A/N: Inspired a 'LIL by Robert Bly's "The Dead Seal Near MCClure's Beach", and a LOT by definition-of-awkward's prompt on tumblr!

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Keith crouched down and waited.

He kept his eyes on the horizon slightly white from the froth of the outer-sea waves, and slightly blue from the backdrop of the sky. What little movement in the nearby water lapped at the edges of his surfboard, and with each nudge slowly soaked up the legs of his bathing suit to the dry sections around his waistband; the water had been so still he did not bother ducking under the swells near the shore, and that left the starchy bathing suit material rubbing the sensitive skin near his navel. Keith muttered a curse and sat back up.

Maybe the weather man had been wrong. Keith had been in such a hurry to grab his board and spend all the time on his lunchbreak he could on the waves that he did not check again to see if the tropical storm to the east would send larger waves his way.

A hop in his surfboard drew him from sulking. Out near the distant rocks, one of the incoming waves caught on the jetty, and in a flurry like birds startled from a meadow, turned over itself into a spiral that glistened in the sun.

Perfect.

Keith dipped his arms into the water. He felt the suck of the wave as it rode his way, and he began to paddle away as the swell reached its zenith, until he was practically on top of it and could take the hesitation to hop to his feet. He stood expertly, like so many times before, with a balance that did not happen so fluidly like when his brother Shiro rose on his surfboard, but rather rashly, with a held intensity that seemed as quick to fall apart as the waves when they met the shore: that matched the waves as they spun and sprayed and he skirted the edge with his board like a knife on whetstone. However, when Keith did meet the shore, he had the option to hop off, and allowed his board the length of its tether to finish the water's motion and wash against the sand.

Keith shook out his hair, now comfortably wet and exhilarated. He picked up his board from its resting place on the sand. He turned back towards the ocean, where he could see another wave hitting the jetty and growing turbulent.

The weather man had not been wrong after all.

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Keith stepped out of the shower stall, in that awkward state of his clothes being dry and his hair being wet and the later causing his collar to dampen and stick against him with the wind. Although it was not the most ideal appearance to have at work, his coworkers had to be used to it by now; Keith was not one to fuss much with his hair, and tying it up would just make it dry slower and knot into a crinkled mess. What was more important to him was his surfboard, and that it got placed safety into the backroom away from customers who wanted to ask about it or had the audacity to touch it. For reasons unknown to him, the red lion decal and its presumed texture was prime reason for people running their fingers all over it.

Upon entering his place of employment, Keith was once again greeted by that smell he wished he could forget: that odd mix of the plastic used on cheap kites, screen-printed shirts, and stiff carpet only tourist shops had, and that made Keith's skin itch until he got used to it. It also did not help that on his way to the front he would often encounter piles of t-shirts left in disarray as customers carded through them, and he would have to spend ten minutes at the table grumbling to himself and putting the shirts back in order. It was one of the many reasons he wished some business where the tourists did not go like the DMV or water treatment plant would hire him, but that was a woe for another time when he felt mad enough at Shiro to berate suckering his girlfriend into giving Keith a job.

Pidge, the shop's resident cashier with a nickname, was hard at work scrubbing out the hermit crabs' cage. In Keith's mind, she—are freshman in high school—was a little too young to have a job at all, but her excuse was that she needed the money for the electronics she liked to tinker with. Keith had no idea in the world why, considering both her father and brother worked at the nearby university for a salary in multitudes of hers, but he decided not to question it. Maybe she liked the discussions she could have with Hunk about this or that she was building, and how he thought she could make it better.

She must have noticed he was there, because she called to the office behind the counter that "Keith's back!" and went on with her scrubbing. Keith sat on the stool for the second register, where beside it the hermit crabs scurried around the bottom of a plastic pan.

"Allura's here today," Pidge explained her announcement of his return. "Shiro and Hunk went out to teach a group of little kids."

Keith looked sidelong out the window, viewing a patch of beach. An outcropping of rocks near the shop created an area almost like a bay, where the water was warm and still and people could learn to stand on surfboards quite easily. Keith could just make out the outlines of Shiro and Hunk amongst a crowd of smaller ones. Who must have been Hunk was helping one of the children balance on a kiddie board, while Shiro was crouched low and demonstrating the paddling form needed to combat a wave. Parents sat along the shoreline and watched the demonstration, resting on colorful towels with their toes being brushed by the water and coolers full of snacks behind them. The child on the board waivered and nearly fell were it not for Hunk, and Keith looked away. He remembered what it had been like to first learn, and he wanted to save himself the memory.

"Which reminds me." Pidge tried to snap, which did not really work with rubber gloves on. "Allura wanted you to make sure the new surfboard's waxed and hang it up."

Keith had hoped that box in the storage room was a new clothing rack he did not have to mess with, but he should have known with so many boards being sold last week he would have no such luck. Keith exhaled and rose from the stool, going around the counter to retrieve the ladder and surfboard.

"Shiro got it out before he left—it's really nice," Pidge added. "It has blue wave designs on it or something."

"Sounds cool," Keith departed with that, and Pidge now went to drying the cage.

Although many of the surfboard designs they sold were pretty, Keith did not linger on them too much. He had his own and every surfboard they had would be sold, never to be seen again, eventually. It was part of the weird paradox of working at the shop: only those who stayed worked here, but only those who left shopped here.

The surfboard would be gone in the next month or so.

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Sunset was always the best time to surf.

Then, the sun did not beat down on Keith's shoulders and cast hot reflections off the water. And unlike at sunrise, the sand and water were still warm, like blood, and Keith could dip into the water and not freeze even as the air chilled and the coming dark pulled him towards the shore. The best part was when the sun sat halfway down the horizon, when the waves would tinge gold and roll together like a platter of champagne flutes. It was almost like a different ocean then, made up in this world of mysterious reds and oranges that bubbled and clashed and sank into the darkness. Keith would ride until the sea extinguished the sun and the water turned a deep purple and the moon overtook the sky. It was almost like Keith's mother when she would turn on the porch light and call in him and Shiro from searching for crabs and shells in the dark. The pang of remembering her face and shape against the doorway from what seemed like so long ago would always come with the moon, and that feeling meant it was time to leave the ocean for another day and return home.

After work, Keith bid Hunk and Pidge and Allura farewell, and told Shiro he would come home after sunset and that he did not need the entrance light to be kept on for him. Shiro said that was alright, but Keith knew as he watched his brother leave on his bike that he would keep all the living room lights on instead. Shiro was sneaky like that, with every excuse he could think of about late-night television and cleaning the house all too ready on his tongue to justify his continued care of Keith even as they lived a household apart. If keeping all the lights on somehow comforted Shiro, Keith did not want to deny him that, but he also had to know that Keith was an independent adult not in need of smothering.

Keith took to his usual spot on the beach, halfway between work and halfway between home, where every so often a decent wave would swell, and Keith could ride it until it collapsed onshore. The storm to the east continued to rattle up the ocean into larger, more powerful waves long into the evening, to the point Keith tired and chose to wrap up his activities early.

A sizeable sliver of sun still glistened over the horizon as Keith packed up his bag and carried his surfboard under his arm. A towel around his neck caught the droplets of seawater from his hair before they could slide to his shirt and chill with the night.

Before the university had moved a town over, the neighborhood of Keith's house had been a popular place for students to rent near the beach: it was not hard to tell the buildings made into apartments and offices were in the shells of closed takeout restaurants and cafés, and a dock for parking jet skis still jutted out into the water. It was nearly useless now, with moss-slick planks and many of the rocks used to bank it lost to the sand. The only one Keith saw use it now was his old neighbor, the one between him and Shiro, when the notion of fly fishing appealed to him.

The wet wood of the dock glittered in the lingering light as Keith made to walk past it, and dark shadows below made the rocks in the small alcove an indiscernible mass. Keith looked away from the dock in favor of home, ignoring it to be forgotten.

Something like a gargled bark startled him.

Keith whirled around, not knowing exactly where the noise came from, and wondering if he had accidentally frightened a dog in the dying light. Although, when he looked back on the beach, he saw no such animal, and turned different ways to check. He frowned as the only sign of others was the flicking on of lights in the beachside homes. Keith fixed his bag back onto his shoulder and returned to his path home, convincing himself it was nothing to be bothered with.

Until again: a bark.

Only, if he stopped to think about it, it sounded more like hacking. And this time he heard it echo from the space near the dock. The possibility of an animal poking around there, alone, like they were not supposed to be caused Keith to hesitate, and he debated the ethics of what to do in such a situation. In the end, the tender parts of his personality won out, and he dropped his bag and stuck his board into the sand. If the dog was skittish Keith would have to coax it towards him, and that required open arms.

Keith ran the edge of the shore to the bottom of the dock, just out of reach of the water. Here, a support of the dock took the brute of the tide, with moss climbing nearly to the top and over the immediate rocks. The smell of the moss and clacking sounds of the dock became more prominent as he approached. He tried peering thought the darkness of the alcove. He did not know if a dog could get wedged under there, like the log washed up by the support.

No. Not a log.

A man.

Keith had that same jerking surprise as when something fell unexpectedly in the night. The man had such a formless shape from a distance that Keith did not notice he was a living, breathing thing until he was a few feet away, and his alarm caused him to stumble back. The man had his face turned away and did not react to the noise of Keith jumping, and for a few more seconds Keith thought him to be dead. But, when he mustered up the courage to creep forward, he saw the quiver of flesh when he breathed, and Keith sighed in relief.

He was odd, really.

The man lied on his side away from Keith, his head turned towards the sand and one arm tucked under him like a broken wing. The other stretched out above him, and it the slants of light over his palm and shoulder Keith could see how brown his skin was, which probably contributed to his mistaken identity as a log. His hair was long enough to fall sideways and dark, although how dark Keith could not quite tell. He wore no clothes, but something tangled around his legs that might have been fabric.

That was the oddest thing of all. What Keith could only guess was a flour sack ran from his thigs to below his feet, where a knot at the end kept it together. A black ichor Keith at first feared was blood, but upon closer examination saw it was too shiny for that, coated the sack and halfway up the man's back. Keith braved to graze his fingers along the substance, and found it was also too thick for blood.

At the touch, the man jerked upright so quickly that Keith nearly fell into the surf. The man whipped around, clutching feverishly at the sack. Keith stared at him in question, and almost wished he had not.

The man had eyes as bright as the coins in a mall fountain. His brow furrowed and his nostrils flared, and Keith recognized at once that he was trying to be threatening and that touching him was a mistake. The man did not lash out, but looked like he maybe wanted to.

What saved Keith was the man opening his mouth to speak, but instead of words, black liquid erupted in its place. The man collapsed to the side and coughed violently, making a terrible sound similar to what had drawn Keith down to the dock—like a dog suffocating on something it should not have swallowed. He retched, but the motion caught in his throat, and his breathing went sporadic as he choked on his own spit and fell again to the sand. Keith rushed towards him, speaking the only thing that came to him.

"Are—Are you okay?"

No, he clearly was not, but his dumb mind did not know what else to say. Keith knew he had to act, and if that meant getting closer and touching the man again, well—be damned.

Keith pried the man's face off the sand. The man's eyes widened, and he squealed with warning, and he had enough fight left in him that Keith was forced to sit on him and wrestle his arms away. Although, for what Keith had to do he needed at least one hand free, and that led to Keith betting on surprise and letting one of the man's arms go to shove a finger down his throat.

The man made the most awful, inhuman shrieking noise that for a moment Keith's brain numbed, and he did not notice the fingernails raking into his arm until they left bleeding marks all the way to his wrist. He shoved off and backed away, the man in a single movement turning and vomiting onto the beach. Watching him regurgitate a pile of black gunk almost made Keith sick himself, and the searing pain in his arm did not help. He looked down at the deep scratches in his flesh, and he bit back a swear as he pinpointed the particularly painful sections with sand he would have to wash out later.

Exhausted, the man vomited a final time, until he could not find the strength to anymore and just lied on his side. His whole body convulsed as he breathed, the move towards tranquility gradual and not easily accepted. The man's face finally softened. Keith assessed his display of weakness as genuine, and he approached the man again, smoothing back his anger at being injured while he was trying to be helpful.

He reached his better arm out towards the man, and he was not swatted away, either because of quiet reverence or true fatigue Keith did not know. It did not honestly matter which, as long as he did not scratch him again, and if the man remaining limp as Keith hooked their arms together was anything to go by, he was not planning to. He merely kept a firm grip around the sack as Keith dragged him away from the dock, his eyes shut and words unspoken.

Keith woefully had to leave his bag and surfboard on a strip of public beach for the time being, but he at least had the mind not to try to hunt for keys amongst a duffle bag and carried them in his pocket. He more or less kicked his door open, stumbling over the doorstop when the man's sack caught on the side. Luckily, Keith had the reflexes to save them both, and the man reached his couch without further damage.

And Keith got time to think.

His heartbeat was hammering in his throat, so he had to wait for that to quell. In the meantime, he went and collected his things from the beach, the light just enough for him to be able to find them and not have to wait until morning. He also cleaned and bandaged his wounds in the bathroom, and the act of care was the one to calm him from all the excitement of the night.

The immediate happenings he could understand, but the reasons behind them he could not: Why was a man down by the dock? Why was he only wearing a sack? Why was he covered in—whatever? Keith stuck on a band-aid a little too roughly and winced.

The only solution was to ask him.

Keith had spoken to the man but once during the entire ordeal, and he supposed that was quite rude of him. He had also left him alone on his couch, not that the man had objected or even moved since he was placed there. He looked peacefully asleep, with his breathing leveled out from before and hand no longer on the sack.

Keith stepped as close as he dared, scanning the man in the light of his living room. Now he could make out the subtle details he could not before, like the slope of his nose and pointed shape of his jaw and the long sand-dusted eyelashes against his cheek. His skin was a deep tan, and with the way he lied the speckles on his shoulder were just visible; it was like the spots on a brown chicken egg. Looking lower Keith became aware of how nude he was, and he hurried with a flushed face to pull the extra blanket from his closet. Keith was not one to keep anything he though he did not need, and he only kept the other blanket because it had been a birthday present from Shiro—a knot-tie blanket he had made himself. Keith covered the man with the blanket to keep him decent, leaving the dirty sack crumpled around his feet exposed.

And he realized it was not a flour sack at all.

Keith had never seen a seal in person, but he remembered from pictures enough of their appearance to recognize the way their skin folded and glistened like velvet, and the split-tail at the end he had thought was a knot. For a moment, Keith did not care that the seal pelt was not his and that it was frightfully dirty, and he snatched it up from the couch in sheer disbelief. The man did not wake to stop him, and Keith turned over the pelt in his hands, viewing the spots like the ones on the man's shoulders. It did not take long after that for Keith to notice the black slick had covered his hands, and when he brought it close to sniff, he gagged. It smelled like rot and gasoline, and Keith dropped the pelt to the coffee table.

He had to get Shiro.

Whatever was happening, he would know what to do, like he always did. He could come in with a clear head, his thoughts not marred by the confusion of the night and the questions that buzzed around Keith's head. Unlike Keith, Shiro could narrow his focus with something other than anger, and that was something Keith could admire.

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"It's… oil." Shiro inspected the black gunk spread over one finger. "Crude oil, I think."

Keith had reiterated to Shiro all the events that had transpired truthfully, and yet his brother's brow remained risen skeptically. Keith crossed his arms and shifted his weight to one leg, while Shiro lied the pelt out across his arms to look at it closer.

"So, he swallowed it?"

"He must have." Shiro eyed the spots he could see under the oil, then the bit of the man's shoulder poking over the blanket to make the connection. "I wonder… Where would he run into crude oil?"

"It's Texas, where won't you run into oil?"

"That's not what I mean," Shiro began, but shook his head, not in the mood to explain his reasoning. Instead, he rested the pelt out on the coffee table gently.

"Also, why would he have a seal pelt instead of clothes?"

Keith's face suddenly went hot, and he turned his head sideways so Shiro would not see, although Shiro was still busy with the pelt.

"I d'know," Keith half-mumbled. "But… Do you remember when we'd go out to look for mermaids?"

That did cause Shiro to look up, and Keith flushed brighter. Shiro saw, and he smiled softly, sparing Keith by turning back to the pelt.

"I do remember. You've always had a thing for the mysterious, and you were convinced that since we lived by the ocean, it would be easiest to find mermaids."

"That's before I realized how big the ocean is," Keith corrected a little testily; he paused. "… Do you remember when we would go down to the library to research mermaids and folklore and stuff?"

Shiro glanced at him again, unsure where he was going with his words. Keith fiddled with the collar of his shirt, meeting Shiro's eyes briefly.

"Do you remember the myths about seal women… Selkies?"

It was not often that Shiro lost his words, but for an uncomfortably long time, that did it for him. Keith buckled slightly under his unwavering gaze, floundering to give an explanation.

"I mean—a lot of the pieces fit. I found him by the ocean, and he doesn't have clothes, just that pelt, which could be like the Selkie coat he slipped out of. I'm not saying he necessarily is, considering I don't know about men being Selkies, but it makes a lot of sense— "

"Whoa—Keith." In the middle of Keith's rambling, Shiro's mouth finally caught up with his brain. "Calm down, buddy… Take a breather."

Keith exhaled, and it came out hoarse. Shiro offered him a comforting touch Keith did not bat away. He took a moment to stare at the pelt and control his breathing. He covered Shiro's hand with his own.

"Just… What if he is?"

He sounded either excited or terrified at the prospect, and Shiro knew both emotions could tilt his temperament in unreasonable ways. Shiro allowed Keith to grip his hand until the tension in his shoulders relaxed and his hold released. Shiro petted his shoulder gently, which seemed to soothe Keith further.

Shiro used the sweetest voice he could muster, "Don't worry about that right now. You've done all you can for him. When he wakes up, you can ask him—just like that. And if you want, we can clean up that pelt for him."

Keith did not reply immediately. He watched the movements of the man on the couch: the calm rise of the blanket and the twitch of his nose and fluttering of hair as he breathed, like any normal person when they slept. And yet, there was something ethereal about him, something that put Keith in awe and in most other situations he would chalk up to admiration. He tore his eyes away when the feeling contracted his chest. Shiro took him with soft motions to the coffee table, and he lifted the pelt with both arms.

"Dish soap should work. It's what they use in wildlife rescue."

Being emotionally vulnerable did not suit Keith at all. His stubborn streak won out, and he pulled himself out of whatever murk he had slipped into. He nodded once and gestured towards the kitchen.

"The dish soap's under the sink. I'll fill the tub to wash it in."

That at least would distract his thoughts for a while.

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A/N: If you want a few more chapters of this, tell me in the comments!