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beerecordings · 5 years

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Selkie Night

Yeah hi so you know how I was apologizing like six hours ago about how I hadn’t had any writing for you lately? well then this happened because i can’t phucken sleep dudes ahhhhh

ANYWAy it’s okay because I got this written in like three hours. and i actually kind of love it??? dude i mentioned my selkie Chase headcanon ONCE (1nce) today and then this sidelines me out of nowhere. i’ve literally never planned to write anything about this it was just like “hehe what if Chsae.... were SELKIE” but anyway here it is and it kind of rocks my socks off I love it. as a side note, I did take some liberties with selkie lore. don’t know what the most common beliefs are, these are just based on the stories I know of. I think most selkie stories are about falling in love with humans, but in this one Chase and Stacy are both selkie.

trigger warning for some mild suicidal ideation, okay? but don’t even think about fussing at me about the nudity in this fic it could not possibly be less sexual. There is an abrupt start tho lolll

And HEY -

I hope you enjoy :) Thanks for reading, my friend.

He tears off his clothes as he runs, pulling his shirt over his head, tugging his pants off mid-stride, stripping until, by the time his bare feet are pounding against wet sand instead of dry, he is naked except for the coat he carries.

The wind rushes across his head, stroking back his downy hair warmly, and the sandy earth beneath his feet is calling to him – stay, stay, brother, child, on this side of the water, where the men make their homes, and the tide keeps its distance. Here you have made your dwelling for so many years. Here you have spoken, loved, eaten, drank. Here you must stay.

No, no. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters but them.

“Stacy!” he screams, as his feet find the harsh plastic of the dock. “Stacy! Sorcha! A chuisle mo chroí!”

He runs, runs, runs towards the end of the dock, runs towards the roiling black waves of the ocean, pulling his coat over his shoulders. Ah, its weight on his back! Its warmth! How long has it been? Tears streak his face like stars the night sky, and then he is at the end of the dock, and he does not stop, he does not pause, does not allow himself even a moment of doubt before he leaps, graceful as a swan, and his body curves beautifully into a dive he has performed a thousand times before, and when he plunges hands-first into the frigid expanse of the great dark water, he is no longer a man.

Ah, to be a seal again!

For a moment, Chase can only dive on, deeper into the water, the suddenness of the transformation leaving him, as always, momentarily numb, momentarily taken over, the thoughts of a man doing their best to drift out of his head. He twitches his long whiskers and swims down through the water, now comfortably cool against his smooth, heavy skin and fat, and no longer so dark with eyes as dark to match. His black-and-white-dappled body cuts easily through the waves, carrying him farther, farther out to sea, away from the noise and the light and the smell of men, away from the other part of himself. Ah, he drifts. He drifts.

He is far away now. Far away from men. As if he is not one of them.

Focus, Chase, something in his head insists, and he shakes his snout, heading back towards the surface of the water for a breath of air. Focus, Conchobhar.

Bottling out of the water, he peers around in all directions, snuffling at the air for a smell of his mate and his puppies. He turns his head West and takes off again, swift as a seal, determined as a man. One broken heart sitting in the middle of his chest, no matter the form he takes.

The cliffs of the next town over appear off in the distance as he swims, bringing with them plentiful places to rest. Scattered across rocks and outcroppings, he smells for signs of his family, the vibrations in the water warning his whiskers if anything stirs that might be them.

A familiar smell – Sorcha? Pups?

No. Other selkie, a trio of them, mixed in with the seals. Maybe they have seen them.

He barks an anxious greeting from a few feet away, enough to rouse them with worried barks to answer him – predators? Hunters? Boats? Is all well, brother? Is all well?

Despairing, he yelps back at them. No predators. Just pain. The seals snuffle back to sleep, but the selkie are alerted, pushing past the others to slip into the water with him. Soon, they are circling him in friendly greeting, barking. He does his best to swim with them, exhausted by his grief. Eventually, he pulls back his hood from his head, and he is a man again, kicking his legs in the water, keeping his head afloat with ease. He was, quite literally, born swimming, and with his coat on, he will not be cold for a long time.

“What's the matter, brother?” asks a brown-skin selkie, drawing back her hood and surfacing with lengths of long, unkempt hair floating lovely on the water around her. It has been a long time since she was a woman. “Do you need someone to swim with?”

“Here is a place of safety,” offers a second, a man twice Chase's size, with a smile warm as the beach in the summer. “Would you like to come lie down?”

“Please,” he croaks. His voice is the backbone of a fish, fragile and thin. “My mate has taken her coat back from me and come back to the water with my children. Please, have you seen her?”

The other selkie exchange worried looks.

“Perhaps we ought not to tell you,” frowns the third selkie, circling Chase slowly, her hands cutting through the water. Her white body gleams in the moonlight on the surface of the ocean, covered only by her heavy seal-skin coat. “If she took her coat back, I wouldn't guess that she wants to be reunited with you.”

His tears mix with the salt of the sea. “I know, I know. But I have to see her again. I need to understand. Please, my heart is shattered. If she wants to go, I have never kept her coat from her, but I have to see my pups again.”

“Look, he is to be trusted,” insists the first, swimming closer to Chase's side and touching the coat wrapped around him. “If she was afraid of him, if he were to hurt her or her babies, she would have stolen his coat, so she would have been safe from him. Isn't that so? She has given you a chance to see them again yet. Poor brother, don't cry.”

“We did see them,” offers the second, pointing out farther up the coastline. “Or I would guess that was them. A grey-coat female with a pair of pups alongside her. She ought to be careful. It can be dangerous territory out there where the black-and-whites roam. No humans, though. They can't get their boats out there because the water's so shallow. Not good fishing for them.”

“Yes,” breathes Chase, simultaneously relieved and exhausted by the news. “Yes, that sounds like them. That sounds like somewhere she would go.”

He reaches for his hood again, turning towards his family. “Thank you so much. I'm sorry to have woken you.”

“It's nothing, brother.”

“We look out for our own. We're glad to help.”

“Yes, we can sleep any time. Life is good here. Hey, listen.”

Chase is already a seal again, but he pauses, his great dark eyes turning back to them.

The others all have pity in their eyes. Pity and worry and warmth.

“If you don't find her,” calls his brother. “Or if she won't have you, you can come back here, okay? We live well. The water's never too cold and the fish are never too fast. The smell of men will wash off you in a little time, and next season more of our sisters and brothers will come to see us, and you can settle down again with new pups. Okay?”

Chase doesn't know how to answer that. He knows it is not something that can be. There is no other family for him than one he loves now. There is no other home for him than that which he built amid men. But he gives them a sharp, grateful bark, turning his smooth body back into the waves.

“Don't swim alone,” he hears one call, as he slips away.

Ah, but he had almost forgotten the brotherhood of selkie.

Knowing that he is headed towards them invigorates him, and he remembers soon enough his old speed. He was always small for a seal, he knows, but he is quick as the froth on the waves, cutting through the water with the speed of a motor on the back of a man's boat and the familiarity of a creature who has belonged to the ocean since the day his mother bore him. He almost loses himself in it – it's so easy to start thinking like a seal again, to be distracted by fish and exciting waves building up in the distance, to snuffle against the sand looking for shiny shells, to find a safe rock to drag himself onto and fall asleep on in full seal form, abandoning the guise of a human. It's true, he could give up everything he's built for so long now and crash back into the familiar arms of the ocean. Live among his real people instead of pretending to be human every day.

But the thought of them always brings his focus back.

The moon is dipping down by the time he finds them, but still the darkness surrounds them, and not even the earliest fishers are rising from their sleep. And there she is on the water, as perfect as the day he met her. Silver in the moonlight.

He knows she feels his vibrations coming from a mile away, but she does not turn or stop, only continues her slow, gentle swim back towards the shore. Speeding up beside her does nothing to change her either. He recalls his pace and finds his rhythm beside her, and the two of them are all but floating through the waves, caught in the exact same tide, side-by-side.

It's almost like the old days. They were so young. Too young, maybe. Most humans would say so. He didn't know that at the time, but she did, and still she took him in, called him her own. Gave him her coat on the day of their wedding without hesitation and kissed his when he handed it over, like it was holy, like it was sacred.

His freedom. His being. His love. All of it held there in her arms.

She promised to protect it, and he, in turn, fell to his knees at her feet, and clutched her coat to his chest, and swore to her on everything that he was, in a tongue not fully human, that no harm would ever come to the seal-skin in his arms.

She cried for love of him. He kissed her with salt on his face. He never meant anything more than the promise he gave her that day.

But here they are.

The silence between them has gone cold.

He gives a rough, desperate bark, begging her to say anything, to do anything, to give him anything. She offers a small chirp and nothing else, until at last they are lying side-by-side on the shore of the beach.

He draws his hood back first. Finally, she pulls hers back too.

Long black hair, heavy with water, piles in the sand at her head. Huge dark eyes stare at him in the darkness. Her moonlight flesh is familiar to him. He could reach out and touch her, but he won't. She no longer wants him. He will never touch her again. Not her skin, not her coat, perhaps not even her children.

Tears course down his cheeks.

“I'm sorry,” she whispers. “That I left so suddenly.”

“Fuck,” he answers eloquently, wiping tears from his face. “Fuck, Stacy. How could you have just – how could you just – and to take the kids – I got home and their coats were gone and I thought maybe someone had stolen you, I didn't – without even telling me...”

He trails off, swallowing back another sob. He wishes she weren't so calm. Hell, he can't even tell if she's paying attention. She's already drawing her mind away from the land. Giving herself back to the ocean.

“My name,” she murmurs. “Is Sorcha.”

He sighs, sitting up and shaking his head. “Okay,” he says. “You picked Stacy for yourself when we moved into the world where the men live, but sure. Sorcha.”

“And yours is Conchobhar.” She stares up at him. “Or it was, when I married you.”

He rubs at his beard, tamping down a frustrated hurt that burns like fishing netting around his chest.

“I like Chase better.”

“I know,” she says. “We no longer want the same things.”

“That's – Sorcha, that's supposed to be something you figure out when you're married, not something you leave them for. Not something you take their pups away for. How could you do this to me? You don't – you don't understand how much this hurts.”

He's crying in earnest now, clutching his coat close around him.

“Maybe I could have stayed,” she says. Her voice is velvet waves and he hates it. Where's her ferocity gone? Her passion, her laughter? Does she only have velvet for him now? “But Hunter and Saoirse... that wasn't I wanted for them. To never know who they really are. I couldn't watch them suffocate on the land like that anymore.”

“We could go out to sea more often,” he tells her, and he knows he's begging, but he doesn't care, not anymore. “Every weekend, if you wanted! I can move us even closer to the ocean soon as things start going back to the way they were with my work.”

“Every weekend,” she laughs. “When I was a child, we spent the whole summer and winter in the water. Half the year, Conchobhar, and not the safest or easiest times either. We lived as we were meant to live. Truly in this world. Truly in the water.”

She takes a deep breath and gets up, stepping back towards the water, letting her calves be swallowed up again. “And you, how long did you spend at sea before you even touched a human being? Oh, your work – you're so funny to me, sometimes, that a creature who didn't touch so much as a boat radio until he was at least fourteen chooses to live his life working with cameras and computers.”

Chase can't help but snort out a laugh, shaking his head. Well, she's got a point. He didn't speak anything but an antique Gaelic til he was twelve, and his first contact with a human was nearly getting shot by some pissed-off fisherman. When they were human, they were human with other selkie, and that was all there was. That was all he needed.

“I found what I loved,” he says.

“Attention,” suggests Sorcha flatly, her back to him now. “Money. Approval from strangers. Time with your cameras instead of your family.”

She may as well be a pissed-off fisherman. He's at the wrong side of her gun and, fuck, but he doesn't know how to take blows like this.

“I know I haven't always been perfect,” she says, surprising him. “I realize now that when you began to struggle with – with the depression, I should have done more than ask you to come out to sea. I was thinking of myself, not you, thinking of how scared I was and what I would do and what I needed, and – Chase, that was wrong of me. I know you need real help. I'm sorry I didn't help you get it. I hope you are getting it now. I still want what's best for you. Really, I...”

There's some emotion out of her, at least, but nothing like the crashing ocean she used to be.

She's really made up her mind, isn't she?

She's really gone.

Here on the beach, he's lost her.

He wonders how close the killer sharks he was warned about swim, and the thought makes him laugh. Maybe he should hold off on impulses like that until she's done apologizing for ignoring him the time he confessed to her that he couldn't help but want to die, resting his head on her stomach while she stroked his hair and promised him everything would be okay, a baby wrapped up in seal-skin asleep on the mattress beside them.

“I can't live like that anymore, Chase. Can't be away so long. Can't let my pups be away so long. I was happy to go with you to live like mostly normal human people. I was happy to help you follow your dreams. But you've lost your sense of reality. You've lost your sense of yourself. And somewhere in the hunt for what you want, you pushed me and Hunter and Saoirse under the waves behind you.”

“Fuck, Stacy – Sorcha, please, don't say that. I love them so much.”

She turns to him, fair as a star, shining in the moonlight. She's like something out of a storybook, he thinks, and not just because of the shape-shifting.

“I know,” she answers. “But not enough to change.”

And if there's truth to that, well. He doesn't have an answer. And if it's false, then what can't be changed is her mind, and she is lost to him.

“We're heading North,” she says. “Unless you're coming with, you won't be able to find us again for some time.”

“Will you be back next season?” he manages.

Turned away from her now. Can't meet that light in the eyes.

“Yeah. Yes, of course. We'll come by.”

“You swear it?”

“Yes.”

“You've broken your promises before.”

“I know.”

“Can I see them one more time?”

She turns towards the water and her gaze allows Chase to see them at last – two little bodies circling sleepily around beneath a rocky outcropping, safe as pearls in the hiding spot their mother found them.

“Yeah,” she says. “If you go with your coat on. I've always wanted them to see you with your coat on. She's starting to look just like you, you know... When was the last time you saw her with her coat on?”

He is already slipping away, wearing his seal form again.

Hunter is afraid of the disturbances in the water at first.

It's bigger than his mother, whatever's coming. It's fast and it's headed right towards him.

He pokes his head up out of the water, chirruping anxiously for his sister. She comes up after him, curious, floating lazily around on the water, and then, a moment later –

She lets out a high-pitched seal yip and streaks through the water towards her father.

Chase pushes their faces together in a kiss greeting and circles with his little girl, stunned by how easy she keeps up, by the shine on her healthy young coat, and Sorcha is right, it's just like his own, dappled black and white, with the blond patch on her tiny, whiskered snout.

Hunter zips past him a second later, barking and bumping into him again and again, a tiny chunk of seal blubber and affection. Chase bursts into yelping laughs and breaches with his pups, splashed again and again by Hunter slapping his fin on the water.

Tiny arms wrap suddenly around his neck and Saoirse is there with her hood drawn back, giggling and kicking in the water, her coat around her shoulders. Chase draws back his hood too and carries her to the rocks, scooping up Hunter too, and clutching both of his children as tightly as he can to his chest, kissing at their soaking hair, at their beautiful little faces, at first one hand, then the other, with all ten tiny, tiny almost-human fingers.

“I love you,” he whispers, again and again. Hunter buries his face in his collarbone, stroking at the ends of his hair. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

“I love you too, Daddy!” Saoirse sobs, and it's only when he realizes that his daughter is crying just from hearing him say it that maybe Sorcha was right about everything after all.

He has to let them go.

He crumples to his knees on the sharp stones of the outcropping, and the last part of his heart shatters clean in half.

The moon stares down at them. She's a tired old stone and she's watched a great many tides come and go, just like this one. He’s not the first seal to die beneath her gaze.

“Chase?”

The clean sand of the beach washes up its morning collection of shells and rocks, and with it comes a young man in a red hoodie, with a backpack thrown over his shoulder and utter terror in his eyes.

“Chase?” he repeats, louder. He's the second person today to sprint down this beach, shouting for the person he's lost.

“Chase, are you here? Man, please answer me! Chase, you're scaring me! Chase Brody, hello?”

Swearing under his breath, Jackie continues down the white expanse of the beach. He'd be ticked to have to be out here running around at six in the morning under most conditions, sure, but when he came home last night and found Chase's room empty – and worse, his coat gone –

“Chase!” he hollers, tears burning in his eyes. “Chase, Chase, where are you? Don't be gone, bud, please don't be gone...”

He knows he's been suicidal. He knows he's been acting reckless. He knows. But just – please, God, don't let his friend have just disappeared, don't let him just be gone. Jackie will never know if he went back to the ocean or something worse, and he can't bear that, he can't –

“Chase!” he cries, relief flooding down his chest. “Chase, is that you?”

A moment later, he's afraid again. The little figure on the beach, curled up beneath a black and white coat, does not move when he calls his name.

“Hey, hey, buddy, are you with me?” Jackie falls to his knees beside him, and, oh, thank God, it really is Chase, little blond tuft poking out at the top of his hair and all. Jackie presses his fingers beneath his chin, searching for a pulse.

“Jackie?” mumbles Chase, blinking open reddened eyes.

“Oh, Chase,” breathes Jackie, scooping him up into a hug so tight Chase's coat might just decide to become one with his skin again. “Holy shit, Chase, I was – you scared me a little, haha, you were just gone, and I was scared you might have done something stupid, or – or – oh, I don't know. It doesn't matter now. Are you okay?”

Chase sniffles and drags his coat in close again, trying his best to push himself up on shaking arms. His face is as white as moonlight, his lips blue as blood from sleeping on the cold beach without blubber to keep him warm. His knees are soaked red, scored with deep cuts.

“Poor guy,” soothes Jackie nervously, trying to be gentle, pushing his wet hair out of his eyes. Chase has told him that being in his other form can be like a whole different mindspace – maybe, in his head, Chase is still out there at sea. “Chase, can you hear me okay? Are you alright?”

Chase just shakes his head, squeezing his eyes tightly shut.

“Oh, buddy. What happened?”

“Stacy,” he chokes out, in a voice raw with crying. “T-took Hunter and Saoirse.”

“Took them? You mean someplace other than staying with her sister?”

Hot tears course down Chase's cheeks, watering the damp sand beneath his head.

“Took them out to sea,” he whimpers, hiding his face in his hands. “Took them out to live like real Selkie, like she always wanted.”

A cold sort of horror hurts its way down Jackie's chest.

“Shit... Chaser, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, man.”

Sniffling, Chase stares with reddened eyes out at the ocean and shakes his head, biting down hard on his lip.

Jackie rubs his shoulder patiently for a long few minutes. Focus on that, Chase. Try to calm down.

The tide draws closer and closer, sighing against the sand. Seagulls circle lazily overhead, searching for scraps. This world he used to know so well is still in harmony, like it always was when he was young.

It just doesn't need him anymore.

Maybe he was the one that walked away from it, but he doesn't know how to go back now, and, with his wife and his heart-lights gone, all the ocean has done to him is take.

“There's something I want you to know,” he croaks out, turning to meet Jackie's eyes.

“Yeah, man. What is it?”

“My real name,” he says. “Is Conchobhar.”

There's a slight pause from Jackie above him, but his voice is still calm when he speaks. Calm and sympathetic. Trying so hard to be there for him. Everybody always is, and he's always too broken to be fixed by it.

“Okay, Conchobhar,” he says. “Is that what you want me to call you now?”

Chase licks at the salt on his dry, cracking lips, huddling down under his coat.

“No,” he whispers finally. “Just wanted you to know. Just... wanted someone to remember.”

Jackie's hand claps down on his shoulder again. “Okay, buddy. I'll remember. Course I will.”

“Thank you. Jackie. Thank you. I don't deserve a friend like you, I don't deserve – I'm such a mess, and a screw-up, and I think I'm losing it, man, I think – ”

“Hey, hey, sh, sh, Chase, it's okay. It's okay. We're going to figure it out. We're going to figure this out, I promise. We can talk all you want when we get home. But first order of business is getting your naked ass off this beach before the tourists show up, okay?”

Chase laughs shakily, reaching up to clutch at Jackie's hand on his shoulder. Ah, but even the touch of him is different. His hands belong to the earth. His hands belong to mankind.

Chase is going back with him.

“I brought you clothes since your coat was gone, figured you must have gone swimming. Here, get some pants on. There you go. Fuck, aren't you freezing? Here, a shirt, and why don't we tuck that coat away, you aren't exactly inconspicuous. Don't want anyone starting any rumors about selkie in this area, man... Imagine what the fans would say. Bro Average, more like... fuck, I have a seal pun on the tip of my tongue, I can't find it. Come on, so. Poor bud. Come here, I'll help you. You're exhausted.”

Chase lists obediently against his friend's chest, letting Jackie wrap a reassuring arm around him. He can almost feel Jackie's anxiety, can almost feel Jackie's fear, but the thin cloak of humor and steadfastness he wraps around it is grounding, and he doesn't want to look through the curtain right now.

“We're going to look after you,” Jackie promises, once they're inside a cab and heading back to his place. Chase is slumped against the glass of the window, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. “Me and Marv and Henrik. And you can finally meet my buddy Jameson. Remember I told you about the demi-fae I've been getting tea with? You're going to love him, guy's an absolute legend.”

“Mmh.”

“You can stay with me and Henrik long as you want, yeah? Forever, if you want to. Going to go home and patch up these poor knees of yours and get you all warm and dry. You'll tell me everything that happened and we'll get it all worked out. Yeah? We'll all look after each other. And we'll all be healthy and cared for and safe, how about that?”

And if Jackie's voice cracks a little on the word 'safe,' and he suddenly has to look away with those last words, well, Chase doesn't care. He lets Jackie drone on as enthusiastically as he can manage, watching his friend's leg bounce nervously on the seat beside him as the empathetic grief rows over Jackie's chest. The ocean slips along past the car, visible over high green hills, sparkling like diamond in the sun.

Chase turns away from it.

His heart is broken.

He doesn't want to be Selkie anymore. All it's brought him now is hurt.

He goes back to Jackie's place and falls asleep in his bed before Jackie is even finished tucking him in. Jackie brings his backpack in and sets it in his own room, almost forgetting about the seal-skin coat tucked away inside, already focused on getting his home ready to keep Chase safe and well and recovering.

Chase doesn't ask for it back.

#mythology au #selkie chase #tw suicidal ideation #chase brody #writers of jack #bee writes #k i'm going to bed lmao #selkie

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