Archive of Our Own

"Get over here," Jackson said when Danny picked up the phone around three o’clock on Saturday afternoon. No "Hi," no, "How are you doing?", no "I'm sorry to hear about your boyfriend cheating on you." Just a single, brusque command. Not that Danny expected anything else from his best friend.

"Where is 'here'?" Danny asked.

"My house, dumbass," Jackson replied. Danny was already grabbing his car keys and walking out the door.

Ten minutes later, Danny found Jackson in his backyard, bobbing up and down in the deep end of his family’s heated outdoor pool, holding his phone a few inches above the water. Danny sat down on one of the ornate poolside benches, next to a copse of carefully-tended daffodils.

"Isn't that bad for your phone?"

"I can afford to replace it," Jackson scoffed.

Danny raised an eyebrow. "Ok, so... why do you have your phone in the pool?"

"Come feel my skin."

"Jackson, I've told you again and again, you're not my type."

"Shut up, jackass. Just do it. You'll see."

Danny knelt down by the edge of the pool and waited for Jackson to swim over. When he did, Danny put one hand on his friend's shoulder.

It felt... rubbery. Slicker than it should have been, even in the water. It didn't feel human.

"It's fucking weird, right?" Jackson sounded even more hostile than usual, which meant he was starting to panic.

"Maybe we should call a dermatologist," Danny suggested, pulling his hand away. "When did this start?"

"About the same time I started to feel like my skin was on fire if it wasn't covered in water."

Danny raised an eyebrow. "And the pool helps?"

"A little. The chlorine stings like hell, but it's better than being dry."

"Ok." Danny took out his own phone. "Let's try googling, figure out what this might be..."

"Do you think I didn't already try that? The internet's not gonna help. I know what this is."

"You do?" It might have been helpful for Jackson to start with that revelation, but he'd never been one for directness. Danny summoned all of his patience to wait for Jackson's reply.

"Yeah." Jackson lifted his chin and stared into Danny's eyes, unblinking. "I'm turning into a fucking dolphin."

"…a dolphin."

Jackson sighed, like Danny was the one saying crazy things. "Yes."

"Like Flipper."

"Danny, we don't have time to reminisce about your childhood crush on Elijah Wood."

Danny crossed his arms. Sure, they'd worn that VHS out when they were little kids, but Jackson was the one to pick it half the time. At least Danny admitted to his feelings about the future Frodo Baggins. "You do realize that acting like an asshole isn't going to convince me to help you, right?"

"Why? It's always worked before," Jackson said.

He... had a point. And it was probably too late for Danny to start reevaluating his life choices. Danny rolled up his jeans, slid his feet out of his flip-flops, and dipped his legs into the lukewarm water, his knees tucked against the rim of the pool. Jackson continued to bob up and down, holding his phone above him in the unseasonably warm late-March air.

"Give me that," Danny said, taking the phone away from Jackson and setting it down on the concrete. "And actually explain what you're talking about, before I assume this is the weirdest practical joke ever and leave."

Jackson pushed back the wet hair plastered to his forehead. "Fine. Remember when McCall got super-jacked, like, overnight?"

~*~

"So let me get this straight," Danny said, ten minutes later. "You went to some hot dude's creepy shack in the woods and asked him to bite you, and now you're supposed to be a werewolf?"

Jackson made a face. "I never said he was hot."

"I saw this guy hanging out in Stilinski's bedroom." Danny wasn't stupid -- he could put two and two together. "And he is hot as hell."

"Why the fuck were you in Stilinski's--"

Danny snapped his fingers. "Jackson, focus. If you want me to believe you, which, for the record, I absolutely do not, then you're going to have to explain why, instead of a wolf, you say you're turning into a dolphin. Because about the only thing those two animals have in common is membership in class mammalia."

Jackson made a sweeping motion with his arm and splashed a wave of water over Danny's lap. "Hey!" Danny yelled, at the same time Jackson shouted, "I don't know!"

Danny looked down at his soaked lap. Rivulets of water were already collecting at the bottom of his rolled-up jeans and dripping back into the pool.

"I can leave," he said, voice quiet and steely. But when he saw the flash of panic in Jackson's eyes, he knew he wouldn't, wet pants or not.

"I don't know why I'm a dolphin, ok? That's the part that doesn't make any sense."

"Oh, that's the part."

"I can prove it to you!" Jackson's mouth twisted with naked desperation, the kind of expression very few people ever got to see on his face. "It's gross and I don't want to, but if it's the only way to make you believe me..."

Jackson trailed off, and before Danny could work up a reply, Jackson's face suddenly bulged outwards, his mouth and nose fusing into one elongated mass. Danny pulled his legs out of the water and scurried backward across the rough concrete. This couldn't be real. He couldn't be watching his best friend's head changing shape, his eyes moving around to the sides of his head, ears shrinking down to almost nothing. Jackson's arms had slipped down into the water as if sucked by a vacuum, and when Danny squinted below the surface he was greeted by the truly surreal sight of a dolphin wearing the tattered remains of Jackson's designer swim trunks.

Danny swallowed and tried to process the scene in front of him. The dolphin Jackson had become, though a fully-functional aquatic mammal as far as Danny could tell (from his very limited knowledge, mostly gained from Lydia's 5th grade science project and a family vacation to Sea World when he was 8), still looked distinctly... Jackson-ish. Its skin was more pink than gray, and its weirdly pale eyes still held the same sardonic gleam. Danny hadn't known that dolphins could smirk, but this one definitely was, beneath a light dusting of dark specks on its beak that looked just like Jackson's freckles. Not that Danny was in the habit of checking out his friend's freckles. They were just... hard to miss.

"...Jackson?" Danny said, crawling back to the edge of the pool and kneeling before the dolphin.

"Eh-eh! Eh-eh!" the dolphin said.

Well, that wasn't very helpful. "Can you... understand me?"

The dolphin nodded, its big head bobbing back and forth above the water from its vertical position. "Eh-eh!"

Danny reached out a tentative hand and ran it over the dolphin's beak. The skin felt just like Jackson's had when he'd first arrived -- smooth, soft, almost rubbery. "Ok, this is really weird."

"Eh-eh!" Jackson-the-dolphin agreed, but he nuzzled up into Danny's hand like a particularly affectionate cat.

"You know, I think I like you better this way," Danny said. "You're way cuter."

The dolphin reared back and used one flipper to splash Danny again, soaking his shirt to match his jeans. Yeah, it was definitely Jackson.

"Ok, can you, like... change back?" Danny still didn't know how Jackson expected him to help, but it would be easier to brainstorm with a version of Jackson that could talk. And he'd have a hell of a time trying to explain a swimming pool dolphin to the Whittemores.

Jackson-the-dolphin nodded again, but his eyes looked worried and uncertain. Which was crazy, because he was a dolphin, and Danny was pretty sure dolphins were not known for their worried temperaments. They weren't like the neurotic pug his older sister had had when they were kids.

But whatever uncertainty Jackson might have had, it proved unfounded; as Danny watched, Jackson's face contracted, his flippers stretched out into arms, and his tail split back into legs and groin, completely exposed under the now-useless scraps of fabric tied around Jackson's waist. Danny kept his eyes politely above the water's surface.

"Whoa," Jackson said, when his tongue had shrunk down to fit inside his human-sized mouth.

"Yeah," Danny said.

"Last time I didn't get that far. My face changed and stuff, but... that was it."

"So you're getting better at this?"

"Of course." Jackson crossed his arms, offended at the very idea that he might not become an immediate expert at whatever skill he wanted to pick up.

But Danny had another idea. He picked up his phone, opened the calendar app, and confirmed his suspicions. "Or, it could just be that the full moon is tonight."

Jackson's face clouded. "Oh."

"Yeah, oh," Danny said. "So how does this work? Do you go full-on dolphin at sunset? Because you can't do that here. The chlorine will poison you." Danny was proud of the way his voice didn't shake, considering the absurdity of the words coming out of his mouth. His best friend was a weredolphin. He was dealing with it.

“I mean, should we call Derek?” Danny suggested. “He’s the one who got you into this mess, right?”

Jackson shook his head emphatically. “No Derek.” He didn’t elaborate, but from his tone Danny knew not to ask any more questions.

“So…what then?”

Jackson looked contemplative for all of five seconds, and then he grinned. "I guess we're taking a trip to the beach."

"We?" Danny asked.

Jackson raised an eyebrow, and Danny didn't bother to continue his protest. Of course he was going to take his dolphinized BFF to the ocean an hour and a half away. It wasn't like he had homework to do or anything. (At least there was no lacrosse this weekend. Finstock would go ballistic if they both skipped.)

"Ok, but how are you gonna get there without drying up? I've seen Free Willy, but I'm pretty sure airlifting you while I throw buckets of water over your chest isn't an option."

"Excuse you, I am not a whale," Jackson sniffed.

"Willy was an orca, which is technically a dolphin, not a whale." That was one fact that had stuck with Danny from his long-ago Sea World visit.

Jackson rolled his eyes. "You're such a nerd."

"I'm the nerd who's going to help you get to the Pacific in freaking March."

"Which takes us back to 'How?'," Jackson pointed out. His skin was looking a little red as the chlorine began to take its toll.

Danny wracked his brain for a minute, kicking his feet a little in the pool until an idea struck. "Ok. What if... what if we rented a moving van?" Danny's parents had rented one when they helped his sister move down to UCLA, and it hadn't seemed difficult to set up. "And then we could buy a kiddie pool and fill it up with water, and you can ride in the back in the pool while I drive." Danny wondered what kind of store would be most likely to stock kiddie pools at this time of year. Wal-Mart, maybe? If worse came to worst, he could probably go borrow the one his little cousins used, though he wasn't sure how he'd explain the request to his aunt and uncle.

But before Danny could figure out the logistics, Jackson made a face. "First of all, there is no way I'm riding in the back of a moving van. Do you have any idea what kind of gross stuff is probably clinging to the walls in there?" Danny started to protest -- this was really not the time for Jackson to get prissy -- but Jackson kept rolling along. "And second, two teenage guys in a van with nothing but a kiddie pool in the back? Yeah, that's not gonna look suspicious at all."

Oh. Danny cringed. "You... may have a point."

"I always do," Jackson said, smug as ever.

Danny threw up his hands. "Ok, if you're such a genius, do you have an idea that solves our problem and doesn't make us look like child predators?"

Jackson's face slid into blankness for a second before his mouth curved up into a terrifyingly Grinch-like smile. "Three words, Danny-boy. Hot. Tub. Limousine."

Danny stared. The idea was pure Jackson, but the more Danny thought about it, the more he realized it might just work. "Ok," he said, "but you're paying."

~*~

Danny had to call five different limousine companies before he got a bite. The first two were completely booked up for the evening (which was understandable – presumably, most customers didn’t decide they needed aquatic transport within the hour). The third company didn’t actually have any hot tub limos, despite advertising them on their website, and the fourth explained, with a tone of legitimate regret, that their hot tub limo was being serviced after a particularly rambunctious group of bridesmaids had decided that filling it up with Kool-Aid powder was a great idea. Danny could feel the creeping edge of despair as he dialed the fifth number; from the pool, Jackson’s eyes were growing more pathetically puppy-ish with each call.

The fifth company picked up on the third ring. “Larry’s Livery, Larry speaking. How can I help you?” asked a gruff voice with a faint Brooklyn accent.

“Hi,” Danny said. “I was wondering if you had a limo with a hot tub available for tonight?”

“Tonight, huh?” the man – Larry – said, with a chuckle. “Got a hot date?”

“Does that mean yes?”

“That depends. How important is this date?”

Danny blanched at the question and debated how to respond. He could lie and spin a tale about some girl he really wanted to impress, but 1.) the limo driver would find out pretty quickly that he and Jackson were both guys, and 2.) while Danny had no problem lying about the fact that his best friend was turning into an aquatic mammal, he hadn’t lied about his sexuality since seventh grade, and he wasn’t planning to do so today. Even if it might mean having to call a sixth limo company.

Danny took a look at Jackson, still treading water in the pool. “I’ve had a crush on him for forever,” he told Larry, letting a pleading note leak into his voice. “And I only just worked up the courage to ask him out. I know he has expensive tastes, and I want to make a good first impression, you know?” He held his breath, waiting for the reply.

But Larry’s voice turned unexpectedly warm. “My husband would never forgive me if I stood in the way of budding romance. Where should I send the car?”

When Danny hung up the phone, Jackson raised an eyebrow. “Did you just imply we’re dating?”

“Did you want me to tell him the truth?”

“No, no. I just want to know why that lie came so easily to you. And why I’m paying if you’re the one taking me out.”

Danny threw a foam pool toy at Jackson’s head. “Shut up. I’m going into your house to get you some clothes. The limo will be here in half an hour.”

~*~

When Jackson pulled himself out of the water (using just his arms, and looking for all the world like a softcore porn star as he did it, a fact not helped by his unintentional nudity), Danny wrapped him in a towel and handed over his clothes. Then they stood, dry and well-dressed, on Jackson’s front lawn to wait for the car. Danny had borrowed a shirt and jacket from Jackson’s closet but couldn’t do anything about his still-damp jeans; all of Jackson’s would be laughably short on him, and he didn’t want to abandon his best friend for the time it would take him to go home and change. In these ensembles, they looked convincing enough as a happy couple about to embark on a fancy date – except for the fact that Jackson was shaking.

Danny put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “Are you gonna be ok?” The limo was five minutes late.

“It feels like I’m shrinking,” Jackson said, teeth chattering. “Like my skin is made of drying leaves.”

Danny scanned the street for the limo, willing it to come faster, and brought a water bottle up to Jackson’s lips. “Just keep drinking. We’ll get you back into water any minute now." He really hoped Jackson could last that long. His sincerity was worrying.

Luckily, the limo showed up two minutes later. Danny talked to the driver, giving him the money (cash from Jackson’s parents’ “emergency” jar, which Jackson swore would be easier to explain away than a suspicious credit card statement) and directing him to the beach Danny’s family sometimes visited in the summer. If Danny had to leave Jackson in the ocean and come back, he wanted it to be somewhere he already knew how to get to.

In the back of the limo the hot tub sat in a place of honor, the seats arranged around it in a rough oval. It was already bubbling. Jackson started stripping the second he got into the car, but Danny held up a hand for him to stop. “Do you want to cook yourself?” he asked. “Let me turn off the bubbles and turn down the temperature first.”

Jackson grumbled but obliged, sitting on the rim of the tub while Danny messed with the dials. The tub wasn’t too hot, thankfully, and Danny figured it would be safe once it got below 100.

Jackson was already splashing his face and neck with the water, sighing audibly whenever it hit. “We can’t do this every month,” Danny pointed out, as the adrenaline of his worry started to subside. “There must be some way to control it. You’ll have to go back to Derek eventually.”

Jackson scowled. “Why don’t we focus on this month first, ok?”

Danny nodded. Arguing with Jackson was pointless when he was in this kind of mood. “Water’s ok now, I think.”

Jackson slipped into the tub, sinking in until even his head was submerged. When he surfaced, the change in his face was obvious. “This feels awesome.”

Danny smiled. “Happy to hear it.”

“You should join me,” Jackson said.

Danny raised an eyebrow. “I’m not the one turning into a dolphin.” Danny didn’t know if there were recorders installed in the back of the limo so the driver could hear the passengers, but he figured it didn’t matter. The driver would think it was a metaphor.

“Come on,” Jackson said. “I can’t be the only one using this thing. That would be weird. You might as well enjoy it, too.”

Danny hesitated, then shrugged. Why not? They had an hour and a half to kill, and the tub would be more comfortable than the sticky faux-leather seats. He stripped off his clothes, modesty be damned, and climbed in.

Even without the jets on, the water felt bubbly and smooth, and smelled more like essential oils than chlorine. It was still warmer than even a heated pool would be, and Danny could feel some of the tension in his shoulders subside.

“See?” Jackson said smugly. “Told you you’d like it.”

Danny didn’t respond, but the splash of water he pushed in Jackson’s direction was half-hearted at best.

Danny and Jackson sat in silence for a few minutes. Danny could hear the low hum of the limo engine, the thump-thump-thump of the wheels along uneven streets, and the quiet Top 40 music the driver was pumping into the back, which they could control from a panel on the partition that divided the front from the back. Danny made no move to adjust it.

“Why did you want to be a werewolf?” he asked, finally.

Jackson looked away. He slipped down into the water, dunking his head for a few seconds. When he reemerged, he still didn’t look at Danny. “Who wouldn’t? To be faster, stronger… better in every way?”

“You were already the best,” Danny pointed out, looking down into the water.

“No, I wasn’t. That was the problem.”

Danny looked up again, taking in Jackson’s profile. “You don’t have to pretend around me. You know that, right? You don’t have to try to be what you aren’t.”

Jackson shook his head, letting little drops of water spray onto the limo seats from the ends of his hair. “Well, that’s a good thing, because right now I’m apparently a fucking dolphin.” As if to punctuate his point, Jackson let his lips extend outward into a partial beak, and as Danny watched, a quarter-sized hole opened up between his shoulder-blades.

“Did you just make a blowhole?” Danny asked, giggling despite himself.

Jackson grinned, a truly terrifying sight with his mouth half-human and half-dolphin.

“That is… so gross.” Danny pushed Jackson and Jackson pushed back, letting his features fade back to human (before, Danny hoped, the driver had a chance to notice anything amiss on the video monitors). They kept shoving each other back and forth, splashing water out of the tub, turning the play-fight into a full-on wrestling match.

After a long struggle, Danny pinned Jackson up against the wall of the tub, holding his arms in place on the rim and straddling his hips on the seat below, and both of them stopped to catch their breath. Danny looked down at Jackson, their faces mere inches apart. Up close, Jackson’s eyes almost sparkled, and his freckles were more apparent than ever. Jackson glanced from side to side, taking in his trapped arms and looking thoughtful. Then he started to lift his head.

Danny pulled back, collapsing into the water in the opposite corner of the tub. “I win,” he said. He was still panting, and he didn’t think it was from exertion.

Jackson shook his head slowly back and forth, as if he was responding to a question in his head and not to Danny’s assertion. “Sure,” he said, and he slipped back underwater again.

~*~

They spent the rest of the ride on opposite sides of the hot tub, talking about inconsequential things and avoiding eye contact. When they were ten minutes away from the beach, Danny got out of the tub and dried off, then pulled on his briefs and jeans. At least one of them, he reasoned, should be wearing clothes when they left the limo.

The driver stopped on the street in front of the beach. In the summer, a bored college kid would be sitting in a chair on the sidewalk, selling beach passes, but on this early spring day only a sign warning them to "SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK" guarded the gap in the fence that served as an entrance.

"Are you sure you boys don't want me to swing back to pick you up?" the driver asked, leaning out of his window as Danny and Jackson closed the back door behind them.

"No, we'll be fine," Danny said. "We'll call a cab later. We don't know how much time we'll need." He gave the driver what he hoped was a coy smile.

"Suit yourself," the driver said, and a minute later he'd pulled around the corner and out of sight.

The fading sunlight was already drying the droplets of water off of Jackson's bare chest, and he grabbed Danny's arm, their first contact since that strange moment in the hot tub. Danny ignored the way his skin heated up at the touch and focused on dropping the bag that held his phone, keys, and towel onto a patch of tall beach grass just past the fence.

"Come on," Jackson said, dragging Danny down the sand. "It's getting worse."

Jackson wasn't exaggerating. They only made it halfway to the water line before he started shaking violently; three-quarters of the way down, as the sun began to set in earnest, his skin started graying out, and his ears grew noticeably smaller. By the time they actually reached the place where salty foam licked at wet sand, Jackson was more than half dolphin, and Danny was practically carrying him.

"I'll be ok," Danny said, again and again, whispering even though they were the only two people on the beach, trying not to let his own fear bleed through. "I'll come get you tomorrow morning. All you have to do is swim back."

Jackson clung to Danny with what was left of his arms. "You fucking better be here," he said, voice garbled as his teeth and tongue began to change shape.

"I always am, aren't I?" Danny said, just as Jackson's legs merged into a tail. Danny caught him before he could fall, setting him down gently in the surf. Then he stripped off his jeans once again and left them at the shoreline so he could half-carry, half-push Jackson out into deeper water. Dolphins were a lot heavier than high school lacrosse players, and the water was like ice, biting at Danny's ankles with tiny teeth. Thankfully, once the water reached the midpoint of Danny's calves, Jackson's dolphinized body came alive, using its own tail and flippers to push itself forward. Danny kept walking and pushing until the water came up to his waist, the occasional wave hitting as high as his neck. He was the one shaking now, teeth chattering with the cold, and Jackson was a dolphin.

"You just have to make it until dawn," Danny repeated. Jackson's dolphin head nodded once up and down, and he nudged Danny's belly with his beak, urging him back toward the relative warmth of the shore. "Try to enjoy yourself," Danny said, patting Jackson's slick gray head one more time. Then he turned toward the shore.

Back on dry land, Danny walked backwards up the beach, watching the ocean until Jackson's fin disappeared from sight. He tried not to think about the consequences. What if Jackson couldn't find his way back? What if he was stuck as a dolphin forever? Danny had seen enough crime procedurals to know this would be bad news for him, as the last person to see Jackson alive, alone on an empty beach no less. But mostly he was worried about Jackson. His best friend had never been good at being alone.

Shaking off his nerves, Danny wrapped himself up in his towel, called a cab, and hoped for the best.

~*~

Danny spent the entire cab ride home on his phone, researching werewolf mythology. He'd started with weredolphins, but other than some incredibly bizarre erotica and legends about river dolphins in the Amazon who came onto land to have sex with villagers, results were slim. With werewolves, he had the opposite problem -- thousands of sites, and no way to tell what was real. It wasn't like he could cross-reference the details with Jackson's symptoms, because, again, his friend wasn't a wolf, he was a dolphin.

He needed to find Derek Hale.

Danny barely had to dust off his hacking skills to find the address of the old Hale house, and as soon as the cab dropped him off at home he jumped into his own car and drove to the preserve. But the house, in addition to being as remote and creepy as Jackson had described, was also thoroughly deserted. He walked around the perimeter with a flashlight and pushed open the front door to check inside, ignoring every warning against trespassing that his parents had ever given him, but a thin layer of dust had settled over the floorboards at every entrance. Derek hadn't been here in weeks.

Luckily, Danny knew somewhere else that Derek had been, at least once. He hopped back into his car and drove to his new destination, where he was greeted at the door by the town sheriff.

"Good evening, Sheriff," Danny said with a smile, using his dimples like weapons. "Is Stiles home?"

"Danny, right?" Sheriff Stilinski looked surprised to see him, which was fair enough -- he and Stiles weren't exactly friends, and his dad hadn't been home the last time Danny had been here. But the surprise didn't cross into suspicion. The sheriff shrugged and yelled in the direction of the staircase. "Stiles! You have a visitor." He turned back to Danny. "You can come in, kid."

Danny waited in the Stilinskis' living room until Stiles came bounding down the stairs. When he saw Danny, he stopped short, an array of emotions crossing his face in a short period of time. Danny would have laughed if he was there on less important business. "Hi, uh, Danny," he said, his face settling on the suspicion his father hadn't gotten to. Then he plastered on a fake smile. "Science project, right? Come on up."

Danny nodded at the Sheriff and followed Stiles upstairs. Stiles closed the door behind them, then spun around. "This is about Jackson, isn't it?"

"It's about your cousin Miguel, technically."

Stiles sank down onto his bed, letting out an exaggerated sigh. "Look, Scott and I didn't have anything to do with this. It was Jackson's crazy idea, so if he's having second thoughts about the whole werewolf thing, he has nobody to blame but himself." He stopped. "You do know about the werewolf thing, right? I didn't just blow your mind?"

"I know," Danny said, and Stiles looked relieved. "I'd know a lot more if Derek Hale had bothered to give Jackson any information or advice. I need to find him."

"Do I look like Derek's baby-sitter?" Stiles scrunched up his nose. "I bet he terrorized his baby-sitters. All that snarling and frowning and pushing people into walls..." He shook his head. "Anyway, why isn't Jackson asking me himself?"

"Do you really think he'd come to your house?" Danny asked, dodging the question.

"Right, right, because my nerd cooties are contagious. Well, he'd better put on a hazmat suit and come over, because this game of telephone has too many links already."

Danny closed his eyes and prayed for patience. "He can't come, ok? He's in the ocean."

"...the ocean? Is he doggie-paddling? Gearing up for beach frisbee season?"

"No," Danny said. "He's swimming. With his fins."

Stiles raised an eyebrow. "Werewolves don't have fins."

"Nope."

Stiles' eyes grew comically large. “So Jackson... isn't a werewolf?"

"Nope."

"Then what is he?"

"You just said there are too many messengers here. Just tell me where Derek is and this doesn't have to be your problem."

"Oh, come on, you can't just drop a bomb like that and not elaborate! Is he a fish? Is he a cave fish? I really hope he’s not a shark, Jackson doesn’t need to be any more terrifying than he already is.”

“If I tell you, will you tell me where to find Derek?”

Stiles held up two fingers. “Scout’s Honor.”

“You were kicked out of Cub Scouts,” Danny pointed out. “After the den mother found you doing experiments on a dead squirrel in the restricted section of the camp.” They’d been in the same troop. Danny himself had left scouting a few years later, when it became clear the organization didn't want him.

“It’s a metaphor,” Stiles said.

“Fine." Danny really hoped his best friend didn't kill him for revealing this. "Jackson… is a dolphin.”

Stiles’ eyes positively sparkled with glee. “Oh my God. It’s like Christmas came early.”

~*~

After he stopped laughing, Stiles made good on his word, giving Danny directions to the abandoned subway station where Derek Hale was hiding out, because, in Stiles' words, "He's turning downward mobility into an art form." Danny thanked him and turned to go, but Stiles put a hand out to stop him, his face sober and serious.

"Hey, Danny... you know I'm not Jackson's biggest fan, but I'm kind of the president of the "my best friend just turned into a supernatural creature, how do I help him without driving myself crazy?" club. If you ever need to talk or anything, or ask questions -- I can't guarantee I'll know the answers, but I've been doing this for a couple months now, so..." He shrugged.

"Thanks, Stiles," Danny said, not sure if he'd ever take him up on the offer but appreciative all the same. Stiles gave a little salute, and Danny nodded in return, then said a polite goodbye to the sheriff on his way out the door.

The subway station was near the border of Beacon Hills and Hill Valley, the remnant of a public transit initiative that had been shut down when the county budget failed to pass a year after construction began. It happened a lot -- budget referendums were more hotly-debated in Beacon County than actual elections, for whatever reason, and half-finished municipal projects littered the county landscape. So Danny wasn't surprised when he pushed past the insistent "CONDEMNED" signs his flashlight helpfully illuminated and down a flight of concrete steps to find a cobwebbed, graffitied mess of decaying leaves and rusted metal. What did surprise him was that the station apparently had a bodyguard.

"Isaac?" Danny said, taking in the sight of his pale, gangly lacrosse teammate. Or, at least, he had been gangly, a couple weeks ago. He was still tall, and not especially bulky, but his shirtlessness betrayed a definite increase in muscle mass across his chest and shoulders. And his skin, though the same startlingly pale shade it had always been, was clear and unbroken -- gone were the bruises and cuts and small burn marks that Danny and his teammates had always pretended not to notice.

Isaac’s presence here definitely wasn’t a coincidence.

“What are you doing here?” Isaac asked, crossing his arms over his bare chest.

“I need to see Derek,” Danny said.

Isaac smirked, one corner of his mouth turning up more than the other. “What makes you think Derek will talk to you?” he asked, stepping forward and crowding Danny’s personal space. It was almost laughable – hardened as his body was, he had the face of a little boy who was trying too hard. But Danny knew enough from what Jackson had told him that he shouldn’t let his guard down. If Isaac had something to prove, he might not hesitate to use his new strength, and claws, to create that proof. Especially the night of the full moon.

“You’re not the only one Derek turned,” Danny said, not bothering to pretend that he didn’t know exactly what was going on. “And while you’re hanging out in this cozy little cave with your alpha, my best friend is trying to figure out everything all by himself. He needs real information.”

Isaac was just opening his sneering mouth for a comeback when Derek Hale stepped into view from the recesses of an abandoned subway car. “I’ll handle this,” he said sharply. Isaac’s head snapped up and around to face Derek, and he backed down immediately, retreating to lean against the wall of the car while Derek walked forward. Isaac’s eyes still looked a little wild, like he’d be happy to attack Danny at the slightest command, but he wasn’t going to disobey orders.

The whole thing was weird and creepy. Danny didn’t blame Jackson for trying to handle things by himself, and not just because Jackson would rather die than hang out in a secret lair full of grime and urban decay.

“Hi. Derek. My name is Danny,” Danny said.

Derek rolled his eyes. “We’ve met.”

“You bit my best friend,” Danny said. Derek didn’t seem like the talkative sort, and Danny wasn’t interested in beating around the bush.

Derek shrugged. “He asked for it. I can’t give him a refund.”

“How about an instruction manual? Did you seriously just send him off on his merry way with no information at all?”

Derek’s face hardened, cheeks drawing in until his cheekbones looked sharp enough to cut glass, and Danny had to look away to avoid blatantly checking him out. Derek Hale was an asshole, but he was a smoking hot asshole, with dark stubble and a tight, grease-stained tank top. It wasn’t fair.

“I told him what he needed to know about the moon and his abilities,” Derek said. “He didn’t ask about anything else before he took off. He’s not my problem anymore.”

Danny stared. “Not your problem? You just go around turning teenagers’ lives upside-down, and then you forget about them the second they start to turn away? If you were willing to bite Jackson, you had to know him at least a little. You had to know that he doesn’t trust easily. He needs… patience.”

“Not. My. Problem.” Derek crossed his arms over his chest, mimicking Isaac’s posture and showing off his impressive biceps.

Danny could feel his anger rising. “Would it be your problem if you found out he wasn’t even turning into a wolf?”

Now it was Derek’s turn to stare. “…explain.”

“He’s still transforming on the full moon, but he’s not a wolf. He’s a totally different animal.”

“What animal?”

Telling Stiles had been one thing, but Danny knew Jackson would never forgive him if he gave too much information to the one person Jackson had begged him not to contact. “I thought you said this wasn’t your problem?” he countered.

“It’s not,” Derek repeated.

“Then that isn’t information you need.”

Derek sighed, trying to look put-upon, but there was a note of fear and confusion in his eyes. “Fine,” he said. “This… isn’t unheard of. We’re shapeshifters. And sometimes, a person will shift into an animal that represents who they are inside, instead of a wolf. It’s rare, but it happens.”

“Have you met anyone else like that?” Danny asked.

“No,” Derek admitted. “I haven’t.”

“Then you’re as useless as Jackson thought you were.” Danny turned on his heel, ready to leave the station, but he turned back briefly. “Seriously, Isaac? You can find a better person to follow than this dude.” Then he climbed back up the stairs and out into the twilight beyond.

~*~

Back home, Danny reheated the dinner his family had made in his absence and retreated to his bedroom, Derek’s words still echoing in his head. Shapeshifters could become an animal that represented who the person was inside. Which begged the question: how in the world was Jackson’s inner animal a dolphin?

Danny booted up his laptop and started researching dolphins. He found the obvious facts first – dolphins were highly intelligent, traveled in pods, etc., etc. That much made sense – Jackson had always been smart, and he was much more comfortable in a group than on his own. Abandonment was his biggest fear, and it wasn’t just because he was adopted. Dolphins were also performative and known for playfulness, which made sense, too – Jackson loved having an audience to show off to, and when that audience was made up of people he trusted, he had a gentle, even playful sense of humor – even if that humor could turn cutting and cruel again on a dime.

Danny kept researching. There were negative traits listed, but Danny couldn’t deny that they matched Jackson’s. Dolphins were known to play with their food before eating it, sometimes even torturing animals that they didn’t plan to eat, just for fun. They were aggressive and prone to fights for dominance. But they also loved sex and pleasure, and in the wild were generally happy creatures who focused on fun as much as they did basic survival.

Maybe Jackson wasn’t always dolphin-like on the surface, but if this transformation was supposed to represent who he was inside – if this transformation was something that would allow him to be happy -- then maybe it was appropriate. And not just because he was captain of the swim team.

Danny set an alarm and woke up at four the next morning. His parents were still sleeping soundly, which meant that the Whittemores probably hadn’t woken them up in search of Jackson – the note they’d left on the Whittemores’ counter, that Jackson would be spending the night at Danny’s, must have worked. For once, Danny was glad that Jackson had such underprotective adoptive parents.

The sun rose behind him as Danny drove out to the beach, knuckles white on the steering wheel, trying to make contingency plans for Jackson not showing up. Would he have to go back to Derek? Maybe there were some werewolves in the Coast Guard who could help him look for a dolphin with unusual markings. But if the Coast Guard could find an unusual dolphin, so could other, less savory types – poachers and careless fishermen and pods of angry rival dolphins and…

Danny pushed the thoughts out of his mind. The only thing he could do right this moment was drive to the beach, and wait.

But waiting proved harder than Danny had expected. When he got to the beach, he made camp on the sand, spreading out a towel and sitting down with a bagel and bottle of orange juice. He’d brought a book, but now that he was here he couldn’t imagine using it; he needed to focus his eyes on the horizon. So he watched. And watched.

An hour passed, excruciatingly slowly. Danny put in a pair of earbuds and played some music on his phone, reasoning that he probably wouldn’t hear Jackson before he saw him anyway. The air was chilly, and he laid another towel, the one he’d brought for Jackson, over his lap as a makeshift blanket. But he kept his eyes trained on the horizon, willing the sun rising behind him to move more quickly to better illuminate the ocean. The waves were hazy and dark, swelling and falling in gentle rhythms, blurring together in Danny’s vision. At the hour and a half mark, his eyes started closing involuntarily; he blinked them back open every time, but the intervals in between grew shorter and shorter as a restless night and the dark, unblemished stretch of horizon took their toll.

Danny didn’t know when he fell asleep. When he woke up, the sun was higher in the sky, just visible at the edge of his vision, and a gentle hand was shaking his shoulder. Danny sat up with a start, worried that a cop had found him sleeping on the beach, which he wasn’t sure was completely legal. But when Danny turned, he realized that the hand belonged to Jackson – a fully human Jackson, dressed in the clothes Danny had brought him.

“Jackson!” Danny leapt up from the sand, sending his towels flying, and pulled his best friend into the kind of hug they usually reserved for the lacrosse field after a victory.

Jackson hugged him back, then pulled away, smirking. “Miss me?”

Danny shoved him back, one hand on his warm bicep. “Of course I did. You could have been harpooned.”

Jackson raised an eyebrow. “Harpooned?”

“It was a possibility,” Danny insisted. “How long have you been standing here?”

Jackson shrugged. “Ten minutes, maybe? You looked… peaceful. I figured I’d let you sleep a little longer. At least until I wasn’t buck naked anymore,” he added with a grin.

“So… how was it?” Danny stepped back when he realized just how close they were still standing.

Jackson shrugged and picked up one of the tangled towels, shook it out, and laid it on the sand. He sat down, and Danny joined him, perching on the other end of the same towel so they could sit side-by-side.

“It was…” Jackson looked at Danny, his eyes roaming up and down, like he was looking for something – permission? Trustworthiness? Whatever it was, he found it, because he let his bluster slip away, replaced by a small, genuine smile. “It was awesome, actually.”

“Yeah?” Danny nudged him with one knee, urging him to continue.

“Yeah. I knew who I was, but it was… dulled. The dolphin instincts took over, and all the dolphin needed to do was swim and breathe and eat raw fish, which, yeah, took some getting used to, but whatever, I like sushi.” Jackson’s cheeks grew pink toward the end of his explanation, his voice rising defensively.

“That sounds pretty cool,” Danny agreed.

Jackson rushed on, breathless, trying to get all the words out before his disaffected façade came rushing back like a wave at high tide. “I just swam all night, doing whatever the dolphin wanted to do, letting my mind drift from thought to thought. And then this morning… I can’t describe it, but I made these clicking noises, and then I just knew what was around me. And I traced back
through the places that seemed kind of familiar, and when I was near the beach, I clicked again and…” He turned his head away. “I found you.”

“You saw me?”

“I felt you,” Jackson corrected. “With this extra sense. Even though I’d never… perceived you with it before.”

Danny smiled, nudging him again, his knee tapping against the firm muscles of Jackson’s thigh. “Sounds like your dolphin likes me.”

Jackson looked down at his lap. “Maybe I do, too.”

Danny cocked his head to the side, surprised and confused. “Um…?”

Jackson’s defensive shield was sliding back over his skin. He clenched his fists in his lap and kept his eyes downcast. “Damnit. This seemed so simple when I was a dolphin. Everything was easier. Clearer.”

“What are you talking about?” Danny reached out to touch Jackson’s shoulder, but Jackson shrugged him off.

“Who the hell else in my life would have done what you did yesterday?” he asked, finally looking up. “I can’t think of a single other person. Lydia would have laughed. My parents would have…” He trailed off, but Danny knew how the sentence was going to end, knew the fear Jackson never quite expressed but always carried with him like a heavy load – the fear that his parents would decide the adoption was a mistake. The fear that they’d give him back, leaving him alone.

“It’s fucked up, and I know I’m not your type, so whatever, I shouldn’t even be saying this. But I like you, Danny. A lot. A lot more than I ever realized. And I wanna… say thanks, at least.”

Danny stared at Jackson. At those pale eyes and full lips and those completely unfair freckles. He heard the waves on the shore, gulls flying overhead. No other humans for at least a mile. And then he pounced, pushing Jackson down into the sand, and kissed him.

They lay like that for a long time, Danny straddling Jackson’s thighs, exploring each other’s mouths and letting their hands roam. Danny savored the sea-salt taste of Jackson’s mouth and the way Jackson’s overnight stubble scraped against his jaw. Jackson’s skin felt warm, and clean, and deliciously human.

Danny finally rolled off of Jackson and lay down on the sand beside him, both of them breathing hard, the forgotten towel crumpled up somewhere off to his right. “You’re not in pain,” Danny realized.

“Yeah,” Jackson said, his voice floating over from Danny’s left side. “I guess I only have to transform for the full moon. The rest of the time I’m just me, unless I do it on purpose.”

Danny let out a slow stream of relieved breath. Once a month was something he could handle.

“Do you want to do it on purpose?” he asked, turning to face Jackson across the sand.

“Maybe,” Jackson admitted, facing Danny in turn. “It feels good. I don’t know if I want to wait another month.” He waggled his eyebrows. “If you come with me next time, maybe I’ll even let you ride me.”

Danny didn’t dignify the joke with a response, though other parts of his body were more than willing to respond of their own accord. “We’re going to have to talk, you know,” Danny pointed out. “About all of this. Your dolphin-ness and your apparent interest in guys and the next full moon and Derek Hale and… a lot of other things.”

“Yeah,” Jackson said, and reached out his hand to grasp Danny’s. “But that can wait.”

Danny squeezed Jackson’s hand, feeling the five strong fingers where a flipper had been just last night. “You’re right,” he said. “It can wait.”

~*~

That afternoon, after dropping Jackson off at his house, Danny pulled out his phone and opened a new text to Stiles. “Hey,” he wrote, “does your offer still stand? I think I’m gonna need all the advice I can get.”

It didn’t take long for his phone to buzz with a reply. “Welcome to the club. :)”

He set down his phone, surrendering to the inevitability of a life that was about to get much, much weirder. But with the taste of sea salt still lingering in his mouth, Danny found he didn’t mind at all.