahogany. A tatted lace shawl, yellowed at the corners like a tea stained spiderweb, was draped over the wood, and Jeremy pulled it off, sending him and Michael into a coughing fit from the cloud of dust that billowed off it.

Jeremy frowned and tapped at the lock on clasp. “Well, so much for dealing with it.”

“Dude, pass me that antennae.”

Jeremy pushed the old set of rabbit-ears into Michael’s outstretched hand, and yelped as Michael snapped one of the wires off of it. “What was that for?!”

“Lockpicking,” Michael said, trying to leave the smugness out of his voice as he slid onto his back to get at the lock. “Bring the lighter over here.”

Jeremy pushed the light closer to the lock, and Michael twisted at the wires until there was a soft click. Jeremy stuck out his hand, and Michael took it, pulling himself up and brushing himself off. Jeremy knelt, and grinned as the lock came free. “Where did you learn how to do that?”

Michael shrugged. “I didn’t spend all of fall sitting on my ass and moping.”

Jeremy looked like he’d downed a bottle of quinine and chased it with a tumbler of siracha. “I’m sorry, you know that, right? I mean, it’s okay if you’re still an—”

“It’s okay,” Michael said, because it actually was. Michael had always been bad at holding a grudge, and doubly so against Jeremy, and triply so considering that he’d apologised for it at every opportunity. He dropped to his knees, and hugged Jeremy. “If I was still angry at you, I wouldn’t be here.”

“If that was a pun, I’ll fucking kill you.” Michael snorted as he felt some of the tension leave Jeremy’s shoulders. Jeremy never admitted it, and always seemed too anxious to ask, but Michael knew that contact always grounded him out. He gave him a squeeze before letting him go.

“Care to do the honors?”

Jeremy hooked his fingers under the silver clasp and gently opened the chest. The hinges gave a soft groan, and he leaned the lid against the back wall. Jeremy raised the lighter a little higher, illuminating the contents.

The whole box was lined in soft blue silk that shimmered green when the light hit it right, but as for what was actually in it, Michael wasn’t really sure whether he should be surprised— it was not everyday he went searching through the belongings of Jeremy’s deadbeat mom. There were a couple of felted hats with tattered feathers in the bands, squished between a small pile of gauzy clothing and a couple of law, travel and romance books stacked in a corner. On top of those was an old framed photo of Jeremy, Mr. and Mrs. Heere standing on the old boat they used to rent in summer.

Jeremy looked a lot like her— same bright blue eyes, same pale skin and high cheek bones, but he had his father’s dark, wavy hair, even if it had been sun bleached to caramel in the photo. The way he looked up at the grinning woman kneeling beside him made Michael’s heart ache.

Jeremy took the picture with shaking hands, running a thumb over the beaded frame before slipping it in his sweater pocket. He stared absently at the trunk, biting his chapped lips.

“There. It brings out your eyes.”

Jeremy glanced up at the blue cloche Michael had jammed on his head, and looked at him like he had just spat on his metaphorical dog. “Michael, I’m going to kill you.”

Michael rolled his eyes, and hand Jeremy the stack of books. “I would think you outgrew homicide by now. C’mon, let’s sort this stupid box, and your emotional trauma.”

Jeremy wheezed in that way that let Michael know he’d actually managed to say something really funny, and Michael’s heart skipped a beat as Jeremy flipped through the harlequin novel at the top of the pile. “Can Elizabeth break free of the shackles of the utterly dull John Toast to find comfort in the loving embrace of Rick and his throbbing manhood?”

Michael giggled. “Oh my god, does that actually say that?”

Jeremy grinned as he picked up the next book in the pile. “Her sex vibrated and quivered, sucking him deeper inside, like a lusting whirlpool.”

“Jer, does it actually?!”

“Melvin, MELVIN! Fuck me you kinky bastard!” Michael felt his breath hitch, and cursed every acting lesson Christine had ever given Jeremy. “His toe thrust deep inside her, throbbing as he penetrated her maximally, rasping against delicate valleys and folds and making her howl with infinite, erotically exotic ecstasy.”

Michael was going to die like this, losing his shit to the sound of Jeremy grunting and making obnoxious sex noises.

“Jeremy, stop. That’s fucked up.”

“THE FROSTY PINK PETALS OF HER CLUNGE SHIVERED AS HE ENTERED HER LIFE...”

“Your mom read those!”

“...SEXUALLY.”

Jeremy cackled as Michael tackled him, sending the offending book bouncing off the low ceiling. Michael sat up, and yanked Jeremy up with him. His face was beet red behind his freckles, and there were tears on his lashes from laughing too hard. “Okay, okay, back to depressing, ancient history.”

“It was only seven months ago!”

Jeremy smiled and scrubbed at his face, but his grin was softer, and didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Doesn’t feel like it.”

“I know.”

Taking out the books and the hats had revealed what Michael assumed was Mrs. Heere’s jewelry box. Jeremy gingerly untangled the hinges from the yarn of the shawl it was buried in, and lifted it out of the trunk. Inside it were at least a dozen necklaces, and a tangle of earrings, bracelets and rings. Most of them were saltwater pearls, but a couple of pieces of coral were mixed in. Michael pulled an exceptionally long necklace from the mass and draped it around Jeremy’s neck.

Jeremy looked down at the string of pearls around his neck, then back at Michael. He looked kind of like Michael’s cat whenever his dad tried to dress it up for the holidays, a sort of dead eyed shock that was half way between fleeing the room screaming and collapsing in a dead faint until the sun consumed the Earth in the fires of a red giant.

“Relax,” Michael chided, poking the leather cord. “It suits you.”

Jeremy sighed, and shrugged. “Mom always was a freak for the beach.”

Michael flicked through the stack of old clothes while Jeremy shuffled through the magazines in silence.

“Is it weird that I’m trying to figure her out from old copies of US and the New Yorker?” Jeremy wasn’t crying, but somehow that look in his eyes was worse. He sighed and dropped the stack of magazines on the ground with a mighty thump, fidgeting with the necklace. “I mean, she just up and left. Like dad and her were fighting for like a week, and then she just…”

Jeremy opened his fists, like the world’s most depressing jazz hands. “She wasn’t great to me, to us, but, I never thought she’d just leave us like that.”

Michael looked him in the eyes, and there were red rims around the blue. Neither of them said it, but they didn’t need to.

Did we ever even know her?

Michael sighed. “If it makes you feel better, we’re almost at the bottom. Five minutes and we can go and raid your dad’s cabinet for cocoa mix.”

Jeremy nodded numbly and reached into the box.

Michael though it was a blanket at first, it was so big, and then he saw the way the light glinted off of its mottled grey surface. He reached out a hand and petted it, brushing off the fine layer of dust, and yeah, that was definitely the silky smooth feeling of real fur, but it was far softer and denser than anything his mom had ever brought home from the back of a thrift store.

Jeremy shivered and made a weird, breathy noise.

“You okay man?”

Jeremy rubbed his arms. “Yeah, just… a weird feeling. I think the cold is getting to me.”

Michael watched as Jeremy stood up, wrapping the pelt around himself like a desert wanderer. It was kind of cute how he almost disappeared under the weight of it, but Jeremy didn’t seem to mind it at all. “Chris probably know what this came from— she’s always hanging out at ren faires with the leather workers.”

Michael nodded, shoving Mrs. Heere’s belongings back into the trunk in some semblance of the original order and clicking the lock shut. “Why don’t you just ask your dad? He probably knows.”

“I don’t want dad to know I’m going through her old stuff,” Jeremy said, playing with the edge of the fur. “Especially when he’s starting to be, like, my dad again.”

Michael stood, hands in his pockets. “You really need to talk to him about these things. You two have got too many secrets.”

“I know.”

♒

“Wow, Jeremy, I didn’t know you had webbed toes. Did you know that that's called syndactyly in science-language? I mean, that is so cool— I’d wear flip flops everyday if I had those, even in winter! It sucks you can’t wear toe socks, though I guess you could cut a hole in them or something?”

Christine poked at Jeremy’s foot experimentally, and Jeremy gave a nervous laugh. He wiggled the toes on his bare left foot, including the two weird middle ones that were joined with a thin membrane, and then pulled his sneaker back on. “Yeah, getting shoes as a kid was always weird.”

Michael snorted, trying to ignore the way Christine’s rambling grated on his nerves. “That’s mostly because you’re a weird kid.”

Jeremy rolled his eyes and grinned out at the sea. “And you’re the freak who hangs out with me.”

Christine snorted, and threw a piece of algae that had washed up on the shore at him. Michael grinned as he watched Jeremy sputter and wipe sand and seaweed off his jacket. He knew that it was shitty to be happy that they had broken up, but he couldn’t help it. He still had a shot.

“So, you guys had something you wanted to ask me?” Christine said, skipping up the old pier. Michael reluctantly followed her, shifting his parka tighter around himself. A blustery February weekend was the earliest evening he could get ahold of both Christine and Jeremy, what with midterms coming up.

Jeremy leaned against one of the old, waterlogged pilings and yanked off his backpack, resting it on his knee as he digged through it.

For something that had been stuffed in Jeremy’s backpack, the pelt was remarkably unwrinkled. The fur glistened in the cool night air, the orange streetlights bathing it in a soft, sodium glow.

“Well what do you need me for? I mean, I really appreciate you guys taking me out for dinner, as like, friends, but the pelt has flippers and a face and stuff— don’t tell me you can’t recognize a seal!” Christine took the pelt from Jeremy gently, holding it up and trying her best to not let the flippers that Michael swore weren’t there the other day drag on the ground. The skin was way taller than her, and her arms were shaking with the effort of holding it up. Jeremy gently took it back, hefting it around his neck.

“It’s a beautifully done fur, though I think the seal fur trade is kind of messed up? Like, they get the white fur by killing the babies!” Christine frowned, and continued down the pier, kicking at the places where the wood had started to rot away. “Where did you get it?”

Michael followed her, frowning at the chipped, rotten wood. “Jeremy’s mom.”

“Tell her that she’s very lucky to have gotten it before they tightened up the regulations.”

“That’s the thing…”

Michael decided to spare Jeremy the explanation. He looped around in front of her, wincing at the way the pier groaned beneath his feet, and put up his hands. “That’s the thing, Christine. Uh, Jeremy’s mom le—”

He was cut off by the pier making an almighty creek. He had barely a second to register the fear in their eyes, in Jeremy’s eyes, before the wood gave out beneath his feet, and the waves swallowed him up.

Michael gasped for breath and sputtered on the ice cold water, rough waves buoying him up only to dunk him again and again. The water was so cold it was burned, and Michael couldn’t swim, and he couldn’t see, and he couldn’t breath, because if he did, he was going to freeze from the inside out .

He was going to die like this, and fuck if that wasn’t disappointing. Michael Mell wasn’t going to die in blaze of SQUIP related glory, or the literal blaze of Jake’s house going up, but because he couldn’t fucking keep his footing on a shitty pier in fucking New Jersey.

Something big brushed against his chest, and Michael latched onto it. Whatever it was, it smooth and had some layer of something around it that felt an awful lot like fabric, and more importantly, it was going up .

Michael broke the surface, gasping and choking. Someone was screaming, but Michael wasn’t sure if it was him or Jeremy or Christine— everything sounded distant. The winter air burned against his wet skin as he coughed up water, and through half opened eyes he could see the pylons of the pier moving.

The thing he was clinging to was dragging him to shore.

Michael had calmed down a bit by the time the water was shallow enough to crawl in. Someone— Christine, judging by the silly bands— was unhooking Michael from the thing and helping him stumble up the beach, forcing his arms through the sleeves of her blindingly pink parka.

“Michael, oh my god, are you alright?”

“C-cold. Where’s Jeremy?”

“He’s… fine. I’m going to get you some blankets, okay? Don’t go anywhere.”

Christine let go of him, and Michael numbly collapsed on the beach, panting. Yeah, that wasn’t going to be much of an issue. The stars seemed to swim in and out of focus above him, like a 3D effect without the glasses. Shit, where were his glasses?

Michael was distracted from searching his water logged pockets by some sort of weird slapping noise, and then Michael looked down, and wow, that definitely was a seal.

It was coming closer, flopping up the beach, and Michael couldn’t tell whether to laugh or cry. Who the fuck escaped drowning in freezing water only to get eaten by a fucking dog-mermaid?

Christine was back with the blankets Michael had stuffed in the back of his car for camping trips, and was wrapping them around him in a cocoon, like there wasn’t anything weird about this.

“There’s a seal,” Michael half-shouted, because how the fuck wasn’t she reacting to that. “Right there!”

Christine pursed her lips like she was a kindergarten teacher who had just been asked where babies came from and Michael was the dipshit child, then grimaced. Michael followed her gaze and felt a dull surge of nausea in stomach. He’d never had a strong stomach for seeing animals in pain, and the way it was thrashing around was awful.

Then he saw the hand that jutted out from the shadows, pale in the moonlight, and that was not a seal . Michael crawled closer, shoving aside the cold ache in his bones, and reached into the darkness. His hand caught on what felt like a shoulder, and Michael pulled.

It was Jeremy, because obviously it was, Michael would always know when he saw his Player Two, but everything was off . His eyes were too big and black, the whites completely swallowed by his pupils, and his teeth seemed too long and too sharp and too many, and where the fuck were his ears?

More importantly, where the fuck were his legs.

Michael couldn’t see the point where Jeremy ended and bigass seal began with his wet shirt on, but where Jeremy’s skinny legs should be— he would know, he had spent ages staring at them like a gross perv— a fucking seal tail bulged out in soft curves. The thick, wet fur was silvery with dappled splotches of dark grey on the spine, like one of the harbor seals that always bobbed around the ports looking for snacks had stuck its head under Jeremy’s soaked shirt, except that wasn’t a seal, it was Jeremy .

“I think it got stuck,” Jeremy said in a small voice.

“What the fuck does that even mean!” And oh god, Michael had that note in his voice he got whenever a panic attack was coming on. Then Christine had a hand on his shoulder, and was telling him to count his breaths, and Michael shut his eyes tight and tried to focus on her voice. Suddenly, Jeremy’s crush made more sense. It was kind of annoying how good she was at keeping tempo.

“Michael, are you okay?” There was a hand on his cheek, long, pointed nails scraping gently against it. Michael’s eyes fluttered opened, and oh geez, Jeremy, behind the piebald skin and whiskers, looked like he was about to cry.

“Yeah. You?”

He didn’t answer.

“Jeremy,” Christine said gently, plopping down on the sand next to him and picking a strand of rockweed off his tail. “I think you might be a selkie.”

“You think?!”

Christine looked a little offended. “I mean, yeah, you just put on a seal skin and turned into a seal, it kind of gives people that vibe.”

Michael felt a migraine coming on. “Seconded.”

Jeremy was scrambling around, trying to get a better look at where his legs should be and mostly succeeding in tossing around the sand. Fat tears rolled down his cheeks, and Jeremy was babbling, talking too fast and tripping over his words. “Who even gets sealmorgification as a superpower— like not even a dolphin or something cool! I’m the fucking worst X-Man!”

Michael shuffled over to Jeremy and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Dude, don’t knock your freaky seal powers too hard. They just saved my life.”

“Crap, dad’s going to have to keep me in a bathtub, and then they’re going to sell me to an aquarium, and nobody’s going to come see me because I drugged them with a stupid computer, and now I’m a fish!”

“Seals are mammals, so you don’t actually need to stay wet, Jeremy.”

Jeremy looked at Christine, who was smiling reassuringly at him, and burst out sobbing. Michael pulled him into a hug, and awkwardly rubbed circles into his back as Jeremy bawled into the blankets. “Jeremy, I’m sure everyone would visit you in the aquarium,” Christine said, and patted his shoulder. “The family that SQUIPs together, stays together!”

Jeremy made a loud, keening noise. Michael patted his soaking wet hair, and made a gesture at Christine like he was slitting someone’s throat with his finger.

She made a little “oh” noise. “But, uh, Jeremy, we’re not going to visit you at the aquarium, because we aren’t sticking you in an aquarium. We’re going to go home, figure this out, and go from there, okay?”

Jeremy let out a ragged breath and pulled away from Michael, looking from one of them to the other.

“Dude, do you really think after all we’ve been through, I’d— we’d let you deal with this on your own?” Michael said, ruffling Jeremy’s wet hair into a mess of cowlicks. “You’re stuck with me!”

Jeremy snorted and pushed Michael’s hand away, but mostly succeeded in overbalancing and falling on his back, tail slapping against the sand.

“Okay dumbass, you ready to get off this stupid beach?”

“ Yes , but I uh... Can’t really move like this,” Jeremy muttered, staring up at them from the sand despairingly.

“We can carry you!” Christine flexed, grinning down at him, and Michael suppressed a groan.

Jeremy fidgeted with the hem of his shirt, looking around like he might find some way to get out of this. After a moment, he dragged a hand down his face and sighed. “Fine. Not like I can look like much more of an idiot.”

Michael hooked his arms under Jeremy’s, and Christine grabbed at the widest part of Jeremy’s tail, and after a brief count off, they hefted him up off the sand, lugging him up the beach towards Michael's old car.

“Damn, you’re heavy, dude.”

“Seals are pretty big boys— did you know that adult male harbor seals can reach 375 pounds!”

Jeremy made a sound halfway between a sigh and one of Christine’s weird goblin noises and put his head in his hands. “Guys, this already humiliating, you don’t need to fat shame me too.”

“Relax,” Christine chirped. “If anything you’re underweight!”

“I don’t think that’s helping,” Michael grumbled, leaning Jeremy against the car. “Trunk or backseat?”

“I’m not a chair on the side of the road,” Jeremy grumbled, watching Michael fish around in his pockets for his keys. “Backseat.”

“‘Kay. Christine, gimme a hand.”

Actually squeezing Jeremy into the backseat was a goddamn process. After some serious heavy lifting, and getting thwacked by flippers multiple times (“Sorry!”), Christine and Michael— but mostly Christine— managed to get him sort of upright, with his tail squashed across the seat and both footwells. Jeremy fiddled with the seat belt for a moment, and buckled in.

Michael made for the door, but Christine put a hand up. “Uh, how ‘bout you take shotgun? I’m the only person who has legs and hasn’t had a near death experience tonight?”

Michael rolled his eyes but couldn’t really bring himself to argue. He sighed and slipped into Jeremy’s usual spot, clipping on his seatbelt. God, the entire car was going to smell like rotting seaweed tomorrow.

“You know where my house is, right?” Jeremy asked from the back.

Christine nodded.

The rest of the ride back was spent in silence. Christine was thankfully a pretty safe driver—  Michael hated to think what they would do if the police pulled them over for speeding or something. Occasionally, Michael looked back to see Jeremy staring out the window, picking sand out of his hair and worrying his bottom lip like he always did when he was the fretting over something, except now his teeth were long and sharp enough to draw blood. Jeremy either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

Getting Jeremy into the Heere Household was considerably easier than the car. Michael crept out of the car and took a precautionary glance around the lifeless street before unlocking the door to scope out the route to Jeremy’s bathroom. Thankfully, Mr. Heere wasn’t sitting on the couch waiting to have an important father-son conversation about curfews. In fact, judging by the empty beer bottle on the counter, it looked like he had already retired for the night.

Michael wished they had one of those men with glowing batons he always saw on the runways when his family went to visit his grandparents back in the Philippines. A marshaler would have probably spared him a bruise or two from whenever Christine misjudged the corners and accidentally shoved him into a doorknob trying to back up.

Eventually, they managed to settle Jeremy against his bed, and he looked up at Michael like he was seeing him for the first time.

“Go take a shower.”

“What?”

“Michael, you look like crap. Go clean up.”

“How am I supposed to do that, when you’re here like this?!” Michael gestured to Jeremy’s, well, everything.

“ Please. ”

The buzz of adrenaline was still sparking in his veins, begging him to do something, anything to fix this, but Jeremy had the look on his face he always got when Michael was panicked about the room being too loud and too full of people and he was trying to calm him down. It was the “I’m telling you to do something because it’s good for you, so shut up and trust me” look.

Michael sighed and grabbed a shirt and pair of pants from Jeremy’s bureau without looking, and headed across the hall to the bathroom.

He flicked the lightswitch in the bathroom and winced as the fan stuttered to life. He turned the faucet to the Heeres’ weird shower-bathtub hybrid and let the water heat up as he shucked his wet clothes into the hamper.

As he pulled off his socks, Michael caught his reflection in the mirror over the sink, and did a double take, because wow, Jeremy may have had a point about him cleaning himself up. His eyes were fever-bright, except minus the fever, so it was more hypothermia-bright. He frowned, rubbing at his lips to try and wipe away the sickly blue tint they had taken on.

He did look like ass.

Michael sighed and stepped into the shower, and immediately winced. The water wasn’t that hot, but it still felt scorching against his clammy skin. Michael breathed in and out, trying to let the burn ground him.

When Michael came back, Christine had managed get Jeremy onto the bed and out of his wet shirt. Michael had sort of imagined seeing Christine stripping Jeremy in his bedroom in an entirely different context, but this was arguably the better one.

Michael settled on the bed next to Jeremy, and tried to keep his eyes away from where Jeremy’s stomach melded smoothly with glossy fur. No sense beating around the bush. “So, how did you change in the first place?”

Jeremy ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. “I don’t know? I just saw you fall, and I thought you were going to drown, so I just kind of followed? And then I was a seal?”

Michael’s cheeks were warm for the first time that night. “That’s… very descriptive?”

“Well, I’m sorry I didn’t take notes, you were drowning and I didn’t have thumbs!”

Jeremy glared at him for a moment, before groaning and leaning back, knocking his head against the back wall. “I’m so screwed.”

“Maybe you just need to relax? I mean, when you put it on, it was sort of on instinct, maybe taking it off works the same way?”

“Relax?” Jeremy gave Christine a desperate look. “How am I supposed to relax ?”

Christine shrugged. “I dunno, soup, or a hot bubble bath? Or maybe you prefer bath salts or something, ‘cuz of the ocean? You tell me!”

Jeremy made a desperate noise and looked at Michael pleadingly.

“It’s not like it’s going to hurt,” Michael conceded. God, he sounded even lamer out loud, telling Jeremy to take a (Metaphorical!) chill pill when he was stuck looking like a bad furaffinity character. “Besides, you’re uh, kind of freaking out anyways.”

“I know!”

Michael rubbed the indents his glasses had left on the bridge of his nose. “I’m going to go run a bath. Do you want us to carry you over?”

Jeremy grumbled and sat— could you sit if you didn’t really have legs any more?— upright on the bed, cheek in his hand. “It’s like five feet, I’ll manage.”

Michael took Christine’s advice, but he opted to go with the bath salts instead of the soap— that stuff always made his hair impossible to tame when he confused it with shampoo, and he really didn’t want to find out if the same applied to seal fur. The little tin was on the top shelf of the linen closet, half full. He debated checking the label, shrugged, and dumped what was left of the salt into the water.

“It’s ready!”

Jeremy dragged himself into the bathroom, stared at Michael and Christine at the doorway for a second, then hefted himself into the tub with a grunt. Michael winced as the water splashed around the room as Jeremy settled into the too-small tub, flippers resting on the faucet. Michael crouched down and patted his pelage.

“You good, Brosideon?”

Jeremy glared at Michael. “Is this really the time?”

“I don’t know. Blame the brain damage from swimming in the brocean.”

“Boys!”

Jeremy sighed and drummed his claws on the rim of the tub. “Yeah, yeah, I actually am. Just, gotta like, concentrate, I guess?”

“Try thinking of shucking corn, or squeezing toothpaste out of a tube, or, ooh! Peeling a banana!”

Jeremy shied away a little from Christine’s grin and shut his eyes.

It took a few minutes for Michael to notice a change. It was sort of fascinating and sort of gross how the skin loosened and slipped off of Jeremy, pudgy seal fur and blubber slinking off to reveal bare skin and oh god, where were his pants.

He put a hand over his eyes, and he guessed Christine did the same judging by the fact that Jeremy hadn’t screamed yet, just sort of made a mortified yelping noise. He thrust a towel at Jeremy, who muttered a word of thanks, waited a moment and opened his eyes.

Jeremy had his face in his hands, the towel over his crotch, and the pelt around his thighs. It was kind of like those videos Michael had watched of a snake sloughing off its skin, the same bloodless tube of skin or scales just sort of sliding off the body. As he shimmied it off, the dark patches on his skin faded back into freckles, and when Jeremy looked up, his eyes were blue and bright and human .

“Does that hurt?” Christine leaned down, and prodded at the pelt that was wrapped around his ankles.

Jeremy grimaced, and sluggishly crossed his legs. “No, but it kinda feels like you’re poking my thighs. Can uh, you guys get out of here? I wanna put on pants, now that I can again?”

Michael nodded and pushed Christine out the door before she could ask anymore questions. As soon as the door clicked shut, she was talking again.

“This is so cool!” Christine whisper-shouted, flapping her hands excitedly. “I mean, minus you nearly dying and having to carry Jeremy up a beach, and like, the panic attacks, so I guess this is more cool in concept? You know what I mean.”

“I would have probably said the same thing half a year ago, but,” Michael made a face, “when weird shit happens to Jeremy, it isn’t usually fun?”

Christine pursed her lips and stared at her feet. “I know.”

Crap. Christine always seemed so bouncy and alive, it was hard to remember that she’d been just as tied up in the SQUIP as he had been. Michael sighed, and tried to settle the wave of sympathy. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just, I’m scared and saying stupid shit.”

“I am too, but fretting isn’t going to help sort this out,” She said, leaning her head back against the faded wallpaper. “I think Jeremy uses you as a barometer of like, when to freak out? LIke, I mean, he’s always kind of freaking out, but when you’re freaking out, he knows that it’s like, something worth freaking out over?”

“Are you saying I’m his Waffle House Index?”

Christine clapped. “Yes! Exactly!”

Michael leapt a foot in the air as the door creaked open. “Christine, are you showing Michael that time the Denny’s tumblr reblogged your interpretive dance again?”

“...Yes? It was a pretty good dance?”

Jeremy sighed fondly, running a hand through his wet, mussed hair. “So, uh, are you going home tonight, because I don’t really think I’m fit to drive.”

Christine looked at him, standing there half asleep in a pair of sweatpants and a tee shirt, then at Michael. She gulped. “... I think I’ll stay the night.”

She padded across the hall to Jeremy’s room, and they followed her, watching as she grabbed the duvet off the chair and wrapped it around herself before flopping on the loveseat. “Good night.”

“Uh, you sure you want to sleep there?” Jeremy said, fiddling with the drawstrings on his pants. “I don’t mind taking the floor?”

Christine stuck up a hand from the mass of blankets on the chair, and waggled her finger at them. “I’m good. You two can split the bed.”

Michael wasn’t sure if he loved her or hated her. He was pretty sure he could feel the not-actually-asleep eyes of Christine on him, silently judging his life choices. He looked back at Jeremy, who was wiggling his toes and staring at them, and in general, trying not to make eye contact. “Fuck it.”

Michael sat on the bed, and patted the spot next to him. Jeremy made a tired noise, and he flopped down next to him, fumbling for the lamp cord. It took them a moment to get settled, Michael pushing away the pillows so his head just rested on the mattress and Jeremy slotting in behind him, jammed into the corner between the wall, the bed and Michael. Michael sighed contentedly. Maybe it was just his recent brush with the cold embrace of death, but he was having trouble seeing why they hadn’t done this in literal years.

“Thanks,” Michael whispered, not daring to try and look back at Jeremy’s face. “You saved my life.”

“Don’t worry about it. Without you, we’d all be in a hivemind.” He felt Jeremy shrug and hook his chin over his shoulder. “Let’s call it even, okay?”

Michael sighed contentedly, and let Jeremy wrap his arms around his waist, because A. Honestly, where else were his hands supposed to go, and B. Michael was selfish. The bed only had one comforter on it but Jeremy’s body, pressed against his back, was more than enough to keep him warm. He tried his best to concentrate on the wind singing through the branches outside— he swore there was a harmony to it— and the gentle snoring noises from Christine’s chair, rather that the warm breath tickling his neck.

♒

On Monday, Michael woke up, slammed his hand on the alarm clock button groggily, and pulled on some fresh clothes from the pile in his closet that he kept putting off folding. He ran through his usual morning routine, hopped in his car, and gunned it to school.

Jeremy looked pretty much the same as he had yesterday when he had helped sneak Christine out of the house— sort of half asleep, hair sticking up at weird angles, a little sweaty— but Michael knew him well enough to spot the changes. His skin seemed a little brighter, his dark hair was still fluffy from too much salt and too little conditioner, and Michael could have sworn his canines were sharper than usual. Aside from that, it was like nothing had ever happened.

“So, what did you do with it?” Michael asked, trying to fake casualness well enough to escape the notice of their peers. The real trick to it was being just loud enough that Jeremy could hear, but just quiet enough that it looked like he was just talking to himself.

Jeremy smiled sheepishly and patted his suspiciously large backpack.

No.

“You didn’t.”

“Look, it felt weird to just leave it at home! What if my dad found it?”

“So you brought it to school with you?”

“Yes!”

Michael was about to retort about how he was pretty sure the administration didn’t allow magical seal hides on school property, but he caught Jenna Roland staring at them and suddenly understood the metaphorical meaning of the phrase “jump out of your skin”.

She waggled her eyebrows at them and mouthed something that was either Fonzi’s catchphrase or uncomfortably true.

Michael pulled Jeremy around the corner, and he swore he could hear her laughing. Jeremy grumbled. “Anyways, I don’t think the teachers are paid enough to care about whatever we put in our bags unless it’s, like, dangerous.”

Michael paused. “Reyes cares.”

“I forced him to join a shiny-happy hivemind with the entire cast. I’m pretty sure that makes him an outlier,” sighed Jeremy. “Besides, his salary’s supplemented with Hobby Lobby.”

Michael conceded the point, and let it rest. He could understand dragging something big and obnoxious to school everyday for comfort, but in fairness, his headphones weren’t a magical, six foot long corpse. “Look, just be careful, okay? Don’t go swimming in any dormant volcano pools and gaining magic powers over water or anything. I’m not hauling your ass out of the school pool.”

“Why are you quoting the premise of H2O at me?”

“Why are you a fucking mermaid?” Michael hissed.

Jeremy glared at him, cheeks ruddy, expression mock-offended. “I’m a selkie, you racist .”

Michael rolled his eyes and groaned dramatically before he turned to leave, hefting the lead weight of his backpack over his shoulders. “Later, dick. I’m gonna research your dumb mermaid ass so you don’t strangle yourself trying to put your seashell bra on, Miss Windsnap.”

Michael was halfway down the hall and a third of the way through his ramble when Jeremy grabbed his arm. “Hey, you too.”

“Huh?”

“I just wanted to say thanks. For putting up with m— I mean, all of this.” Jeremy smiled and patted Michael’s cheek. “You’re pretty great. And uh, yeah. If anything happens, I’m always there to talk?”

Michael stood there and watched Jeremy, red faced and stumbling into every freshman in the entire school like he was bowling ball and they were a bunch of pimply pins, scamper off to his literature class. He touched his hand to his cheek.

That was new.

Michael spent every study hall that week on his phone, on a studying spree the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the play, much to Rich’s annoyance. His usual ritual of standing next to him making furtive glances at the screen until Michael showed him whatever the morning’s terrible meme or ridiculous conspiracy theory was was consistently met with failure. Instead of some dry comedy article or post modernist meme they both pretended they understood, Michael’s phone had only picture of seals and woman with long, black hair dressed in skins.

The internet had been varying levels of helpful. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much on selkies. Most of it was wikipedia (helpful), some animated movie (kind of depressing) or a bunch of pagans telling you how to “call on the powers of the seal-folk” (Michael already knew how to do that— speed dial).

It was the fifth time that Rich had caught him staring sadly at his phone, or Jeremy, or some combination of the two at lunch, that he finally brought it up.

Michael clicked his phone off and stuffed it in the kangaroo-esque pouch of his hoodie— seriously, he could probably fit an infant in that thing, and yes, he was way too proud of that. He crept out of the bathroom stall, and was immediately met with Rich, who was leaning against the sink under the tarnished mirror with a humorless smile.

Six months ago, that would have been cause for some serious alarm, but there was really no mistaking the guy in front of him for the bully he had been. Sure, the burn scars, heavy lisp, actual smile and red streak in his hair had to do with that, but it was more the fact that there was some actual life in his eyes that set him apart. It was pretty amazing how much younger it made him look.

“Hey, Headphones, did something happen between you and Tall-Ass? You’ve been a sad sack all week.”

Michael shrugged. “We didn’t fight, if that’s what you mean.”

Rich frowned, and stood up straight, away from the wall. “Was it, y’know?”

It took a moment for Michael to process what Rich was implying. “No, not the SQUIP.”

“Oh.”

Michael figured the conversation was over, but Rich was still standing there expectantly, like he knew it was just a matter of time before Michael broke down and cried into his arms about the horrors of high school and how Stacy was cheating on him with Brad, and his parents just didn’t understand him, or something. Michael fingered the edge of one of the patches on his hoodie and tried to reason with himself.

Rich was Michael’s friend. More importantly, Rich was Jeremy’s friend, and honestly, probably understood somethings about him even better than Michael did— He wasn’t jealous of that, he could live with having the most malevolent thing possessing him being the desire to pull all nighters to IV grind Pokemon. Michael sighed.

“Are you asking me because you know Jeremy will clam up and pretend nothing is wrong?”

Rich hummed. “Pretty much.”

Michael rubbed at his temples, weighing his options. Rich was an asshole in sort of an affectionate, mostly joking way, and Jeremy was a sensitive soul, two facts that usually didn’t mix when one was upset, but on the other hand, Rich wasn’t exactly a stranger to shitty parents. Fuck it.

“Something came up with his mom. He’s uh, pretty freaked out by it?”

“Is she sick or something?”

“Uh, no.” Michael glanced around, as if Jeremy would come hurtling into the bathroom at any second. “If you tell Jenna, I’ll kill you for him.”

Rich nodded and Michael grimaced. Half of him wished he would burst out laughing at the threat or something, so Michael could get out of explaining this. “You didn’t hear this from me, but… she left a while back, and we were looking through her stuff. And we found something that sort of made us kinda do double take? Like, you think you know everything about someone and… yeah.”

Rich nodded, mouth a thin line. “I know.”

Michael rubbed his face, like he wipe the tired feeling from his eyes. He hated this. “Look, just keep an eye on him? For me?”

Rich laughed and gently slapped his back, and Michael coughed as the wind was knocked out of him. They had very different definitions of gentle. “Dude, he’s my friend. I’d do that anyways.”

Michael shrugged. God, it was weird having more than one friend. God, it was weird having Richard fucking Goranski as a friend. “Yeah, well.”

Rich grinned, waving as he sauntered out the door. “See you in algebra!”

He watched Rich leave, and half heartedly returned his wave as he left. A moment passed, and Michael fished out his phone. The webpage was a poorly coded mess from 2005, all comic sans and tiled water background, and was utterly useless— same legend, same old timey woodcuts, same shitty conspiracy theories.

He’d read the story a million times now, but god, what if this one ended differently? The fisherman finds a lady, takes her skin, marries her, same old, same old, but that part didn’t matter, because—

The selkie will forever long for the sea, and if she ever finds her skin, she will vanish into the night, leaving her husband and kin behind.

The sick feeling he got every time he thought about the SQUIP, or the party, or the way Jeremy had muttered something and walked off was back, and it rose in his stomach every time he reread that fucking story that always ended with the selkie diving into the waves, leaving her husband and children behind.

Michael leaned back against the cold metal of the stalls and tried to keep his breathing steady, timing it to the drip of the battered old faucet.

Jeremy was going to run off into the sea one day and marry a dolphin or something, and Michael was going to be left on the  fucking shore waiting for him to come back for the rest of his goddamn life.

Michael felt like screaming and punching the wall, like dying in a hole, and god, this was all too much.

He had to do something about the sickness building in his gut.

He wasn’t going to, he couldn’t go through that again.

There was one person who could help.

♒

“Did you know?”

Mr. Heere looked taken aback when Michael barged into his kitchen, courtesy of the spare key Jeremy had given him, but was at least wearing pants. Michael couldn’t tell whether it was the fact that he was shivering with anger, or that he was there without Jeremy that caught Mr. Heere by surprise, but he had that same deer in the headlights look Jeremy got whenever Rich tackled him— friendly or otherwise— in the hallway.

Then again, Michael didn’t give a shit.

“Son—”

“Don’t call me son.”

“What’s wrong?” Mr. Heere swallowed. “Did something happen to Jeremy?”

Michael felt bile rise in his throat, and slammed his hands on the table, loud enough rattle the glass of water on it. “If by something, you mean turning into a goddamn seal-man, yes!”

Mr. Heere leapt to his feet, knocking the chair across the tiled floor with a clatter. He was halfway to the door when Michael grabbed the sleeve of his shirt. “The skin?”

“Jeremy has it.”

Some of the panic drained out of Mr. Heere’s face, and he collapsed into the chair. Somehow that just made Michael angrier.

“Did it ever occur to you maybe drop us a line that, hey, Mrs. Heere was a fucking pinniped?”

Mr. Heere stared at the glass of water in his hands, and the tiredness in his voice lit Michael’s blood on fire. “Yes, Michael, it did.”

“Well, great job picking up on that cue. Could you have thought of doing that before she fucked off?!”

“I hadn’t really planned on her leaving, Michael,” Mr. Heere sighed, no bite to the words.

“Yeah, would you mind explaining that, ‘cause Wikipedia has something to say about selkies fucking ditching their families! And by something, I mean a fucking shit ton to say about selkies fucking ditching their families. ”

“She didn’t abandon us, Michael. I just wouldn’t let her take him out to sea.”

Michael felt his stomach bottom out. “What?”

“She wanted to go, and take him with her,” Mr. Heere spat , and Michael startled. He’d never really heard Mr. Heere that angry before. “Whether or not I came didn’t matter.”

“And I told her, Beth, you can’t just expect us, expect him, to uproot his whole life for you again and' again!” Mr. Heere was shouting, and Michael felt the hairs on his arms prick up. “I left my family for you, I moved to the ocean for you, but I won’t lose my son for you!”

Years of bad movies and documentaries had not prepared Michael for this. He’d never seen an adult really cry, let alone a man old enough to be his father, and god, he never needed to know that was where Jeremy got the flush he had every time he was upset.

Michel was torn between comforting him, bolting, and screaming in abject terror. He settled on freezing stock still as Mr. Heere broke down sobbing.

“Dad?”

Michael twisted his neck so fast, he thought he’d gotten whiplash. Jeremy was standing at the doorway, backpack dangling from one hand, forgotten. Shit, theatre auditions must have let out early.

“Jeremy.”

“You knew.” Jeremy looked between Michael and Mr. Heere, brow creased. “You knew she was a seal or selkie or something, and you never freaking told me?”

Mr. Heere stared at the floor. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. “We were married for nineteen years, Jeremy. Of course I knew.”

Jeremy glared. Mr. Heere sighed. “I think it’s time we had a talk. Heart to heart, man to man.”

“Uh, yeah , but that’s going to be hard, seeing as I’m apparently part seal!”

Mr. Heere looked at Michael expectantly, but Jeremy grabbed his forearm. “Anything you want to say to me, you can say to Michael.”

“I might as well. You’re practically family.” Mr. Heere gave Michael a watery smile. “You’re like my son in law.”

“Dad!”

Michael snorted at how red Jeremy’s face had gone and took a seat at the table. Mr. Heere clasped his hands and stared at them for a moment. “I met your mother when I was 25. I had just passed the bar, and my sister and I went to Cape May to celebrate.”

“She was on the beach, and I asked her where the best bar in town was, and we went out. That night, she took me out to the rocks and showed me. I was infatuated.”

“Even after the vacation ended, I would drive down from Scranton to see her. Your grandparents didn’t like her much, but I was in love.” Michael could see that. It was clear in the way Mr. Heere’s voice softened, and the familiarity of it twisted at his gut.

He sighed. “I cut ties with them when I proposed. She didn’t want to be around them if they couldn’t understand us.”

“Our wedding night, she told me stories of men who had stolen skins and ensnared selkies in marriage. I swore to her that I would never do that.”

“A few months after we married, she decided she wanted to move back to the sea. I had just gotten a foothold in the firm I was working at, but that evening, she showed me her skin, and talked about how few married selkies ever got to swim again. I quit the next day.”

Mr. Heere paused. “Maybe if I hadn’t, things would be better.”

“What do you mean?” Jeremy’s voice was quiet, but Michael could still hear the fear in it.

Mr. Heere leaned back and stared at his clasped hands. Michael had never really noticed the lines on his face until now.

“She did that a lot. When your mother wanted something, she’d mention our vows, or the old myths of selkies finding their skins and vanishing.”

“And you let her?”

Mr. Heere shrugged and sighed. “I would have done almost anything for your mother.”

Jeremy stared at his feet, a myriad of emotions darting across his face.

Michael felt like an intruder, but leaving now and disrupting seemed worse than staying. The clock ticked loudly in the still room, and Michael tried his best to settle the sick feeling pooling in his stomach.

“Do you remember when she left?”

Of course he did. It was hard to forget Jeremy showing up at his window at one in the morning on a humid summer night, eyes bloodshot from crying, making him tea in the dark kitchen, and wondering how anyone could do that to anyone, let alone Jeremy . It was even harder to forget him staying there for the next week because he couldn’t stand being in the house while his dad sat around  for hours on the couch and just moped .

Michael watched Jeremy let out a shaky breath and nod.

“Jeremy, she wanted to take your skin, and make you come with her. And—” Mr. Heere inhaled sharply— “If she wanted to leave, I couldn’t stop her. But she was going to take you into the sea, away from me, from Michael, and…”

Mr. Heere trailed off. Michael risked a glance at Jeremy, who had gone ashen.

“I was going to tell you this fall, once you got used to her being gone, but with the way the you were acting, I didn’t want you to do something… Rash.”

Jeremy stared at the floor. He looked like he was collapsing on himself, like a building over a sinkhole. Michael reached out under the table and took his hand, squeezing it tight.

Mr. Heere’s eyes flicked down, but thankfully he didn’t comment.

Jeremy looked at Michael, and Michael mouthed “The SQUIP” at him and dipped his head towards Mr. Heere. Jeremy glanced between him and Michael like they were a rock and a hard place.

“Private, is something wrong?”

“I’ll help you tell him,” Michael whispered. Jeremy bit his lip and after a moment that felt like a decade, nodded.

Jeremy straightened, slipping into that eerily perfect posture that always set Michael’s teeth on edge, and stared at the tablecloth. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and measured in a way that just screamed wrong .

“It’s from Japan. It’s a gray, oblong pill, with a quantum nanotechnology CPU. It implants in your brain, and then, it tells you what to do.”

Jeremy swallowed, and looked his father dead in the eyes. “It’s a SQUIP.”

Explaining the trainwreck that was fall took the better part of an hour. Michael let Jeremy lead the story, but he chimed in when ever he left out important details, like the man at Payless, Rich losing it at the party, or the shocks that Jeremy kept refusing to acknowledge. Jeremy looked around like a caged animal whenever Michael mentioned them, but fuck it, this was Jeremy’s dad , and by the time he had processed all this enough to start probing, Michael might not be there to wrap an arm around him and help him stop trembling.

Mr. Heere had gone pale by the time they got to Jeremy’s upgrade, and Michael tried to quash the sickness that rolled around his gut for the second time that night as Jeremy explained the mechanics of Optic Nerve Blocking.

When Jeremy stood up halfway through Michael’s explanation of the SQUIP’s high frequency hivemind, pale and shaking, Mr. Heere didn’t say anything, just watched as Michael followed his son out the door. Michael couldn’t tell whether to be thankful or angry about that.

Jeremy was quiet when he got into the shotgun seat of the PT Cruiser. Michael couldn’t blame him. Just talking about the horror show that had been the play, the months Jeremy had vanished from his life, and the Party felt like he had flayed himself open and laid his organs bare to the world.

He gunned the ignition and placed his hand on Jeremy’s arm, right over where his tattoo was. His friend let out a shaky breath and wrapped his fingers around Michael’s arm like it was a lifeline.

“‘Miah, where do you wanna go?”

Jeremy sighed and pushed his head back against the rest. “Anywhere.”

Michael figured the classics were best. The short, one handed ride to the Seven Eleven by the former movie theater passed in silence. It had been their designated snack stop since time immemorial, and Michael was in and out in less than a minute, holding two slushies. Jeremy took the blue one, but didn’t drink from it, just held it in his hand while he examined the tears and scuffs on the car’s ceiling.

Michael leaned back against the heated driver’s seat and took a long drag of his cherry slushie, letting the familiar taste of sugar and artificial flavoring soothe his nerves. It was a shit substitute for weed, but it was better than nothing.

“So, I guess being a yiffer is hereditary.”

Jeremy managed to simultaneously choke on his drink and do a spit take, and Michael pounded his back. “What is wrong with you?!”

“Are you denying it?”

“No— I mean yes— I mean—” Jeremy threw his hands up in the air. “Quit kinkshaming my family.”

“Jeremy Heere, how dare you deny me my one joy in life.”

Jeremy rolled his eyes, and the silence was back, but more relaxed. Neither of them spoke until the straw of Jeremy’s drink was rasping against the cup. Michael broke the peace.

“Are you okay?”

“I think so. Thank you.” Jeremy paused, putting the empty cup in the footwell of his seat. “I needed this.”

“You’d do the same for me.”

Jeremy nodded, then frowned. He raked a hand through his hair. “... It’s just weird hearing it all laid out like that.”

“Your mom, or the SQUIP?”

“Both.” Jeremy answered. “Like, I knew that her and dad were bad for each other, and bad for me, but I just always shoved it aside until, well, now.”

Michael nodded.

“And, like, it’s just weird looking at her, and the SQUIP and…”

Jeremy waved a hand, as if that explained everything.

Michael put down his empty cup and pretended he understood.

♒

“Jesus Christ man, aren’t you cold?”

Jeremy shrugged and pulled the pelt up higher around his chest, a little bit like what Michael had seen the girls in bad high school comedies do when they stepped out of the shower, except instead of towels it was quasi-living magical pinniped skin. Michael, for his part, did an excellent job of keeping his eyes on Jeremy’s face and not his legs or where his collar bones rose above the pelt.

“Now, private,” Mr. Heere announced, taking a long drag from his mug of coffee. “Where are you going?”

“Just around the cove, not out past the rocks, don’t let anyone see you, don’t go near boats, scream if you need help, etcetera, etcetera,” Jeremy rattled off. “Seriously dad, you can calm down. I’m a seal, I’m not going to drown.”

Mr. Heere just chuckled and ruffled Jeremy’s hair. Jeremy yelped and tried to swat away his father’s hand without dropping the hide. Michael took a moment to thank the Lord for making sure that Jeremy covered the universe’s quota for pantless Heeres at the moment and not the alternative.

“So,” Jeremy started, smoothing down the rumpled mess that was his hair. “Can you guys, uh, turn around, and dad, if you say anything about the army , I swear to god.”

Mr. Heere just chuckled and turned around. Michael rolled his eyes and followed.

A moment ticked by, and Jeremy made several frustrated noises. Michael glanced behind him.

“Michael!”

And then Michael was glancing back very, very quickly, and trying to ignore the Mr. Heere because, god, “I just got an eyeful of your son and not a seal” was not something he ever wanted to say to anyone.

Ever.

“Uh, how’s it going, Jer?”

“Fine, fine— No, don’t turn around again!” There was another grunt. “Just taking a minute.”

“Christine texted me to tell you to imagine you’re zipping up a sleeping bag. From like, the inside.”

Michael waited for the usual snarky comeback, but nothing came. He turned, ready with a retort, but stopped short.

Jeremy was lying on the beach, staring up at them with black eyes.

Michael figured that even if it was technically his best friend of twelve, almost thirteen years, wearing the seal skin and using the magical powers he had inherited from his mother to become a harbor seal, there was always going to be something weird(er) about being this close to animal this big and well, carnivorous. It was sort of like standing near the back of a horse— kind of huge, kind of felt like you were only suppose to see them galloping across the plains of midwest, wild and free, and could kind of wreck your shit if you spooked it.

But this was Jeremy, who Michael was pretty sure only wore cardigans because he liked being able to pin buttons to them, snorted milk out his nose if you made him laugh during breakfast and always dropped anything— and in one particularly awkward instance, anyone— he was doing when Michael needed him. It didn’t matter if he had traded freckles for dappled grey fur, or acne for whiskers, it was still his Player Two.

Michael knelt and poked at the blunt claws on Jeremy’s flippers. “You doing okay, buddy?”

“I’m proud of you, Private.” Mr. Heere wiped a tear of paternal affection from his eye and patting what Michael assumed was Jeremy’s back-analogue.

Jeremy gave them both a look that Michael interpreted as a mixture of “Yes, duh, of course I am” and “What is this validation of which you speak”. Michael wasn’t sure if that was years of friendship and understanding the subtle ebb and flow of Jeremy’s emotions, or just pure bullshit.

Same difference, really.

Michael gently pushed Jeremy’s pale stomach, and watched, enthused, as Jeremy half rolled, half bounced, down the gentle incline of the beach, landing in the water with a splash.

Apparently, the proper motivation Jeremy needed to master this whole skin thing was mild inconvenience, because a few seconds later, an arm, attached to a hand, attached to one stubborn middle finger rose out of the surf.

Jeremy ducked back down, and was gone. Michael settled onto the hood of Mr. Heere’s sedan and waited for Jeremy to come back up. At least it was sunny today, the light glinting off the ocean and those little golden shells mixed in with the sand that tourist traps always made into windchimes. It would have been nicer if it wasn’t freezing cold and if there was, you know, actual green shit on the plants , but it wasn’t terrible.

A few minutes later, Jeremy popped back out of the water, barking and waving a flipper at them. Michael grinned and waved back.

He continued like that, diving deep and then coming back up and bobbing around like a half deflated pool floatie before repeating the cycle, until he had made it all around the cove. Michael got nervous when he took a little longer crossing the channel— Mr. Heere was too, it was clear in the way he kept checking his watch and rubbing at is ring finger— but eventually Jeremy surfaced on the other side.

When Jeremy came out, wet seal skin around his waist and dripping water everywhere, he was grinning. It was the sort of unabashed elation he hadn’t seen him wear since the SQUIP, hell, since Mrs. Heere left in the night, with none of the usual nervous twitches that betrayed his fear of being actually happy.

“Michael! Holy crud, you wouldn’t believe what I saw down there!”

Jeremy nattered on about fish, and how easy and fast swimming was, and some cormorant he had seen eating a squid, and honestly, Michael was still stuck trying to decipher what a sea robin actually was. He glanced at Mr. Heere, who had the dopiest look of parental affection as he handed Jeremy a towel, and wondered whether he felt the same nervous flutter in his throat as Michael.

Jeremy liked the ocean.

A lot.

That meant they took a lot of trips down to the freezing hell that was the New Jersey coastline in the winter.

In a stunning display of competent parenting, Mr. Heere came most days Jeremy went out, a pair of binoculars under one arm, and a thermos of hot tea for when he came in. It was a little pointless, seeing as Jeremy never complained about the cold, but Michael could tell he appreciated the gesture nonetheless. Christine tagged along as often as she could— her advanced placement exams were coming up, on top of scoring a leading role in the spring musical— which amounted to about once every week and a half. Jeremy insisted she stayed in the car until he was already in the water, and she would always groan and mutter something about “Pucking”, whatever that meant.

Michael though, Michael always went.

At this point, he sort of considered it the ultimate evolution and merging of whale watching and his favourite pastime of ogling his best friend. Eventually, they had sort of worked into a routine after the awkward mess that was the first outing.

Jeremy and Michael usually left school the moment the bell rang and piled into his car, which was starting to smell like a fish market. Jeremy would pull up the directions to the beach du jour, and Michael would then add directions to the nearest Seven Eleven to the GPS. Michael would get his slushie, cherry, of course, and then tolerated Jeremy’s slushie, not cherry, the heathen. The half hour drive down to an abandoned beach or underside of a bridge was typically spent shooting the shit with each other, complaining about classes, or exchanging second hand rumors from Jenna.

Michael would keep an eye out for wayward tourists, which in the dead of winter was thankfully not much of an issue, while Jeremy changed out of his street clothes. Jeremy always had the skin wrapped around as much of himself as possible by the time Michael turned around, which was equal parts comforting and disappointing.

That was usually the part where Michael made a crack about skinny dipping, and Jeremy would try to force him to wade into the water, which was freezing, okay, he wasn’t a wimp, Jeremy, he just wasn’t a goddamn furry, you dick.

Jeremy would then huff and march off into the water until it rose around his waist, and then he’d kick and disappear into the dark water.

A minute later, a pale seal head with the same dopey expression Jeremy usually had on the rare occasion he wasn’t worrying about something would pop out of the water. Sometimes he barked at Michael, and then some tired woman with her yappy little dog would wander over and Michael would have to bullshit a reason why he was camped out under a bridge with a pile of clothing and two slushies.

The barking started to sound a lot more like Jeremy’s wheezing laugh after that started.

Asshole .

Jeremy would then disappear under the waves again. Michael figured that this was why he prefered going with him rather than his dad, most of the time. Ever since the supremely awkward conversation in the Heere family kitchen, Mr. Heere had been a bit overprotective, calling Jeremy while they were hanging out, “just to check in”, and pulling Jeremy— and Michael by proxy— into “family nights”. When he came to the ocean, he usually didn’t let Jeremy go out past the rocks, and Jeremy usually abided by his rules.

Well, when he was there to enforce them.

Jeremy seemed to hold a bizarre passion for testing how fast, far and deep he could swim, but Michael wasn’t really worried though. Jeremy had finally mastered the art half taking off his skin, thank god, so every few minutes he’d see his dipshit friend jump out of the water, waving to him. Even if it was a football field away, the sight of Jeremy treading water, hair plastered to his face and grinning at him always set the anxious knot in his stomach at ease.

Sometimes other harbour seals were in the area, lounging on the shore or on the rocks. Jeremy usually flopped his way over to the haul out— he was getting better at moving around on land, but Michael still thought he looked like a Water Wigglie trying to do the worm, and took every opportunity to mention it— and shimmied in close to the center, content to just lie in the sun. Even in a sea of silver, Jeremy was pretty recognizable— after all, he was the only seal with scars branching up its back like lightning strikes.

Michael tried to ignore how the way that Jeremy fit into the herd made a lump form in his throat.

Eventually, as the sun was starting to slink below the horizon, Jeremy would crawl back on shore, sopping wet and grinning, but there was always a hint of sadness in his eyes as he pulled on a shirt and hopped in the car, chattering all the while about how amazing the rocks were and how I caught a fish Michael! I suck at that with a rod!

They kept going, and every time, Jeremy swam further out, a dark dot in the distance. Eventually, Michael, no matter how much he wiped his glasses and squinted, couldn’t tell if he if he was waving back anymore.

♒

Tonight’s destination was a bit more far afield than usual. Staff development day had cursed the teachers of Middleborough with eight hours of team building and ice breakers, and blessed its students with an entire Friday off.

Christine grinned as she bounded into the backseat of Michael’s car, pushing her roller bag into the footwell. “I’m so glad we’re going on vacation! And all the way to Newport— they were really nervous about me going, especially with two guys, but then I told them about you two and then they were really chill with it!”

Michael nodded, gunned the engine and quietly pushed away the bubble of annoyance. Christine’s parents could just join half the school and Jeremy’s dad in thinking they were together. The first few times people had made that mistake, Michael had spent a good fifteen minutes stammering out denial and that “It’s not like that mom!”, but the barrage of gay jokes freshmen year had dulled the surprise. Even Jeremy, despite being a perpetual ball of nerves, barely sputtered when it came up at this point, which was either a testament to him working on his anxiety or just how much people didn’t believe in platonic handholding.

It was sort of weird, but Michael had always had a strange appreciation for long car rides. Not by himself— staring at boring-ass scenery was more Jeremy’s thing, but with Jeremy and Christine bickering at each other from shotgun and the backseat respectively over the merits of a play he’d never even heard of? It was pretty perfect, listening to his favourite person, and Christine, who was slowly worming her way into his life, shoot barbs at each other as background noise. Christine could talk for days about literally anything, but while Jeremy was usually pretty quiet, Michael had mastered the art of prodding him into ten minute rants on the merits of choreography, costume design or some other weirdly technical theater thing. It was nice hearing him find something he was that passionate about. Bless Christine’s heart for managing to get him into it, even if it had started out as a weird romantic gesture that had nearly ended in the apocalypse.

Michael hummed and turned onto the bridge, passing the eighteen wheeler that had been in front of them for the last three miles, thank god. Michael spared glance at Jeremy, who was polishing off a bottle of dollar store cream soda, and licking his lips.

Fuck.

Okay, and maybe it was just Jeremy’s stupid twink face in the foreground, with his hair falling into his eyes, just begging for someone to tuck the strands back behind his ear, and the way his eyes were the same color as the sea, but the water looked pretty nice behind him. The sun shimmered off it, and even Michael could appreciate the white lines of wake the sailboats left across it, like lines of frosting on a impossibly blue cake. Long Island rose out of the water in the distance, gorgeous under the cloudless sky, and Michael sighed. Was this what Jeremy saw every time he looked at the sea? It was kind of incred—

“Shit! Michael, I think that was our turn!”

Michael swore, took the next exit, and proceeded to get horribly, utterly lost on the hellish backroads of whatever coastal, Charybdis-esque, out of season tourist trap they had gotten sucked into. After a half hour and conflicting directions from several pedestrians, Michael eventually gave up and pulled over at a fishmarket to reconfigure the GPS. Jeremy, after some encouragement from Christine, and a dare from Michael, stumbled out of the car and bought a blue crab off of one of the fisherman.

“How are you supposed to cook these things anyways?” Christine asked, prodding at the crab Jeremy was holding up by its shell. It took a swipe at her and she squeaked. Michael snorted.

Jeremy lifted the crab up for a better look, squinted, and straight up took a bite out of it.

“Dude, you can’t just eat animals alive!”

“It’s not alive anymore! Besides, that’s how everyone cooks them!”

“That’s disgusting!”

Jeremy was subsequently banished to the back of the car for the rest of the trip, along with the remaining half of the crab.

It was kind of weird having Christine ride shotgun. For one, he could actually see through the right hand window, which was normally hidden by Jeremy’s tall ass, and she wasn’t looking at him like one of them was about to begin a five hour conversation on the merits of One With Nothing.

God, it was weird having friends who weren’t Jeremy.

Instead, she grinned and held up her MP3 player, and Michael wordlessly passed her the aux.

Christine’s taste in music was nothing like his. For one, there was no reggae, or Artic Monkeys, or weird experimental mixes from overly obscure genres that only existed on the internet.

It was showtunes.

It was all showtunes.

Michael didn’t even know most of the songs, but he still knew they probably came from some Broadway musical that had been playing since the dawn of time and had chewed through a hundred lead actors like so much toffee.

They weren’t bad though. Michael, as someone who listened to way too much music and way too little of the outside world, could appreciate the leitmotifs and the way twenty people could harmonize on one note. Not really his thing, but it wasn’t bad.

Christine also knew the lyrics to all her music and wasn’t shy about letting everyone in New England know.

Apparently that sort of in your face, loud noise making confidence was infectious, because there was a second, softer voice chiming in from the back seat. Jeremy didn't really like singing in front of other people— something about one infamously traumatic grade school musical where his voice had cracked in front of two hundred students and their parents— but he was really, really not terrible.

It was kind of heartening to realize that the lyrics were to the soundtrack of the spring musical, and that Jeremy was nailing the notes like he’d put serious time into practicing them.

Michael mouthed “thank you” at Christine. She grinned, and turned the music up a little more.

And fuck it, the chorus was catchy enough that he knew all the words. Michael shrugged and launched into the refrain like an off tune cannon ball as they pulled into the parking lot.

The park Jeremy had picked out was enormous. Out front, on the coast, was an enormous, rolling hill that probably looked gorgeous in the summer, but for now had only a teenaged, patchy stubble of grass on it. Further inland, wide paths snaked through the leafless forest and around what google informed them was an old carriage house.

Still, the main focus, or at least for Jeremy, was the ocean. The beach was littered with fat white stones, weather beaten by the sea into smooth curves. Christine dragged Michael out to the rocks, where soft sand gave way to dark shale.

“Look! A fish got stuck in the tidepool!”

Sure enough, some poor, stupid mummichog was glaring at a hermit crab in the half foot of water that had collected on the rocks.

What ensued was a fifteen minute struggle to chase the fish in Christine’s waiting hands. By the time they had managed to herd it into her palms and chucked it back into the sea, Michael was drenched from the knees down and Christine had a piece of algae tangled in her hair.

There was a chorus of loud barking, and Michael nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Fucking hell Jer, you scared the shit out of me.” Jeremy snorted at them from the water and dived back down, splashing them both on the way.

Michael and Christine made their way back to the beach proper. The sand was soft, and Michael pulled a blanket out from his backpack. It was pretty chilly— the sun was just beginning to set, and the orange and magenta clouds were reflected on the water. Michael leaned back against the sea wall, content to pull his headphones out and doze after a long day of driving, but then he heard it .

Michael froze. Over the sound of the waves, a high, keening melody rose, twining around them like a net. Michael had never quite heard anything like it. It was almost like chamber music, the notes long and lamenting, and Michael felt the hair on the back of his neck rise.

Christine stared out past the waves, frowning. “Do you hear that? Sort of a high pitched noise?”

“Yeah.”

She shrugged and smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Maybe there’s a street performer or something?”

“Christine, there’s no one else here.” A glance at the road and the lot confirmed his worst fears. “No other cars, either.”

A moment passed in still, stunned silence, the music rolling around them like a choir at a church. Michael broke out in a cold sweat. “Jeremy!”

No response. He stood, and ran towards the water, stopping just short of where the waves licked the rocks, Christine hot on his heels. “Jeremy, you need to get out of there!”

Michael stood, terrified, on the shore for what felt like hours, pacing up and down the length of the beach and shouting Jeremy’s name. God, he was dead, or pulled out in a rip current or had abandoned them or—

A dark shape splashed and bobbed on the surface.

“Jeremy!” Michael screamed. “Get out of the water!”

Jeremy didn’t move, and Michael cursed that he didn’t have a flashlight on him.

“Jeremy, please!” Christine was shouting too, and oh thank god, Jeremy finally started to come in, painfully slow. He flicked under the water for a moment, and then there was actual Jeremy, all gangly legs and freckles, wading out of the water.

“Christ, dude, don’t do that. You scared the shit out of us.”

Jeremy’s feet hit the wet sand, and Michael was close enough to really see him now, the moon and stars illuminating him. His eyes were wide and distant, darting around like something was going to pounce on him. “I’ve gotta go back out.”

“Jeremy, what the fuck.”

“Michael, it’s calling me.” Jeremy was fidgeting with the seal skin, nails clicking against claws. “The song, you can hear it, right?”

“Yeah.” Michael whispered around the lump in his throat.

“Please, let me go, I need to see what it is.”

Michael swallowed thickly, staring at Jeremy in absolute horror.

“Jeremy!” Christine had Jeremy’s hand and was talking him down, which was good, because Michael didn’t trust himself to speak. Jeremy’s eyes seemed to clear, like someone had opened the shutters on the proverbial windows to the soul, and maybe watered the flower box.

“Christine?”

“Jeremy, we’re leaving.”

Jeremy looked like he was going to protest, but Christine set her jaw and looked him dead in the eyes. “C’mon. And put on some pants.”

Jeremy mouthed something that looked suspiciously like “Not my dad” and followed her up the beach. He got dressed in silence, and Michael pulled out of the lot, driving around the gentle curves of the road towards the park exit.

Michael handed the ticket to the woman manning the park’s ticket booth. She took it sleepily, and Michael was about to pull out when she held up a hand. “Hey, have any of you kids seen a Jeremiah Heere in the park?”

Michael felt something knot in his stomach. The noise, the singing, was still rolling around his head like stones in a rock tumbler. “No, why?”

“Some lady in a fur coat came by earlier asking if they’d seen him.”

“Oh.” Michael swallowed, trying to chase away the dryness in his throat. “We’ll keep a look out.”

As they pulled out onto the dark road, Michael spared a glance at Jeremy, who was craning his neck to look back at the sea through the back window.

The ride back to New Jersey passed in silence. Usually Michael hated driving at night— it always made him feel like he was about to nod off, not to mention the deer— but the adrenaline kept him wide awake, and once that faded, the sound of the song echoing around his head was more than enough to get them to Jeremy’s doorstep.

Mr. Heere was surprised to see them back at one in the morning, and quietly offered Michael and Christine to come in for tea. Michael and Christine shared a look. Her hair was mussed, eyes a little frazzled, and Michael knew she had spent the ride home biting her knuckles by the little white semi circles left on her skin. He didn’t even want to think about how he looked.

They politely declined.

Michael watched Mr. Heere shepard Jeremy into the house and soaked in the far off look in his eyes.

Fuck.

♒

The worst part about this was that it was nothing like fall. Fall had been a very physical wedge between them. Jeremy had ghosted through the halls with perfect posture, eyes flicking over Michael and skipping over his name on lists, never noticing, never caring.

This was the opposite. Jeremy was there, but every interaction, from sitting in his room doing homework to helping him practice his lines for theater was bogged down by the knowledge that this wasn’t going to last. Michael wasn’t an idiot, and he sure as fuck wasn’t naive. It didn’t take a genius to know that one day Michael was going to wake up and Jeremy wasn’t going to be at school, or answering his texts, or playing N64 in his basement.

He still went with Jeremy to the beach, but it was more out of routine than anything. Instead of watching him harass kayakers or spook seabirds, Michael brought his homework and sat on the sand trying to puzzle out the zugzwang that was calculus. He didn’t even bother looking up— Jeremy was probably too far out and too deep to see, let alone wave to.

It didn’t help that whenever they were out past dark, it would come back.

The sun would set, the song would begin and Michael would shout to Jeremy to come in, because some traitorous part of him wanted to cling instead of doing the right thing and letting him go. Eventually, he’d haul himself up on shore and change back, skin draped around him as he walked up the sand, but still looking out at the horizon.

Aside from the distance in his eyes, Jeremy was closer than ever, sitting next to him at lunch, swinging by his locker between bells and slipping him hints to the lab report that was due on Friday. God, he was even doing the extra nice stuff that he only ever broke out when they had had a huge argument.

Jeremy had brought a pack of sushi for them to split today, tuna and eel, and Michael realized after a moment of staring that the sloppy rolls weren’t the cheap shit from the grocery store. They were home made, extra avocado poking out of the pieces, just like Michael liked it. Jeremy grinned and pushed a cup of soy sauce at him, but his smile was waning and Michael only tasted ash.

It hurt that he was trying so hard, because Michael knew that it just meant he was the one who wasn’t meeting him halfway. He wished Jeremy would just admit it and quit trying to soften the blow, but talking about it would just be too painful. Jeremy didn’t deserve to be guilt tripped over this, and Michael didn’t deserve to have to think through it again. He’d done this before, and it was always better to do it quick, like ripping off a bandaid.

“Hey, Headphones!”

Rich’s voice snapped Michael out of his thoughts as he came barreling towards him. “You free tonight?”

Jeremy was going out with his dad for dinner, and that meant that Michael’s evening otherwise consisted of torturing Sims and puzzling through homework. In other words—

“Yeah. My house or yours?”

“Do you need to ask?”

Michael winced.

“Kidding, kidding! We’ll be by at four!”

“Wait, we?”

Too late. The ephemeral Richard Goranski had vanished into the tide of students rushing to seventh period, leaving Michael holding his headphones and the weight of his life choices.

Honestly, in between his physics test, presentation on Huckleberry Finn and desperately trying to tamp down both his hope Jeremy would stay and the depression that came with knowing he wouldn’t, Michael completely forgot about Rich.

Well, until he was sitting in his basement, finishing the Pokemon Coliseum campaign and trying to ignore his want for the two things he couldn’t have— a joint and Jeremy. He was pulled away from beating that piece of shit Raiku by the loud rapping on the door and the subsequent entering of said door by Rich and Christine.

“Hi Michael! Your mom told us you were down here, moping!”

Michael scrambled around in his beanbag chair to face them. Christine had brought a peace offering of Snapple Pie, which she placed on the floor before she jumped into Jeremy’s empty chair, and Rich had a sign decked out in a rainbow of bubble letters. He shook it enthusiastically.

“I’m not moping !” Michael sputtered. “I’m relaxing!”

Rich rolled his eyes. “You’re wearing your moping shirt.”

Michael glared and looked down at the “CREEPS” that was emblazoned across his chest. It wasn’t his moping shirt, he just liked the fleece inside. It was kind of like wearing a hug, so so what if he wore when he needed a little confidence, like for that heinous math test last week, or when he’d been sick pneumonia, or Halloween—

“Okay, fine, I’m moping.”

Rich grinned. “Well, stop relaxing, because we’re here to tell you to quit being a dick.”

“Whatever.” Michael groaned and fell back on his beanbag. “Therapize me.”

“It was her idea.”

Christine grumbled. “You still made the sign.”

“What does IN ERVEN ION even mean?”

Rich shrugged, pushed Michael a foot to the left, and squished onto the chair. “Sorry, the yellow marker doesn’t really show up. Now tell Doctor Rich about your big gay crush.”

“Rich!” Christine hissed. “We’re trying to fix his straight friendship first .”

“Wait what—”

“Fine, tell Doctor Rich, MD, about your completely platonic and heterosexual friendship.”

“No, we do not just move past that!” God, Michael hoped he didn’t look nearly as frazzled as he felt. “You think I’ve got a crush on Jeremy?”

“Michael,” Christine said sweetly, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Even I noticed.”

“Dude, we have eyes.”

Michael sighed and put his head in hands. God, he could already feel the inevitable headache.

“So! Why have you been acting all weirdly lately?”

Michael gave Christine a Look. “Why haven’t you?”

Christine frowned and twisted a lock of fluffy black hair between her fingers. “I mean, I think I have been? It’s just that when I do it, people shrug and just kinda, accept it?”

“Yeah, the whole stare-at-Jeremy-like-he’s-got-a-terminal-illness thing is super noticeable.” Rich paused, frowning. “He doesn’t have a terminal illness, right?”

“... No?”

Rich’s cracked a grin. “Okay then, great! So stop acting like it!”

“I can’t, okay!” God, why was he yelling, he was supposed to be over this. “How the hell am I supposed to be okay when he’s going to leave again!”

Rich exchanged a wide eyed look with Christine. Watching them was kinda like trying to figure out a conversation between two mimes— no talking and way too many gestures.

“Mikey,” Rich intoned, “What the everloving fuck makes you think he’s going to leave you?”

Christine came to his rescue. “Uh, it’s a Jeremy secret?”

Rich gave Christine an exasperated look. “No shit.”

“I mean, it’s Jeremy’s secret! So we can’t tell you… the details! Yeah!”

God, Michael was going to die in the grave Christine was digging them. “Fine, sure, just quit giving me that look Rich. So Jeremy’s mom, has been trying to contact him?”

Christine nodded, and Rich looked between them, frowning like he knew that that wasn’t the end of it. “And you think he’s going to go, what, stay with her?”

“I don’t know! She was sort of an asshole, but she was still his mom!” Michael shouted, because somehow actually saying it hurt more. “And if he wants to ditch me for her, I’ve got to let him go!”

Rich folded his arms, rubbing his thumbs against the scar tissue. “Look, I know you two had a lot of shit happen between you when he was— I was— SQUIPed, but I honestly don’t think Jeremy’s got it in him to do that again.”

Michael was silent, desperately wishing he could just jam on his headphones like he used to when he didn’t want to have a conversation.

“You two have been through hell together,” Rich said, looping an arm around Michael’s neck. “And honestly, you should really just talk to Tall-Ass about this.”

Christine nodded, and Michael stared at the floor, trying to choke down the warm feeling rising in his throat.

The clock ticked in the background.

Rich drummed his fingers on Michael’s shoulder.

A pellet leaked out of the ripped seam on the beanbag.

“Well,” Rich said a little too loudly. “I have a dentist appointment at five. So uh, Dr. Rich is out.”

Michael watched him untangle himself and stand. “Thank you?”

“Hey man,” Rich shrugged, “As far as I’m concerned, this was inevitable.”

Before Michael could react and ask him what the fuck that meant, Rich Goranski ascended the steps and left, like a bisexual fairy godmother who had just finished pimping out her ward in metaphorical clothing made of metaphorical silk and ermine for a metaphorical ball.

Christine and Michael sat in companionable, yet awkward, silence. Michael was debating offering her a controller and roping her into a match of Pokemon, because he’d need someone to play with after Jeremy left, and she had sort of slotted into that position by default, when she finally stood.

“Good talk?”

Michael shrugged and Christine frowned. “Michael. He’s your friend and he’s my friend— we’ll work through it.”

She turned to leave, but something pulled at him to stand and say something. “Christine.”

She paused at the door, hand resting on the tarnished knob. “Yes?”

Michael took a deep breath, and hoped she would understand. “I think that life’s kinda more like Mario Party than Apocalypse of the Damned or Pikmin 2.”

“Michael, the only videogame I’ve ever played more than once is Tamagotchi.”

“Okay, that’s a little sad.” Micheal scratched the back of his neck. “I guess what I’m trying to say is, whatever happens with Jeremy and me, you’re still our Player 3.”

“Do I need to get the tattoo?”

“Not if you don’t want to?”

Christine’s grin was big enough to break her face as she pulled him into a hug, and wow, play rehearsal apparently made you buff as hell. “Don’t worry, you two will always be my Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.”

“Thanks. I think?”

“Yo, Chris! You coming?”

Christine pulled away, smiling, and flicked his shoulder. “Google it! I gotta go though!”

She shut the door, and that brief flicker of hope left with her.

Michael sighed and cracked open the Snapple she had left, sipping at the too-sweet syrup and frowning at the vaguely alcoholic taste that really old soda picked up. Panicked dread had crystallized to cold certainty, and if there was one thing Michael knew, fighting the inevitable just made it hurt more when it happened. There wasn’t any Mountain Dew he could shove down Jeremy’s throat, or computer he could antagonize to fix this.

Jeremy was going to dive away into the sea one day, and there was nothing Michael could do— should do— to stop it.

♒

Michael stared out through the front window of his car, not even bothering to turn on the windshield wipers. The rain was coming hard now, fat drops slapping against the glass. In the distance sound the low rumble of rolling thunder. The June storm had swept in incredibly fast, bowing the trees and making it almost impossible to drive. Michael sighed, secretly relieved. “Sorry guys, no day at the beach.”

Jeremy grumbled, gazing forlornly out at the water, which roiled in the heavy gale, crashing against the rocks that dotted the surface. Michael rolled his eyes, catching Christine’s judging, backseat stare in the mirror. God. He just wanted to go home.

He was halfway to turning the ignition when a high noise broke through the storm, the first few notes of the aria they had heard again and again. Michael shivered. Even after all this time, the music stirred something cold and panicked in his chest.

Lightening crashed, illuminating the horizon and the rocks in the cove in sharp silhouette, and Jeremy stiffened, eyes wide. Wordlessly, he got out of the car, transfixed by something in the distance.

“What are you doing?” Christine said. Her tone was light, but there was a thread of tension running through it.

Jeremy was already pulling off his shirt. With the car door open and light pouring out of it, the shiny lines of his scars were stark against his back. “She’s out there!”

Michael scrambled out of the car, Christine hot on his heels.

“Jeremy, are you fucking crazy?” Michael shouted over the gale. “It’s not safe!”

“She’s my mom!” Jeremy kicked off his pants into a wet heap like Christine wasn’t even there, and pulled the seal skin around his shoulders. “I need to see her!

“What the hell?” Michael grabbed his shoulders, pulling him around to face him. Jeremy’s eyes were dark and his face was half way between excitement and panic.

“I have to talk to her!”

“You hate your mom! Why the hell do you want to go talk to her?” That cold, tired part of Michael screamed to stand idle, let him leave and cut that cord, but desperation was twisting around his heart.

“Because if I have to be like her, I want to at least know if there's anything worth salvaging from me!” Michael stepped back, startled. “I hurt everyone I care about, Michael! I hurt dad and Christine and you , and I’m sorry, but I can’t fix it since I don’t even know what I even did, and you won’t tell me, so at least let me go see the one person who actually wants to be around me!”

Michael blinked, and Jeremy was gone, a pale figure streaking towards the sea across the sand. He shouted, and ran after him, scrambling down the dune because, he couldn't let him go, fuck letting him go quietly—

Christine had his arm. “Michael, stop, you’ll get torn apart out there!”

“We have to go! I’m not letting him almost get killed again, because I fucking sat around crying!”

“I know!” Her voice cracked, and Michael turned away from the sea to look at her. Her hair flailed in the wind, and Michael couldn’t tell if it was rain or surf or tears that rolled down her cheeks, but it didn’t fucking matter. “Follow me!”

Michael chased after her, bare feet slapping against sharp slipper shells and through puddles, and Michael saw the silhouette of the dock against the black waves of the sea. Christine was kneeling already, unhooking a little boat with oars and life vests tucked under the bars that served as seats. He grabbed a vest out of it, every PSA and story of men lost at sea ringing through his head like a choir.

Christine clicked her vest on and clambered into the boat, and Michael followed, because, god, she at least looked like she knew what to do. He wiped the rainwater off his glasses, and reached for the oars, but Christine had them already and was pushing them away from the dock.

The water was rough, and Michael felt the icy water seep through his hoodie every time a wave crashed against the ship, like the cold was draining into his very being.

Lightning slashed across the sky, arcing like the scars on Jeremy’s back, and Michael saw her. She stood out on the rock, a massive piece of basalt that crested out of the water like the head of some ancient leviathan, white water crashing against it and around her bare feet. Her skin whipped around her, its dark form melding into her hair. She was singing, and Michael felt it surround him, the notes backed by the percussion of the rain and sea.

Mrs. Heere knelt, and extended a hand to the turning tide.

Michael felt a vise on his throat when he saw a pale arm shoot out of the sea, and take it.

Jeremy, skin held against his chest in one hand, the other holding his mother’s, crawled out of the water, coughing up salt.

Christine steered the boat closer, and Michael could hear them over the pounding of the wind.

“Jeremiah,” And god, the way her voice sounded so unmistakably fond was so at odds with what Michael had heard of her, seen of her, it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end— “It’s beautiful, isn’t it.”

Jeremy stared at seafoam around his feet, and when he spoke, Michael could barely hear him over the crashing of the waves. “It is.”

The storm seemed to rage for an impossibly long time as they stared at each other. Jeremy shook his head and broke the silence.

“Why did you leave him?”

She placed her hands on Jeremy’s shoulders. “Jeremy, there is nothing in this world more important than your freedom. The ocean is that. You’ll understand when you’re older.”

“Mom.” Jeremy’s voice was colder. “ Why did you leave him. ”

“What was I supposed to do? Stay beached on the shore, idling away my days when I could be out here?” Mrs. Heere gestured at the frothing sea, like that explained everything, like that made it okay.

“You were supposed to be my mom!” Michael winced as Jeremy’s voice cracked on the last word. Christine was doing something with the oars, but the selkies on the rock were like a car crash— Michael couldn’t look away.

“You were suppose to stay with us, so we could help each other! Not just run off on a stupid whim!”

“I deserved better, Jeremy. You do too.”

“Bullshit!”

Mrs. Heere sighed. “You think Michael’s going to understand this?”

“He doesn’t have to!” Jeremy shouted, raking his hands through his hair. “I don’t understand him all the time, but that doesn’t mean he’s not my friend, not the reason I’m still alive! I love him, damn it, and there’s no way in hell I’d leave him for you!”

Michael felt his heart leap into his throat as he watched Mrs. Heere turn and stare out to Long Island out on the horizon, “Do you think I didn’t love your father?”

“Not enough.”

Mrs. Heere whirled around and grabbed Jeremy’s wrist, yanking him towards her. Jeremy yelped and stumbled on the sharp rocks, but didn’t move. “Jeremiah, this acting out has to stop. I know what’s best for you. This is what you want, trust me.”

“But this isn’t what I need.”

One second Jeremy was there on the rock, Mrs. Heere holding on to his arm like a vice, the next a seal was rolling down into the water. Jeremy bobbed to the surface, and Michael swore he could see the flash of his eyes, looking directly at him.

An enormous wave crashed against the rock, taking Jeremy with it, and Michael watched, horrified, as Jeremy float limply on the surface of the water as the waves threw him against it again and again.

And she just stood there.

“Help him!” Michael screamed. “He’s your son, god damn it!”

Mrs. Heere’s gaze alighted on Michael, but there was no warmth to it. Her eyes flicked to Jeremy, who was barely clinging to the rock, and she frowned. She didn’t say anything, just dove into the sea, and vanished into the crashing waves.

No one rose out of the water to help Jeremy.

Michael felt the burn of bile rising in his throat.

“Michael, I’ll row, just get him!”

The ocean churned, enormous swells tossing the dinghy around like a toy in a child’s bathtub. Michael reached into the water, groping around for a hand or a skin or a flipper. Finally, Michael’s hand brushed against something soft and warm, and grabbed it, holding on for dear life.

Jeremy’s fur was slick, and every time it seemed Michael had a firm grip on him, he lost it. He was leaning halfway out of the boat when he finally wrapped his arms around Jeremy. He didn’t know if it was the waves, or the adrenaline burning through him, but Michael found the strength to grab tight and pull Jeremy into the boat.

Lightning cracked, and Michael saw dark liquid sliding across his hands. A fresh wave of nausea rolled over him.

He was dimly aware of Christine shouting something about going to shore as he knelt over him, his knees drenched in the water that had sloshed into the boat.

Michael put an ear to Jeremy’s muzzle and a hand to his neck, and tried to block out the rain, and the cold, and the dread pooling in his stomach.

There was a heartbeat, but he wasn’t breathing.

Lessons from health class rattled around his head as he desperately tried to remember CPR. How were you even supposed to do it on a fucking seal?

“Christine! Jeremy’s not breathing!”

“Shut his mouth and breath through his nose!” God, he can hear the fear in her voice, and man, maybe Christine was his Waffle House Index, because he could feel her panic draining into him. “That’s what you do for dogs!“

Everything felt like it was moving too fast. He put his hand on Jeremy’s slack jaw and pushed it closed as best he could and breathed .

Jeremy’s chest rose under Michael’s palm, and fuck if that wasn’t reassuring. Michael gasped and went back down, forcing the air in again and again.

Michael pulled back just fast enough to avoid getting hit in the nose as Jeremy rolled on his side and heaved into the bottom of the boat. The noise of Jeremy hacking up a lung, as well as what felt like buckets of seawater rattled around his head and god, that was going to give him nightmares.

After a moment of wretched coughing, Jeremy went still, and Michael watched as he changed back, pulling the skin away from his face with shaking hands. Even in the darkness, he could see the black bruises and cuts on white skin, where Jeremy had hit the rocks.

“‘Miah?”

Jeremy tried to sit up, the skin falling off his shoulders and into his lap, and groaned.

“No, no, that’s a really bad idea, here, let me help,” MIchael said, and hooked his arm around Jeremy’s bare waist, pulling him up. Jeremy leaned against him heavily, cheek pressed against his shoulder. “Christ, how do you feel?”

“...Like crap,” Jeremy muttered, and Michael winced at the hoarse, raspy tone he had taken on. “Hurts to talk.”

Michael nodded. “I’d imagine.”

Jeremy stared off at the horizon, and Michael could feel his shoulders shaking against his chest. He looked at Christine desperately, but she seemed completely out of her element here, and busy with the oars anyways.

Michael carded his hand through Jeremy’s wet hair, and let him sob into his shoulder.

♒

The ocean was still today. It rippled at the edges of the sandbar, stretching out to the horizon like a mirror image of the cloudless sky.

Jeremy was at his side, smiling out at the water, but some of that manic energy was gone. The gentle ocean breeze tousled his hair, and Michael could see the faintest hint of summer freckles spreading across his neck.

Michael watched him fiddle with the strap of his backpack, and sighed. He was stalling, and that never helped— better to do it quick and painless. He took a deep breath.

“I’m sorry.”

“What?”

Michael sighed and put his hands on Jeremy’s shoulders. Somehow, they steadied him. “I’ve been acting weird and distant to you for ages, and you’ve just dealt with it, and that was really, really fucking shitty of me.”

“Michael, it’s okay.” Jeremy paused, and then quietly unhooked his bag from his shoulders. After a moment of fussing with the zippers, he handed Michael the skin. The cool, musty feeling it had when they found it was gone— now it was warm under his fingers, the dull fur replaced with thick guard hairs slick with oil. The little holes torn in it from the rocks were almost closed, thank god, and he swore that if he looked for it, he could feel a pulse. “You did the same for me.”

“Jeremy.” Michael stared at what was literally Jeremy’s life in his hands, and then at it’s owner, who was biting his lip. “It’s not alright.”

“It is.” There was a hard note in Jeremy’s voice. “I was distracted the sea, and acting weird, and—”

“That isn’t a good enough reason!” God, he hated this. “I let my stupid abandonment issues ruin everything when you were dealing with your mom and dad, and turning into a seal!”

“Yeah, and whose fault are those?” Jeremy’s mouth was a thin, bitter line. “It’s fine.”

“Jeremy, I know what it’s like to have someone you love ignore you for months, and I hate that I made you go through that! I know that it’s not fucking okay!” Jeremy flinched, and Michael pulled him into a hug. After a tense moment, Jeremy rested his hands on Michael’s back, and buried his head in his shoulder.

“Michael,” Jeremy whispered into his neck. “Even if I leave, or go away, I’m always going to come back.”

Michael nodded and squeezed him tight. They stood there for what felt like years, waves lapping at their feet, Michael’s hand rubbing circles into Jeremy’s shuddering back. Finally, Michael pulled away and broke the silence.

“I heard what you said about me.” Jeremy pulled away enough that Michael could see his tear-stained face going from concern to mild terror to carefully controlled, somewhat dead eyed confusion in heart beat. “To your mom.”

“Wha— I mean, I’m pretty sure you’re still my best friend?”

Michael leveled a look at Jeremy. He sighed, hiding his face in his hands. “I’m sorry I made things weird— I mean, weirder— between us. Again.”

“No, it’s okay!”

Jeremy kept going, like Michael hadn’t even spoken. “And I get if that’s gross or weird, and if you don’t want to touch me or sleep next to me, that’s o—”

After thirteen years of friendship, ages of pining, an abusive supercomputer, and a magical seal skin, Michael was pretty good at nipping Jeremy’s anxiety ridden tangents in the bud. Kissing him was definitely a new technique, but judging by Jeremy’s soft gasp and the way his hands fisted in the folds of Michael’s tee shirt, not an invalid one.

It was over too quick for Michael to really process what he had done, and next thing he knew, Jeremy was red faced and staring at him, baffled. “Did you just—”

Michael snorted, half out of nerves, and half out of the sheer elation that this was actually happening. “I should have done that way, way earlier.”

“ How long ?

Michael shrugged, giddy like he was riding a high. “I don’t know? I guess it was the start of last year, when you got me The Cheetahmen cartridge? I just sort of looked at you, and this obscure ass game I was desperate for and blabbering about when I was stoned off my ass, and realized you’re, y’know, Amazing. I mean, in a way I wanted to date.”

Jeremy looked  at the shore, grinning. “Dude! You could have told me!”

“Yeah, well we know that now.” Michael was going for snarky, but honestly, he couldn’t keep out the sheer joy from his voice, because he did know that now, holy fuck. “You could have told me !”

The look that Jeremy shot him was so fond and warm, Michael felt like he was going to float away. “Okay, now you have to tell me about your dumb, gay crush.”

Jeremy rolled his eyes. “It was only dumb because it was on you, jerk.”

“Shut up and tell me already!”

“Fine, fine!” Jeremy smile melted into a more pensive look, and leaned his head on Michael’s shoulder. “End of freshmen year!”

“Dude! I thought you liked Christine then?”

“I liked you both? I guess?” Jeremy shrugged. “And I figured that if I went after Christine and it blew up in my face, I’d at least have you, but if I fucked up us , then…”

Oh.

“Yeah, that worked out perfectly, didn’t it?” Jeremy sighed, eyes on the sea. “And then, there was the SQUIP and then it was gone, everything flooded back, and I was scared it was just rebound, and then this h—”

Michael grabbed him by the cardigan and pulled him in.

The kiss wasn’t great. Michael’s glasses pressed uncomfortably against the bridge of his nose, and his aim was a bit like more like a shotgun spread than a sniper shot, hitting more of Jeremy’s cheek then his lips. Jeremy tasted like salt, seaweed and the vile, saccharine taste of Cotton Candy slushie, but his hand was warm on Michael’s waist, and when Michael ran his tongue across the line of Jeremy’s lips, he hummed contentedly.

That kind of made it perfect.

Jeremy pulled away after a moment, smiling softly. Wordlessly, he draped the skin around their shoulders, warm and heavy, and they stepped into the sea together.