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Tommy dove after the figure almost before he hit the water, eeling through the harsh currents to get him before he bashed his brain out on the rocks. He didn’t bother being circumspect about it, either; the people on the ship hadn’t seen him hiding on the beach at all, being too busy tying someone up and shoving him into the frozen shallows. They’d turned away as soon as the guy went under, ship heading back out to sea.
The stranger was barely swimming when Tommy reached him, too busy jerking against the restraints binding his wrists. Tommy circled him, but the guy didn’t seem to register his presence until Tommy bumped him with his snout; then he flinched back, eyes unfocused and dazed in the water. Definitely drowning, which settled things. Tommy fixed his teeth in the back of the stranger’s shirt and dragged him up to air, making a beeline home.
When someone was caught in cold water without their coat for too long— if they were also a huge pussy who lacked cold tolerance— they got shocky, shivery, fucked up beyond most relief. Sometimes they took breaths underwater even though anyone sensible knew it was bad. If Tommy didn’t hurry, this stranger would straight up fucking die.
He flopped onto land, dragging the guy out of the worst of the waves, and took off his coat so he could use hands to pull him into the cave. The stranger was tall and weirdly thin, and he had a long brown coat. Tommy paused at the sight of it, uncertainty welling up. If this fucker had a coat, he shouldn’t have been struggling to swim at all— but it didn’t feel like fur, so maybe it was a false coat, like someone had tricked him. Pretty stupid of the guy to get tricked like that, in Tommy’s opinion, but it could happen. People got desperate when they couldn’t shift.
Tubbo bobbed up from an inner pool, one of the deep places that kept water as the tide went out, and shifted while submerged, dark eyes gleaming. “Who’s that?”
“I don’t know,” Tommy said, depositing the stranger on a nice dry stretch of sand. He was too pale, no longer shivering. Tommy shifted back to chew the bindings off his wrists. “I think he’s freezing and shit, though," he said, once he'd freed the stranger's arms. His skin felt clammy. "We’ve got to warm him up, get his blood flowing before it turns to ice.”
“That’s not really how frostbite works,” Tubbo said, coming up to prod at him. He thumped him hard in the chest, Tommy pushing him over on his side, and the man threw up seawater, coughing weakly.
“He’s not shivering,” Tommy said. “That’s bad, right? A sign of the oncoming end of life?” He touched the stranger’s coat gingerly, but it felt like thick wet fabric, not living magic. A great big mass of soaked, freezing cloth, laid over the stranger like he was already a corpse.
“It sure isn’t anything good, bossman,” Tubbo observed. “Means he doesn’t have the energy to waste trying to warm himself up.”
“You think if I moved his coat a little he’d be warmer?” Tommy ventured. Saving someone from the sea was one thing, but taking their coat while they were unconscious was another. That was how selkies ended up trapped with people they hated. “Not to take, just to change position. So it’s still in his line of sight.”
“If it’s a life-saving measure, I think one could argue that it isn’t binding,” Tubbo agreed, frowning. “Or at least it could be binding both ways, if you’d like to have an obligation to this total stranger, which I’m not particularly suggesting you should.”
Tommy glared at the ground, thinking it through. He saw what Tubbo was implying: if he moved the man’s coat and used his own to warm him up, it’d prevent a one-sided obligation. It would also declare them brothers, or at least preliminary brothers if the stranger turned out to be evil-- and if he was evil, it would have to be Tubbo who killed him. Tubbo wouldn’t mind killing a stranger, though, so that wasn’t a dealbreaker. And they couldn't leave the stranger to die now, not when Tommy could have saved his life.
“Okay,” he said at last, settling into certainty. “Then we’re brothers unless he’s a huge fucking dick."
Tommy maneuvered the stranger’s arms out of his strange coat, folded it to set carefully aside. He settled next to him, propping them both against the wall, and wrapped his coat around them both.
Awareness trickled through him, like rainwater through stacked rocks. Tommy pressed up close to the stranger, willing warmth through his skin with all his heart's magic— touching with hands and bare arms, rolling up his pant legs to get more contact— and almost shrieked at the force of the horror-grief-hatred that poured back through the coat-connection. The stranger was mourning. The stranger was terrified, caught in it like a moth in a spider’s web, writhing with helpless worry for so many faces, and worse, below that, sewn through him like with a trussing needle, was the hatred. Suddenly Tommy despised the stranger beside him. Suddenly he wanted him dead, because he deserved it for failing everyone, for being an idiot and a bastard liar, he deserved drowning and mutilation and worse and god, god, it should have been slower—
“What the fuck?” Tommy shouted, jerking away.
Tubbo jumped up, staring around wildly. “What, what is it?"
“He’s all fucked in the head,” Tommy shrilled. His heart pounded, queasy hatred shaking through him in aftershocks. He hugged himself, wanting his coat back but not wanting to ruin the stranger's chances of survival by taking it away, and hopped a few paces, trying to shake off the worst of the mental impression. “He’s— I don’t, what the hell-- it's like his brain's all twisted in, like a-- toenail or something. One of the shitty ones that curls up and cuts your toe."
“Huh,” Tubbo said, peering closer. He had his coat wrapped tight around his shoulders, fastened so it wouldn't shake loose. Tommy wished they had woven blankets, so Tommy could take his coat back. “Like, monstrous kind of fucked, or the really sad kind?”
“I think the sad kind,” Tommy decided. Now that he wasn’t in his coat with the stranger, the foreign emotions were a lot more manageable. His new brother felt like the halted breath when you were trying not to cry, that moment where you struggled to control your face and blink back tears, where you tried not to focus on anything because one more iota of badness would push you over the edge. Too much buildup with nowhere to go, like a levy about to burst.
Tommy’s eyes stung, his mouth wobbling. He took a shuddering breath and went back to wrap his coat more completely around his shoulders. The stranger's lips were blue. Behind the grief, he mostly felt miserable with cold. Weather made you feel all sorts of shit, when it was crap enough.
“Maybe he needs cheering up,” Tommy said, staring down at him. He wracked his brain for things that he himself enjoyed— fighting, swimming, bothering other seals when he knew he could flee fast, stealing people’s fish— and came up with, “Do you expect he’d like a crab?”
Crabs were fun and nutritious. They scuttled, sometimes onto land so you had to chase after them on foot, and if you caught them you could crunch them in your jaws. One of them would be a treat, especially for someone so weakened he couldn't grab it for himself.
“I’d like a crab,” Tubbo said. “You want me to go find some, since you’re otherwise occupied?”
Tommy very much wanted that. Tubbo disappeared out of the mouth of the cave, slipping into the dark water, and left the two of them alone.
*
The gray sky darkened to black outside, rain patter starting up, and eventually the stranger shifted beside him, curling tighter into himself and mumbling under his breath. Tommy got a muddled sadness from him, the emptiness before emotion hit, but when he pulled the coat tighter around them both, it vanished into startled contentment.
“What the fuck is your deal, anyway?” Tommy asked, heartened by the change and spurred to conversation. The stranger didn’t respond, by virtue of being not awake. “Why’d they throw you in the sea? Did they want your real coat without you attached to it? ‘Cause that’s stupid, you know, that’s not how any of this works. You should’ve informed them of the rules before they threw you away.”
Tubbo wouldn’t return until later at night; he’d been cooped up in the cave for a few days doing boring tasks like weaving, so he’d take the opportunity to frolic and steal from other pods. Then he’d have to hide out until they stopped chasing him, so he could bring more food back to Tommy and the new guy. They had time to kill.
“Since we’re brothers, we should know these things about each other,” Tommy continued. The stranger mumbled something, low and nonsensical. “My name is Tommy and my favorite fish is mackerel. My least favorite fish is sharks. Sharks are bastards. If you see a shark, you should swim the other direction at once, get on land if at all possible. The only thing worse than sharks is orcas, since they're bigger and work in groups."
His new brother said nothing. His eyelashes fluttered, like perhaps he was dreaming. Tommy kept up a steady stream of words, letting general amiability seep through his coat and take the edge off the stranger's tired grief. His brother's skin slowly warmed, losing its pallid blue-gray tone and gaining proper color, and his breathing evened out, punctuated by the occasional sniffle. Tommy poked his nose to see if he'd wake up, but only succeeded in making the stranger press his face into the coat, turning his shoulders away.
Tommy had stood for a bit earlier, to take the stranger's coat and bring it closer to them both, but he didn't particularly want to move again. He wanted to get to know his new brother, the fluctuations of his unconscious emotions, his facial features and all the ways he would probably be annoying. It had been a while since their pod had contained anyone more than just him and Tubbo, and he knew Tubbo like the shape of his own whiskers; surprises were rare between them, and usually only popped up when one of them had been bothering the other for a good while.
Adding pod members was always an adjustment, though, from what he vaguely remembered of their birth pod. Someone would share coats with a stranger, bring them into the fold, and all of a sudden there would be a weird new person in your favorite haul-out spot, taking up the part of the beach that you most wanted to flop upon. Or you would want to hunt together, and they would steal your lobster, and you would have to talk it out so they would give you their squid in its place. Tommy thought this pod member would be a difficult one. Probably he would be a prissy bitch, or sad all the time so you had to cheer him up a lot.
Not that he minded cheering people up, really. He just wasn't sure how to do it for a person who didn't have a proper coat anymore and couldn't swim.
Maybe he liked hearing stories. Tommy rambled about how an octopus had tried to eat his face once, enjoying how his voice echoed off the cave walls, and occupied himself theorizing about possible names for when his brother awoke, in case he'd forgotten his own and needed a new one. Tubbo returned with fish and crabs around the time that he settled on Clarencio the Second.
The stranger jerked awake soon after, flooding the connection with so much alarm that Tommy startled, snorting in threat. His new brother scrambled back, weak and uncoordinated like a newborn pup, and the sense of his confused terror cut off like a torn limb; he'd pulled away from the coat.
“What,” he blurted, voice raspy, “who the fuck are you? How did I get here?”
“You were in the ocean, all tied up,” Tommy informed him. Awake, his new brother didn't seem any more intimidating than he had whilst asleep. A good sign, in Tommy's opinion. “Which was dumb of you when you don’t have a real coat, that’s quite negligent as these things go. Are you evil or a murderer?”
The stranger faltered, staring around. Whatever he’d expected to wake up to, it clearly wasn’t a cave. “Not a murderer,” he said. “I’ve never taken a life. But I’ve failed some people quite conclusively, now that all is said and done, and I don’t think I have a way to make it up to them. Inspiring people to great heights and letting them fall— that’s a form of evil, I expect.”
“‘S that why you got thrown off a ship?” Tommy pressed, because he'd followed maybe half of that. “‘Cause you were bad at things?”
“Bad at winning elections, sure,” the stranger said, bitter and tired. “Horrible at predicting a fucking coup— hold up, I’m sorry, but if you picked me up from the sea, don’t you live here? How do you not know who I am?”
“I know who you are,” Tommy said, affronted. “You’re my new brother, who I fished from the sea. And you’re a little bitch, probably, but that’s okay, I’ll set you to rights. That’s what brothers do.” He went over to the pile of fish that Tubbo had so considerately collected for him, and grabbed the first crustacean he saw. “Here,” he said, pushing the crab into the stranger’s hands. “Have a crab.”
The stranger took the crab blankly. “I don’t… recall having another brother. Is this a development I should have been aware of?"
“It’s new,” Tommy said, then added, a touch anxiously, “I didn’t take your coat, though, it’s just over there by the rock. I’m not a fucking coat thief.”
“I appreciate that,” the stranger said, “but I’m afraid I have no idea who you are, actually. None whatsoever. In fact, I was rather certain I was being exiled to a rough and uninhabited coast.”
“I’m Tommy,” Tommy told him, ignoring the rest as unimportant, and waited expectantly.
“Pre— Wilbur,” the stranger said, faltering. “Wilbur Soot. It’s, ah. If you saved my life, I suppose it’s good to meet you, Tommy.” He seemed to notice the coat around Tommy’s shoulders for the first time. “Do you live here?”
“Yes,” Tommy said, glancing over to where Tubbo was hiding. He'd hunkered down in the inner pool to watch in case the stranger turned out villainous. “Do you have a cave?”
Wilbur’s face twisted. “Not so much, at the moment. I suppose you could say I’m between homes.” He ran a hand through his hair, making a face at the tangles. “I’ll be out of your hair as soon as possible, I promise you. There’s something I’ve got to get back. Or destroy. I suppose I’ll know which I’m doing soon enough.”
“Is it your real coat?”
“What?”
“You have a fake one,” Tommy said, and Tubbo moved closer, a round dark shadow in the water. Listening in. “Is it because someone took your real one?”
“You could say that," Wilbur said after a long moment. "It’s— something very dear to me, a part of me, and through my own foolishness, it’s been taken away."
Tommy mulled that over. If his new brother knew the location of his coat, or coat-like object, they'd have to stage some sort of recovery mission. But right now it was storming, and without a coat Wilbur would take forever to transport across the water, especially if he got sick from being so cold--
“We can deal with that shit later,” he decided, standing to put his coat back over Wilbur’s shoulders. His new brother’s emotions spiraled through him, anxious twisted hatred mingling with stark bewilderment, and he pushed steadfast determination back, a flood to wash out the worst of thoughts. Wilbur jolted a little, eyes widening. “Why don’t you have blubber, by the way? It’s such a useful sort of flesh."
Confusion, irritation, reluctant mirth. “You’re a very strange child,” Wilbur said, poking at Tommy's coat. Understanding burst into the connection for a moment, along with a teeny spark of triumph. “Is this a common thing for you, saving random people from their executions? Am I facilitating a hobby of yours?”
“My hobbies are meeting lots of women and not being a huge fucking bitch,” Tommy said, and Wilbur huffed a laugh. “I saw you fall off the ship, is all. I don’t like people dying, so I made you not drown.”
“Out of the goodness of your heart," Wilbur said, radiating skepticism.
“You owe me brotherhood now,” Tommy informed him, though it was so obvious that he wasn't sure why he had to. “Because you’re wearing my coat. So that’s what I get out of it. You get being alive, and also another brother. Technically you have two new brothers now, though, since Tubbo’s mine.”
The crab had started to wriggle, recovering from being stunned. Wilbur blinked down at it. “Is that so,” he said, slow. “Just like that?”
“Yes,” Tommy said decisively. “Now eat your crab, calm yourself. You need to get warmer before you start thinking and saying things.”
Wilbur sat down, still staring at the crab. Tommy sat next to him, took a dead fish and bit through its spine with a crunch, then offered his new brother a grin.
Wilbur smiled a tiny bit back, emotions shifting between disbelief and irritated confusion, until they finally settled on a tentative sort of wonder.