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At the best of times, Charles could often be a touch absent-minded.
Well, “completely oblivious” was how Raven always put it, but personally he found that rather harsh.
Though perhaps accurate, given the time of year. Early December means a few things: the approaching holidays, the end-of-term grading, the first brutal dump of snow on the city, the dawning realization that he’s about to spend the 24th in a complete panic as he never seems to get his shopping completed beforehand, and really all things considered he should have an award for making it back from the laundromat at all.
Of course, after he’s done his laundry, it always takes another day (or three) to get around to folding it all. Takes maybe another two after that to be finished with the task. Maybe more if he’s truly swamped, and maybe sometimes, yeah, he just sort of lives out of the heap of unsorted clothing.
Anyway. All that being said, all this seems to sum up to the surreal argument he finds himself in at five-thirty on a Monday evening with a complete stranger.
“Errm. Can I help you?” he had asked after opening the door, thinking I don’t care what he’s selling, he can bloody well stay.
While Charles likes to consider himself fairly open to the broad spectrum of human beauty, the man who’d just interrupted a stunning evening of 101 essays was objectively one of the most attractive men Charles had ever had the pleasure to meet.
“Give it back,” is all the man says, and that figures, doesn’t it? The personality can’t possibly match the looks, that’s just Charles’s luck.
Staring up at the stranger, he frowns.
“What?”
The man crosses his arms, and straightens to look behind Charles like he’s trying to scan the apartment. Charles refrains from the urge to just slam the door. It’s not like he’d really be tall enough to block this guy’s line of sight even if he could stand, and it’s not like he ever truly expects anyone to be even remotely considerate of that fact, but really.
“I know it’s in here somewhere,” the man insists, and Charles folds his arms as well, tilting his chin up.
“If you asked nicely, perhaps I’d be able to help with whatever it is you’ve lost,” he says.
Yes, he should probably just slam the door on this guy. But spend long enough teaching, you might just find yourself correcting everyone’s poor behavior out of pure habit.
The stranger blinks down at him, a crease forming between his eyebrows. It’s as if he’s genuinely perplexed by the very concept of polite behavior.
“I,” he starts, before tilting his head curiously. “I believe I saw you at the laundromat last week.”
They stare at each other for a long, uncomfortable moment.
Not for the first time in his life, Charles finds he rather wishes that he’d a way of telling what someone’s thinking without going through all the bother of listening to them talk.
“Yes?” he prompts, eventually. He’s half inclined to deny it--surely he’d’ve noticed someone who looks this good--but he does tend toward tunnel vision, come laundry day. After the first few trips, he figured out how very little eye contact it takes before someone starts trying to unload the dryers for him.
“And,” the man says, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, “And you took something of mine. I believe.”
“You believe,” Charles echoes.
“Know,” the man corrects, “I know. And I don’t have time for any of this,” he gestures between them, a short dismissive wave of his hand that seems to suggest Charles has any clue whatsoever about what he’s going on about, “Or any interest in it, either. Not that you’re unattractive, at least for a--”
All right, then. Definitely time to slam the door, because--attractive or not--Charles isn’t about to be insulted by an utter stranger. He throws the locks as loudly as possible to make sure Mister Tall Dark and Ableist can hear it through his excuses, and heads back to the stack of grading thinking well, that’s the last I’ll see of him.
The next day, there’s a knock at the door.
Again, it’s five-thirty. Charles is shocked enough to see the man again, much less to be greeted with a carton of pho--suspiciously, it looks and smells to be from his favorite place, halfway across town--and a poor excuse for an apology which consists mostly of “I’m sorry to have maligned the human species” for some reason. He’s intrigued (and hungry) enough to accept the soup and bizarre excuses, but before terribly long the man asks after his misplaced laundry.
Charles insists, again, that he’d have noticed, that he’d never picked up something not his before and he didn’t last week either, and the man leaves in a huff.
And shows up the night after that.
And again the next, and Charles should call the cops but frankly the interruptions--which usually seem to involve food or flowers or both, like this guy’s trying to court him without actually introducing himself--are welcome ones. The city’s been gloomy with sleet and snow for weeks, and it seems he only interacts with harried students. Strange as he may be, this guy is at least a refreshing change of pace, enough so that by the fifth night Charles is inviting him in before he quite knows what he’s saying.
“About time,” he says, storming in like he owns Charles’s apartment already.
He comes to a dead halt in the middle of the living room, seemingly taking in the state of the flat. There are tea cups and coffee mugs and small bowls (if you squint hard, the latter could be just possibly mistaken for tea cups if one were quite desperate for a clean receptacle from which to drink one’s tea) lining every last even surface. The man curses under his breath, and starts gathering.
“Way you’ve been, I almost believed you didn’t want a spouse,” he says. Charles cannot stop staring at the lines of this guy’s body as he stoops to pick up mug after mug. “Much less need one.”
The words sink in.
Eventually.
“Wait, what was that?” Charles asks the man’s back. Already, he’s in the kitchen and making a series of dismayed remarks about the state of that as Charles heads after him. “It sounded as if you said--”
“--why do you even own dish soap, if you aren’t going to use--”
“--err, that is… Hold on, I’m trying to speak to you seriously here and you’re going on about--”
“--this is appalling. Why did you not let me in when I first arrived, if you needed me so desperately--”
“I don’t need any--what are you doing? Who are you? You’re throwing out perfectly good china--”
“--it’s cracked. And molding. That’s mold, look, mold’s keeping it together--”
“--that’s the patina. Will you stop changing the subject! You’re going on with this nonsense about spouses and I don’t even know your name!”
There’s a pause, then. The stranger shuts off the kitchen tap, and the only noise for a moment is the soft pop of soapsuds. He turns, slowly.
“You took my pelt without even knowing,” he says, voice flat.
The words make no sense. It’s as if he’s speaking an entirely different language, Charles thinks, but all the same he finds himself apologizing.
“I’m sorry? I mean, I didn’t take anything. What are you--”
The man shakes his head, and turns back to the sink, picking up a scrub brush.
Charles didn’t know he still owned one.
“My name’s Erik,” the stranger grumbles. “And if I’m going to be living with you, we will be working out a chore schedule.”
“Wait. Living with?” Charles echoes, incredulous.
But by then, Erik’s clearly far more focused on dishes than conversation, and Charles watches for a few minutes more before thinking well, better him than me, I suppose and heading back to his grading.
Erik spends about an hour on the dishes, tirelessly salvaging whatever he decides he can. He spends another scrubbing down the kitchen, grumbling the whole time; twenty minutes before the fridge cursing at the endless stacks of take-out containers and overfilling the compost bin.
The whole time, Charles is perplexed, but not uncomfortable. He’s not even really all that embarrassed about the state of his flat as Erik comes and goes from kitchen to living room and back again, not at all quiet as he carries on with the chores.
There are a few stacks of grading to finish. Absorbed in the task, strangely lulled by the annoyed clanking of pans and the low warm muttering of Erik’s complaints on the nature of Charles’s house. A few hours later, he sets aside the last paper, and curses softly as he adjusts how he’s sitting, the muscles of his lower back twitching with strain.
“You should take better care of yourself,” Erik accuses, and Charles jumps, feeling Erik’s broad hands on his shoulders.
One thing to have a stranger clean your house, quite another for him to get handsy, Charles thinks. But there’s something familiar about it, a disconcerting rightfulness. Shaking himself, Charles pulls away.
It’s just that he’s sore, he thinks. He’s been on a few dates lately, but nothing’s been on the “casual massage” level for a number of years. The reason it feels right is because Erik’s just pressed down, with a weirdly unerring accuracy and the perfect amount of force, on the one knot in Charles’s right shoulder that’s forever making his massage therapist curse his lack of proper posture.
“Don’t,” Charles warns, pivoting his chair so he’s now facing Erik.
Erik raises his eyebrows at him, tilts his head slightly.
The light in the living room isn’t exactly great, save for Charles’s desk lamp. And the light in the kitchen is only worse, the garish compact fluorescents that came with the place.
But the way Erik’s standing right now...
The light from the desk lamp catches his grey-blue eyes in a way that makes him look suddenly and completely inhuman.
“What are you,” Charles asks, quietly. He’s not afraid, only curious. But he’s wholly aware that’s how it always is, with him. One day his inquisitiveness will just get him in trouble, and that might be today. “You said something about a pelt--is that why you’re here?”
Erik laughs, a short and humorless bark. “I’m yours, now.”
“You’re--”
“Practically human,” he says, spitting the word out like a curse, “because you took my skin, and you’ve got the audacity to pretend you don’t know.”
“I don’t,” Charles insists. “Look, Erik. Saying I’ve got your pelt or whatever it is--”
“Which you do--”
“Just,” Charles sighs, shaking his head. “Okay. For the sake of argument, I’ve took something of yours. Why would I hide if I had? You seem to believe it’s here, whatever I say. If you’re going to clean my entire bloody flat and move in heedless of whether or not I’ve actually got this thing, why not just tell me what’s going on?”
“Because you shouldn’t need me to explain anything,” Erik complains. “What do you think I am?”
“Mad, for starters,” Charles grumbles, and Erik just glares at him a moment before brusquely sweeping around to head back to the kitchen.
“I’m a selkie,” he says over his shoulder, dismissive and bored, as if stating obvious fact. “And until you return my pelt--and you’d best do it soon--you’re my husband.”
“A selkie?” Charles repeats to himself, but Erik’s already calling to him from the kitchen.
“Dinner’s in fifteen. Hope you like pasta, as it's the only thing not rotting. And I expect you to do the dishes, after.”
----
Charles does the dishes.
He also winds up doing a last-minute sprucing of the bathroom after, since Erik seems entirely unwilling to leave--this spouse business is apparently serious--and while Erik accepts his offer of a shower, he sets up a makeshift bed on the couch.
There’s a strange energy between them, some sort of connection he can’t easily dismiss.
After Erik’s done in the shower, Charles heads in to complete his nighttime routine, passing Erik as he’s heading out to the couch.
But when he’s finally transferring into the bed--he’s not shocked to find Erik there, curled in one of his old robes.
“Hi there,” he murmurs, and Erik mumbles something unintelligible in greeting.
Charles settles beside him, and stares at the ceiling, feeling entirely at sea. None of the last dates he’d had were quite on the “fall asleep together without, you know, sleeping together” level, either.
The room is warm and close, and Erik’s breathing is steady and quiet, and somehow just slow enough to not seem quite human. Yet there’s something comforting in that, too. Perhaps, fantastic as it is, Erik’s telling the truth.
Perhaps they’re truly bound together.
Either way, the eerie pace of Erik’s breathing lulls him, and he falls into slumber that’s deep and full of odd blue-lit dreams. And when he wakes, the first pale glow of morning is already glimmering through bedroom window.
Disoriented, Charles rubs at his eyes one-handed, and tries to reposition. It’s a rare thing for him, sleeping the entire night, and that’s when he’s on his own. He sleeps so poorly he’s never managed more than a few hours at a stretch with another person, but last night he somehow slept right through Erik winding all across him like a bloody limpet.
Briefly, he considers letting Erik sleep. But needs are needs, and if Erik’s going to play at being his husband he may as well do a proper job of it.
Pushing at Erik’s shoulder, he shifts, ignoring the low unhappy grumbling.
“Sorry,” he mutters in return as Erik lifts off of him, “you don’t have to wake up, but you do have to move.”
“Hmm,” Erik agrees, lying on his back by Charles’s side. “Well, I’m awake, now.”
From the corner of his eye, Charles sees that Erik’s looking up at the window. There’s something forlorn in his expression, and Charles sighs, turning toward him.
“Erik… I… That is, hypothetically speaking, if I’ve got this cloak of yours--”
“Pelt,” Erik corrects, rolling on his side and propping himself on one arm to look at Charles. “And I do doubt it’s hypothetical.”
“Right, so this pelt, which--for the sake of argument--which I now have, I would’ve picked it up in the laundromat. Right?”
Erik leans in a bit closer. “Yes. That’s right,” he says.
“And it’s your, well. Magic pelt, is that right? Makes you transform into a seal and back.”
“That’s simplifying--”
“So it’s rather important,” Charles continues, watching Erik’s face. He’s still trying to somehow get a read on whether or not he’s just spent a night beside a complete madman.
“Of course,” Erik says, sounding a bit exasperated. He looks away briefly, glancing around the room.
Not the first he’s done it, Charles suddenly realizes, and he can’t help smiling a little when Erik looks back at him.
“If it’s that important, then… Why’d you have it at a bloody laundromat to begin with? Doesn’t it need to be steamed, or something like it? You can’t even take furs to a dry cleaner, I don’t think. Aren’t there--well, probably less of them nowadays, wouldn’t there be--but weren’t there professional fur cleaners, isn’t it sort of it’s own...”
He trails off, noticing Erik’s now gone pale.
“I’m sorry, is it the fur thing? I didn’t mean to, that is,” he stammers. God, Raven always tells him it’s an awful habit of his, nattering on, and if he’s gone and hurt Erik already--
“No, it’s not that. It’s happened before, of course--humans kill everything, given half a chance--but it’s rare for my kind to be caught unawares. I was just remembering what happened to my pelt,” he grumbles. “I do hope wherever you’ve got it hidden, it’s not damp. When it gets musty--”
“It’s sealskin,” Charles interrupts. This only makes less sense, the more he thinks on it. “Isn’t it supposed to be wet? Can’t you just put it on and take a shower?”
“Not in that state, I couldn’t,” Erik insists. “And it’s always held up perfectly well in the wash. Think about it, if it’s meant to be wet, as you say, why would it need to be steam cleaned?”
Charles sighs. “Congratulations, you proved my knowledge of basic pelt maintenance wrong. What happened to it to begin with?”
Erik flops back onto his side again, in a move that Charles now finds all too reminiscent of a seal. “The upstairs neighbors happened. They know the plumbing is original, but do they refrain from flushing a disturbing variety of human-made items?”
“How do you have upstairs neighbors in a harbor?”
“I don’t. I know it’s not your fault, humans just aren’t very clever as a whole, but--”
“Steady on,” Charles interrupts, frowning at Erik.
“Sorry,” Erik says, not sounding terribly apologetic. “But I have an apartment. In a building. That’s on land, as buildings tend to be.”
“Yes, I think I’ve got it now,” he grumbles. “But if you find humans such a dense, self-centered species, why do you live in an apartment complex at all?”
“It’s a family building. Someone should be watching it, making sure the humans don’t raze it to the ground for more--” he gestures in the air, “--what are they called? Condominiums?”
The way he says it is stilted, each syllable enunciated with care.
“A family building,” he repeats, raising one eyebrow. “For a seal--”
“We’re not--” Erik huffs out a sigh, glaring when Charles just smirks up at him. “I’ve told you. The word’s ‘selkie,’ at least so in your pathetic excuse for language. But if you must know, my grandfather was a human.”
“Oh,” Charles says, prodding gently at Erik’s side, “so you didn’t get on with your grandpa, hmm?”
“What? What makes you think--course I got along with him. He was an exception to the rule,” Erik sniffs, and Charles has to fight off the urge to laugh as Erik frowns at him.
“Unlike me, is that right?” Charles asks, meaning for it to come out light and joking.
But while the concept of seal-people is still rather unbelievable, and while it’s a nice change to meet someone who finds all humanity universally distasteful rather than being exceptionally awful to one segment or another in particular, he’s not too sure about being judged on the mere basis of his species.
Erik makes a dismissive noise and turns back around, pulling the blanket closer and staring at the window.
For a moment, Charles stares. There’s a scattering of freckles on the back of Erik’s neck, and Charles wonders at them. He can’t freckle as a seal, can he?
It’s perplexing, how right and intimate this feels, waking next to someone he just met over an argument about misplaced fur.
And with that thought, a wave of guilt makes Charles flush. He’s just glad Erik’s turned the other way.
“Erik,” he murmurs eventually, and Erik hums in acknowledgement. Pulling himself closer, Charles brushes his fingers over the warm skin of Erik’s neck. The hairs are soft, neat bristles, like he’d had a haircut quite recently. “I have put you through trouble enough, haven’t I?”
“I won’t argue that,” Erik says, before rolling over into Charles’s arms. “But I wouldn’t say it’s been that great of a hardship. You wouldn’t be impossible, at least not for a land-spouse. It’s only the timing of it.”
“We’re not married,” Charles says, wondering again how an entire species operates under the assumption that fur thievery makes for legally binding nuptials. “And I’d never keep you here against your will, whatever your traditions are. If it’s the pelt that keeps you here, if you really think there’s a chance I’ve got it--let’s find it.” Letting go of Erik, he pushes himself up to get in his chair. Erik is slower to sit up, as if genuinely shocked by Charles’s words, and Charles watches him sadly as he stands.
“Is that common, then?” Charles asks. He rather wishes he’d ever been at all interested in mythology, or that he’d at least rented that Secret of Roan Inish movie when Raven’d last asked him to watch the kids. “Keeping the pelt hidden, so a selkie can’t leave? Here, this one, I’ll check in the other,” he says, gesturing toward one of the hampers as he busies himself with the other. Erik clears his throat and starts lifting clothes aside. He piles them on the bed, neat and gentle.
“It’s never happened to me,” he assures. “I had a wife, once--”
Charles startles, and must make some noise indicating his dismay, because Erik straightens back up from his task.
“No! She wasn’t--we’re divorced,” he says. “And she’s much too smart to have her pelt stolen,” Erik adds, under his breath.
The more Charles hears, the more questions he has. Selkies divorce, but they wed a human the minute their fur gets swiped? It doesn’t quite add up, but he’s glad that nothing so untoward happened to someone Erik cared for.
“But her mother was stolen in that way, when we were young. Without our pelts, we can’t return to the ocean.”
There’s something in his voice that sounds as if he’s confessing a great secret. Charles silently digs through a heap of sweaters and shirts, feeling oddly humbled.
“I hope we find yours, then,” he says, softly. Erik hums in agreement, continuing to sort carefully through Charles’s laundry.
“Is that why you’re in a hurry,” he asks, after a moment.
It’s impolite, he shouldn’t push. Erik’s essentially a stranger, still. What Erik’s told him already--as fantastical, as incredible as it all is--was far more than Charles would’ve asked, but Erik keeps folding trousers and pairing socks.
“In a way,” he admits. “Normally I wouldn’t be so rushed. I was just out in September, it’s not like I’m going to dry up.”
“Could that happen?” Charles asks, looking up again. Erik just shoots him a withering glare in answer.
“As I was saying. It’s not for me, it’s for the pups.”
He says it so factually that, for a minute, Charles can’t even process that he probably doesn’t mean baby animals per se.
“The--” he starts, and Erik takes pity enough on him to interrupt.
“Pups, yes. Magda and I have our differences of opinion,” and Charles may not know Erik terribly well yet but he has the distinct feeling that’s an understatement, “but not so much so that I don’t spend holidays with them.”
Charles nods, heaping aside another sweater. “So they live out a distance, then? If you’re heading out this early--”
“Early?” Erik asks, sounding incredulous. “It’s the morning of the sixteenth already.” He fixes Charles with another look, his odd greyish eyes cold.
“You don’t think,” he says, “that selkies all celebrate Christmas, do you?”
“I, err, that is, I never exactly gave it much thought--” Charles starts, only to stop abruptly.
Because--improbable as it is--he’s suddenly thankful to whatever power there is, that he’s just touched something sleek and soft and utterly foreign.
“Oh,” he says, stunned. He reaches in deeper, taking the whatever-it-is carefully in both hands, drawing it out. The room’s silent, and he can feel Erik’s eyes on him.
Most of the fur is dark, a deep almost-black grey. But in the light, there’s a sheen to it; and there’s a great long line of silver running down the middle of it, like the back of whatever animal wore it was streaked with some precious metal.
“That’s it,” Erik whispers, unnecessarily. There’s a stack of Charles’s clothes on the bed before him, and he neatly folds the shirt in his hands and places it atop the rest before approaching.
“Thank you.”
Shaking his head, Charles holds the weight of fur out to Erik.
It’s a large pelt. Large enough, he can’t help noticing, to cover Erik’s body entirely.
“Don’t thank me, it was yours to begin with,” he murmurs, watching Erik take it up in his arms and hold it to his chest.
“Perhaps,” Erik admits. One thumb is brushing idly against the grain of the fur. Whatever he believes of Erik’s story, Charles thinks, it’s clear that the pelt is truly important to him. It’s obvious that it holds him in some strange sort of thrall. “But it’s not every day, meeting a human who would admit even that much.”
Charles swallows, throat tight. “Told you I wasn’t most humans,” he says, folding his hands on his lap.
It’s only been the one day he’d truly been speaking to Erik--one long, surreal, odd day--and only a week before that he’s known him at all.
But it’s as if he’s been with Erik his whole life. Maybe the pelt has some sort of magic over humans, too. And as Erik stands with the fur, draping it over one arm, Charles feels a weight settling in his stomach.
There’s no doubting Erik, now. The pelt makes this all too tangible and real, and he knows that Erik’s leaving.
“I don’t suppose--” he says, before having to clear his throat, and stopping.
Surely, it’s too much to ask, to see Erik again. And even now, Erik’s looking more at the fur than him. It’s as if there’s been something that was between them, and now it’s been severed.
Erik steps back.
“I need to go,” he says, his voice deep and hesitant.
“I know.” Charles follows him to the door, and every moment that passes--it’s like he’s less and less familiar with Erik, like the pelt truly held them joined.
“Thanks,” he says, watching Erik button his coat, wind his scarf back around his neck. He does everything a bit awkwardly, holding on to the pelt with one hand or the other the whole time. “For tidying up. You didn’t need to.”
Erik’s opening the door, already. It’s early yet, and the hallway is quiet, the rest of the apartment’s residents still sleeping, and Erik pauses and turns.
“I did,” he says. “I meant what I said, Charles--maybe it was an accident, you stealing my pelt. Maybe you never wanted a spouse. But you do need one,” he states.
And then, the fur safe in his arms, he leaves.
----
On the 25th, he’s out on a pier, probably freezing his ass off for no reason. “Probably” referring to the freezing bit--not like he’d feel it when his legs dropped right off from frostbite--and not the “no reason.”
He’s definitely out here for no reason. It’d just been instinct, shaking him awake in the pitch of pre-dawn and luring him out to a damn pier.
Christmas day, he thinks. Christmas day, and the city is silent and still and beautiful in that crystalline winter-morning sort of way, and here he is waiting for a man--a seal--he’d met a fortnight ago.
Huddling deeper into his coat and scarf, Charles watches the motion of the waves, deep grey and choppy. The minutes pass, and he berates himself for coming out here at all. He could be getting ready to brave the Adler-Darkholme homestead, he could be wrapping the presents he’d rushed out to buy yesterday and not been able to get wrapped at the store, he could be sleeping in, but…
But he can’t seem to help but stay here, just a bit longer, watching the dark motion of the water and thinking of Erik.
In retrospect, the whole affair seems at best a bizarre dream. Erik was only stopping by a week before he left, a handful of days before he slipped back off with a pelt in his hands. Charles never saw him transform, never had much more than a glimpse of the odd silvery fur and Erik’s word for proof that there’s apparently an entire civilization of shapeshifting seals living just off the harbor.
The waves pound on against the pier, and give no hint to what lies beneath. Charles waits, and the light shifts against the water, and for a long moment he’s sure that’s all he’s seeing: the reflection of the cold December sun, a line of silver breaking through the waves.
It vanishes, and appears again, and Charles is thinking you’ve still got plenty time left to get back to Raven’s before the kids wake.
He reaches down to unlock the brakes on his chair, rubs his hands together one more time to warm them before he leaves. The silver surfaces again closer, long and strangely solid.
Okay. Not the light, then, he thinks. Not the light, but it could be anything. A fish, or--more than likely, given these waters--a plastic bag.
He doesn’t get long to convince himself of any of that, as the sleek head of a seal breaks through the waters not far from the pier.
Just a seal, he thinks, inching a bit nearer to the edge, regardless. Just a seal, though he can’t remember the last time he’d seen one. Certainly not in the harbor, probably in a zoo, and definitely not this close-up.
It’s a big animal. But they are, aren’t they? It doesn’t mean anything at all that this creature looks to be about the size of a full-grown man. Seals get to be massive, don’t they. He wheels just a touch closer to the water, thinking only of getting a bit of a better look and not trying at all to see any similarities between a man he’d slept beside and a bloody pinniped.
The moment he’s neared the edge of the dock, the seal barks at him, loud and cutting in the silence of the morning, and it hauls its front half out of the harbor.
Water beads over its fur, making the silver shine, making the creature seem all the more ethereal. The animal is lean and long-necked, more a sea lion than a seal proper; when it barks again Charles can’t help but back up, noticing the great size of its fangs.
The seal huffs loudly and pulls completely onto to the dock, now that it’s room enough to do so.
“Um,” Charles begins, staring at it. The animal tilts its head, looking at him.
Charles swallows, forgetting whatever he’d been about to say. There’s an intelligence in those eyes, shrewd and almost human, and he’s a fool who can’t keep from hoping.
“Erik?” he breathes, reaching out.
The seal huffs again, moves its head in what Charles is desperately attempting to not anthropomorphize into a nod.
“Is that really--what am I saying,” he mumbles to himself, letting his hand drop. “I’m talking to a seal,” and then he curses and can’t say anything at all.
Suddenly, the seal’s pushing up, head arched back. In the middle of its chest, the fur starts splitting somehow, a gap that keeps getting larger and larger, and it’s all over and done with before Charles can even begin to process what he’s seen.
“I’ve told you before,” Erik says, standing impossibly on the dock, “I’m not a seal.”
Charles considers pinching himself.
“Well,” he says. “You’re, ah, dressed well as one, aren’t you? Isn’t it a bit cold?”
Erik keeps dripping all over the dock, barefoot and naked save for the pelt slung over his shoulders like a cape. He grins, just as toothily as his other form.
“Hello to you, too, Charles,” he says.
“Hello,” Charles replies. It’s incredibly difficult to make eye contact with Erik dressed as he is. “So, well. How are your--pups?” he asks, looking back out at the water.
There’s no sign of anything--or one--else out there. There was little evidence of Erik being in the water, either, but Erik shakes his head.
“They’re much too young to come to shore,” Erik says, and Charles has the feeling that’s a bit more about Erik’s human-related paranoia than anything inherent to selkie youth. “But maybe you’d like to meet them, someday.”
Charles smiles, amazed and delighted; broad enough that it warms his face in the freezing air.
“I’d love that,” he says, and he can’t keep himself from reaching out then, his gloved hands dark on the pale wet skin of Erik’s sides.
“I hope you had a lovely Hanukkah.”
“Thank you. And Happy Christmas to you, Charles.” Erik replies, and leans down to give him a chilly and damp embrace.
“I’m sure it will be, quite. Now, why don’t we go see if I can’t figure out a way to warm you up.”