Archive of Our Own

It had been a few days since Roy showed Johnny his skin, his other body, how he could change and fly through the water. They hadn’t talked much that day because other revelations had happened at the same time, including several that involved using their mouths for purposes other than forming words.

But that didn't mean Johnny wasn't curious. He had questions. So many questions.

Does it hurt when you change? Is this why you're never cold? How long can you hold your breath?

But they had just given a fire station tour to an elementary school field trip during their latest work shift, and Johnny was determined not to be as annoying as the nine-year-olds.

Right then, Johnny was relaxing on the deck of Roy's boathouse, a warm mug of coffee wrapped in both of his hands, as he watched Roy zipping around in the water. For someone who went through human life in such a calm and sedate manner, Roy sure moved fast as a seal. Like he saved most of his energy for the water. Seal Roy was motion.

He twisted through the water with a speed and ease that made the whole cove seem built around him. He dove and surfaced and vanished into shadow. He skimmed just below the waterline, close enough for Johnny to follow the mottled shape of him until sunlight broke him apart into silver-gray flickers.

Roy vanished under the surface again. Johnny watched the ripple spread, then disappear. He counted without meaning to.

At one minute, he reminded himself that this was normal. For Roy, anyway. For seal-Roy. Selkie-Roy. Whatever the proper category was when your best friend and newly kissed… something could wrap himself in a seal skin and become the sleek shape currently cutting circles through the cove.

After five minutes, he told himself not to be stupid. At seven, he put his mug down.

At ten, Roy surfaced near the far rocks, sleek head breaking through the water with barely a splash.

Johnny let out a breath he had not realized he was holding. Roy looked straight at him. Even from halfway across the cove, even without eyebrows, Johnny could tell he was being questioned.

"I wasn’t worried," Johnny called.

Roy blinked.

Johnny picked his coffee back up with great dignity. "I was timing you."

Roy gave a soft, wet huff and slipped under again. Johnny stared at the place he’d vanished.

"Which is different," he added, mostly to himself. He took a sip and relished the warmth that spread through his body with each drink. If he was going to be spending more time on the water, he needed to develop a better tolerance for the cool breezes that blew off of it.

Roy popped up near the deck. While Johnny was still watching the rocky area near where Roy had surfaced last time.

Johnny startled so hard that coffee sloshed over the rim of the mug and onto his fingers. Roy, as a seal, was too dang fast.

Roy made a small sound that was definitely not an apology.

"Oh, don’t give me that. You know exactly what you’re doing."

Roy rolled in the water, pale yellowish belly flashing briefly before he righted himself again.

Johnny narrowed his eyes. "You're showing off."

Roy dove once more and reappeared, nudging something onto the deck with his nose. Johnny stood from his chair and reached over to pick it up. At least he could give Roy a hand… since he was the one who currently had two of them.

"What's this?" He murmured. He turned it over in his hand. Just a piece of blue seaglass.

A wet slap on wood, and Roy had heaved himself up onto the deck, seal body and all, bouncing enthusiastically towards Johnny on his belly.

Johnny was not very successful at hiding his amused grin. In the water Roy, as a seal, was speed and grace and fluid. On land was a different story, a tube of squish that bounced and dragged himself along.

Roy finally let the skin come loose, letting it fall and drape around him as his knees and palms pushed human Roy up from the deck. He stood, wet and naked save for a mottled toga of fur, dripping and glistening in the low evening sun.

He took the seaglass from Johnny's hand and inspected it under his now blue human eyes.

"It's pretty, right?" He was more asking for Johnny to agree with him than to give a real opinion. Johnny looked down at the glass in Roy's hand now. Deep blue, smooth after years of being tossed around by the waves.

"Yeah, it is."

Roy smiled, satisfied, and entered his house through the sliding door.

Johnny followed close behind, cringing at the sound of Roy's wet feet on the hardwood floors that didn't even belong to him. The droplets of water that fell off him as he walked, and Johnny knew at some point he would be the one to step in a puddle with his socks on, because Roy moved through his own home like water was inevitable and supposed to be there.

He followed until they reached the giant mosaic of a sea turtle that hung on the wall over Roy's sofa. And then Roy held up the seaglass and pushed it into a spot Johnny hadn't even noticed was empty. The water around the turtle that was a mix of blue and white. And then something clicked in his brain as well.

"Wait, did you make that?" Johnny got up close and peered at the details.

"Uh, yeah." Roy answered like it was no big deal. He was apparently an artist.

"I always thought you bought it," Johnny admitted.

Roy gave him a weird look. Because where would he have bought something like this? Something that had been created out of trash that nature turned beautiful again.

"I'm going to go change into… clothes," Roy said.

Another look, this time a tiny grimace that made Johnny chuckle as Roy left for the bedroom. Then he looked around himself. Johnny'd been in this houseboat so many times, and he was just now realizing that a lot of the decor… was actually beach treasures, trinkets that Roy had creatively turned useful.

The sea turtle mosaic was the most obvious, now that he knew to look. Blue and white sea glass for the water. Pale shell pieces for the foam. Little green fragments making up the turtle’s shell, each one worn smooth by sand and tide before Roy ever touched it. Johnny stepped closer, squinting at the details. A bit of brown bottle glass had become shadow under a flipper. A piece of white china with the faintest blue floral pattern made one bright break in the wave.

He had seen the thing half a dozen times and never really looked at it. That seemed to be happening a lot lately.

He turned slowly.

The lamp on the end table had a base made from a piece of driftwood, polished and sealed until the twisting grain looked golden under the shade. Johnny had thought Roy bought it that way. He had even joked once that it looked like something from a tourist shop.

Now he wasn’t so sure.

The little dish by the door where Roy dropped his keys was half of a giant pearly shell, too imperfect and strange to have come from any store Johnny knew. The wind chime just outside the sliding door was made of shell, glass, and little pieces of metal rubbed soft by time, and it clicked gently in the sea breeze like it was talking to itself.

The bedroom door opened behind him.

Johnny turned.

Roy came back wearing loose drawstring pants and a faded shirt so soft it barely held its own shape. His hair was still wet, curling slightly at the ends, and he had a towel in one hand that he was making only a token effort to use. He stopped when he saw Johnny staring at the room in obvious wonder.

"What?" Roy asked.

Johnny gestured vaguely around them. "You made all this."

Roy glanced at the living room, then back at him. "Not all of it."

"The lamp?"

Roy looked toward the driftwood lamp. "Yeah."

"The wind chime?"

"That was mostly already there."

"Mostly?"

"Someone threw it out because pieces fell off. I replaced things."

Johnny walked to the key drop near the door and pointed at it. "This?"

Roy came closer, towel draped over one shoulder now. “Shell.”

"I figured that much out."

"A big one."

Johnny gave him a look.

The skin around Roy's eyes crinkled in amusement. "I found it near Pismo."

"You made a key dish out of it."

"I didn't make it. It just works well as one."

Johnny stared at him. Roy stared back and shrugged.

Johnny shook his head. "You are just full of surprises, aren’t you?"

"I don’t think a key dish counts."

"You are a seal man who makes turtle mosaics out of sea glass. It counts."

Roy’s eyebrows lifted. "Seal man?"

"Selkie," Johnny corrected quickly. "Sorry. Still working on the vocabulary."

Roy’s smiled warmed at that. It was enough to make Johnny’s chest do something ridiculous. Then Roy sat down on the couch and tossed the towel aside, done pretending to use it, and Johnny dropped beside him.

"So… are all selkie like you?" Johnny finally settled on the one big question he'd ask that day.

"Like me?"

"Living among us? Going to work, paying mortgages, swimming after work?"

"Oh…" Roy's head tilted as he understood the question.

Johnny watched him sort through the answer.

That was becoming one of Johnny’s favorite things, which was ridiculous because Roy had always done it. That little pause before he spoke. The way his eyes shifted up to the heavens, not because he was avoiding anything, but because he wanted to find the right combination of words before he spoke.

Only now Johnny knew there were whole oceans behind some of those pauses.

"Some are," Roy said at last.

Johnny leaned into the back of the couch. "Some."

"Not many." Roy clarified. "Most stay in the water with the seals, only shedding their skins a few times in their life. It's just not safe. Someone could—"

"Someone could take their skin." Johnny finished. He knew that fear, had seen it on Roy.

"Right." Roy nodded. "And then there are some who put their fur away, their skin, hide it away in a locked box and never look at it again, and try to live on the land with the people for the rest of their days. Usually for the sake of love they found. But it is usually one or the other, water or land."

"And you?" Johnny asked.

Roy looked back at him.

Johnny’s jaw dropped a bit when everything around him came together, and he realized. "You got a house on the water."

Roy’s mouth curved up.

"I got a house on the water," he said, and nodded. "My parents told me I was of the land and the sea and should live my life with a balance of both. So…"

"Houseboat," Johnny said.

"Houseboat… and a job, a driver's license, taxes, you… and the ocean rocking me to sleep, dropping into the water whenever I please, a seal pod that returns nearby seasonally… balance."

"You ever think about going away and living like the ones in the water?"

Roy’s smile faded a little. Still there, but quieter. Johnny regretted asking almost immediately, but he didn’t take it back. The question was already between them now, sitting there.

Roy looked toward the wide windows.

Outside, the cove moved in the soft evening. The swim platform was still wet where Roy had hauled himself up. A line of water tracked from the sliding door to the living room floor, shining faintly across the wood.

"Twice," Roy said.

Johnny caught his breath. Roy must have felt it, because his mouth pulled to one side, not quite a smile, and not quite comfort.

"I think about it more than that," he said. "On bad days. After hard calls. When the air feels too dry, and everything on land feels too loud." His eyes stayed on the water. "But most of the time, it’s just… knowing I could go."

Johnny swallowed.

Roy’s fingers moved against his own knee, slow and thoughtful. "That helps me stay."

Johnny looked at him.

Roy glanced over then. "I know that probably doesn’t make sense."

“No,” Johnny said quietly. “It makes perfect sense. Sometimes, riding my bike after a bad shift, I just think about never stopping… just going until I'm away."

Roy studied him for a second, as if he hadn’t expected that.

Johnny shrugged, but there was nothing casual in it. "Nobody likes feeling trapped."

"No," Roy breathed in agreement. "They don’t."

He looked back at the cove.

"The thought is always there somewhere. Not always loud. Just there. Like a door I know I can open." His voice lowered. "Most days, knowing the door isn’t locked is enough."

Of course, that mattered to Roy. Of course, a selkie who had been raised on stories of stolen skins and locked-away coats would need the door to stay open. Of course, choosing land only meant anything if the water remained reachable.

Johnny glanced toward the hallway, toward the bedroom closet he could not see from here.

Roy’s skin was back there. Safe.

Not hidden from Johnny anymore, exactly. But safe.

"So… Twice?" Johnny asked.

Two fingers touched his chin, turning his eyes back from the bedroom to Roy. He smiled sheepishly, caught with his attention on the one thing that almost separated them.

"Vietnam. It was the first— the only time I was away from myself, my coat, for that long or even that far. I didn't dare take it to war. I left it with my parents. When I got back, I took a long time to come back in from the water. My parents were so patient. And they wouldn't have fought me on it. They escaped war themselves."

Johnny could imagine a younger Roy, back from war and thinner than he should have been, carrying things no one on land knew how to name. He could picture him walking straight past every human expectation laid out for him—work, home, normal life, polite conversation—and going to the water instead.

"How long?" Johnny asked.

"Almost three weeks before I slept indoors."

Johnny’s breath left him slowly. He looked down at their joined hands.

"I wish I had known you then."

Roy looked over at him.

Johnny’s throat tightened. "Not because I think I could’ve fixed anything. I just…" He squeezed Roy’s hand once, carefully. "I wish you hadn’t had to do all that alone."

Roy’s expression changed. Something small and exposed crossed his face before he looked back toward the water.

"I wasn’t alone," he said. "My parents were there. It was before I got this house."

"Yeah," Johnny said softly. "But still."

Roy didn’t argue.

For a while, neither of them spoke. The houseboat rocked beneath them, gentle and familiar. Outside, the sun dipped, and the wind chime clicked softly against itself.

"And the second time?"

"Johnny." Roy gave him a look. One that said Johnny didn't want to know. Not really.

"Oh…" Johnny's throat closed up. He swallowed around it. "It was me, wasn't it?"

"Johnny…" Roy said again.

"Roy, I'm sor—"

Roy shook his head once, to keep the apology from coming. "It was the first time anyone besides me or my parents had ever found it. The first time a human hand touched it."

Johnny closed his eyes.

"I didn’t mean—"

"I know." Roy’s voice was quiet. "I know that now. Part of me knew it then."

Johnny opened his eyes again.

Roy looked up at him then, because he wouldn't hide from the worst of it. "That night. After you went. I swam out past the cove and thought about not coming back. Not to the boat. Not to the station. Not to any of it."

Johnny felt the room tilt. The living room was warm, too warm. Or he was. He definitely felt overheated. The couch was solid beneath them. Roy’s shoulder was pressed close to his.

Still, Johnny felt suddenly like he was standing on the dock again, watching dark water close over the place Roy had disappeared.

"You almost left because of me," Johnny said.

"No, I stayed because of you. Because you didn't take it. And because… I realized I was in love with you."

Johnny stopped breathing.

The words scattered through him, sharp and bright and impossible to catch.

I stayed because of you. You didn’t take it. I'm in love with you.

Johnny stared at him, unable to make his mouth work.

Roy’s face changed almost immediately, realizing that they hadn't said those words out loud yet.

The openness shuttered by half, bracing for refusal or dismissal. Like he had stepped too far onto land and suddenly remembered there was no water under him. And Johnny hated that Roy had given him something so bare, and his first response had been silence.

"Roy," he said, but his voice came out rough enough that he had to stop.

Roy looked down at their hands. Johnny tightened his grip before Roy could pull away. Roy’s eyes lifted.

Johnny swallowed hard. "I’m not— I’m just trying to catch up."

Roy’s mouth moved, almost a smile and almost pain. "You’ve been doing a lot of that lately."

"Yeah, well, you keep giving me surprises."

That got him the smallest breath of laughter, and Johnny clung to it. Then the laughter faded, and the weight of the rest came back.

"You almost left," Johnny said. He looked toward the windows, toward the cove gone dark beyond the glass. "You really would’ve?"

"I could have."

"But would you have?"

Roy was quiet for a long moment.

Then, softly, "Yes."

Johnny closed his eyes.

Roy’s thumb moved once against the back of his hand. "Johnny—"

"I know." Johnny opened his eyes again, forcing himself to look into Roy's eyes. "I know why. Or I’m starting to. I don’t blame you."

Roy’s brows drew together. "You look like you do."

"I blame me."

Roy’s face tightened. "Don’t."

"Kinda hard not to."

"You didn’t know."

"I was too nosy. I still touched it."

"And then you let go." Roy shifted closer on the couch, close enough that his knee pressed against Johnny’s. "That matters more."

Johnny looked down at their joined hands. "To you."

"Yes, to me," Roy agreed with a small chuckle. "Who else is there?"

Johnny let out a shaky breath. "I don’t want to be something you have to survive."

"You’re not."

"I scared you bad enough that you thought about leaving everything."

Roy nodded once. "And then you made me remember why I didn’t have to. Why I didn't want to."

Johnny hadn't done anything. He just… cared.

Roy’s eyes were steady now, determined to get through to Johnny. "You left the door open."

Johnny could understand that.

He turned more fully toward Roy on the couch, careful not to crowd him, careful even now. "Then I’ll keep leaving it open."

Roy smiled brilliantly, like a ball of sunshine under his messy mop of hair.

Johnny held his gaze. "I mean it. Whatever this is. Whatever we are. I don’t want you trapped here. Not by me. Not by the station. Not by anything."

Roy’s hand tightened around his.

Johnny gave a small, crooked smile, though his eyes burned. "I’m not saying I’d be cheerful about you swimming off for three weeks."

Roy bit his lip, his smile still big and his eyes crinkled.

"I’d be awful," Johnny admitted. "Just terrible. Cap would probably send me home by day two."

"Day one," Roy said.

"Probably," Johnny said, and the laugh broke slightly on the way out. "But I’d rather miss you because you chose the water than keep you because I was afraid you wouldn’t come back."

Roy nodded, eyes going suspiciously wet. Johnny wondered if that was too much. Too close to the heart of it.

Then Roy leaned into him. Just a quiet, deliberate movement until his forehead rested against Johnny’s shoulder.

Johnny wrapped an arm around him. This time, he didn't hesitate.

Roy let out a contented sigh against his shirt. "I don’t want to leave."

Johnny closed his eyes and pressed his cheek to Roy’s damp hair.

"Good," he whispered. "Because I love you too."

Roy breathed a tiny gasp and Johnny would have laughed, but it would have come out too wet.

"What? You didn’t know that part?" he asked.

Roy’s voice was muffled against his shoulder. "I hoped."

"Yeah," Johnny said, holding him a little tighter. "Well. You were right."

Roy’s hand moved over Johnny’s ribs, soft and exploring, holding just there.

The wind chime clicked softly outside the glass door, shells and sea glass tapping together in the breeze.

Johnny looked past Roy’s shoulder toward the cove.

The water was still out there.

Waiting. Open.

And Roy was still here.