amhrán na farraige
Henrik has a good life. He's a surgeon, and a damn good one at that; he's got a loving partner, a house, everything a man could possibly want.
But there's a huge chasm in his past. He can hear people sing, even when their mouth is closed. And the smell of sea salt and brine follows him no matter where he goes.
(cw: ego shipping, schneeplebro/docaverage)
Read on ao3
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Henrik has a good life.
He’s a surgeon, a healer — he fixes people, and gets money and gratitude for it.
Sometimes their heart stops and never beats again, right there on his operating table. He knows death is part of the job, that he always does the best he can. But he can’t stop himself from heaving and curling up on the hospital bathroom floor afterwards, because that was a life, that was a life he felt slip away between his fingers. Long, slender fingers, steady hands, yet bloodied.
(A life stops, a song stops. He always hears music, always, harmony and discord as people pass him by. Everyone always sings, even with their mouth closed, even as they sleep. Always.)
***
Henrik has a loving partner. Chase, sweet, amazing Chase, who pushed past his prickly exterior. Chase, who makes him laugh with his ridiculous jokes and antics. Chase, who trusted him with his heart, battered and bleeding, who let him hold him after he nearly drank himself into a coma and cried in the doctor’s arms, because he couldn’t see a way out of the darkness.
Chase, who had been so scared to love someone like that again. Yet one night, as their bodies sung in shared pleasure and their breaths mingled, beads of exertion glinting like dew on their skin, Chase had told Henrik he loved him. It hadn’t been clear, trapped between a moan and a sob, but he’d said it again and again as they both unraveled.
(Chase’s song is complex, melancholy and regret meeting cautious hope and naive sweetness. Henrik stays up to listen, gently cradling his boyfriend’s sleeping face and thumbing over each of his features. Henrik’s bedroom smells of him — chamomile and wheat and a musk that’s so distinctly Chase. It smells of him, of cooling lust, and the ever-present sea salt and foam in the doctor’s nostrils.)
***
Henrik has blemishes. Dots and patches of discolored skin, pale grey or white on his fair complexion. They’ve always been there, just like the silver and white strands scattered in his short brown hair. Left every dermatologist he’s ever seen stumped. But they don’t move, they don’t spread, and Henrik isn’t sick. They’re just another part of him.
(Chase likes to count them, to kiss each and every one of them as he worships Henrik’s body, so gentle and reverent and loving it makes the doctor want to cry. His tears taste like the ocean, salt and brine, always salt and brine.)
***
Henrik is a lot of things. A surgeon, a lover, an estranged husband and father.
And there’s a hole in his past. A chasm.
He remembers drowning. Pain and panic, the freezing, tight embrace of the water like a stillwomb. The salt burning his eyes and throat, water in his lungs. Darkness engulfing him as the ocean pulls at him, refusing to let him go.
Then he wakes in a hospital. He’s young, no older than twenty, maybe even less. He has nothing but his name, memories stolen by the water who tried to steal his life. Trauma-based memory loss, the doctors kept saying, although it didn’t mean much to Henrik.
A name and a blinding fear of the ocean — the ocean who clings to him no matter how far he moves away from it, the scent of it ever-present. That’s all Henrik starts his life with, years and years of it forever out of his reach. Spots on his skin and seafoam in his nose.
And a grey, white-speckled coat he locks into a chest and forgets about.
He knows something is missing, even as he busies himself building a life. As he throws himself into his studies, into short and meaningless flings, then into a marriage that makes him feel like he’s drowning all over again. There’s a hole in his memories, a hole in his very soul, and nothing ever fills it.
He tries alcohol first, but hates the person he becomes when under its influence. Weed has interesting results, but it dulls his senses and mind, and it scares him. Nicotine becomes his go-to for a while, before he meets Chase. Now, it’s caffeine, only caffeine. His hands, skilled and steady hands tremble when he has too much, and Chase kisses his knuckles soothingly as he pours the rest of the pot into the drain.
(It’s better with Chase, pretty, kind Chase. He’s doing better, they both are. The hole is still there, the longing for something Henrik can’t identify, just as great as it ever was. But he learns to ignore it better.)
***
One day, Chase finds something in his attic. Henrik never goes up there, because it’s nothing but old junk and dust, but Chase stumbles on an old wooden chest there as he searches for something completely unrelated. It’s perfectly ordinary, without a proper lock, and the vlogger can’t help but take a peek inside.
When he comes back down, holding a beautiful, ample coat of white-pattered grey fur, Henrik breaks. He takes a step back, then another, until his back hits the kitchen counter. He’s breathing fast, too fast, even as Chase rushes up to him. Henrik doesn’t hear his pleas to calm down, it’s okay, what’s wrong? Nor does he see Chase’s panicked face, his grey-blue eyes set on the coat in the other man’s hands like it’s death itself coming to take him.
He knows what this is he doesn’t know what this is.
He wants to take it back he wants to run away.
Chase, Chase has it, he touched it, wrong, wrong! Stolen, taken! He wants it back he doesn’t want it he wants it he doesn't want—
Henrik lets out a pitiful whine and sinks down to the cold tiled floor, rocking and whimpering and pulling at his hair as his lover tries desperately to understand, to help. And Henrik doesn’t start to calm down until the coat is hidden out of sight, out of mind, out of mind, out of mind.
In the end, the mysterious coat goes back in the attic, and Henrik spends the rest of the evening curled up in Chase’s lap, the vlogger gently petting his hair and whispering apologies. But there’s nothing to forgive, Henrik thinks. Chase hasn’t done anything wrong.
Then why? Why had he felt the burn of seawater in his throat, in his lungs, longing and terror alike tearing his carefully stiched-together self apart?
***
That night, Henrik has a strange dream. As his lover holds him and the rain pours outside his window, he dreams he hasn’t always been human.
***
Things don’t get back to normal. Henrik can’t sleep, dream-memories of watery darkness and weightlessness making him wake up with the gasps of a drowning man. He zones out, his hands keep shaking even though he’s cut the caffeine. His coworkers look at him with barely disguised concern, and it drives him up the wall.
(A box has been opened. A wooden chest. And the latter might have been closed, but the former hasn’t.)
He almost botches an open-heart surgery. His boss makes him take the week off. Everything he’s built for himself is falling apart, because of a goddamn piece of fur that doesn’t even look like a proper coat.
He spends the first few days despondent on the couch, exhausted yet unable to sleep. Whenever he closes his eyes, all he can see are tiny, tiny silver bubbles of air escaping his mouth and nose as life leaves his lungs. He can hear the waves, louder and louder in his ears. The smell of salt and brine has become so pungent he can taste it in everything he eats, everything he drinks.
He must be going mad. And it’s taking a toll on Chase too, stubborn, self-sacrificial Chase who’s trying so hard to keep him fed and hydrated, keep him sane, keep him together.
(He’s selfish. He's supposed to be the other man’s support, not the other way around.)
He’s scared. Gott, he’s so scared. “Chase,” he croaks out on the fourth day, after many, many hours of silence. His boyfriend is at his side instantly, catching his hand and squeezing it gently. “Yeah?” Chase asks quietly, smiling down at him. He looks so tired. “What’s up, big man? Do you need something?”
Henrik plants his own dull, grey eyes into pools of blue. He can see flickers of gold and silver in the vlogger’s eyes, quick shadows swimming through like fish. He blinks, and they’re gone.
The allure. It’s never been this strong, slowly overtaking his fear. His whole body is singing, so loud he can barely hear anything else, not even the waves. It’s discordant, it needs, it wants. “Take me to the sea,” he murmurs. The waves in his ears crash with a thunderous noise.
***
It’s not a short trip. And despite Henrik’s frantic demands that they leave now, quickly, Chase insists they pack up properly and book a hotel first. Henrik barely takes anything, and what little he shoves into his suitcase is more to appease Chase than anything else. He doesn’t need any clothes, or toiletries, or anything. He just needs to go. He has to see it.
(Without really realizing it, he climbs up into the attic while Chase loads up his things and takes the coat. It feels impossibly soft against his skin, like it was made just for him.)
They take Chase’s car, because the doctor is nowhere functional enough to drive even a bumper kart at a local fair. They live pretty far off the nearest coast, so it’s a fairly long drive that takes up most of the next day. The low drone of the engine and rocking motions lull Henrik into an uneasy sleep on the passenger seat — the bags under his eyes are so dark, his face so gaunt and pale and hollow, it makes Chase’s heart lurch. But he keeps driving, keeps forcing water and snacks into his boyfriend at each pit stop, because he’s not fucking giving up on the man he loves.
The more they approach the seafront, the more frantic Henrik seems to get. Dull grey eyes gain back some shine, a fevered kind of glint that’s almost more concerning. His hands fiddle with the strings of his borrowed hoodie, the one he likes to wear when he’s anxious. It smells like Chase, and it’s comforting enough.
The first spot they reach, thanks to Henrik’s insistence, is not a beach you’d see on a postcard. It’s remote, right under a jagged cliffside, which makes it tricky to climb down to. Grey and black rocks sinking under the tide instead of white sand. And it’s early November, which means it’s cold, a humid, freezing cold only made worse by the grey drizzle of rain. Nobody sensible is around this time of year.
It’s perfect, Henrik thinks.
He can smell it, actually smell it — the salt, the foam, the brine. No longer a phantom scent clinging to him, but tangible, real, surrounding him. Chase helps him down the last boulder, and his shoes hit the rocky beach with a dull crunch. “It’s kind of pretty,” the vlogger comments, shivering a little within the confines of his parka. “Wild.”
Henrik doesn’t respond. The bundle on his back almost burns through his clothes. The wind whips at his face and hands harshly, but he no longer feels the cold.
The sea is restless, grey, reflecting the troubled skies. Foam forms within the creases of the crashing waves. Definitely unsafe.
“Think there’s an undertow somewhere,” Chase squints as his lover sits down on the rocks, protecting his eyes from the pale light of the setting winter sun. “No wonder there’s no easy path down there, place is a death trap.”
Still, he sits down next to the older man, wrapping an arm around him. Henrik lets him, his head falling against Chase’s shoulder as they both gaze out at the horizon. The drizzle has stopped, for now.
Chase takes a deep breath — the seabreeze enters his lungs, fresh and invigorating after weeks of rough nights and silent anxiety. Seaspray mixes with the remaining rainwater on his cheeks, cold, leaving little white salt patches on his skin. Now he and Henrik are twins.
It really is pretty out there, even though it’s cold and the rocks are digging into his ass uncomfortably. “I’ll go get the blanket,” he decides, rubbing Henrik’s arm as he presses a kiss to his temple. “You stay right here, I’ll be right back.”
Henrik nods, slowly, like he’s not quite all there. His fingers dig into the bundle at his side as Chase gets up and walks away, beginning his ascension back to the car.
When the rocky beach comes back into view as the vlogger climbs back down with a bag, he almost trips and falls into a chasm.
Henrik is no longer there. His clothes lay discarded where Chase left him, and the fabric bag he was carrying is empty among them. The vlogger feels a cold, sharp panic claw at his heart before he spots the other man, standing further away, and Chase understands that something is really, really off.
Henrik stands there, naked as the day he was born, wrapping that coat around himself — the one from the attic, the one thing that had started his partner’s downward spiral in the first place. It falls around the doctor’s wiry frame like a thick layer of foam, shapeless but somehow perfectly fitted.
His naked feet are in the water. He’s too close, too close, and the raging waves are right there. “Henrik!” Chase calls out, his voice going up a few octaves as he scrambles faster down the rocks. “What are you doing?! Get back, it’s — shit, it’s dangerous!”
Henrik turns back to look at him. Chase can’t make out his expression from that distance, but he can tell he’s no longer wearing his glasses. Henrik never takes off his glasses, not even in the bath even though they alway get fogged up, because his eyesight is that terrible.
He stares. Then he pulls the hood of that coat over his head, blue eyes disappearing beneath grey and white fur, and he takes a step forward.
“No!” Chase screeches, missing the last few steps and falling over the edge with a startled yelp. He hits the rocks with a pained wheeze, not even taking the time to check his throbbing shoulder before he scrambles to his feet. “Henrik!”
The other is knee-deep already, and he’s not stopping. Chase grits his teeth and starts running, calling the other’s name in a desperate attempt to get him to stop, come back, Hen, please!
But Henrik doesn’t hear him. All he hears is the song, that song that’s been drilling in his ears ever since he first woke up in that hospital, always droning in the background. Now it’s loud, like a siren’s song, and he can no longer resist it.
Even now, he’s scared. He doesn’t know if he’s heading for his death, or something different he doesn’t understand yet. But he doesn’t stop, not even when Chase skids to a stop at the edge of the water and begs him to come back. Not even when Chase grits his teeth and jumps in after him, his jeans quickly soaked and waterlogged. Not even when the vlogger realizes how stupid of an idea this is when a wave knocks him off his feet and the current almost drags him away at frightening speed.
Henrik walks. The water’s cold, but it doesn’t bother him. The coat is warm, soft, and sticking to him like a second skin. His fear gets quiet. He takes a deep, deep breath. And he sinks under the surface, letting the current carry him far, far away as the coat and his body become one.
It’s peaceful. It’s grey and blue, blue, blue.
Henrik forgets.
***
Chase coughs, soaked and freezing, choking out mouthfuls of seawater on the rocky beach. And when he has no more water left to heave, he screams.
*** The ocean is infinite.
He sinks, as the fear and doubts boil inside his veins.
Strikes of bright silver, the seals fly by his sides.
Their song is so beautiful, he can’t remember if he’s swimming in water or in the harmonious chords of their perfect trills.
They weave a web of light and life around him. Inside him.
Trapped by the threads, the doubts and fear dissolve as he becomes ocean.
And always, that song. The song of the sea.
This is home. I’m home.
***
Chase sobs. He’s cold, so cold, fingers digging like claws at the rocks beneath him.
Henrik’s gone. He’s lost him. It’s been almost an hour since he’s sunk under the surface, and nobody could survive this long underwater. Chase knows this.
Yet, even as the hours pass and the night paints the sky in ink and stars, something keeps him here, sitting on that beach, his blanket wrapped tightly around himself, soaked clothes discarded to the side. Waiting for the impossible.
***
The world is a song. The song of the sea.
Every perfect note binds existence and matter, water and dream, desire and change.
Quick chase and playful tumbles, sweet daydreams rocked by the waves. Dives in forgotten darkness, iridescent bubbles of calm exhales or boiling rush of foam, the song drapes the world in harmony.
The drifting, translucent icebergs are drums, drums drifting towards their doom.
The shimmer of silver fish fleeing in vain in front of him, a chorus of chimes, light and beautiful.
Harmony of the purest kind, marrying the darkness of the abyss to the light of the surface. His fins cut through the sea, through the song.
There is only one false note — a splash of sunny yellow in the endless blue.
A face. Cherished.
***
Chase’s body shivers. His eyelashes flutter in the breeze, hands faintly twitching and curling around the blanket as he sleeps fitfully, knocked out by the exhaustion.
***
He has a strange dream.
As the moon bathes the world in silver and unstoppable waves rock his slumber, he dreams he hasn’t always been part of the sea.
A face. A smile, dimples, freckles, a nose scrunching up. Soft, baby blue eyes. I love you, Hen.
The blue-eyed harbor seal remembers.
***
Chase wakes, sluggishly, like he’s being pulled out of a quagmire. He’s not sure what woke up him at first, the sky still dark, the sea now quiet and at peace. But when his eyes flutter open, crusty with sleep and salt, he makes out a shape kneeling next to him.
He gasps, the last cobwebs of drowsiness burned away to nothing. Because Henrik is back, his hair plastered to his forehead by the seawater. He’s still wrapped up in that coat, shaking him gently with a look of pure worry.
Chase tackles him and the doctor yelps, the coat absorbing most of the impact as his back hits the rocks. “Henrik Von Schneeplestein, you fucking idiot!” Chase seethes and Henrik winces, because oh, his boyfriend is mad. “What the hell?! I thought— I thought—”
Chase whimpers, his rage fading into relief, so overwhelming he can’t form words. He embraces Henrik through his thick, fluffy coat, suppressing a sob because he’s so tired of crying. Hen’s back. He’s alive. He’s alive.
Henrik’s eyes soften. His arms slowly emerge from the furs, the coat falling back to reveal his very alive, very human upper body. He wraps his arms around the younger man, closing his eyes and letting the other cry silently into his neck. They hold each other for a while, no more words needed.
“Fuck, Hen,” Chase finally breaks the silence after many, many long minutes. He breathes out in a shuttering exhale. “I thought— you were—”
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“I thought I lost you.”
“I know. I thought I lost myself, too.”
Chase clings to him like a mussel to its rock, like he’s scared Henrik will dissipate into foam if he lets go. But he does eventually, letting Henrik cradle his tear-stricken face. Everything tastes of salt, everything. “Häschen,” the German murmurs, stroking over the other’s cheeks to wipe the tears away. “It’s alright. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere, not again. I promise.”
Chase sniffles, burying his face into the other’s chest. Henrik pets his uncovered curls soothingly, the iconic snapback lost somewhere near the cliff. “...I’m not human,” he breathes out. Not lamenting, or awestruck, just… stating a fact. Like a piece of his universe righting itself. He looks healthier than he’s ever been, Chase notices when he pulls away again — his eyes are bright, no longer grey and dull, and the dark rings around them are all but gone, color returned to his previously ashen skin.
He looks… peaceful. Radiant. But a hint of worry twists the corners of his mouth down. “You… you don’t…” Henrik tries, visibly bracing himself for some form or rejection, or fear. Chase lets out a wheezy, wet bout of laughter. “Hen, c’mon. You could be a fucking dragon for all I care. I love you, and—”
He presses his lips against the other man’s, fiercely, like he’s trying to convey every ounce of trust, affection and devotion he has. He pulls away to breathe, leaving Henrik a little dizzy and lovestruck. “I love you so much,” the vlogger continues, holding his lover even tighter. “If this is who you are— if this,” he gestures at the wide expanse of ocean in front of them, “Is what you’ve been needing all this time… then we’ll figure it out. Okay? Together.”
Chase kisses his forehead, his nose, his mouth. Gentle. Loving. Chase is human, he’s warm, and Henrik loves him, has loved him way before he ever laid his hands on his precious coat, his other skin.
He leans into his love, letting him lay his head down on his thigh. He trusted Chase with his life, had for a long time. And now, he was trusting him with his skin. Selkie skin, his mind provides, finally remembering the word, the old stories.
Gott. He was a selkie. That made so much sense. Now he felt like a fool — the answer had been right under his nose this whole time, locked away in an attic, gathering dust. “I’m tired,” he mumbles, because he is. Gone is the fear, the unknown that kept him up at night. His mind is quiet, save for the song, back to a comforting background noise.
Chase hums. “I can imagine. What were you doing in there?” he asks, trying to light up the mood. “Your breath smells like fish.”
Henrik laughs. It feels good. “Chase, mein Gott. And you tell me this after you kissed me silly. Several times.”
“Didn’t want to ruin the moment.”
“Dummkopf,” the German slurs, already struggling to keep his eyes open.
“Love you too, doc. Fuck, so much for that hotel room…”
They grow quiet again, Chase laying down to pull Henrik against him, pressing his forehead against his boyfriend’s. Henrik smiles sleepily, both of their songs intertwining in perfect harmony as the sun rises over the horizon.
Henrik sleeps, and dreams of nothing.