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This is the closest he’ll ever get to the ocean, he knows. Sitting on the ship’s bow, legs crossed, and eyes closed as the cold wind plays with his hair. He can smell it, he can almost taste it, heavy on his tongue, and not for the first time he wishes — there’s the familiar yearning, the urge to jump and breathe it, live in it.
Neil feels more than hears someone approach him, and when a warm hand settles on his shoulder, he opens his eyes and looks up. There’s a softness to the way Andrew looks at him that he’s still not used to seeing on his face.
“I knew I’d find you here,” Andrew lets go of his shoulder and sits by his side. He doesn’t say anything else, but there’s a heaviness to the silence that Neil understands is worry.
“I’m fine,” he says, and Andrew shakes his head. Neil isn’t looking at him, but he knows there’s disapproval written all over his face. That’s a more familiar look, anyway.
“You’re not fine.”
Neil sighs. “No. But I will be.”
*
When he was five, his mother sat him down and explained to him what they were. Quiet words in the dead of the night, when his father was far, far away, hunting other creatures.
“You can’t let him know,” she said. She looked at him with serious, big eyes, and held his wrists too tightly, tight enough to give him bruises. “You can’t let anyone know. They’ll steal your coat and trap you, and you’ll be left with nothing but the yearning for something you can never have. Promise me, Nathaniel. You’ll keep it a secret and never trust anyone.”
The words didn’t mean a lot to him, when he was five — but he was used to keeping things from his father, and he knew what it meant to want things he couldn’t have. He trusted his mother to have his best interests at heart, so he promised her. He’d keep it a secret and never trust anyone but her.
Later, when she put him to bed, she sang him to sleep — a sweet, melancholic song about life under the sea, and how much she missed it.
*
When he was nine, they ran away. At the time, Nathaniel didn’t know that it would kill her — all he could feel was relief at not having to deal with his father anymore. They hadn’t talked about it ever since that night, when he was five, because any time he asked his mother was at turns brusque and reticent.
She told him it was because he couldn’t miss something if he didn’t know about it, that it wouldn’t hurt if he didn’t know what was missing.
She was wrong, of course, but he wouldn’t find that out until much later.
“Give it to me,” she said, when she considered they were far enough, safe enough. “Give it one long, last look, and then give it to me.”
They were going to hide it, he thought. And maybe, when he was old enough, or after his father died, he could come back for it. He remembered the songs, the lullabies his mother used to sing him, and he thought maybe…
He didn’t think anything of the fire she was building until she threw his coat into it.
He threw himself after it, but she held him back. “Listen to me,” she said, holding his face with one hand, forcing him to look her in the eyes. They were big, and crazed, and for a moment he could barely recognize his own mother. “You’re free now. Do you understand it? No one will ever control you like they did me. You’re free .”
He didn’t know enough to put into words how he felt, so he only nodded. He hadn’t known that when she’d told him not to trust anyone, she’d meant herself too.
*
She died slowly, away from the husband who bound her to shore. The first time he saw the ocean was also the day he buried her, because for all that she avoided it while she was alive, she was still a selkie. It felt… right.
Without her strong, heavy presence to distract him, he felt bereft. Worst of all, the longing — his desire to don his coat and live underwater, to join his people in the ocean — became unbearable.
He did the worst possible thing he could have done: he joined a pirate crew. A ship was both the closest and the farthest from the ocean he could bear to be.
*
They call themselves foxes, which is a strange name for a pirate crew, but he likes it. They’re a motley bunch with a worn down ship and they welcome him with open arms — mostly. He doesn’t get on well with their medic, but Neil (not Nathaniel, he buried that name alongside his mother) has no intention of ever asking him for anything, so it isn’t a problem.
And the captain likes him, even if he reminds Neil of his father more often than he’d like it. Even if he didn’t, his position is temporary: he was only hired because part of the crew is busy doing something else — Neil doesn’t ask what, it’s none of his business.
*
He’s happy, is the thing. Happier than he ever remembers being. And as the time passes, he wishes he could— well, he’s already learnt there’s no point wanting impossible things.
*
The first time he meets Andrew, it doesn’t go well — Andrew looks at him and realizes immediately that he’s hiding something, which doesn’t please him. Before anyone else can do anything, Neil finds himself against the tip of his rapier, and then tumbling down the ship, towards the ocean.
Two things go through his mind, as he’s falling down. The first one is he can’t swim, because his mother has never taught him, and the second one is finally , finally .
The water is like an old friend, both welcoming and strange at the same time. There’s a familiar sort of pain, inside, in the place that has been empty since that night when he was nine. He wishes to stay, just for one moment, before there are arms around him and he breathes air once again.
Later, when he’s back to the ship and Aaron has gotten the water out of his lungs, he finds he doesn’t resent Andrew for his suspicion. Neil learnt too late the price of trusting the wrong person, and it makes him feel… safer, in a way, to know that Andrew is willing to protect the foxes from this.
*
He learns, with time, that he and Andrew are kindred spirits. They’ve both been burnt before by someone they trusted — someone who should have protected them — and they both have something, now, that they wish to hold on with both hands and would do anything to protect.
They both find it difficult to put what they’re feeling into words.
But they both understand each other, even without words, and on top of that there’s something about Andrew that makes him very easy to trust. Maybe it’s because of Andrew’s straightforwardness, or maybe it’s because he never breaks his word, or maybe it’s the way Andrew respects his space implicitly — though at the end of the day, the reason doesn’t matter.
What matters is this: he’s as close to the ocean as he’ll ever be, his father is far away, and there are people who love him.
*
Neil looks up, towards the horizon, where the sun is setting. Andrew is a silent, warm presence at his side.
“You know,” he starts, and then pauses. Andrew is easy to talk to, but there are things he finds difficult to talk about anyway, feelings he has trouble admitting even to himself.
“Hm?” Andrew prompts him. Neil looks at Andrew, who’s giving him his undivided attention, but he doesn’t think he can handle seeing the look on Andrew’s face when he says it, so he looks away again.
“If I still had my coat, if my mother hadn’t burnt it, I’d trust you with it.”
There’s a pause. As if Andrew doesn’t know what to say, and then: “I know.”
“You wouldn’t hide it from me. You’d help me keep it safe. And if I wanted to leave, you would- let me.”
Andrew pulls him closer. Neil lets himself close his eyes, rest his head on Andrew’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he says, quietly.