The Lowing

Peter woke up to a crack in his door. His eyes didn’t want to open. It was a weekend, he was positive it was a weekend.

“Peter?” Ned whispered.

“Parker, wake up,” MJ announced. “You’ve gotta tell us everything.”

The trip back from Ireland had been anti-climactic.

Everyone had finished their Tasks. Matt was tired, Sergeant Barnes was the most alive anyone had ever seen him, and Mrs. Nelson was inconsolable that Foggy was leaving their family once again.

Foggy said in the airport that he missed Ireland, but he sure as hell didn’t miss the emotional labor that it brought.

Matt slept on his shoulder the whole time.

Peter didn’t know where Matt and Foggy had put their coats for the flight, only that Sergeant Barnes had teased them about stealing them and had gotten chased into a corner in the airport and loomed over by Foggy, who didn’t think that was funny.

“So does this mean that Matt’s a seal again?” MJ asked.

Peter hummed.

“He’s a seal,” he said. “But I don’t know if he’s tried being one yet. I think he’s stuck in like, energy-debt.”

MJ stared.

“Does this mean we can give him an offering?” she asked.

Oh.

Now that was a thought.

Foggy wasn’t home, which was no fun. Johnny was home, however, which continued to be no fun. He said that his sister was freaking out about him spending too much time with the selkies. He apparently had to be laid on and re-scented by the others on his team so that local fae didn’t get any ideas of him belonging to anyone but them.

He wasn’t happy about it. His heart kept jumping and fluttering in Peter’s chest like a nervous guppy.

“Karen,” MJ said. “Karen’ll know.”

“They’re bathtubbin’ it,” Karen said, slouching casually in her doorway.

“What’s that?” Ned asked her.

Karen shrugged.

“I have no idea,” she said. “That’s what Foggy said when I asked him.”

…so they were at Matt’s place, then?

Karen shrugged again.

They were definitely at Matt’s place.

No one answered the door, but Karen had a key and as soon as it was opened, it became apparent that ‘bathtubbin’ it’ was a nice way of saying ‘attempting manslaughter.’

They found the duo in the bathroom. Foggy was soaked. Matt was soaked. No one was a seal. Matt was very sad-looking.

“Karen, you angel,” he gasped over the sound of water sloshing in the tub.

“Leave it on pain of death,”  Foggy snapped at him when he stretched a hand her way.

Peter wasn’t positive anymore that this was the best time and place for an offering.

Karen was intrigued.

“Is this…helping?” she asked.

Matt made a sound of despair.

“Yes,” Foggy said immediately. “Very much so. And it can be even more helpful if you remove yourself and your rays of hope to about three meters minimum from this place.”

Matt pawed at him. He was wearing clothes in the tub--a pair of Athletic tights and a t-shirt which looked black from the water. The room was not warm.

“It’s good for you, Matty,” Foggy told him sympathetically, removing his pleading hand from where it was hanging in the air and setting it back on the side of the tub.

“Are we re-learning how to swim?” Karen asked.

Foggy scoffed.

Matt begged her for something harder than ever with his eyebrows.

Karen waited.

“I’m noticing no answer,” she pointed out after a few beats.

“Seal-things, Karen. I told you. You wouldn’t understand, they have to happen for future Fisk-things. It’s important. So get gone,” Foggy said. “And take your groupies.”

Karen said that it couldn’t be helped. They had to leave the selkies to their water torture. Foggy wouldn’t be amenable to explaining anything about anything until they were done.

She took the pigeon feather that Peter and the others had scrounged up for Matt and promised she’d hand it off when there were fewer secret seal-things happening.

Kind of disappointing, but alas.

They decided to retreat.

“Is there anyone who we know who isn’t fae?” MJ asked at Wendy’s, where their trio had decided to go for rallying purposes.

“Wade isn’t,” Peter told her. “Mr. Stark’s not. Most of our classmates aren’t.”

“Most?” Ned asked.

Peter hummed and stirred his coke.

“Most,” he said. “I dunno about any others right now. Johnny would know better.”

Ned pursed his lips and considered this.

“Does Johnny play DnD?” he asked after a beat.

MJ stomped on his foot under the table and he jolted and yelped. Peter considered it.

“Johnny’s more into cars than DnD,” he said. “He’s kind of a living DnD creature, so you know. It doesn’t have the same appeal for him.”

“So you’re saying he won’t play with us?” Ned said.

He hid his feet under his booth’s seat before MJ could get at them again.

“Don’t think so, sorry,” Peter said. “But he’d probably be okay with doing the mood lighting if you want?”

Ned’s eyebrows went serious.

“Peter,” he said. “There is nothing I have ever wanted more in life than your fire demon doing the atmosphere effects for our next campaign.”

MJ announced that she wasn’t playing with them anymore and hadn’t ever liked DnD, even from the start.

Peter and Ned could see through that one, even without help from the fae.

Johnny didn’t know what DnD was actually.

“It’s like a game,” Peter told him. “But with role-play. And dice.”

Ned nodded helpfully. Johnny watched him with interest. MJ scowled.

“My sister’s boyfriend told me gambling’s for suckers and idiots,” Johnny reported.

“It’s not gambling,” Peter explained. “It’s like we’re telling a story. Like we’re narrating a Task.”

Johnny lit up.

“Another Task?” he asked.

“No, no,” Peter told him. “We’re not doing another Task. We’re making one up.”

Johnny cocked his head.

“So a ballad?” he tried. “A song? You’re writing a song?”

“A legend, more like. Or a saga,” Ned said. “You want to join?”

Johnny studied him for a long time and then got distracted by his sister shouting his name somewhere behind him in the house and telling him that he wasn’t done with what she’d asked him to do.

Hm.

Well.

Plan B.

“Big puppy,” Ned told Peter.

“Take. Him,” Cap said forcefully.

Sergeant Barnes rolled onto his back between Cap’s couch and coffee table and Mr. Wilson stared down at him with a mug in his hand that he seemed to be considering dropping on his face.

“I thought he was bigger than that?” Peter asked while Mr. Wilson started to tip his mug.

Sergeant Barnes shuffled over in a rush at the threat and scrambled up onto his feet to bark at Mr. Wilson.

Mr. Wilson’s eyes narrowed further.

Peter could have sworn Sarge was at least the size of three couches stacked on top of each other.

“He’s malleable and for sale,” Cap gritted out through his teeth.

“Is this legal?” MJ whispered behind Peter.

Mm.

Probably not.

“I have four bucks,” Peter said.

“Sold,” Cap told him immediately.

“Does he have a leash?” Peter asked.

“No, but here’s a twenty. Buy him whichever you want on the way. Make it neon. Keep the change,” Cap said.

Sergeant Barnes had never played DnD before, just like Johnny. In hound-form, he just wanted to eat the dice on the table, which was to be expected.

Johnny also wanted to eat them.  

Peter ended up taking them off the table and scrubbing them with mint to put the two of them off their snacking urges.

While he was doing that, Johnny got distracted by May coming home and asking him if he wanted to help her bake, which took their five-man crew back down to four.

May was, however, very complementary towards the Sergeant’s sizing capabilities as she destroyed their plans for the evening. She told him to sit. He did not. She asked him if he wanted a drink and then poured some coffee into a bowl and left it on the ground for him.

Sergeant Barnes was intrigued by the premise of DnD and once he was finished dragging his head all over everything on the table for the third time and sniffing around Peter’s room for the fifth, he deigned to take on human form and settled down to consider their story.

He got bored with it within seconds.

“No, no, no,” he told Peter, holding the dice hostage. “This isn’t how you tell stories of quests.”

The other three stared at him.

“There’s a wrong way?” Peter asked.

Sergeant Barnes huffed.

“Yeah,” he said. “Obviously. Fuckin’ humans. Come on. Get with it. We need some ambient noise. Where’s that damn fire?”

Johnny could make these crackling noises that Peter hadn’t known he could just emit at will. Sergeant Barnes told him to take it to a three out of ten and then he turned off the light and shut the blinds. He swept out to wheedle a set of candles out of May and came back with these lit, arranged neatly in a dish. He plonked them down in the middle of the table.

Johnny’s heat and the sound and smell of baking bread in the room kind of undid some of the drama that Sergeant Barnes seemed to be going for, but he accounted for that by letting his eyes flash silver and gold and holding his hands over the table they were all gathered around so that they threw shadows too long for his fingers across it.

The shadows went the wrong way. They seemed to crawl towards the candles.

“Let’s tell a story about a selkie, Fire,” Sergeant Barnes told Johnny. “Perhaps we’ll even take turns. Me, you, and the witch. I’ll start. Are you ready?”

Peter was surprised by where this was going, but it was also exciting.

These things had actually happened.

He’d been a part of this quest.

It was almost as though he was being asked to make it real. To immortalize it.

Sergeant Barnes flicked his glowing eyes away from Peter’s and set them upon MJ and Ned.

“Not long ago,” he said, “There was a selkie-child. In his prime by our age, but young by his people’s and more than anything in the world, what he wanted was…”

Sergeant Barnes trailed off, looking expectantly at MJ and Ned.

“Was his coat?” Ned tried.

Sergeant Barnes’s grin grew wider.

“Was his coat,” he confirmed. “But to get it, there would be trials and troubles and heartbreak greater than any human could bear. Well. Not any human, it turned out. But we’ll get there, don’t you worry.”