A/N: I had wanted to post this yesterday, but with it being April Fool's, I wanted to stay away from the internet in general because I'm a poop like that.
Two
The following morning, Clara woke up to the sound of birds outside on her sill. Rain dripped lazily from the eaves and some animal chittered nearby. A squirrel? Probably a squirrel. She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling, remembering the night before.
'I have a seal-man on my sofa,' she thought, wrinkling her nose at the thought. Ian's surprise appearance during last night's storm was definitely a shock. His claims at being a selkie seemed nearly outrageous, if it weren't for how she found him: a starkers wild man coming out of the sea completely dry despite the fact he should have been waterlogged through his skin. It was ridiculous, believing in such faerie stories, but one touch of the coat he was clutching and she knew sometimes things such as common sense had to be ignored.
Clara rolled out of bed and walked out into the hall, rubbing her eyes sleepily. She went to the bathroom and then made her way over towards the kitchen. There, she stopped as she saw Ian standing in front of the stove, lording over a fry-up.
"Sit down," he more requested than anything. She sat at her chair and waited as her guest made their breakfast while wearing her dead boyfriend's clothes. He shoved the eggs, bacon, and beans onto two plates and brought them to the table, sitting down across from her.
"So, um, how long do you plan on staying here?" she wondered.
"Thank you," he said.
"I'm sorry, what…?"
"Usually people say 'thank you' after someone makes them breakfast, but things might have changed since the last time I was on land for an extended period of time." He scowled, seeming leagues more abrasive than he was the night prior, shoving a pile of beans on his fork and stuffing them in his mouth. "It's been a while."
"Okay, well, thank you Ian for this lovely meal and not making it out of herring," she frowned. Clara looked at her plate and pushed around her beans. "You didn't answer my question."
"Hmm? Oh, how long I'm staying… well, usually these sorts of things are more of a semi-permanent fix, but considering how surprised you were to see me…"
"What do you mean by 'semi-permanent'?"
"Oh come on, you're cleverer than that—you're an English lass that's been up here for a considerable amount of time, existing on her own without so much as a lick of prior experience. I'm sure you can figure that one out."
"Give me a little bit of time and maybe I will, but as of now it's been less than twelve hours since I've first heard the word 'selkie' and I'm not entirely sure I believe it."
Ian took a drink of his water, grimaced, put some table salt in, and scoffed. "My kind exists alongside regular seals, but we can walk on land just as well as humans, to the point where you can't tell a regular land-walker from a human. It's no surprise that you're still doubting."
"It's not that I'm doubting at this point… I just don't understand why," Clara replied. "I was mourning the man I was going to marry, not asking for some sort of weird animal fetish."
"Those little bastards on the shoreline, those are what you get when you ask the faeries for a fetish," he replied, pointing at her with his fork before continuing to eat. The little…? Oh, yes the sheep. "All I know is that I was summoned by your tears, so don't go backing out on me now."
"How do you know it was me though?"
"…because you were the one who came," he answered plainly. "You didn't catch me and hold my skin captive… you cried, and it drew me here, to my old mate Orson's, and now my skin's on a coat peg and you refuse to admit that you believe in faerie stories."
"Why should I? Believing in happy endings came to a very abrupt halt a bit over a year ago."
"Maybe you should look at a book of tales every now and then; it's not all happy endings and sunshine." Ian put down his fork and stood up, walking out the kitchen door into the back garden, passing the hook where his skin sat. Clara looked over her shoulder at him, wondering what in the heck was going on. She followed him, only to find him sitting on a rock, looking out at the ocean.
"I really am stuck with you, aren't I?" she asked. She then caught herself and blurted out, "I mean: you're going to be staying with me for some time yet, is that right?"
"…for at least a while, yeah," he replied quietly. One of the squirrels that infested the garden chittered its way up to him, sniffing his bare foot carefully before scurrying back up the nearest tree. "Feck—I hate to say it, but the Council was right."
Clara gingerly placed her hand on his shoulder, attempting to show some form of support. "Right about what?"
"That I'm just a fool land-walker," he muttered. "I'd come to land sometimes, just to see what it was like. I did that for a long time, in and out, in and out, so much so that for a while, I nearly believed that I could be one of you if I tried hard enough." He swallowed hard, remembering. "It took so long for my Summons that I was almost convinced that I was never going to be called, that I was on land for so long that I missed my shot, and now that I'm here it's for a woman who can't even see what's in front of her."
"Hey, what I know is I see you," Clara said. She sat down on the other side of the rock, facing the house. "I'm still having a difficult time trying to grasp the whole faerie thing, but what I do know is that you're sitting here with me. If we have anything, there's that."
"The fae are dying," Ian stated plainly. Clara turned and stared at him, only able to see the side of his grim face. "Man's reliance on technology has never been an issue before the past hundred years or so. We still had our believers, even as smokestacks went up and forests went down, but Man has changed so much that they've forgotten about us. We die when we're forgotten."
"Everyone dies when they're forgotten—that's how life works."
"For the individual, yes, but forgetting the fae is like forgetting to breathe. How can Man summon Fae if they don't even believe in them anymore?"
"Man still believes, if it's mainly the little kids that do," Clara said. "I thought I stopped believing in faerie stories when I was eight… though I guess I never really did."
"If you are anything, Clara Oswald, at least you are honest," Ian noted. He saw she was staring at him, so he tapped the side of his head with a long, spindly finger. "I'm a slight telepath—actually, more like a poor telepath. It's how most Fae are able to trick Man so easily."
"…but you, for some reason, are not tricking me."
"That's because you now own my skin. I couldn't trick you even if I tried." He rested his elbows on his knees and hunched over, pensive. "My telepathy is more based on reading your emotions, though I've always been terrible at it."
"How so?" she wondered.
"Humans say one thing yet mean another way too often; I've known faeries who are easier to comprehend than you people," he scoffed. "Your words thanked me for breakfast earlier, but you were still upset, still angered."
"…only because you were avoiding my question," she said. "Faerie politeness is different from human politeness. Being a land-walker, I thought you would have known that."
"It's not right."
"Just because something isn't right doesn't mean we can't figure out how to deal with it in our own way," she said. Clara looked him over and made a decision, one she was hoping she wouldn't regret. "So, are you going to wander around in a dead man's clothes or are you going to come with me to Kirkwall?"
Ian glanced at her out the side of his eyes, confused. "Kirkwall? Why are we going to the mainland?"
"Danny's old things don't fit you very well, and I've got to get a couple extra bits and bobs now that you're here," she explained as she stood. She gave his back a hefty pat and grinned at him, making his eyes boggle in confusion. "Now, are we going to find you an old pair of shoes and get going, or are we going to sit here and mope?"
Brushing his consciousness against hers, Ian couldn't tell what exactly was going on. He trusted her though—she was the one that summoned him, after all—the one who now owned the cottage next to the sea and the peg his coat hung on—and for that reason alone he put his hand in her outstretched one and allowed her to give him a boost up. It was time to go to the Mainland.
