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Sid’s halfway through the ninth hole when the sensation of a heated blanket falls onto his back.
It’s a warm Maritime day; the sun is beating down on their whole crew, and Nate’s ears are starting to get pink from exposure, but the sudden warmth that envelops Sid is abrupt and almost heavy, like he can feel it draped over him.
“Dude, go or I’m going to go for you.”
It stays for the rest of the course. When Mike flags down the bar cart, Sid downs his iced rum and coke before Nate can finish ordering. He goes through both his bottle of water and the one he’d slipped out of Nate’s backpack. His ass leaves a sweaty mark on the golf cart that draws a look of disgust from Mike and a crude joke from Nate.
It feels like it’s moving on him, almost. It shifts like weight, heavier and hotter in some places than others. For a moment he thinks it’s heatstroke, but he isn’t confused or disoriented. It’s just an encompassing, magma-hot energy only he can feel.
“Maybe you should get to the water,” Nate says as they load up after the last hole. He’s watching the sweat drip down Sid’s face with something that looks a little too much like genuine concern.
“Fur’s at home,” Sid tells him, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. A drop of sweat streaks down his temple. “I’ll get it and jump in.”
He’s fuckin’ cooked when they get back to the clubhouse. He waits outside Nate’s car for nearly four minutes as the air conditioning blasts away the oven-like temperatures inside. Nate flips his keys around his finger, standing next to Sid and trying his hardest not to look worried as he shakes the shit out of his key fob.
“The fuck is going on, man?” he finally whispers, like it’s a secret.
“Either the house is on fire and my fur’s burning up,” Sid says, “or it got left out in the sun.”
“Alright, we’re going,” Nate says, nearly throwing Sid into the passenger seat.
“It’s not that serious.”
“Sure,” Nate says unconvincingly. Sid leans back and tugs his cap down over his eyes. Nate’s always been a little too curious, a little too worried, about Sid’s other form. That selkies were a dime a dozen on the coast never seemed to matter to Nate; if Sid was doing something, Nate was sticking his nose into it.
He doesn’t even notice that Nate rolls down the driveway instead of stopping at the fork in the road like he usually does. Nate has to jostle him to attention so he can haul himself out of the car and walk the few steps to his front door, which isn’t engulfed in flames.
Annoyance brews in Sid’s gut as he fumbles his way inside. There’s only one person in Sid’s home who knows where his second skin is right now. He’d expected some base level of respect for it, even from a human. Selkies hadn’t yet grown out of their evolutionary desire to hide their pelts from anyone and everyone. As soon as Sid had grown old enough to remember where he’d left it, he’d even started hiding it from his parents. Pelts were more than important; they were essential, they were blood and flesh disconnected from the body. That was Sid, at its core, and he’d been left out.
That’s when he sees Geno on the couch.
Geno never sleeps restfully. He moves, twitches, shifts like he’s being chased in his dreams. The act of sleeping on a couch is a perilous wager between him, gravity, and the width of the couch’s seat. He’s curled up in the late afternoon sun, his long bare legs drawn up with a pillow wedged between his thin shins. His head is tucked down against the pillow, and as he huffs out a sleepy sigh, something moves between Sid’s shoulder blades.
A complicated flurry of emotions cascade down Sid’s throat and into his stomach. One step closer, and there it is: a glimpse of dappled gray beneath Geno’s cheek.
Sid grabs onto Geno’s skinny ankle and tugs, hard.
Geno wakes like a gunshot, erupting off the couch with a gasp and a windmill of limbs. His knee misses the coffee table by a scant inch. The sound he makes as he falls onto the carpet makes Sid think of a hard check against the boards.
The oppressive heat around Sid breaks like a thundercloud. The sweat dripping down his back finally isn’t boiling. The breath he heaves out is cool on his lips. He’s drenched, and the small shiver that crawls up his back is the best thing he’s ever felt.
“Sid?” Geno groans as he rights himself.
“Nice pillow,” Sid rasps, picking his pelt up from the couch.
Having it under his fingers now feels impossibly better than it usually does. He takes in a few deep breaths, trying to coax his heart into slowing its frantic rhythm. The pelt, while usually blood-warm, sizzles like a heated blanket in his palms.
“You leave in laundry basket.”
Geno squints up at Sid, contactless and a little blind, but still accusatory.
“Yeah,” Sid says. “I left it there. On purpose. Why were you looking for it?”
“I don’t,” Geno mutters, gathering his limbs so he can start the laborious process of hauling his big body up. “I’m find while I do laundry.”
“You did laundry,” Sid says flatly.
“Yes! All my clothes dirty, best towel is dirty, I do it!”
Sid can’t hide the skeptical twist to his mouth as he regards his pelt. It would have survived the wash, but it would’ve probably beat him to hell and back.
“Why were you sleeping on it?”
Had this been seven, maybe even five, years ago, Geno would have scoffed and said something rude and maybe a little funny. He would have been prickly, and Sid would have shrugged it off, and things would have gone on as they always had.
Now, though, with Geno in Sid’s home, with Geno by his side for the whole mating season, he rubbed at where his knee had scraped the carpet and quietly said, “You gone for little while, maybe it’s, like, nice.”
Sid isn’t a romantic. He reels Geno in nonetheless, groping around his hip and holding him close with a firm grip on his ass.
“You’re real cute,” he says. “But you almost gave me heat stroke. Do you know how warm it is, with you laying on that?”
Geno frowns down at him, the downturns at the corners of his mouth almost comical.
“You feel that?”
“We went over that years ago, G. You touch it, I feel it.”
“I’m not touch. I’m lay on.”
“That’s touching. If it’s cold, I’m cold. If it’s hot, I’m hot.”
Geno puzzles over him for a long moment, his eyes flickering over Sid’s pink-warm cheeks and the two-day scruff coating his chin. “Stupid,” he finally settles on as a response.
“Yeah, well, take it up with the species, alright?”
Sid smacks him on the ass and steps back. He’s going to have to find a better hiding spot next time. He’s gotten too casual with Geno around, and though he trusts Geno more than he trusts a lot of things, there’s still an uneasy evolutionary frisson that scrapes along his nerves.
He puts it in the supply closet while he showers. It’s cool and dark inside, and the lukewarm shower helps calm his feverish skin. When he emerges, Geno has fled the scene; the sliding door to the patio is ajar and Geno’s slides are gone.
Sid leaves his pelt tucked away, but as they settle into bed that night, Geno’s cold fingers wedged into the warm crevices of Sid’s body for heat, he thinks about Geno’s cheek against his second skin.
He nuzzles closer, burying his nose in Geno’s familiar, unruly hair. How would it feel to have a piece of Geno he could carry with him? Something living, breathing, something part of Geno so wholly that it beat along with his heart? He drags his lips against Geno's scalp, and in return, Geno’s lips press gently to his throat.