Chapter Text
There was a seal near the surface, its silhouette sharp and obvious against the moonlight, its movements halting and so deliciously wrong. The thrashing off-tilt swim stroke reverberated through Jared, who snapped and barreled up, rocketing through an ocean perfumed with blood, his mouth wide and open and hungry –
He tasted cotton. Jared's whole body bobbed on rough waves, except he had a pillow under his head and in his mouth, and now that he thought about it, a human nose squashed against said pillow. He wasn't in the ocean, which meant that he'd stumbled back to his apartment at some point, except Jared didn't feel like he'd landed on solid bed. The shark must have messed up his inner ear with all those dumb, deep dives. He released his pillow, knuckled his ear and registered a voice. Jared knew the person speaking. He knew he did. But knowledge was slow in coming, strained through fuzz ...
“Jared!”
Oh. It was Jensen. That made sense, since it was always Jensen. Jared relaxed. Then he groaned, because his mouth tasted like cotton fibers and half-masticated fish.
Jensen kept talking: “You're bleeding, man! Who stabbed you? Oh God. Is that a bomb?”
Bomb bomb bomb. That ... wasn't a good word. Bomb!
Jared shot upright and awake.
“Don't move!” Jensen snapped.
Jared felt a low throb in his back, which then bloomed into real pain. He shook his head and half-turned, trying to see the thing lodged beside his shoulder blade. He caught a flash of silver.
An antenna.
He'd been stabbed with an antenna while swimming in the ocean.
What the Hell?
“Would you quit moving? You're going to set that thing off!” Jensen plastered himself against the far wall.
“Why would someone bomb a shark?”Jared didn't know why he'd been stabbed with an antenna, but he knew it wasn't meant to explode.
“People hate sharks. What do we do? Call in a bomb squad?”
“It's not a bomb! How would we explain someone sticking a bomb in my back?” Jared doubled over, one hand falling to his abdomen. Sharks – even weresharks – took awhile to digest their food, so Jared's human stomach was now dealing with huge chunks of things he didn't want to think about. Fish. Seals. License plates. Small boats. He was lucky he hadn't perforated his intestines yet, but also unlucky in that he spent most post-shark mornings spewing chunks of marine mammal.
“You can't throw up. You could set off the bomb!”
“People don't wire sharks with explosives, Jensen!”
“How'd you get that thing stuck in you anyway? Weren't you, I don't know, in the ocean?”
Jared made a helpless gesture, only to gasp when the skin and antenna tugged. The shark and him shared physical space, not a brain. He never remembered more than flashes.
Jensen made an exasperated noise. “Do you think it's remote controlled?”
A knock came on the door.
“Crap,” Jared said. “It's probably my landlord. Just ignore it.”
“Are you behind again?”
Jared shrugged, which moved the antenna, which hurt. He'd been doing this for twelve years, his whole life guided by two basic principles: 1) The shark was stupid and 2) The shark needed to be contained. These principles had led to the creation of Jared's systems, which included things like 'reduce stress' and 'do not invite chaos.'
Jared worked low-paying jobs where he didn't need to be near people, because people stressed him out, and stress made him turn into a shark. He looked for places where it was normal for employees to leave without notice, because sometimes he needed to take emergency trips to the ocean. He kept his crappy apartment military-inspection neat and stuck to plain, vegetarian foods, because one time he covered a bacon omelet in hot sauce, only to feel huge, serrated teeth slice open his human gums.
Jensen ran a hand over his mouth. “Danni's got that friend who's a nurse. Maybe we could get her to take a look?”
“What would we tell her? I'm a hard thing to explain, Jensen!”
The knocking became more insistent.
“Whoever you're looking for isn't home!” Jensen shouted, before lowering his voice. “You don't think it's another public indecency thing, do you?”
“Cops say they're cops when they knock.” Jared had racked up more warnings than he wanted to admit, though living near a beach made people more forgiving, since the ocean had a way of stealing too-loose swim trunks. He just hoped the cops continued to let him off; he didn't want to know what happened to weresharks in jail.
“Maybe we should just pull it out? I doubt it's anything that will kill me.” Jared reached back, trying to touch the antenna's tip.
“Do not pull that out!” Jensen leaped forward and slapped Jared's wrist.
The knocking picked up speed and force. The person at the door wasn't quitting.
Jensen tilted his head toward the door. “We're gonna have to deal with that. Do you have a jacket or something you could put on? You can hide in here, too, but I dunno. If it's something about you ...”
"If it's a bomb, that could make it go off. Just moving around could make it go off." Jared wasn't an expert or anything, but he'd seen enough action movies to know you weren't supposed to jostle bombs.
Jensen's face paled.
Jared grabbed a blanket and shrugged it over his shoulders –
Jensen yelped –
Jared shifted his shoulders. The antenna could lay flat without causing excruciating pain, but it was definitely uncomfortable. "I told you it wasn't a bomb."
"You're an asshole." Jensen motioned toward the front door. "After you. Asshole."
The skin around the antenna twinged. It was a sore and nauseated Jared that answered the door.
“Where is he?” A stranger barged into the apartment. His dark hair was a windblown mess. He wore a navy pullover with a shark motif, orange board shorts and ugly brown sandals, and he seemed to be searching the room. Rooms. It was a one-bedroom with a freakishly large bath, because sometimes Jared submerged himself in salt water to ease panic attacks before they resulted in great whites.
Jensen blocked the stranger from entering the bathroom. “What are you, tweaking? There's no one else here. You've got the wrong damn place.”
“That's funny, because I tagged a shark earlier this morning.”
Jared felt his face pull an 'oh shit' expression, but Jensen remained calm. “Yeah, and last time I checked they don't swim into apartment buildings. My friend here's got a stomach bug, so how about you go harass some other nice people. Or do you want me to call the cops?”
The stranger's eyes flashed. He was only a little shorter than Jensen, but his build was significantly slighter. It didn't seem to matter, since he wasn't backing down. “They're nifty things, tags. They let us researchers know how deep sharks dive, where they travel. Whenever the animal surfaces, it sends a message to a satellite. My shark surfaced around four thirty a.m., when it apparently headed straight to this apartment complex and hasn't moved since. Next time you decide to illegally poach a protected animal, you might want to make sure it's not wearing GPS.”
Crap. Oh crap. The shark had managed to get itself tagged. For research. What the fuck was Jared supposed to do now?
The man's eyes scanned Jared's crappy apartment with its crappy furnishings, like a giant shark carcass might reveal itself at any moment. “Do you know how long it takes white sharks to reproduce? There are probably 200-some off the California coast, and you decided to kill a healthy adult for what? Its fins? Its jaw? This isn't the kind of place where one hangs trophies, so I'm guessing you were looking for some cash. I hope the jail time will make you think twice about destroying natural treasures for commercial gain.”
Sharks. Sharks were national treasures?
It occurred to Jared that this guy was insane and possibly dangerous.
“Whoa,” Jensen interrupted. “No one's going to jail. No one's poaching any sharks. Your tag probably fell off, and someone picked it up.”
The man's eyes flashed. “The GPS led me here.”
“GPS probably tagged the whole block.”
“I also followed the trail of blood.”
Jared looked down. Sure enough, he'd bloodied one ankle. The shark could have scraped a caudal fin while swimming. Jared could have stepped on something while pitching himself home in a daze.
The stranger followed Jared's gaze and sneered. “What did you do, pierce yourself on your own hook?”
“Jared.” That was a warning. Jensen was warning him.
Jared needed to get himself under control, before this asshat met the shark he was so desperate to tag. But his leg throbbed, and he remembered a bump and pain, a red ocean. A strange new urge to taste-test his little brother. That first full moon.
“Sharks suck,” Jared growled.
The stranger looked like Jared had smacked him. “What?”
“I hope they all die. They deserve it. They're fucking awful dumbass killing machines, and they should get poached. I hope they're all soup.”
“Oh God,” Jensen said.
“Soup,” Jared emphasized.
“If you touch another shark, you'll be soup! California state law protects –”
“Us! From harassment!” Jensen grabbed the stranger's arm and wrangled him toward the door.
The man swung a punch, but didn't have enough momentum to really land it. His fist glanced off Jensen's jaw. “If you think I'm going to let you harm another shark, you're even dumber than you look. I'll stop you! One way or the other! I don't care what I have to do!”
Jared swayed on his feet, feeling like he'd woken up in a cartoon with cheesy cartoon villains spouting cheesy cartoon threats.
“Jared, man. You okay?” Jensen shoved the stranger out the door. “He's got a health condition, you dumb fuck.”
Health condition. That was one way to put it.
Jared sprinted to the bathroom. He ducked down over the toilet bowl, and his stomach heaved, and he vomited bloodied chunks of white and silver. The shark wasn't much of a fish-eater. Jared suspected chumsicle. Bait. Not anything he would have caught on his own. He heard raised voices spilling in from the living area, but the words didn't register.
Jared thought he identified the species. Halibut.
Three-quarters of a chumsicle later, Jensen entered the bathroom, shaken. “Man, I don't know what to do. That dude could make serious trouble for you, and we can't even report him. We don't want you on the cops' radar any more than you already are.”
“I need a nap.” Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, Jared's basic biological needs were resurfacing. He more or less shut down after a moon.
Jensen ignored him. “GPS. Are you kidding me? Tell that shark of yours to keep the Hell away from scientists.”
“It doesn't take orders. It would be a lot easier if it did.”
“Yeah, man. I know.” Jensen poked Jared's shoulder through the blanket and below the tag. “We still gotta get that thing out.”
Jared yawned and cast aside the blanket. “Pliers?”
“I swear I've seen him somewhere. Did he seem familiar to you?” Jensen asked. “And what the fuck were you saying about soup?”
“I told you it wasn't a bomb.” Jared stumbled to his feet, still dizzy.
Jensen scowled. “I don't need your lip right now. Lay the fuck down.”
Later that afternoon, Jared received a text on the disposable cell phone Jensen had given him last Christmas: “I knew I'd seen him!” It contained a link, which went to a staff web page at the local aquarium, which had a picture of one Misha Collins smiling face under the not-so-auspicious heading: “Meet Our Shark Divers!!!!”
Misha Collins volunteered part-time at the aquarium, where he was somehow allowed to speak to children. Misha Collins was a marine biologist working out of a UCLA field school, where he also taught classes. Misha Collins loved sharks, judging from his Facebook page, where most of the photos showed him either in tanks with sharks or on boats loaded with chum designed to lure sharks.
Jared drank some ginger ale and let his mind slip away.
Misha Collins was psychotic. Jared could tell because of all the stalking.
Misha followed him everywhere. Jared made that pretty easy by almost never leaving his apartment. Still, having Misha around made him nervous, and being nervous wasn't good, when anxiety was on Jared's list of known shark triggers. He spent way too much time in his bathtub trying not to grow gills, which only made him angrier and more irritable when he saw Misha in the cereal aisle at Ralphs.
Jared pressed his mouth into a thin line and thought a few oms. He had to remain calm. Stay human.
“Here to murder another innocent animal?” Misha crossed his arms over his chest. No cart, no basket. He wasn't shopping.
A mother shot Jared a scandalized look, like she didn't have packages of ground round in her cart along with her toddler.
Jared hunched his shoulders. “Cheerios. I'm here for Cheerios.”
“If you support yourself poaching, those are blood Cheerios."
“I'm vegetarian.”
“Good one." Misha squared himself in front of Jared's cart.
“I told you, I had nothing to do with your missing shark.” Jared busied his fingers searching through his coupons. He knew he had a two-for-one on the knock-off brand.
“If you don't have anything to hide, go to the cops. Report me.”
Jared set his jaw and stared at his coupons. He'd be able to get a jar of applesauce for a dollar. Spaghetti, too. Spaghetti, applesauce, Cheerios, bananas, rice. Jared was definitely living large.
“That's what I thought. You can't.” Misha smiled, not quite triumphantly.
“Yeah, but if I were a real poacher, you'd be dead.” Jared tried to back out of the aisle. Of course he'd gotten a cart with a fucked-up wheel, so instead of going backward, the contraption threatened somersaults.
“Are you threatening me?” Misha asked.
“No. I'm picking up some groceries. Then I'm going to go home and put away those groceries.”
“People shouldn't eat sharks. There's too much mercury. In poaching sharks, you're harming the environment and human consumers.”
Jared yanked hard on his cart. The bad wheel shrilled. Nails on chalkboard.
“Sharks are apex predators. Their impact on the environment can't be measured.” Misha shook himself. “Well, it can, and that's more or less my job. But it's impossible to get a true sense of it. Did you know that removing sharks from the environment throws every other species off-balance, right down to the microbes that help consume pollutants? Shark-less oceans are dirtier oceans –”
Jared angled the cart forward.
Misha just stepped in front of it again.
Jared huffed. “Misha. I don't care about sharks. I care about my grocery shopping.”
Misha's eyes narrowed. “You know my name?”
“My friend recognized you from the aquarium.”
“Poachers visit aquariums, now?”
“We're not poachers.” Jared took another deep breath. A tight ripple moved down his spine. Oh, God. He couldn't afford to get too pissed off. It wasn't the moon. It wasn't even that close to the moon. But if he got angry enough, it wouldn't matter, and Misha would discover his poached shark thrashing around the cereal aisle.
Jared would suffocate to death; it wasn't like some Good Samaritan could pick up a two-ton great white and pitch it back into the ocean. He hadn't fully transformed outside of the ocean in years, but there was no forgetting that kind of terror. He couldn't breath. Couldn't scream. His skin pinched in, a squeezing vice –
He remembered the person he'd been, prior to the bite. Friendly, exuberant, always up for a fun time. He'd wanted to run an animal shelter someday. Or play video games professionally. He'd assumed that he'd graduate college and live some big, fancy, excitinglife.
Jared stuffed his coupons in his pocket. “I need a bath.”
“Bath? Is that poacher code?”
Jared ignored Misha. It was that or biting him in half.
Misha seemed oblivious to any danger, which would've been dumb even if Jared were human. “Are you doing this for the money? I can help you. I'll get you a job. You can turn your life around –”
Jared almost laughed. He didn't have a high school diploma. He hadn't seen his family since age fifteen. The government didn't list 'wereshark' as an acknowledged disability, and if he were found out, he's spend the rest of his life as a lab experiment. His life was as good as it was ever going to get.
He'd had it worse.
Jared left his cart. He stalked toward the automatic doors.
Misha scurried after him. “Is it student loan debt? Or organized crime?”
“Fuck you,” Jared said.
“You don't seem like a bad person, just a desperate one, and if I have the resources to turn you away from this life, it's my responsibility to use them! Jared –” Misha grabbed Jared's arm by the crook.
Jared shook him off. He didn't have a car, and he didn't want Misha following him on the bus. Or lecturing him the entire time he waited at the bus stop. He supposed he wouldn't have to put up with it too much longer; in another two weeks, it would be the moon, and anyone stalking Jared would likely end up as shark chow.
The thought made Jared's stomach churn. He didn't want to kill anyone, not even psychopaths.
Jared remembered reading the headlines about himself. '15-Year-Old Shark Survivor Reported Missing.' 'Shark Attack Survivor Now a Runaway.' 'Padalecki Family Suspects Wrongdoing.' In that one, his mother had cried and said that Jared would never have left of his own free will, and not just because the shark attack had crippled him. He shivered.
Misha noticed. “You're not a monster, Jared. I know you're not.”
Jared clenched his hands, reassuring himself that he still had fingers. That those fingers contained bones. “You don't know me. Everything you think you know is wrong. So fuck off. Before it comes back and bites you.”
“Sooner or later, I'll catch you in the act and report you to the authorities. You'll go to jail, Jared.”
“I'll die first.” Jared was only being honest. “Also, you're going to have a lot of trouble proving that I poach sharks. Because I don't.”
“If I have to take you down, I will,” Misha said. “This could ruin your entire life.”
“Following me could ruin yours.”
“You are threatening me.”
“And you're just striking up a friendly chat?” Jared's nostril's flared. He swallowed his anger down before it could burst through his skin. “Leave me alone, Misha. Harassing me isn't saving any sharks.”
“We'll see about that.” Did Misha get all of his lines from B-movies?
Jared didn't know how else to escape, so he just turned around and started running. It didn't really matter where he went, since Misha already knew where he lived.
Misha went after him. "Jared!"
Jared didn't even know why he was surprised. He picked up his pace and zigged around a parked car.
"You can't run away from this!" Misha shouted. "You're being ridiculous!"
Said the crazy person.
Misha had good foot speed, but Jared's legs were far longer, and maybe he did have some kind of superhuman stamina, because the shark probably would've killed a normal human by now. It only took Jared fifteen minutes of sprinting and a dive into a back alley to lose Misha.
Which put him ... somewhere. Jared had no idea.
He eventually ended up at a bus station. Four dollars and three hours later, he found himself at Jensen's, who took one look at him and started filling a bucket with water from the sink. “Here. Stick your head in that.”
Jared grumbled but complied, thinking that it was better than nothing. He emerged after a few seconds, since he hadn't grown gills. “Misha followed me to the grocery store today."
“Misha shouldn't be allowed in fucking public.”
"He said I could turn my life around. I don't think he's giving up before the moon.”
Jensen clapped a hand on Jared's shoulder. “It's gonna be okay, man. If I need to, I'll go fishing the nights you change. Misha'll be too busy trying to have me arrested to notice anything weird about you.”
“He's not stalking you too, is he? Or having you stalked?” Jensen put himself in enough danger just knowing Jared.
“I'm not the weak link in our operation.”
“We don't have an operation.”
“He doesn't know who I am. Maybe you should drop the name of the store. He comes by there, I'll have him arrested for loitering.” Jensen had taken over the family business – an outdoor excursions equipment rental – a couple of years back.
“You'll get a professor arrested for loitering?” Jared eyed the bucket, debating a second dip. “Besides, he'd probably decide Ackles Kayaks is a front for our shark-poaching business, and, I don't know, bomb it.”
Jensen's expression soured. The b-word wasn't his favorite word.
“What if he follows me on the moon?” Jared asked. “I'll kill him. You know I will.”
“Look, Misha's the one being psychotic here. That means that whatever happens, it's not your fault.” Jensen scratched his temple. "You can't control what he does. You can't control the shark, either. You're just ... there."
"I'd be the one throwing up Misha chunks!" Jared ignored a phantom throb in his scarred thigh. “I don't want to eat him. What if he escapes with a bite? Can you imagine Misha as a wereshark? He would go Jaws! Actual Jaws! God, Jensen. I can't do this to anyone else. I can't.”
“Bucket. Now.” Jensen waited until Jared had completed three dunks. “You're getting way ahead of yourself, dude. We'll figure something out. You won't kill Misha, even if he does deserve it, and you definitely won't turn him into Jaws.”
“He won't leave me alone! I keep feeling like I'm going to snap, and it's not even that close to the moon yet.”
“Bucket –”
“I don't need a bucket! I need Misha Collins to fuck off and die! Without me killing him!” Jared stuck his head in the bucket, then pulled back out. “This isn't really helping. I need my tub. Which is currently surrounded by hostile Misha.”
“Plan B is beer.”
Jared didn't hesitate long. “Yeah. Okay. Beer sounds good.”
Misha was waiting for Jared when he came home.
“Don't you work?” Jared fumbled for his keys.
“I can stop cruel injustice against nature while I grade.” Misha held up a stack of papers. He paused, then motioned to an awful-smelling paper bag. “I ordered Burmese, if you're interested.”
“Are you trying to sway me with kindness?”
“You're a poacher. You torture animals for a living. I'm fairly sure kindness is lost on you.” Misha shrugged. “In all honesty, the deliverer forgot forks. And I did stop you from purchasing food this afternoon.”
“It's a little too late to develop a rapport. I already hate you.” Where the Hell were Jared's keys?
Misha's eyes flashed, before he got himself back under control. God, Jared worried so much about killing anyone, he'd almost forgotten that Misha was going to knife him in his sleep. To protect sharks.
“How many sharks did you kill after you slipped me?” Misha asked. “That's why I'm here. Because as long as I'm watching you, you're not poaching. Believe me, if I ever discover the identity of your partner, I'll have him watched, too. My students are always looking for extra credit.”
“I hope you never find a real poacher. You'll get a bunch of kids killed.” Jared's fingers finally closed around his keys. “Enjoy sleeping in my hallway. I doubt this building's ever been sprayed for roaches.”
He slammed the door, drowning whatever Misha snapped in reply.
Misha was gone the next morning.
Misha continued to be gone well into the afternoon.
After two weeks of near-constant Misha, Jared found himself pacing around his living room, waiting for Misha to pop out of a shadow or blow up the building. Something. Anything.
He called Jensen. “He's not here.”
“Isn't that a good thing?”
“I have no idea. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
Jensen's sigh crackled against the speaker. “Why don't you come by the store? Danni wants to get dinner tonight, so I'd love some help closing.”
Jared paused. Someone was pounding on his door. “Never mind. I think he's back.”
A thump came over the line. Maybe Jensen was shelving. Or punching things at random. “Jared, I know you don't want to think about it, but you might have to move. We built that bathtub. We can build one someplace else.”
“I need to get the door before the neighbors call the cops.”
"Jared!"
Jared ended the call and headed toward the door. He undid the lock and twisted open the handle. “And here I thought you'd left forever."
Something hit his stomach, then smacked onto his feet. Jared looked down.
He stumbled back.
It was a baby great white, not even three feet long. Someone had sliced off its fins, leaving a pathetic, glass-eyed eel.
Misha glared at Jared with red-rimmed eyes. “They drown like that. They can't breathe unless they're swimming. When you cut off their fins and toss them back into the ocean, you leave them to drown, Jared.”
Jared had never been that small as a shark, but he'd been small enough. One wrong encounter, and Jared could have been left limbless, bleeding and alone in a dark ocean. He wasn't much safer now. People shot big sharks. They caught them in nets.
“The poachers escaped," Misha said, too quietly. "The Coast Guard only has the boat. I spent last night and all of today cataloging the species on board.”
Jared blinked hard, trying to dispel the gray flooding across his vision. He didn't want to think about the shark corpse in the living room, or the eco-terrorist who'd put the shark corpse in the living room. He didn't want to think about how every moon might be his last.
“Was this you?" Misha asked. "Was this how you spent yesterday afternoon? Destroying beautiful animals who pose little risk to humanity? Who have done nothing wrong except look too scary?”
Jared's stomach clenched. His diaphragm seized. Oh God. He couldn't turn into a shark now. Not in front of Misha.
But Jared didn't pop gills.
He lurched forward, spewing bile and off-brand Cheerios over the shark corpse and Misha's sandals.
Jared looked up and met Misha's stunned stare. The baby shark smelled like fish and blood, with a subtle hint of growing rot. He couldn't stand it. He couldn't be here. Jared ran for the bathroom and braced himself over toilet. His stomach heaved loose another load.
Time passed. Jared didn't know how much.
A soft knock came on the door.
“Just go away,” Jared rasped. Acid stung his throat and nostrils.
The door creaked open, revealing a sliver of Misha. “I … removed the shark and cleaned the carpet.”
Jared glanced over at his freakish bathtub; he'd closed the curtain, so it's size wasn't totally obvious. Still, he didn't want Misha invading this, too.
“You're not a poacher, are you?”
Jared wiped his mouth, streaking digestive fluid. “What do you think?”
The door opened wider. “I know 'sorry' can't possibly cover what I've put you through the past few weeks ...”
“You really think we should have this conversation over a toilet bowl?”
Misha peered at Jared, his face pale. “Let me make it up to you. I could ... fix your sink if it's broken. Or buy you dinner?”
“I don't want anything from you.”
“I wouldn't want anything from me, either. But I'm offering, and you must need … something. I feel awful, Jared. Truly.” Misha looked pretty fucking remorseful.
Jared didn't fucking care. “I just said 'no,' and I meant it.”
Misha's gaze fixed on Jared's shower curtain. “I don't know how I was so sure. The GPS –”
Jared flushed the toilet.
Misha jumped. His hands curled and uncurled at his sides.
“You could have tried listening to me. But you don't really do that, do you?” Jared's legs weren't in working order. He wasn't ready to get to his feet.
“I can't claim the best track record, no.”
Jared rubbed his temples. “I don't know why I thought asking would be enough to get rid of you. If I agree to, um, lunch, would you agree to leave me alone forever?”
“Yes?” Misha said quickly. “I mean, absolutely.”
“Next week work for you?”
Misha nodded. “Any time's good.”
“We'll go Tuesday at one.”
“Meet me outside the aquarium?”
“I'd like you to leave my bathroom now.”
Misha scrambled back so fast it was almost comical. Jared waited a moment and heard his door close.
He pressed his forehead against the cool porcelain. “What is wrong with that guy?"
Misha twisted a napkin between his fingers, looking nervous. “You can order the lobster if you want.”
Jared flipped open his menu. “I'm vegetarian. This is a vegetarian restaurant.”
“I mean you can order a meal commiserate with your suffering. What's the vegetarian equivalent of lobster?”
Jared scanned the prices, because it was better than making small talk with his torturer. “Probably the raw avocado thingy.”
“I can afford that.”
“You can't. The portions are way too small. I'd have to order five.”
"Bankruptcy is only fair." Misha's foot tapped against a table leg. He'd picked the restaurant. It was some kind of upscale vegetarian thing, where half the entrees included locally grown organic kale, and the water ran through some kind of special filter.
Jared wanted to twitch out of his skin.
He didn't really eat out. Or go out. Or do anything but hole up in his apartment with ramen and peanut butter between moons.
Misha took a large swallow of his water-with-lime. “To be honest, I just looked at the Yelp reviews and picked one that sounded good. I mostly go to hole-in-the-wall places known for health code violations.”
“That doesn't surprise me.”
“This isn't really your kind of place, is it?”
“No place is my kind of place.” Jared caught Misha's miserable expression. “Do you want to go somewhere else?”
“Do you?”
“I'm pretty sure this is going to be painful, no matter where it happens.” Jared fiddled with his silverware.
Suddenly, Misha looked determined. “We should go somewhere else. You can bankrupt me at a hotdog truck.”
“Still vegetarian.”
“You can bankrupt me at a vegetarian hotdog truck just as easily. It might even be easier.” Misha grabbed his coat off the back of his chair. “We'll find something. Let's just … go.”
They ended up stopping at a Korean-Mexican fusion truck, where Jared ordered soy product tacos, sans kimchi. It was better being outside, even if Jared wasn't so sure about the company.
Misha had ordered extra kimchi on his bulgogi beef fajitas, but he wasn't really eating. “Any suggestions for making this less awful? You could tell me about you, I could tell you about me.”
Jared threw out his plate in the first trashcan he saw. He wondered how many buses he'd have to take to get back to his part of town. “There's not much to tell.”
“I only know that you're not a poacher, which is pretty sexy, by the way.”
Jared's mind slammed against a wall.
Was Misha propositioning him?
“Sexy?” Jared asked.
“Definitely sexy.” Misha sucked some kimchi off his thumb.
“You have … interesting standards.”
Misha laughed at that, a little high, and Jared got it: Misha was trying to break the ice, and he'd somehow landed on sexual attraction as the least awkward topic. “You're not the first one to say it.”
“I know you really, really like sharks?” Jared offered. “It's more scary than sexy.”
Misha's smile faded, and Jared felt bad, which was stupid, considering everything Misha had put him through. “I went to an aquarium in Baltimore when I was five. They had this huge shark exhibit, where you can walk from floor to floor, seeing the different levels of ocean life. They had the usual aquarium sharks – lemon, snaggle-toothed, maybe some reef sharks.”
“Was it love at first sight?”
Misha picked at the edge of a tortilla. “I had nightmares for months. I'd see myself in the center of the ocean floor, with an endless ring of sharks circling me, drawing closer and closer until one bore down on me. That's when I woke.”
Jared shuddered.
Misha nudged his side. He'd somehow gotten close enough to do that. “My legal guardian was the 'learning is power' type, so she got me a science book on them, probably hoping that I'd stop screaming her awake every night. Anyway, that's when I decided sharks were the most interesting creatures on the planet, and I haven't really looked back.”
“The aquarium stuff. Is that … teaching other people not be scared, too?”
“In part.” Misha took an actual bite of his food, then wiped red sauce from the corner of his mouth.
“What if they should be scared? I mean, sharks … I know attacks are rare. But they're awful when they happen.” Jared felt a pang in his scarred leg, the one that would have crippled him, if it hadn't made him a monster.
Misha faced him. “More people are crushed to death by televisions than are eaten by sharks, Jared.”
“You say that like I'm not also scared of televisions.”
Misha's eyes sparked. He leaned up, just a little, like he was angling for a kiss. “We should do this again sometime.”
Jared rubbed the back of his neck, feeling beyond lost. Yet his mouth formed syllables, and those syllables conveyed meaning, and clearly Jared was losing what little mind he had left, because he could've sworn he'd just said “Okay” instead of “Not in a million years?” or “Are you high?”
Misha drew back, pleased and pink-cheeked. “This isn't even the oddest way I've gotten a date.”
“You – What's happening here?”
“Nothing I can't work with.” Misha grabbed Jared's hand and grinned, toothy and not too manic.
Somehow, Jared found himself smiling back. It had to be some kind of reflex; mindless instinct offered the only explanation. “So what do you do for fun, when you're not stalking people who don't actually poach sharks?”
Misha's fingers tightened where they gripped Jared's hand, but he didn't miss a beat. “You can't expect me to unveil all my secrets.”
Jared said, “I can relate to that.”