SPN Fic: Throw Your Arms Around Me (1/2)
Title: Throw Your Arms Around Me
Author: deirdre_c
Pairings: Jared/Jensen, brief Jared/omc
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~14,000
Warnings: creature!Jensen, graphic tentacle sex
Summary: There were hundreds of houses, thousands of people who came to swim and play in Jensen’s lake, but Jared was the only one he cared to know by name.
A/N: Written (oh so very belatedly) for the adorable cherie_morte for the occasion of her birthday. She once asked for fic about pining, lake-monster!Jensen to go with this picture. Her will be done, but about three times longer than I'd originally intended. Title from a song by Hunters and Collectors. Special thanks to zubeneschamali for the thoughtful beta work and to the mini_wrimo challenge for helping me finish. You can get a .pdf at AO3.
Jensen’s winters in the lake seemed to go on forever, but now it was late spring, almost summer, and soon Jared would come back.
Jared came every June. His family owned a house on a bluff overlooking the water and they spent part of each year there when the weather was hottest. Jensen could hardly remember a time when, once the days start growing long, he wouldn’t swim each morning to the southern tip of the lake to check whether the green shades on Jared’s porch had finally been rolled up and dogs were romping on the lawn. He could recall when Jared was a tiny boy, chubby-legged, wading in the shallows and scooping futilely at the silver minnows darting there, his mother helping him launch little boats made of legos or sticks and leaves. Once they walked hand-in-hand out to the end of their long wooden dock and, Jensen, underneath, heard her tell her son, “Don’t ever go swimming alone, Jared. It may look safe, but the water’s dangerous all by yourself.”
Jared. That was the boy. And that was many years ago.
There were hundreds of houses, thousands of people who came to swim and play in Jensen’s lake, but Jared was the only one he cared to know by name.
*****
When it wasn’t summer, Jensen marked time, sometimes constructing hidden retreats tucked in the lakes deepest recesses, carefully planned to show no evidence of design if discovered, sometimes gathering man-made trash from the bottom and leaving it in the shallows to wash to shore. More often he occupied himself by learning about humans and their ways. He spied, he listened. He spent long hours teaching himself to read their written letters, collecting paperback books and magazines left behind by vacationers on docks and on rocky lookouts and in the bottoms of adrift canoes. He studied the ways of families and couples, partygoers and paddleboarders, packs of children and lone sailors on their bright-sailed Sunfish circling the lake.
He knew certain humans would love to study him in return, if they had the chance. Waves of glory-hunters and curiosity-seekers regularly rolled through the lake’s little waterfront towns. They came in all seasons in search of the legendary giant squid or merman or prehistoric beast or whatever it was they’d heard whispered about that lurked in the lake’s placid depths. The locals egged them on, feeding tall tales to gullible newcomers and selling t-shirts made in China.
Jensen knew each of the stories and rumors about himself because he was an expert at eavesdropping. Strange how, for all the interest there was in looking for him, no one bothered to peek under the nearby pier at quite the right time or check beneath the windows of the lakeside restaurants. So while he kept up as he liked with all the goings-on landside, Jensen’s searchers never caught up with him. The patchwork of undeveloped islands freckling the lake, the murky bottoms in the open depths, the buildup of bridges and docks and houseboats around the lake’s circumference, all conspired to make it relatively easy for him to hide.
Jared was the first human- at least that he knew of- to catch full view of him.
It wasn’t as if Jensen had meant to get caught, certainly not in the open water. He’d had plenty of practice shadowing all kinds of boats, zipping along unseen under some sleek hull, limbs gathered in for speed and to avoid being snagged by a propeller or rudder. Any boat would do if he were bored and needed the exercise.
But if the Padaleckis were out on the water, Jensen was always close by, and that day, as he’d floated near the family’s motorboat idling away-Jared’s father giving instructions to the young sister just learning to water ski- Jensen had looked up through the few feet of clear water between him and the blue summer sky, and there was Jared, leaning out over the bow. Their eyes had locked, Jared’s widening comically as he took in Jensen’s appearance. It wasn’t how Jensen had imagined they’d meet. (Not that he’d had a specific meeting in mind, never pictured swimming up to Jared and introducing himself or anything lunatic like that.) But instead of swiftly darting away, leaving Jared to convince himself later he’d been imagining things, Jensen stayed put, drinking in Jared’s attention. He’d expected a muffled shout- “Hey, Dad, come see this!”- but there was nothing, just stillness. Until Jared raised a hand and gave a small, slow wave. Jensen tried waving back. It wasn’t a gesture he’d practiced much, but it brought a smile to Jared’s face, so Jensen figured it served its purpose.
Jared’s eyes were bluish-brown with sparks of gold, like the lake’s surface on an autumn afternoon. Jensen had never known that before.
As soon as the family finished skiing and made it back to shore, Jared vaulted from the boat the moment it bumped gently into its slip. He ran the length of the dock, leaping into the water on the far side, as if he’d known Jensen would be there waiting.
Jensen was.
They treaded water a few yards apart, both at a loss, until Jared blurted out, “My parents say you’re not real.”
“I guess they’re mistaken,” Jensen replied. He was pretty sure those were the first words he’d ever said to a human.
From up on the lawn drifted the sound of a woman’s voice calling, “Jared, honey? Lunch!”
Jared spun swiftly and grabbed the weathered-smooth edge of the dock, hauling himself up head-high, shouting, “Be there in a minute!”
He let himself drop back into the water, paddling around to face Jensen again. Jensen had to steel himself against the instinct to dive under, out of sight, instead letting Jared stare and himself staring back.
“What are you?”
“I don’t know,” Jensen answered honestly. He’d thought about it, a lot, more than a lot, but had never come up with a satisfactory answer. Based on how the locals talked about him, he could be a monster, but he preferred to give himself the benefit of the doubt. “What are you?”
“Just some kid,” Jared said. But Jensen wasn’t sure that was true, either. Jared didn’t seem like ‘just’ anything. Even if Jensen couldn’t say what it was about Jared that made him shine brighter than others, like a planet glowing low on the night horizon, shaming the stars.
“You have to be more careful,” Jared went on, a vertical crease appearing between his brows. “You can’t go around letting anybody see you. If they knew you were real, they’d- well, they’d trap you for sure. Maybe kill you.”
“I am careful. Usually.” He smiled, shrugging. “Haven’t been caught yet.” Jared was worried about him. That was unexpected… and nice.
Jared smiled back, then looked back over his shoulder, as if expecting someone to come fetch him. “Okay well. I should probably go.” He drifted toward the dock, as smoothly as someone with only two legs could. “Will you come back sometime? So we can talk some more? Longer? I- I would- That would be cool.”
“I’ll come back, if you want. Look for me tomorrow.” And then Jensen did plunge away.
*****
By the next summer, they had established a secret spot for hanging out unseen. It was a few hundred yards up the shore from Jared’s house, where suddenly the beach ended in a large copse of trees that huddled all the way down into water deep enough for Jensen to swim up. Jared usually brought a book so he had a handy excuse for being gone all morning.
Jensen would already be there, anticipating, and he’d watch as Jared climbed over exposed roots and fallen trunks to the tiny pool hidden from view. The sunlight there was filtered gold and glanced bright off of Jared’s bare shoulders, shiny with sunscreen.
Jensen didn’t like the lotion’s smell, but he wouldn’t tell Jared that.
He did tell Jared other things: about odd items the winter storms washed into the lake, how it felt to switch his breathing between gills and lungs, about patterns the schools of fish follow each dawn, the story of how the Padaleckis’ next door neighbor, Mr. Galina, who lived lakeside year-round, drove home drunk last winter from some bar, missed the garage, and put his Buick right in the water.
Jared told him things, too: what middle school was like, how hard it was to learn to play the trumpet, the plots of both of the movies playing at the nearby two-screen village cinema, who was running for president, how Doritos taste, the rules in basketball.
Sometimes Jared would actually read his book aloud. Sometimes he persuaded Jensen to instead. Sometimes they’d just sit quietly together, watching bugs skate along the surface of the pond or tossing sticks at leaf targets. Sometimes Jensen would come back in October and float alone in their usual spot, gazing out toward at the flat, crisp sky over the far shore, thinking how very far away June seemed.
*****
A couple summers on and it was raining, but Jared came to meet him anyway, like he still did almost every day. He sat with his long legs dangling in the pool, his head tilted back to catch droplets in his mouth. Jensen wondered what it was like to feel thirsty.
There was a strange glint in Jared’s eye when he glanced down again. “Jensen?”
“Hmmm?”
“Can I touch one of your tentacles?”
Jensen hesitated. He tried to remember if anyone had ever touched him before. Of course, he touched things all the time, constantly. Aquatic and landbound items. Flora and fauna, natural and man-made. Just never a human. “Alright.”
He slid one of his longer limbs out of the water, stretching it out along the tree root next to Jared’s leg. He usually hid them from view as best he could. He knew some humans were freaked out by appendages like his-shared by strange sea creatures he’d only read about like octopus and jellyfish- and he didn’t want to freak Jared out.
Jared stroked his palm carefully along Jensen’s smooth skin, encircled it with his hand, squeezing, then turned it over in his grip.
“What are these?” he asked, and scrubbed a thumb over one of the raised nodes on the underside.
Jensen flinched and tried to twitch out of Jared’s grasp.
“Sorry!” Jared let go, both hands snatched up and away.
“No,” Jensen said, “no, it’s okay. Just sensitive. Like a finger.” He snaked out and brushed the blunt, narrow tip of his limb delicately against the pad of Jared’s thumb, tracing down to the thin skin between, and up the side his index finger.
Jared huffed a laugh and pulled back. “Okay! I get it,” he grinned. “We’re both ticklish.” Then he cocked his head sideways. “But your hands? Do they have those things, too?”
Jensen held out one hand, the match to Jared’s human one- both almost the same size now because all Jared seemed to do was eat and grow between summers- and let him inspect that as well. Something bright fluttered in Jensen’s stomach as Jared cradled his hand, and they both looked down in surprise, under the water, where Jensen had unconsciously twined several limbs around Jared’s ankles and shins.
Jensen forced them to curl away, practically knotting them behind his back, while Jared watched without comment. Then he turned back to Jensen’s hand cupped in his, and drew a line down the center with one finger. “They say this is your lifeline,” he said matter-of-factly.
*****
Once Jared got his kayak, they had even more freedom. Jared had shown up on the first day that particular June toting a skinny, banana-yellow boat down the hill to the water line. He launched it with an awkward skip-hop into the seat and immediately turned sharp left, paddling as best he could toward their little alcove. Jensen met him halfway, but stayed submerged out of an abundance of caution for possible observers from shore or passing boat.
The kayak shifted course and eventually, despite Jared’s pitiful, hatchet-like strokes, made its way to one of the smaller nearby islands-most of them hardly worth the name, mere waterlogged huddles of nest-filled pines, swampy cattails stands, and sawgrass- so Jensen came to the surface beside Jared, gliding just ahead of where his paddle plowed into the water.
“I bagged groceries after school all year,” Jared said proudly, as soon as he knew Jensen could hear. “Earned enough money to buy this.”
“If you’d saved up for a jet ski, we could’ve gotten here a lot faster,” Jensen teased, giddy as always at Jared’s arrival at last, words bubbling out of him after long seasons of silence.
He reached up one limb and wrapped it around the neck of the paddle, tugging it in Jared’s grip and making the little kayak sway and dip, until Jared wrenched the paddle away.
“Breathe this, jerk,” he said and skipped an arc of water at Jensen with the flat side.
All summer they explored farther and farther up the shoreline. Jared took to packing a lunch so they could stay out longer. Jensen would sometimes tow the boat along behind him, one limb pulling on the kayak’s criss-crossed bungee cords, when Jared’s arms started aching from miles traversed.
It took Jared long enough to think of finding himself a mask and snorkel, but once he did, they dove together, not all the way to Jensen’s deepest refuges, but to other hideaways and caches he’d built up over the years, to particularly beautiful natural sites, to other places Jensen suddenly discovered that he wanted to share. They swam around old sunken piers, aged boat wrecks with the hulls hollowed out and coated green, stone-tumbled jetties cordoned off by official orange markers, thick forests of undulating tape-grass.
Before, in these places, Jensen had known only solitude; now, he thought, Jared’s presence, the careful touch of his hand, would leave a permanent trace.
Jensen learned, during these underwater treks, to read Jared’s expression through the distorting blur of the mask. They developed hand gestures they could use for communication. Jared’s lung capacity increased until he could stay down for minutes at a time before he’d pull on Jensen and shoot toward the surface again.
It was enough.
*****
Jared called out, “They’re looking for you!” as he sprang over roots and ducked under branches, scrabbling his way into their cove.
“Hello to you, too,” Jensen replied. His eyes travelled over Jared, searching eagerly for differences since last summer. His hair was longer, falling over his eyes. He wore a necklace made of shells around his neck. Patchy hair also shadowed his chin and his t-shirt stretched tight over muscles in his chest, and Jensen realized with a start that Jared didn’t look like a boy anymore. Why wasn’t Jensen aging, too? Year after year, the things in his world remained static, unchanging, extending back uniformly into the mists of his memory. Everything except for Jared. It was one more way Jensen was freakish, alien, unexplainable, and he felt a strange moment’s rush of self-hatred, his lower limbs clenching, twisting into a thick knot.
“Jensen,” Jared panted out as he reached where Jensen floated, waiting, “There’s some kind of television crew in town, and they’re talking about how they’re here to film a search for the monster in the lake.”
Monster. Even Jared thought of him that way. The usual joy that colored each June 1st for him dulled and leeched away. But Jared’s face was etched with worry, so Jensen pasted on a reassuring smile. “Yeah, I’ve seen them. Amateurs,” he scoffed. “They’ve set up a series of snares tethered here and there. As if a few forty-foot nets is enough to cover seven miles of lake. But I imagine they’ll catch a few fish.”
“As long as they don’t catch you,” Jared said.
“As if. I was thinking I could cut holes in the nets and tie the dangly pieces in bows. That would give them something to think about, wouldn’t it?”
Jared scowled. “Might as well paint a target on your back.”
“You think I’m not smart enough to avoid a few nets?” Jared’s lack of faith rankled.
“They might have more than nets. Maybe some high-tech sonar or infra-red video recorders or something. Once they get even a hint that you might actually be here, they’ll never leave you alone until they find you. You can’t take any chances. You’re not taking this seriously enough.”
“And you’re taking it too seriously,” Jensen replied tautly. “They don’t really believe things like me exist. It’s just a stunt, publicity for some travelling show. I’ve seen enough of these yahoos over the years to know that this is not a serious hunt for evidence, it’s a circus.”
Jared searched his face, and Jensen didn’t know what he saw, but it must’ve worked because Jared sighed and scrubbed the back of his neck, relaxing enough to plop down on the driftwood structure he’d nailed together last year to serve as a bench for him, an armrest for Jensen. “If you say so.”
“I say so,” Jensen said firmly, uncoiling a bit himself at the familiarity of the scene, him and Jared side-by-side. If only they could just stay here like this, and screw the world outside this little shelter.
“It’s just-“ Jared kicked out a foot in the water and playfully dug a toe into Jensen’s ribs, carefully avoiding the delicate lines of gills striping his flank. “I gotta make sure you’re okay. You’re-you’re kind of my best friend at this point.”
“Yeah?” Jensen suddenly warmed straight through as if the sun blazed out a from behind a bank of clouds. He stealthily reached a limb around behind Jared to poke him in turn, laughing when Jared jumped. “Well, you’re mine, too.”
Jared swatted Jensen away and arched an eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure I’m your only friend.”
“Tell that to a thousand spotted bass up by Jerry’s Marina.”
“So you’re saying I only rank 1,001?”
“Hmm. Maybe higher.” Jensen leaned back on his elbows, lazily stretching his limbs outward, swirling them to make the water in the cove lap up against Jared’s criss-crossed legs. “Some of those bass are assholes.”
*****
The next summer was the last before Jared’s brother left for medical school and Jared for college, and the two of them dedicated every evening to water-skiing. Around sunset the windy chop died down and the water’s surface turned to glass, and most of the traffic on the lake cleared away as people headed home for food and cold beer on shore. This left things wide open for the Padaleckis’ new little fiberglass 17-footer, its Evinrude engine a bit more horsepower than Jensen could keep up with.
That was fine with him, though, because the view was better sitting still. He floated discreetly near one of the homemade buoys fashioned out of milk jugs and anchored by cinderblocks-two rag-tag columns of them forming a slalom course of sorts-ready to duck under when the boat skidded by. By comparison, Jared was anything but discreet, waving and clowning as he passed near Jensen, to the point where Jensen wondered whether Jared’s brother was going to start looking around for someone in the water, someone who shouldn’t be there.
But Jensen couldn’t worry long, not with the newly-defined muscles in Jared’s arms and shoulders on full display, not with him laying back almost horizontal on his one-hand turns and kicking up a mighty rooster tail on his pass around Jensen’s buoy, spraying a rainbow arc of water over him.
“Woooo! Would you look at that!” Jared would yell to no one, arm pumping the air, the horizon behind him painted pink and violet.
Such a show-off.
It wasn’t as fun when Jared took his turns driving the boat, but Jensen waited. Jared would be in the water again soon enough.
It was a good thing Jensen never missed a single evening of the brothers’ antics, because late in the season they got cocky and careless, breaking cardinal rules of skiing: Jared with his life jacket unbuckled, his brother not looking back.
It was a one-in-a-million fall. As Jared toed the wake, the tip of his ski caught and he flipped, and the ski ricocheted to smack him in the temple, knocking him senseless as he cartwheeled into the churning froth.
Jacket torn off, Jared disappeared. Jensen ducked under, too, sped through the gloom on an intercept course, barely enough light left below the surface for him to track Jared’s limp body on its slow descent. It felt like hours, but it was mere seconds before he was there, wrapping Jared tightly up and surging back toward the surface. He looped one limb across Jared’s mouth and nose to keep him from breathing water into his lungs, and together they burst into the air, Jensen not giving a crap about what Jared’s brother might see.
But the boat was still circling back lazily off toward the shore, as if not even aware something had gone wrong. Jared was coughing, gasping, his hands gripping Jensen’s shoulders as desperately as Jensen held him.
When Jared finally gathered breath, he spent it on Jensen's name, and it came out sounding as if the only reason Jared stayed alive was to say it again. His eyes were streaming and the imprint of the ski’s edge a thick red line along the blade of his cheek.
Jensen’s anger sprang out of nowhere, his voice trembling with it. “What the hell? That was so fucking stupid! What’s the point of a life jacket, if you’re not going to wear it right? What would have happened if I wasn’t here?”
“But you were.” Jared wasn’t even trying to tread water; he just let Jensen hold him up. He leaned his forehead against Jensen’s, his chest still heaving inside Jensen’s tight grip. “You were here.”
And Jensen was suddenly keenly aware of all the warm, bare skin he was touching, clutching, a dozen limbs twined around Jared’s narrow waist, around his thighs, behind his knees, Jared’s breath ghosting across his face. He froze, and Jared must’ve felt the tension because he looked up into Jensen’s eyes, then around at the sound of the boat puttering nearer.
“Hide,” Jared said apprehensively, pushing at Jensen and turning to shield him from sight with his body.
Jensen sank like stone, but one stray limb lingered, slipping along Jared’s hip, down his leg, his ankle, until finally Jensen was too deep to reach anymore.
*****
If the first day of June was the best of the year, August 31 was the worst. Some years Jensen told himself that he would skip it, skip the goodbyes. Not have the last memory to take him into winter be one of awkward murmured farewells and Jared not looking back as he jogged up the lawn and into the house, screen door slamming behind.
But once again that morning Jensen found himself in the waters near the Padaleckis’ dock, waiting for Jared to launch his kayak, unwilling to sacrifice those last few hours.
Jared had spent the end of that summer anxious about leaving for college, and his constant chewing over all his fears spread the anxiety to Jensen, too.
He looked up toward the sky, piles of pristine white clouds distorted through the water’s lens and thought, What if Jared just stopped coming back? Jared’s older brother didn’t visit the lake house every summer anymore, this last one had been unusual. Perhaps college meant Jared’s interests would change, that he’d outgrow long days doing nothing, stuck with a companion who couldn’t even get out of the water. Aside from Jared, nothing much changed in Jensen’s world; days trickled by unnoticed, like the water slowly eroding a beach grain by grain. But Jared’s time flew on dragonfly’s wings, each summer flitting by faster than the last. He was an adult now, and what was Jensen? Jensen toiled not, nor spun, so what could he possibly know of the responsibilities and challenges that Jared now faced?
Plus, Jared said he wanted to study oceanography and marine biology, and something about that didn’t sit right with Jensen. Maybe he was being self-centered, reading things wrong, but why would Jared choose a field that studied aquatic life if he didn’t have a particularly interesting specimen in mind. At some point he was fairly certain he’d become a thing to Jared, analyzed, categorized as an unusual object of research.
“There’s a professor on campus I’ve read about,” Jared was saying, later, around a mouthful of trail mix, when they’d stopped to rest along the summer’s last aimless circuit of the islands, “who’s working on identifying new species discovered in deep ocean trenches. I don’t think he’d take on a freshman as a research assistant, but I’m hoping I can get into one of his intro classes.”
Jensen felt himself frowning, so smirked instead. “Just tell him he doesn’t need to go to the bottom of the ocean, right? Tell him to write a paper about me? The two of you could build me a portable cage. Sell tickets.”
Jared flinched. “Jesus, I hate when you joke about that. It’s not funny. It’s never funny.” But his eyes locked on Jensen’s limbs, drifting leisurely around them as they sat among a jumble of broad, half-submerged rocks in a small outcropping they’d discovered, and the intensity of Jared’s gaze made Jensen twitchy, itchy, made him want to swim fast and far.
“I hope you find what you’re looking for, off at college,” Jensen said at last.
Jared ducked his head, an odd half-smile playing across his lips. He dug around in his bag for an almond, picking one out and tucking it into Jensen’s palm. Jared loved foisting human foods on him, got the biggest kick out of watching Jensen’s reaction to new tastes. Almonds were a favorite.
“Yeah, well. I’ll let you know.”
*****
“Jensen?”
“Yes?” That summer they were fishing-if that’s what a stick strung haphazardly with nylon line, a crust of bread tied to the end could be termed-and Jensen found it simultaneously amusing and frustrating. If Jared wanted fish, Jensen could bring him a dozen in no time flat. Jared always said that wasn’t the point. Jensen crossed his arms and watched a tiny crappie nibble delicately at Jared’s bait and swim away.
“Have you ever heard of ‘hentai?’”
“No. What is it?”
“Remember when I showed you those comic books when I was a kid? It’s like those. They’re mostly from Japan, I guess. Some guys in my dorm were really into it.”
“Yeah?” Jensen encouraged, more casually than he felt. He wanted to hear more. Jared has been frustratingly reticent about his first two years at college. The bread crust was pretty much gone now.
“There’s- it turns out there’s a certain kind that have stories about people like you.”
Jensen shot straight up. “What? Really? How like me?”
“Well,” Jared stumbled. “Not all of them, not exactly like you, but there are a few, with men, and they have tentacles, and…” Jared trailed off, fidgeting, suddenly preoccupied with re-baiting his makeshift hook. “Never mind. They’re just comics. Forget I brought it up. It’s stupid.” He hunched farther forward over the end of his line.
Jensen had never heard of such a thing, never read anything like it in the scores of books and maps and other printed things he’d been able to filch and carefully store in a library of discarded waterproof coolers he’d collected over the years and stored on the lake’s most inaccessible islands. “No, I’d like to see it. Do you have any? Would you show me one?”
“I don’t have any here,” Jared said, voice lowered, peering around nervously as if afraid of being overheard. It made Jensen glance around, too, and settle back deeper into the water. Sometimes he forgot to be cautious when he was with Jared.
“Okay, well.” Jensen tried to hide his disappointment. Maybe those stories were a link to where he came from, finding others like him. Sure they were just comic books, but still. He’d have to learn more about Japan if he could. “Maybe some other time?”
“Sometime,” Jared nodded, the tips of his ears red from too long in the sun.
*****
The thought of it- these hentai stories- tickled at the back of Jensen’s mind after Jared left the lake that fall. Jensen had zealously gathered human legends about all kinds of impossible creatures, but he’d never managed to discover anything about half-men, half-squid beings like himself. He replayed the brief conversation with Jared over in his mind, mulled over it as he swam, wore it thin as he tried to go to sleep. He should’ve pressed Jared to tell him more.
Finally his curiosity drove him to do something uncharacteristic, and potentially dangerous: he stole a human’s phone.
Jared had gotten a smartphone for his birthday the summer before and immediately shown it to Jensen, demonstrating how it worked, his face glowing with delight when they discovered the tip of one of Jensen’s limbs on the screen could control the workings of it, same as his fingers. And while Jensen was quite intrigued, it wasn’t exactly a practical toy for a water-bound user.
But that particular evening, as the low autumn angle of sunset sent gold pebbles of light skipping over water’s surface, the moment he saw a stranger tuck her phone in a bag on a dock and leave it unattended to run back into her rental cottage, he moved on impulse. Swimming quickly, he hugged the lake bottom as he neared the shallower water. He broke the surface for a quick 360-degree scout of the area, and, coast clear, he reached up, scrabbling for the phone, pulling it out, and clutching it in his hand.
His heartbeat raced triple-time as he slipped away, his human half above water, moving as a human would- painfully slow, visible to any observer- in order to keep the phone safe and dry. The back of his neck burned with anticipation of that moment someone sighted him, that shout of discovery. Mysteriously missing items always tended to churn up the rumors among the humans about a creature in the lake. Actually getting spotted swiping something could be disastrous.
Even once Jensen found shelter within a nearby line of boat slips, his hands wouldn’t stop shaking as he clicked the button on top of the phone to make it light up. On the screen he found the same image that represented the internet on Jared’s phone, so he touched it, droplets of water smearing as he carefully typed into the search box ‘henteye tentacles.’
The first line that popped up read: showing results for hentai tentacles. Underneath was a link for images.
He pressed it. There were pictures.
At first, he couldn’t quite tell what he was seeing. He recognized the comic book style, and found in each tiny frame, each panel, there were tentacles, disembodied masses of them. And humans. There were humans, too, women. It looked like their faces were twisted in pain, screaming, surrounded, horrified, penetrated.
Jensen recoiled, fumbling to catch the phone before it slipped from his nerveless hands. Why would Jared look at this, tell him about this-this brutality?
He held the phone up again, steeled himself to glance through the images once more. Scrolling down through a sea of reds and blacks, he noticed something pastel, a cartoon girl with oversized eyes, a flower wrapped in a slender pinkish tentacle extending out from behind her back, stretched toward another girl. No agony, no fear. It might even be called cute.
He looked again, closer, at the other pictures. And he realized in several of them, most of them, the women weren’t being tortured, they were being pleasured.
Jensen was quite familiar with human sexual practices, mostly as an accidental spectator. Over the years, he’d stumbled across more humans than he could count coupling near and in the water, at all times of night and day, in various states of undress. And he could remember in times past when teenagers were likely to hide glossy, salacious magazines full of naked women and couples, or even multiple people, fucking through the pages. He’d never been particularly interested in those magazine pictures. Whenever there were times he’d felt a vague sexual urge, he’d take care of it himself matter-of-factly, like any other physical need. But here, on the tiny screen in front of him, was something else, something that sounded a thrumming note in his brain, at his core.
He kept scrolling, searching for more than disembodied tentacles, until a particular drawing caught his eye. He stopped, stared. It wasn’t a woman, it was a young man, naked, on hands and knees, cock rigid between his legs. He was lithe and lean, shaggy hair falling down over his face, back arching into a tentacle that was just in the act of breeching his ass, his tiny puckered hole stretching out around the tip of the seeking limb.
“Oh,” Jensen breathed. And suddenly all he could see was Jared, imagined Jared twisting and writhing, as the tentacle caressed him, entered him, in that most intimate place.
Hot liquid rushed into Jensen’s gut as he tapped the picture, the phone loading two more images of the same scene. In one, the youth was speared on the tentacle, held upright by other thick limbs wrapped around his chest, another spiraled around his cock. His upturned face had a sharp nose and chin, tip-tilted eyes, hair curling under his ears, and it wasn’t quite Jared, but it could’ve been. It could’ve been.
Jensen felt his own cock, hidden amongst his sea of limbs, start to throb, to ache. He gripped it like the cock in the picture was gripped, using one of his thinner limbs to encircle it, stroke it, for the first time imagining what it would be like inside someone else, sensation quickening in his veins while both of his hands continued to grip the phone, white-knuckled.
Arousal caused his limb to exude a slick, milky substance that eased the way underwater as Jensen rubbed harder and faster at his erection, his eyes searching out the final image on the screen. The young man’s- Jared’s, his mind whispered- arms were pulled straight out to the sides by tentacles wrapped around each wrist, while another pair had looped under his knees, holding them up and apart. There were coils at his waist supporting his weight, other tentacles rubbing through his hair and encircling his throat, the tip of one dipping into his navel, two others clutching his balls, a bundle all the way up inside him. Jensen wanted to feel it, feel the strain against the fetters, the play of muscles corded in his arms and stomach, wanted to watch the young man’s eyes shut tight, mouth open in a shout as come spurted from his untouched cock.
Jensen heard himself make a noise high in his throat as he came too, orgasm ripping through him so hard there was almost as much pain as pleasure.
He threw the stolen phone onto the gangway of the boat slip, then collapsed against it, limp and gasping.
He didn’t know what the hell that was, but he realized right then he was in so much trouble.
*****
Jensen had no idea how he was going to face the real Jared that June, after strange months of pornographic cross-species fantasies with dream!Jared in the starring role. Nevertheless, he headed to their cove that morning, pep-talking himself into acting normal. It wasn’t as if Jared could see inside his head, had any idea Jensen could’ve sunk so far into depravity since last they met.
Once Jensen arrived, he couldn’t sit still, so he swam back and forth working off nervous energy across the small span of the pool, currently made smaller by dead branches that had tumbled into the water over the winter. He shoved at them, pricking his hands on brown-brittle needles, hefting them back up onto the pile of fallen logs that comprised the bank. Jensen must’ve been more distracted than he realized, because Jared somehow managed to sneak up on him, all six-foot-whatever of him silent over their hideaway’s rocks and stumps until, thunk, Jensen jumped as a stack of books slammed down onto Jared’s driftwood bench.
“Six used text books. All yours.” Jared smiled down at him.
“Cool. Thanks.” Jensen turned them over, pretending to look at the titles while slanting a look up at Jared, bigger and broader then he remembered. He seemed tired, too, with faint smudges under his eyes. Not much resemblance to the lithe young innocent from that thrice-damned comic.
This Jared was better.
“Welcome back,” Jensen continued belatedly, perhaps over-heartily, sounding to his own ears as awkward as he’d feared. He put the book in his hands down and floated back a few feet in the water as a buffer. “How was school?”
Jared settled himself on the bench with a sigh, “Four-oh in the fall, but a three-one this spring.”
“Oh.” That second term must’ve been a doozy, because Jensen knew Jared prided himself on all As. “Tough classes?”
“Not really,” Jared replied. “The problem was, I made a really terrible decision to come out to my parents over Spring Break and-“ He broke off suddenly, biting his lip and picking furiously at a splinter on arm of the bench.
“Come out? What do you mean?”
Jared glanced quickly at him, then back down, clenching and flexing his busy hand. “I told them I’m gay. That I like guys, not girls.” He looked at Jensen again, and held his gaze determinedly this time, as if waiting for a reaction.
Of course. Jensen had heard about that, about homosexuality among humans, how it was controversial among certain social groups. He realized-and maybe it was odd in hindsight- he and Jared had never really talked about dating or sex, so he’d never thought much about it. Of course, now would have to be the time the topic came up, when Jensen had spent the past six months envisioning Jared naked and moaning with desire.
Jensen quickly steeled himself not to let any of that show on his face. Jared clearly needed to talk about this, so talk they would. “What’s the big deal?” Guys. Girls. It wasn’t as if Jared was contemplating sex with something unspeakable.
”They didn’t exactly-they didn’t take it well.” Jared’s voice broke over the last word. His eyes welled up with unshed tears.
“Jared, what happened?” Jensen asked urgently, swimming closer, concern elbowing his discomfort out of the way.
“They were disappointed,” he croaked. “Angry. Really angry. Told me I was wrong, that being gay was unnatural. I’m so stupid, I thought they’d be okay with it. They’ve never seemed as conservative as some of their friends or the people at their church. They threatened to pull me out of college. They said they were selling the lakehouse.” Jared buried his face in doubled fists, pressing so hard Jensen feared he might bruise it. “They know I love it here, better than anyone anywhere, and they'd sell the house to punish me.”
Jensen reached out and laid his hands on Jared’s hunched and shaking shoulders. He’d never seen Jared cry before, and the sight made his own voice come out shaky. “Hey. Hey. That’s terrible, but I know it’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. Really. Who needs the house? We’ll-we’ll build a little shack out here for you with some of these old logs while you wait for them to come around. It’ll be okay.”
That earned a little hiccoughing laugh. “Nah. Josh and Mac convinced them to keep it after all.” Jared wiped his wet cheeks with the back of his hand, gifting Jensen with a bravado-rich smile. “Although a shack? It’s awful hard to turn that down.”
Jensen gave Jared’s shoulders a little shake, half retort, half encouragement. And it didn’t feel weird at all, the nearness, the touching, the warmth soaking through his tshirt into Jensen’s palms. It simply felt normal and right.
“So what now?” Jensen asked. He knew he couldn’t much at all, but he was ready to do what he could.
Jared heaved a deep breath, looking out over Jensen’s shoulder to the lake beyond. “I don’t know. ”
*****
He didn’t see enough of Jared that summer. Jared wasn’t sure whether his parents really were going to cut him off, emotionally or financially, but he told Jensen he wasn’t going to risk the latter. So he took on two jobs. During the day he worked on a local construction crew putting up homes in a new subdivision, at night he waited tables at a bar two towns over.
After his first seventeen-hour day, Jared practically crawled down to the waterfront where Jensen waited by the dock. Jensen had staked out an inconspicuous spot there since the late-setting sun finally disappeared, knowing the other Padaleckis were not in the house to see him and not wanting to make Jared walk all the way down the beach to their regular meeting place.
“How did it go?” Jensen asked once Jared sprawled on his back, eyes closed, the planes of his face lit only by stars.
“Mmph,” was all Jared answered.
“That bad, huh?”
“That bad,” Jared groaned. “I can’t decide which hurts worse, the blisters on my hands or the blisters on my feet. Even my hair aches.”
“Ouch.” Jensen decided to skip the easy insult about Jared’s long mane, out of a spirit of compassion. “Did you get some dinner at least?”
“Yeah, they fed me in the kitchen at The Roadhouse. So, one less meal to pay for, which is good. And I took a sandwich with me at lunch. All the guys on the crew bring their own.” Jared yawned wide enough to crack his jaw. “Remind me to tell you about them, they’re all pretty cool. Weird, but cool.”
Jensen wanted to know now, wanted all the details, all the conversation he’d missed when he didn’t have Jared completely to himself throughout the long, lonely summer day. Instead he urged, “You’d better head on back inside to bed, man.”
Jared yawned again. “In a minute. I’ll go up in a minute.” But he drifted off before the words had barely left his mouth.
Jensen hesitated, then moved forward slowly, quietly, rising up even with the dock so he could look close, look at Jared boneless with his head flopped to the side and his throat bared, his mouth hanging open slightly. I’ll bet he starts snoring any second, Jensen thought fondly. He dared Jared’s exhaustion enough to reach out and sweep the bangs off of his forehead, then let his hand rest carefully on Jared’s softly rising and falling chest, reveling in the strength of his heartbeat. It wasn’t until a lazy, sweet tingle started low in his belly that he snatched his hand away, sick at the thought he might be taking advantage of Jared’s unconscious state to perv on him, all unknowing.
Curling himself under the dock, Jensen resolved to stay awake and on guard, either until Jared woke or until morning, whichever came first.
*****
Despite Jensen’s concerns over bad backs and mosquito bites and other hardships that humans faced when they slept by the water’s edge, Jared spent most nights that summer out on the dock.
“If I have to be gone all day,” he said, snuggling down into the mass of sleeping bag and pillows he’d set up in an elaborate down-filled nest, “I’d rather be down here for the few minutes I’m home than up in my room all alone.”
“Even if it means waking up soaking wet?” Jensen asked, remembering that first morning when he’d had to shake a dew-drenched Jared awake so he could rush to the house for a change of clothes and still make it to the construction site on time.
“Yep,” Jared replied, looking around at the rows of bare wooden slats that acted as his bed. “But maybe I can figure out how to set up a tent or something.”
He didn’t manage to rig up a shelter, but Jensen did watch with amusement as Jared constructed what he called their hobo campfire out of an old portable grill he’d found in the garage.
“You’re gonna burn the whole place down,” Jensen said skeptically, eyeing sparks like orange fireflies popping out of the tinder.
“It’s a risk I’m willing to take,” Jared vowed. “I can’t let you go one more day without experiencing the glory that is s’mores.”
So Jared sacrificed an hour of much-needed sleep to teach Jensen how to roast marshmallows over a hand’s-width of flame. The dessert itself was gross, disgustingly sweet to Jensen’s taste. But it turned out fine, because Jared was more than happy to devour each of Jensen’s treats, one after another, as they came off the end of his stick.
“Why haven’t we ever done this before?” Jared said, his upper lip smeared with chocolate.
Jensen looked back over his shoulder down the shoreline. “Because someone is probably going to see us.”
Jared shrugged. “It’s one in the morning. And even if they did, we just look like two regular guys, hanging out.”
Just two guys, Jensen thought wistfully, turning his latest marshmallow slowly to toast it on all sides, as instructed. Not that he’d ever wanted to be human. He just wished it could be that easy, that normal.
“Now if you were wielding six sticks at a time, that might attract some attention,” Jared teased, wiggling his fingers to mimic tiny limbs.
Jensen snorted and casually used a real limb to flick a dollop of water onto the fire, making it hiss and Jared squeak in surprise.
Finally, with Jared one s’more short of a trip to the hospital to pump his stomach, they allowed the flames to burn down to ash and said goodnight, Jared reluctantly sliding into his nest and Jensen to his station under the dock.
*****
The crazy thing was, that next spring was the first one in a long time where Jensen wasn’t anxious about Jared’s arrival. Jared had been scheduled to graduate that semester, and he’d told Jensen he had no plans other than spending the summer at the lake, as usual.
But Jensen’s ease turned inside out when he swam south that morning and found a crowd of people on the Padaleckis' lawn. He pulled up short in surprise, then ducked underwater, rising back to barely break the surface enough to see what was going on. He spotted Jared immediately, standing on the stairs, holding the door open as a line of men and women carried suitcases and duffles and bags of groceries into the house, a group of others coming back out in swimsuits, tossing a football back and forth. Jensen realized these were guests, friends of Jared’s. Maybe they were college schoolmates, young and loud, their voices ringing out where last summer there’d just been him and Jared.
Jensen turned and sped quickly to the little cove in the trees, expecting Jared would be there soon to explain. What he didn’t expect was to find a folded piece of paper tucked prominently in the notch of two branches at Jensen’s eye-level. Jensen opened it and read:
Sorry I can’t meet here like usual. I can’t get away this morning without people following me everywhere I go. There was talk of a party here at the lake after graduation, but I don’t know how all of them got invited! (Actually, I do. Remember me telling you about Chad?) Anyway they’re only staying until Sunday. I’ll get up at dawn tomorrow before everyone else and kayak to Bird Island for a bit. Meet you there, ok? ~J
Okay. Tomorrow. He swallowed down a bitter throatful of disappointment. He knew how paranoid Jared was about someone discovering Jensen. He could keep out of sight until Jared’s guests left. Then the summer would truly begin.
*****
But that night, Jensen stole to the surface to spot figures around a fire on the beach, laughter and music tripping toward him across the choppy waves. He couldn’t see much, clouds blanketing the moon and stars, but he could feel the vibrations when the partiers all ran into the water, howling, shrieking, splashing. He drew as close as he dared, barely hidden behind a thin pillar of the dock.
He scanned the crowd, picked out Jared, a head taller than the other boys, towering over the girls, his hipbones sharp, his shaggy hair slicked back and dripping. A splash-war started. Jensen watched them play, almost wishing he could join in. But he shook his head at the thought of what the strangers would do if he revealed himself, of what Jared might do. He saw Jared try to send a wave toward a couple of girls nearby, swinging too wildly and fall back into the water, struggling to stand upright again, still swaying even once he got to his feet.
Jared’s drunk, Jensen realized. It was strange, an unknown side of him.
Then one boy drew Jared aside, deeper into the water, tugging him out toward the old floating platform the Padaleckis used to anchor a few dozen yards from the beach and that someone must’ve discovered and set up earlier in the day. Out past where Jensen skulked in the shadows of the dock like some kind of bottom-feeder.
This boy, this man, nudged Jared to sit on the ladder hooked to the platform’s far side, moving in close, their chests almost touching, and while this shielded them from the friends closer in, it gave Jensen a perfect view as the stranger took Jared’s face in his hands and kissed him.
Jared shook his head pulled back, weaving and blinking, then glancing around. Jensen shrank noiselessly lower, not even there. Despite the echoing lap of water against wood, he could hear Jared’s murmured protest, “We can’t. Can’t do this here.”
The stranger’s response was a sibilant hiss. “Yes, we can.” He pushed Jared back onto the platform, hovering over him. “For old times’ sake.” He spread Jared’s legs apart with his palms, kneeling between them, sealing their mouths together again.
Like a limb wrapped around his heart and squeezing, Jensen’s chest tightened sharply. Sure, he’d caught people making out before, but tonight, here, this was Jared, and the thought of him having sex, watching him have sex, roiled through Jensen like a thunderhead churning across the skies. A terrible urge rose up, the need to grab this intruder, this horrible creature, pull him off of Jared and drag him down to the deepest part of the lake.
But instead Jensen held himself perfectly, painfully still and watched as the stranger worked Jared’s swimtrunks down around his thighs, and then his own, licked his palm and wrapped it around his and Jared’s erections, bringing them together, his hand stroking up and down their coupled lengths as Jared squirmed below him, his heels coming up to dig into the bend of the stranger’s back.
There was grunting and muttered words from the stranger as his hips and hand moved, but Jared was silent, teeth digging into his bottom lip, his eyes squeezed shut, neck arched.
It was dark, but not so dark that Jensen couldn’t see the stranger stiffen and come all over Jared’s belly, see his hand continue to work Jared’s dick faster, his other one move too, shoving Jared’s shorts down farther, fingers spreading the cheeks of Jared’s ass, working between them.
And at that, Jared jerked like a fish on a line, spilling his own seed and calling out. “Jensen!”
Then the pain in his chest was gone, because Jensen’s heart had stopped and might never beat again.
“Who’s Jensen?” he heard the stranger demand.
“No one. No one at all,” Jared gasped. “I’m sorry, it’s…” Jared looked around wildly, too quick for Jensen to bolt back behind the pillar, or under the water, anywhere. Their eyes locked. He never could hide from Jared.
“Oh, god. No,” Jared whispered.
And as if the words split a chain that was anchoring him to the spot, Jensen was gone.
*****
How stupid of him not to figure it out.
All these years, and he never applied the concept of love to himself. How many stolen novels had he read? How many human stories of pining, of misunderstanding and of adoration, of fighting and winning and living happily ever after?
It wasn’t about casual fantasies while getting off. It wasn’t about just friendship. He wanted to be the one; it was clear to him now, after so many years of hiding it from himself. The one Jared smiled for. The one who made him proud. The one to hold him close, feel him move in his hand, to make him cry out, only Jensen’s name forever.
But he was a beast, some mutant half-animal, and Jared was a man. A man at the very sunrise of manhood, and love wasn’t something a beast could ever offer Jared, nor would Jared embrace it. Three months of every year, Jared had been trapped here, marking time until he could enter the human world fully and for good, all twelve months spent firmly on land. Jensen- water-bound, alien, hiding from view-he couldn’t be what Jared deserved. No stories could be written about their happily ever after.
It was up to Jensen to set Jared free.
Jensen swam on, full-speed through the depths of the night-pitch water, miles and miles and more until he was so tired he could no longer picture Jared’s face behind his eyes for needing rest. Finally, he curled up among some debris trapped in a scooped out hollow along the lake bottom. Far under, safe from discovery. Far north, a place he’d never brought Jared in all their travels.
How wise of him.
On to Part 2
Author: deirdre_c
Pairings: Jared/Jensen, brief Jared/omc
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~14,000
Warnings: creature!Jensen, graphic tentacle sex
Summary: There were hundreds of houses, thousands of people who came to swim and play in Jensen’s lake, but Jared was the only one he cared to know by name.
A/N: Written (oh so very belatedly) for the adorable cherie_morte for the occasion of her birthday. She once asked for fic about pining, lake-monster!Jensen to go with this picture. Her will be done, but about three times longer than I'd originally intended. Title from a song by Hunters and Collectors. Special thanks to zubeneschamali for the thoughtful beta work and to the mini_wrimo challenge for helping me finish. You can get a .pdf at AO3.
Jensen’s winters in the lake seemed to go on forever, but now it was late spring, almost summer, and soon Jared would come back.
Jared came every June. His family owned a house on a bluff overlooking the water and they spent part of each year there when the weather was hottest. Jensen could hardly remember a time when, once the days start growing long, he wouldn’t swim each morning to the southern tip of the lake to check whether the green shades on Jared’s porch had finally been rolled up and dogs were romping on the lawn. He could recall when Jared was a tiny boy, chubby-legged, wading in the shallows and scooping futilely at the silver minnows darting there, his mother helping him launch little boats made of legos or sticks and leaves. Once they walked hand-in-hand out to the end of their long wooden dock and, Jensen, underneath, heard her tell her son, “Don’t ever go swimming alone, Jared. It may look safe, but the water’s dangerous all by yourself.”
Jared. That was the boy. And that was many years ago.
There were hundreds of houses, thousands of people who came to swim and play in Jensen’s lake, but Jared was the only one he cared to know by name.
*****
When it wasn’t summer, Jensen marked time, sometimes constructing hidden retreats tucked in the lakes deepest recesses, carefully planned to show no evidence of design if discovered, sometimes gathering man-made trash from the bottom and leaving it in the shallows to wash to shore. More often he occupied himself by learning about humans and their ways. He spied, he listened. He spent long hours teaching himself to read their written letters, collecting paperback books and magazines left behind by vacationers on docks and on rocky lookouts and in the bottoms of adrift canoes. He studied the ways of families and couples, partygoers and paddleboarders, packs of children and lone sailors on their bright-sailed Sunfish circling the lake.
He knew certain humans would love to study him in return, if they had the chance. Waves of glory-hunters and curiosity-seekers regularly rolled through the lake’s little waterfront towns. They came in all seasons in search of the legendary giant squid or merman or prehistoric beast or whatever it was they’d heard whispered about that lurked in the lake’s placid depths. The locals egged them on, feeding tall tales to gullible newcomers and selling t-shirts made in China.
Jensen knew each of the stories and rumors about himself because he was an expert at eavesdropping. Strange how, for all the interest there was in looking for him, no one bothered to peek under the nearby pier at quite the right time or check beneath the windows of the lakeside restaurants. So while he kept up as he liked with all the goings-on landside, Jensen’s searchers never caught up with him. The patchwork of undeveloped islands freckling the lake, the murky bottoms in the open depths, the buildup of bridges and docks and houseboats around the lake’s circumference, all conspired to make it relatively easy for him to hide.
Jared was the first human- at least that he knew of- to catch full view of him.
It wasn’t as if Jensen had meant to get caught, certainly not in the open water. He’d had plenty of practice shadowing all kinds of boats, zipping along unseen under some sleek hull, limbs gathered in for speed and to avoid being snagged by a propeller or rudder. Any boat would do if he were bored and needed the exercise.
But if the Padaleckis were out on the water, Jensen was always close by, and that day, as he’d floated near the family’s motorboat idling away-Jared’s father giving instructions to the young sister just learning to water ski- Jensen had looked up through the few feet of clear water between him and the blue summer sky, and there was Jared, leaning out over the bow. Their eyes had locked, Jared’s widening comically as he took in Jensen’s appearance. It wasn’t how Jensen had imagined they’d meet. (Not that he’d had a specific meeting in mind, never pictured swimming up to Jared and introducing himself or anything lunatic like that.) But instead of swiftly darting away, leaving Jared to convince himself later he’d been imagining things, Jensen stayed put, drinking in Jared’s attention. He’d expected a muffled shout- “Hey, Dad, come see this!”- but there was nothing, just stillness. Until Jared raised a hand and gave a small, slow wave. Jensen tried waving back. It wasn’t a gesture he’d practiced much, but it brought a smile to Jared’s face, so Jensen figured it served its purpose.
Jared’s eyes were bluish-brown with sparks of gold, like the lake’s surface on an autumn afternoon. Jensen had never known that before.
As soon as the family finished skiing and made it back to shore, Jared vaulted from the boat the moment it bumped gently into its slip. He ran the length of the dock, leaping into the water on the far side, as if he’d known Jensen would be there waiting.
Jensen was.
They treaded water a few yards apart, both at a loss, until Jared blurted out, “My parents say you’re not real.”
“I guess they’re mistaken,” Jensen replied. He was pretty sure those were the first words he’d ever said to a human.
From up on the lawn drifted the sound of a woman’s voice calling, “Jared, honey? Lunch!”
Jared spun swiftly and grabbed the weathered-smooth edge of the dock, hauling himself up head-high, shouting, “Be there in a minute!”
He let himself drop back into the water, paddling around to face Jensen again. Jensen had to steel himself against the instinct to dive under, out of sight, instead letting Jared stare and himself staring back.
“What are you?”
“I don’t know,” Jensen answered honestly. He’d thought about it, a lot, more than a lot, but had never come up with a satisfactory answer. Based on how the locals talked about him, he could be a monster, but he preferred to give himself the benefit of the doubt. “What are you?”
“Just some kid,” Jared said. But Jensen wasn’t sure that was true, either. Jared didn’t seem like ‘just’ anything. Even if Jensen couldn’t say what it was about Jared that made him shine brighter than others, like a planet glowing low on the night horizon, shaming the stars.
“You have to be more careful,” Jared went on, a vertical crease appearing between his brows. “You can’t go around letting anybody see you. If they knew you were real, they’d- well, they’d trap you for sure. Maybe kill you.”
“I am careful. Usually.” He smiled, shrugging. “Haven’t been caught yet.” Jared was worried about him. That was unexpected… and nice.
Jared smiled back, then looked back over his shoulder, as if expecting someone to come fetch him. “Okay well. I should probably go.” He drifted toward the dock, as smoothly as someone with only two legs could. “Will you come back sometime? So we can talk some more? Longer? I- I would- That would be cool.”
“I’ll come back, if you want. Look for me tomorrow.” And then Jensen did plunge away.
*****
By the next summer, they had established a secret spot for hanging out unseen. It was a few hundred yards up the shore from Jared’s house, where suddenly the beach ended in a large copse of trees that huddled all the way down into water deep enough for Jensen to swim up. Jared usually brought a book so he had a handy excuse for being gone all morning.
Jensen would already be there, anticipating, and he’d watch as Jared climbed over exposed roots and fallen trunks to the tiny pool hidden from view. The sunlight there was filtered gold and glanced bright off of Jared’s bare shoulders, shiny with sunscreen.
Jensen didn’t like the lotion’s smell, but he wouldn’t tell Jared that.
He did tell Jared other things: about odd items the winter storms washed into the lake, how it felt to switch his breathing between gills and lungs, about patterns the schools of fish follow each dawn, the story of how the Padaleckis’ next door neighbor, Mr. Galina, who lived lakeside year-round, drove home drunk last winter from some bar, missed the garage, and put his Buick right in the water.
Jared told him things, too: what middle school was like, how hard it was to learn to play the trumpet, the plots of both of the movies playing at the nearby two-screen village cinema, who was running for president, how Doritos taste, the rules in basketball.
Sometimes Jared would actually read his book aloud. Sometimes he persuaded Jensen to instead. Sometimes they’d just sit quietly together, watching bugs skate along the surface of the pond or tossing sticks at leaf targets. Sometimes Jensen would come back in October and float alone in their usual spot, gazing out toward at the flat, crisp sky over the far shore, thinking how very far away June seemed.
*****
A couple summers on and it was raining, but Jared came to meet him anyway, like he still did almost every day. He sat with his long legs dangling in the pool, his head tilted back to catch droplets in his mouth. Jensen wondered what it was like to feel thirsty.
There was a strange glint in Jared’s eye when he glanced down again. “Jensen?”
“Hmmm?”
“Can I touch one of your tentacles?”
Jensen hesitated. He tried to remember if anyone had ever touched him before. Of course, he touched things all the time, constantly. Aquatic and landbound items. Flora and fauna, natural and man-made. Just never a human. “Alright.”
He slid one of his longer limbs out of the water, stretching it out along the tree root next to Jared’s leg. He usually hid them from view as best he could. He knew some humans were freaked out by appendages like his-shared by strange sea creatures he’d only read about like octopus and jellyfish- and he didn’t want to freak Jared out.
Jared stroked his palm carefully along Jensen’s smooth skin, encircled it with his hand, squeezing, then turned it over in his grip.
“What are these?” he asked, and scrubbed a thumb over one of the raised nodes on the underside.
Jensen flinched and tried to twitch out of Jared’s grasp.
“Sorry!” Jared let go, both hands snatched up and away.
“No,” Jensen said, “no, it’s okay. Just sensitive. Like a finger.” He snaked out and brushed the blunt, narrow tip of his limb delicately against the pad of Jared’s thumb, tracing down to the thin skin between, and up the side his index finger.
Jared huffed a laugh and pulled back. “Okay! I get it,” he grinned. “We’re both ticklish.” Then he cocked his head sideways. “But your hands? Do they have those things, too?”
Jensen held out one hand, the match to Jared’s human one- both almost the same size now because all Jared seemed to do was eat and grow between summers- and let him inspect that as well. Something bright fluttered in Jensen’s stomach as Jared cradled his hand, and they both looked down in surprise, under the water, where Jensen had unconsciously twined several limbs around Jared’s ankles and shins.
Jensen forced them to curl away, practically knotting them behind his back, while Jared watched without comment. Then he turned back to Jensen’s hand cupped in his, and drew a line down the center with one finger. “They say this is your lifeline,” he said matter-of-factly.
*****
Once Jared got his kayak, they had even more freedom. Jared had shown up on the first day that particular June toting a skinny, banana-yellow boat down the hill to the water line. He launched it with an awkward skip-hop into the seat and immediately turned sharp left, paddling as best he could toward their little alcove. Jensen met him halfway, but stayed submerged out of an abundance of caution for possible observers from shore or passing boat.
The kayak shifted course and eventually, despite Jared’s pitiful, hatchet-like strokes, made its way to one of the smaller nearby islands-most of them hardly worth the name, mere waterlogged huddles of nest-filled pines, swampy cattails stands, and sawgrass- so Jensen came to the surface beside Jared, gliding just ahead of where his paddle plowed into the water.
“I bagged groceries after school all year,” Jared said proudly, as soon as he knew Jensen could hear. “Earned enough money to buy this.”
“If you’d saved up for a jet ski, we could’ve gotten here a lot faster,” Jensen teased, giddy as always at Jared’s arrival at last, words bubbling out of him after long seasons of silence.
He reached up one limb and wrapped it around the neck of the paddle, tugging it in Jared’s grip and making the little kayak sway and dip, until Jared wrenched the paddle away.
“Breathe this, jerk,” he said and skipped an arc of water at Jensen with the flat side.
All summer they explored farther and farther up the shoreline. Jared took to packing a lunch so they could stay out longer. Jensen would sometimes tow the boat along behind him, one limb pulling on the kayak’s criss-crossed bungee cords, when Jared’s arms started aching from miles traversed.
It took Jared long enough to think of finding himself a mask and snorkel, but once he did, they dove together, not all the way to Jensen’s deepest refuges, but to other hideaways and caches he’d built up over the years, to particularly beautiful natural sites, to other places Jensen suddenly discovered that he wanted to share. They swam around old sunken piers, aged boat wrecks with the hulls hollowed out and coated green, stone-tumbled jetties cordoned off by official orange markers, thick forests of undulating tape-grass.
Before, in these places, Jensen had known only solitude; now, he thought, Jared’s presence, the careful touch of his hand, would leave a permanent trace.
Jensen learned, during these underwater treks, to read Jared’s expression through the distorting blur of the mask. They developed hand gestures they could use for communication. Jared’s lung capacity increased until he could stay down for minutes at a time before he’d pull on Jensen and shoot toward the surface again.
It was enough.
*****
Jared called out, “They’re looking for you!” as he sprang over roots and ducked under branches, scrabbling his way into their cove.
“Hello to you, too,” Jensen replied. His eyes travelled over Jared, searching eagerly for differences since last summer. His hair was longer, falling over his eyes. He wore a necklace made of shells around his neck. Patchy hair also shadowed his chin and his t-shirt stretched tight over muscles in his chest, and Jensen realized with a start that Jared didn’t look like a boy anymore. Why wasn’t Jensen aging, too? Year after year, the things in his world remained static, unchanging, extending back uniformly into the mists of his memory. Everything except for Jared. It was one more way Jensen was freakish, alien, unexplainable, and he felt a strange moment’s rush of self-hatred, his lower limbs clenching, twisting into a thick knot.
“Jensen,” Jared panted out as he reached where Jensen floated, waiting, “There’s some kind of television crew in town, and they’re talking about how they’re here to film a search for the monster in the lake.”
Monster. Even Jared thought of him that way. The usual joy that colored each June 1st for him dulled and leeched away. But Jared’s face was etched with worry, so Jensen pasted on a reassuring smile. “Yeah, I’ve seen them. Amateurs,” he scoffed. “They’ve set up a series of snares tethered here and there. As if a few forty-foot nets is enough to cover seven miles of lake. But I imagine they’ll catch a few fish.”
“As long as they don’t catch you,” Jared said.
“As if. I was thinking I could cut holes in the nets and tie the dangly pieces in bows. That would give them something to think about, wouldn’t it?”
Jared scowled. “Might as well paint a target on your back.”
“You think I’m not smart enough to avoid a few nets?” Jared’s lack of faith rankled.
“They might have more than nets. Maybe some high-tech sonar or infra-red video recorders or something. Once they get even a hint that you might actually be here, they’ll never leave you alone until they find you. You can’t take any chances. You’re not taking this seriously enough.”
“And you’re taking it too seriously,” Jensen replied tautly. “They don’t really believe things like me exist. It’s just a stunt, publicity for some travelling show. I’ve seen enough of these yahoos over the years to know that this is not a serious hunt for evidence, it’s a circus.”
Jared searched his face, and Jensen didn’t know what he saw, but it must’ve worked because Jared sighed and scrubbed the back of his neck, relaxing enough to plop down on the driftwood structure he’d nailed together last year to serve as a bench for him, an armrest for Jensen. “If you say so.”
“I say so,” Jensen said firmly, uncoiling a bit himself at the familiarity of the scene, him and Jared side-by-side. If only they could just stay here like this, and screw the world outside this little shelter.
“It’s just-“ Jared kicked out a foot in the water and playfully dug a toe into Jensen’s ribs, carefully avoiding the delicate lines of gills striping his flank. “I gotta make sure you’re okay. You’re-you’re kind of my best friend at this point.”
“Yeah?” Jensen suddenly warmed straight through as if the sun blazed out a from behind a bank of clouds. He stealthily reached a limb around behind Jared to poke him in turn, laughing when Jared jumped. “Well, you’re mine, too.”
Jared swatted Jensen away and arched an eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure I’m your only friend.”
“Tell that to a thousand spotted bass up by Jerry’s Marina.”
“So you’re saying I only rank 1,001?”
“Hmm. Maybe higher.” Jensen leaned back on his elbows, lazily stretching his limbs outward, swirling them to make the water in the cove lap up against Jared’s criss-crossed legs. “Some of those bass are assholes.”
*****
The next summer was the last before Jared’s brother left for medical school and Jared for college, and the two of them dedicated every evening to water-skiing. Around sunset the windy chop died down and the water’s surface turned to glass, and most of the traffic on the lake cleared away as people headed home for food and cold beer on shore. This left things wide open for the Padaleckis’ new little fiberglass 17-footer, its Evinrude engine a bit more horsepower than Jensen could keep up with.
That was fine with him, though, because the view was better sitting still. He floated discreetly near one of the homemade buoys fashioned out of milk jugs and anchored by cinderblocks-two rag-tag columns of them forming a slalom course of sorts-ready to duck under when the boat skidded by. By comparison, Jared was anything but discreet, waving and clowning as he passed near Jensen, to the point where Jensen wondered whether Jared’s brother was going to start looking around for someone in the water, someone who shouldn’t be there.
But Jensen couldn’t worry long, not with the newly-defined muscles in Jared’s arms and shoulders on full display, not with him laying back almost horizontal on his one-hand turns and kicking up a mighty rooster tail on his pass around Jensen’s buoy, spraying a rainbow arc of water over him.
“Woooo! Would you look at that!” Jared would yell to no one, arm pumping the air, the horizon behind him painted pink and violet.
Such a show-off.
It wasn’t as fun when Jared took his turns driving the boat, but Jensen waited. Jared would be in the water again soon enough.
It was a good thing Jensen never missed a single evening of the brothers’ antics, because late in the season they got cocky and careless, breaking cardinal rules of skiing: Jared with his life jacket unbuckled, his brother not looking back.
It was a one-in-a-million fall. As Jared toed the wake, the tip of his ski caught and he flipped, and the ski ricocheted to smack him in the temple, knocking him senseless as he cartwheeled into the churning froth.
Jacket torn off, Jared disappeared. Jensen ducked under, too, sped through the gloom on an intercept course, barely enough light left below the surface for him to track Jared’s limp body on its slow descent. It felt like hours, but it was mere seconds before he was there, wrapping Jared tightly up and surging back toward the surface. He looped one limb across Jared’s mouth and nose to keep him from breathing water into his lungs, and together they burst into the air, Jensen not giving a crap about what Jared’s brother might see.
But the boat was still circling back lazily off toward the shore, as if not even aware something had gone wrong. Jared was coughing, gasping, his hands gripping Jensen’s shoulders as desperately as Jensen held him.
When Jared finally gathered breath, he spent it on Jensen's name, and it came out sounding as if the only reason Jared stayed alive was to say it again. His eyes were streaming and the imprint of the ski’s edge a thick red line along the blade of his cheek.
Jensen’s anger sprang out of nowhere, his voice trembling with it. “What the hell? That was so fucking stupid! What’s the point of a life jacket, if you’re not going to wear it right? What would have happened if I wasn’t here?”
“But you were.” Jared wasn’t even trying to tread water; he just let Jensen hold him up. He leaned his forehead against Jensen’s, his chest still heaving inside Jensen’s tight grip. “You were here.”
And Jensen was suddenly keenly aware of all the warm, bare skin he was touching, clutching, a dozen limbs twined around Jared’s narrow waist, around his thighs, behind his knees, Jared’s breath ghosting across his face. He froze, and Jared must’ve felt the tension because he looked up into Jensen’s eyes, then around at the sound of the boat puttering nearer.
“Hide,” Jared said apprehensively, pushing at Jensen and turning to shield him from sight with his body.
Jensen sank like stone, but one stray limb lingered, slipping along Jared’s hip, down his leg, his ankle, until finally Jensen was too deep to reach anymore.
*****
If the first day of June was the best of the year, August 31 was the worst. Some years Jensen told himself that he would skip it, skip the goodbyes. Not have the last memory to take him into winter be one of awkward murmured farewells and Jared not looking back as he jogged up the lawn and into the house, screen door slamming behind.
But once again that morning Jensen found himself in the waters near the Padaleckis’ dock, waiting for Jared to launch his kayak, unwilling to sacrifice those last few hours.
Jared had spent the end of that summer anxious about leaving for college, and his constant chewing over all his fears spread the anxiety to Jensen, too.
He looked up toward the sky, piles of pristine white clouds distorted through the water’s lens and thought, What if Jared just stopped coming back? Jared’s older brother didn’t visit the lake house every summer anymore, this last one had been unusual. Perhaps college meant Jared’s interests would change, that he’d outgrow long days doing nothing, stuck with a companion who couldn’t even get out of the water. Aside from Jared, nothing much changed in Jensen’s world; days trickled by unnoticed, like the water slowly eroding a beach grain by grain. But Jared’s time flew on dragonfly’s wings, each summer flitting by faster than the last. He was an adult now, and what was Jensen? Jensen toiled not, nor spun, so what could he possibly know of the responsibilities and challenges that Jared now faced?
Plus, Jared said he wanted to study oceanography and marine biology, and something about that didn’t sit right with Jensen. Maybe he was being self-centered, reading things wrong, but why would Jared choose a field that studied aquatic life if he didn’t have a particularly interesting specimen in mind. At some point he was fairly certain he’d become a thing to Jared, analyzed, categorized as an unusual object of research.
“There’s a professor on campus I’ve read about,” Jared was saying, later, around a mouthful of trail mix, when they’d stopped to rest along the summer’s last aimless circuit of the islands, “who’s working on identifying new species discovered in deep ocean trenches. I don’t think he’d take on a freshman as a research assistant, but I’m hoping I can get into one of his intro classes.”
Jensen felt himself frowning, so smirked instead. “Just tell him he doesn’t need to go to the bottom of the ocean, right? Tell him to write a paper about me? The two of you could build me a portable cage. Sell tickets.”
Jared flinched. “Jesus, I hate when you joke about that. It’s not funny. It’s never funny.” But his eyes locked on Jensen’s limbs, drifting leisurely around them as they sat among a jumble of broad, half-submerged rocks in a small outcropping they’d discovered, and the intensity of Jared’s gaze made Jensen twitchy, itchy, made him want to swim fast and far.
“I hope you find what you’re looking for, off at college,” Jensen said at last.
Jared ducked his head, an odd half-smile playing across his lips. He dug around in his bag for an almond, picking one out and tucking it into Jensen’s palm. Jared loved foisting human foods on him, got the biggest kick out of watching Jensen’s reaction to new tastes. Almonds were a favorite.
“Yeah, well. I’ll let you know.”
*****
“Jensen?”
“Yes?” That summer they were fishing-if that’s what a stick strung haphazardly with nylon line, a crust of bread tied to the end could be termed-and Jensen found it simultaneously amusing and frustrating. If Jared wanted fish, Jensen could bring him a dozen in no time flat. Jared always said that wasn’t the point. Jensen crossed his arms and watched a tiny crappie nibble delicately at Jared’s bait and swim away.
“Have you ever heard of ‘hentai?’”
“No. What is it?”
“Remember when I showed you those comic books when I was a kid? It’s like those. They’re mostly from Japan, I guess. Some guys in my dorm were really into it.”
“Yeah?” Jensen encouraged, more casually than he felt. He wanted to hear more. Jared has been frustratingly reticent about his first two years at college. The bread crust was pretty much gone now.
“There’s- it turns out there’s a certain kind that have stories about people like you.”
Jensen shot straight up. “What? Really? How like me?”
“Well,” Jared stumbled. “Not all of them, not exactly like you, but there are a few, with men, and they have tentacles, and…” Jared trailed off, fidgeting, suddenly preoccupied with re-baiting his makeshift hook. “Never mind. They’re just comics. Forget I brought it up. It’s stupid.” He hunched farther forward over the end of his line.
Jensen had never heard of such a thing, never read anything like it in the scores of books and maps and other printed things he’d been able to filch and carefully store in a library of discarded waterproof coolers he’d collected over the years and stored on the lake’s most inaccessible islands. “No, I’d like to see it. Do you have any? Would you show me one?”
“I don’t have any here,” Jared said, voice lowered, peering around nervously as if afraid of being overheard. It made Jensen glance around, too, and settle back deeper into the water. Sometimes he forgot to be cautious when he was with Jared.
“Okay, well.” Jensen tried to hide his disappointment. Maybe those stories were a link to where he came from, finding others like him. Sure they were just comic books, but still. He’d have to learn more about Japan if he could. “Maybe some other time?”
“Sometime,” Jared nodded, the tips of his ears red from too long in the sun.
*****
The thought of it- these hentai stories- tickled at the back of Jensen’s mind after Jared left the lake that fall. Jensen had zealously gathered human legends about all kinds of impossible creatures, but he’d never managed to discover anything about half-men, half-squid beings like himself. He replayed the brief conversation with Jared over in his mind, mulled over it as he swam, wore it thin as he tried to go to sleep. He should’ve pressed Jared to tell him more.
Finally his curiosity drove him to do something uncharacteristic, and potentially dangerous: he stole a human’s phone.
Jared had gotten a smartphone for his birthday the summer before and immediately shown it to Jensen, demonstrating how it worked, his face glowing with delight when they discovered the tip of one of Jensen’s limbs on the screen could control the workings of it, same as his fingers. And while Jensen was quite intrigued, it wasn’t exactly a practical toy for a water-bound user.
But that particular evening, as the low autumn angle of sunset sent gold pebbles of light skipping over water’s surface, the moment he saw a stranger tuck her phone in a bag on a dock and leave it unattended to run back into her rental cottage, he moved on impulse. Swimming quickly, he hugged the lake bottom as he neared the shallower water. He broke the surface for a quick 360-degree scout of the area, and, coast clear, he reached up, scrabbling for the phone, pulling it out, and clutching it in his hand.
His heartbeat raced triple-time as he slipped away, his human half above water, moving as a human would- painfully slow, visible to any observer- in order to keep the phone safe and dry. The back of his neck burned with anticipation of that moment someone sighted him, that shout of discovery. Mysteriously missing items always tended to churn up the rumors among the humans about a creature in the lake. Actually getting spotted swiping something could be disastrous.
Even once Jensen found shelter within a nearby line of boat slips, his hands wouldn’t stop shaking as he clicked the button on top of the phone to make it light up. On the screen he found the same image that represented the internet on Jared’s phone, so he touched it, droplets of water smearing as he carefully typed into the search box ‘henteye tentacles.’
The first line that popped up read: showing results for hentai tentacles. Underneath was a link for images.
He pressed it. There were pictures.
At first, he couldn’t quite tell what he was seeing. He recognized the comic book style, and found in each tiny frame, each panel, there were tentacles, disembodied masses of them. And humans. There were humans, too, women. It looked like their faces were twisted in pain, screaming, surrounded, horrified, penetrated.
Jensen recoiled, fumbling to catch the phone before it slipped from his nerveless hands. Why would Jared look at this, tell him about this-this brutality?
He held the phone up again, steeled himself to glance through the images once more. Scrolling down through a sea of reds and blacks, he noticed something pastel, a cartoon girl with oversized eyes, a flower wrapped in a slender pinkish tentacle extending out from behind her back, stretched toward another girl. No agony, no fear. It might even be called cute.
He looked again, closer, at the other pictures. And he realized in several of them, most of them, the women weren’t being tortured, they were being pleasured.
Jensen was quite familiar with human sexual practices, mostly as an accidental spectator. Over the years, he’d stumbled across more humans than he could count coupling near and in the water, at all times of night and day, in various states of undress. And he could remember in times past when teenagers were likely to hide glossy, salacious magazines full of naked women and couples, or even multiple people, fucking through the pages. He’d never been particularly interested in those magazine pictures. Whenever there were times he’d felt a vague sexual urge, he’d take care of it himself matter-of-factly, like any other physical need. But here, on the tiny screen in front of him, was something else, something that sounded a thrumming note in his brain, at his core.
He kept scrolling, searching for more than disembodied tentacles, until a particular drawing caught his eye. He stopped, stared. It wasn’t a woman, it was a young man, naked, on hands and knees, cock rigid between his legs. He was lithe and lean, shaggy hair falling down over his face, back arching into a tentacle that was just in the act of breeching his ass, his tiny puckered hole stretching out around the tip of the seeking limb.
“Oh,” Jensen breathed. And suddenly all he could see was Jared, imagined Jared twisting and writhing, as the tentacle caressed him, entered him, in that most intimate place.
Hot liquid rushed into Jensen’s gut as he tapped the picture, the phone loading two more images of the same scene. In one, the youth was speared on the tentacle, held upright by other thick limbs wrapped around his chest, another spiraled around his cock. His upturned face had a sharp nose and chin, tip-tilted eyes, hair curling under his ears, and it wasn’t quite Jared, but it could’ve been. It could’ve been.
Jensen felt his own cock, hidden amongst his sea of limbs, start to throb, to ache. He gripped it like the cock in the picture was gripped, using one of his thinner limbs to encircle it, stroke it, for the first time imagining what it would be like inside someone else, sensation quickening in his veins while both of his hands continued to grip the phone, white-knuckled.
Arousal caused his limb to exude a slick, milky substance that eased the way underwater as Jensen rubbed harder and faster at his erection, his eyes searching out the final image on the screen. The young man’s- Jared’s, his mind whispered- arms were pulled straight out to the sides by tentacles wrapped around each wrist, while another pair had looped under his knees, holding them up and apart. There were coils at his waist supporting his weight, other tentacles rubbing through his hair and encircling his throat, the tip of one dipping into his navel, two others clutching his balls, a bundle all the way up inside him. Jensen wanted to feel it, feel the strain against the fetters, the play of muscles corded in his arms and stomach, wanted to watch the young man’s eyes shut tight, mouth open in a shout as come spurted from his untouched cock.
Jensen heard himself make a noise high in his throat as he came too, orgasm ripping through him so hard there was almost as much pain as pleasure.
He threw the stolen phone onto the gangway of the boat slip, then collapsed against it, limp and gasping.
He didn’t know what the hell that was, but he realized right then he was in so much trouble.
*****
Jensen had no idea how he was going to face the real Jared that June, after strange months of pornographic cross-species fantasies with dream!Jared in the starring role. Nevertheless, he headed to their cove that morning, pep-talking himself into acting normal. It wasn’t as if Jared could see inside his head, had any idea Jensen could’ve sunk so far into depravity since last they met.
Once Jensen arrived, he couldn’t sit still, so he swam back and forth working off nervous energy across the small span of the pool, currently made smaller by dead branches that had tumbled into the water over the winter. He shoved at them, pricking his hands on brown-brittle needles, hefting them back up onto the pile of fallen logs that comprised the bank. Jensen must’ve been more distracted than he realized, because Jared somehow managed to sneak up on him, all six-foot-whatever of him silent over their hideaway’s rocks and stumps until, thunk, Jensen jumped as a stack of books slammed down onto Jared’s driftwood bench.
“Six used text books. All yours.” Jared smiled down at him.
“Cool. Thanks.” Jensen turned them over, pretending to look at the titles while slanting a look up at Jared, bigger and broader then he remembered. He seemed tired, too, with faint smudges under his eyes. Not much resemblance to the lithe young innocent from that thrice-damned comic.
This Jared was better.
“Welcome back,” Jensen continued belatedly, perhaps over-heartily, sounding to his own ears as awkward as he’d feared. He put the book in his hands down and floated back a few feet in the water as a buffer. “How was school?”
Jared settled himself on the bench with a sigh, “Four-oh in the fall, but a three-one this spring.”
“Oh.” That second term must’ve been a doozy, because Jensen knew Jared prided himself on all As. “Tough classes?”
“Not really,” Jared replied. “The problem was, I made a really terrible decision to come out to my parents over Spring Break and-“ He broke off suddenly, biting his lip and picking furiously at a splinter on arm of the bench.
“Come out? What do you mean?”
Jared glanced quickly at him, then back down, clenching and flexing his busy hand. “I told them I’m gay. That I like guys, not girls.” He looked at Jensen again, and held his gaze determinedly this time, as if waiting for a reaction.
Of course. Jensen had heard about that, about homosexuality among humans, how it was controversial among certain social groups. He realized-and maybe it was odd in hindsight- he and Jared had never really talked about dating or sex, so he’d never thought much about it. Of course, now would have to be the time the topic came up, when Jensen had spent the past six months envisioning Jared naked and moaning with desire.
Jensen quickly steeled himself not to let any of that show on his face. Jared clearly needed to talk about this, so talk they would. “What’s the big deal?” Guys. Girls. It wasn’t as if Jared was contemplating sex with something unspeakable.
”They didn’t exactly-they didn’t take it well.” Jared’s voice broke over the last word. His eyes welled up with unshed tears.
“Jared, what happened?” Jensen asked urgently, swimming closer, concern elbowing his discomfort out of the way.
“They were disappointed,” he croaked. “Angry. Really angry. Told me I was wrong, that being gay was unnatural. I’m so stupid, I thought they’d be okay with it. They’ve never seemed as conservative as some of their friends or the people at their church. They threatened to pull me out of college. They said they were selling the lakehouse.” Jared buried his face in doubled fists, pressing so hard Jensen feared he might bruise it. “They know I love it here, better than anyone anywhere, and they'd sell the house to punish me.”
Jensen reached out and laid his hands on Jared’s hunched and shaking shoulders. He’d never seen Jared cry before, and the sight made his own voice come out shaky. “Hey. Hey. That’s terrible, but I know it’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. Really. Who needs the house? We’ll-we’ll build a little shack out here for you with some of these old logs while you wait for them to come around. It’ll be okay.”
That earned a little hiccoughing laugh. “Nah. Josh and Mac convinced them to keep it after all.” Jared wiped his wet cheeks with the back of his hand, gifting Jensen with a bravado-rich smile. “Although a shack? It’s awful hard to turn that down.”
Jensen gave Jared’s shoulders a little shake, half retort, half encouragement. And it didn’t feel weird at all, the nearness, the touching, the warmth soaking through his tshirt into Jensen’s palms. It simply felt normal and right.
“So what now?” Jensen asked. He knew he couldn’t much at all, but he was ready to do what he could.
Jared heaved a deep breath, looking out over Jensen’s shoulder to the lake beyond. “I don’t know. ”
*****
He didn’t see enough of Jared that summer. Jared wasn’t sure whether his parents really were going to cut him off, emotionally or financially, but he told Jensen he wasn’t going to risk the latter. So he took on two jobs. During the day he worked on a local construction crew putting up homes in a new subdivision, at night he waited tables at a bar two towns over.
After his first seventeen-hour day, Jared practically crawled down to the waterfront where Jensen waited by the dock. Jensen had staked out an inconspicuous spot there since the late-setting sun finally disappeared, knowing the other Padaleckis were not in the house to see him and not wanting to make Jared walk all the way down the beach to their regular meeting place.
“How did it go?” Jensen asked once Jared sprawled on his back, eyes closed, the planes of his face lit only by stars.
“Mmph,” was all Jared answered.
“That bad, huh?”
“That bad,” Jared groaned. “I can’t decide which hurts worse, the blisters on my hands or the blisters on my feet. Even my hair aches.”
“Ouch.” Jensen decided to skip the easy insult about Jared’s long mane, out of a spirit of compassion. “Did you get some dinner at least?”
“Yeah, they fed me in the kitchen at The Roadhouse. So, one less meal to pay for, which is good. And I took a sandwich with me at lunch. All the guys on the crew bring their own.” Jared yawned wide enough to crack his jaw. “Remind me to tell you about them, they’re all pretty cool. Weird, but cool.”
Jensen wanted to know now, wanted all the details, all the conversation he’d missed when he didn’t have Jared completely to himself throughout the long, lonely summer day. Instead he urged, “You’d better head on back inside to bed, man.”
Jared yawned again. “In a minute. I’ll go up in a minute.” But he drifted off before the words had barely left his mouth.
Jensen hesitated, then moved forward slowly, quietly, rising up even with the dock so he could look close, look at Jared boneless with his head flopped to the side and his throat bared, his mouth hanging open slightly. I’ll bet he starts snoring any second, Jensen thought fondly. He dared Jared’s exhaustion enough to reach out and sweep the bangs off of his forehead, then let his hand rest carefully on Jared’s softly rising and falling chest, reveling in the strength of his heartbeat. It wasn’t until a lazy, sweet tingle started low in his belly that he snatched his hand away, sick at the thought he might be taking advantage of Jared’s unconscious state to perv on him, all unknowing.
Curling himself under the dock, Jensen resolved to stay awake and on guard, either until Jared woke or until morning, whichever came first.
*****
Despite Jensen’s concerns over bad backs and mosquito bites and other hardships that humans faced when they slept by the water’s edge, Jared spent most nights that summer out on the dock.
“If I have to be gone all day,” he said, snuggling down into the mass of sleeping bag and pillows he’d set up in an elaborate down-filled nest, “I’d rather be down here for the few minutes I’m home than up in my room all alone.”
“Even if it means waking up soaking wet?” Jensen asked, remembering that first morning when he’d had to shake a dew-drenched Jared awake so he could rush to the house for a change of clothes and still make it to the construction site on time.
“Yep,” Jared replied, looking around at the rows of bare wooden slats that acted as his bed. “But maybe I can figure out how to set up a tent or something.”
He didn’t manage to rig up a shelter, but Jensen did watch with amusement as Jared constructed what he called their hobo campfire out of an old portable grill he’d found in the garage.
“You’re gonna burn the whole place down,” Jensen said skeptically, eyeing sparks like orange fireflies popping out of the tinder.
“It’s a risk I’m willing to take,” Jared vowed. “I can’t let you go one more day without experiencing the glory that is s’mores.”
So Jared sacrificed an hour of much-needed sleep to teach Jensen how to roast marshmallows over a hand’s-width of flame. The dessert itself was gross, disgustingly sweet to Jensen’s taste. But it turned out fine, because Jared was more than happy to devour each of Jensen’s treats, one after another, as they came off the end of his stick.
“Why haven’t we ever done this before?” Jared said, his upper lip smeared with chocolate.
Jensen looked back over his shoulder down the shoreline. “Because someone is probably going to see us.”
Jared shrugged. “It’s one in the morning. And even if they did, we just look like two regular guys, hanging out.”
Just two guys, Jensen thought wistfully, turning his latest marshmallow slowly to toast it on all sides, as instructed. Not that he’d ever wanted to be human. He just wished it could be that easy, that normal.
“Now if you were wielding six sticks at a time, that might attract some attention,” Jared teased, wiggling his fingers to mimic tiny limbs.
Jensen snorted and casually used a real limb to flick a dollop of water onto the fire, making it hiss and Jared squeak in surprise.
Finally, with Jared one s’more short of a trip to the hospital to pump his stomach, they allowed the flames to burn down to ash and said goodnight, Jared reluctantly sliding into his nest and Jensen to his station under the dock.
*****
The crazy thing was, that next spring was the first one in a long time where Jensen wasn’t anxious about Jared’s arrival. Jared had been scheduled to graduate that semester, and he’d told Jensen he had no plans other than spending the summer at the lake, as usual.
But Jensen’s ease turned inside out when he swam south that morning and found a crowd of people on the Padaleckis' lawn. He pulled up short in surprise, then ducked underwater, rising back to barely break the surface enough to see what was going on. He spotted Jared immediately, standing on the stairs, holding the door open as a line of men and women carried suitcases and duffles and bags of groceries into the house, a group of others coming back out in swimsuits, tossing a football back and forth. Jensen realized these were guests, friends of Jared’s. Maybe they were college schoolmates, young and loud, their voices ringing out where last summer there’d just been him and Jared.
Jensen turned and sped quickly to the little cove in the trees, expecting Jared would be there soon to explain. What he didn’t expect was to find a folded piece of paper tucked prominently in the notch of two branches at Jensen’s eye-level. Jensen opened it and read:
Sorry I can’t meet here like usual. I can’t get away this morning without people following me everywhere I go. There was talk of a party here at the lake after graduation, but I don’t know how all of them got invited! (Actually, I do. Remember me telling you about Chad?) Anyway they’re only staying until Sunday. I’ll get up at dawn tomorrow before everyone else and kayak to Bird Island for a bit. Meet you there, ok? ~J
Okay. Tomorrow. He swallowed down a bitter throatful of disappointment. He knew how paranoid Jared was about someone discovering Jensen. He could keep out of sight until Jared’s guests left. Then the summer would truly begin.
*****
But that night, Jensen stole to the surface to spot figures around a fire on the beach, laughter and music tripping toward him across the choppy waves. He couldn’t see much, clouds blanketing the moon and stars, but he could feel the vibrations when the partiers all ran into the water, howling, shrieking, splashing. He drew as close as he dared, barely hidden behind a thin pillar of the dock.
He scanned the crowd, picked out Jared, a head taller than the other boys, towering over the girls, his hipbones sharp, his shaggy hair slicked back and dripping. A splash-war started. Jensen watched them play, almost wishing he could join in. But he shook his head at the thought of what the strangers would do if he revealed himself, of what Jared might do. He saw Jared try to send a wave toward a couple of girls nearby, swinging too wildly and fall back into the water, struggling to stand upright again, still swaying even once he got to his feet.
Jared’s drunk, Jensen realized. It was strange, an unknown side of him.
Then one boy drew Jared aside, deeper into the water, tugging him out toward the old floating platform the Padaleckis used to anchor a few dozen yards from the beach and that someone must’ve discovered and set up earlier in the day. Out past where Jensen skulked in the shadows of the dock like some kind of bottom-feeder.
This boy, this man, nudged Jared to sit on the ladder hooked to the platform’s far side, moving in close, their chests almost touching, and while this shielded them from the friends closer in, it gave Jensen a perfect view as the stranger took Jared’s face in his hands and kissed him.
Jared shook his head pulled back, weaving and blinking, then glancing around. Jensen shrank noiselessly lower, not even there. Despite the echoing lap of water against wood, he could hear Jared’s murmured protest, “We can’t. Can’t do this here.”
The stranger’s response was a sibilant hiss. “Yes, we can.” He pushed Jared back onto the platform, hovering over him. “For old times’ sake.” He spread Jared’s legs apart with his palms, kneeling between them, sealing their mouths together again.
Like a limb wrapped around his heart and squeezing, Jensen’s chest tightened sharply. Sure, he’d caught people making out before, but tonight, here, this was Jared, and the thought of him having sex, watching him have sex, roiled through Jensen like a thunderhead churning across the skies. A terrible urge rose up, the need to grab this intruder, this horrible creature, pull him off of Jared and drag him down to the deepest part of the lake.
But instead Jensen held himself perfectly, painfully still and watched as the stranger worked Jared’s swimtrunks down around his thighs, and then his own, licked his palm and wrapped it around his and Jared’s erections, bringing them together, his hand stroking up and down their coupled lengths as Jared squirmed below him, his heels coming up to dig into the bend of the stranger’s back.
There was grunting and muttered words from the stranger as his hips and hand moved, but Jared was silent, teeth digging into his bottom lip, his eyes squeezed shut, neck arched.
It was dark, but not so dark that Jensen couldn’t see the stranger stiffen and come all over Jared’s belly, see his hand continue to work Jared’s dick faster, his other one move too, shoving Jared’s shorts down farther, fingers spreading the cheeks of Jared’s ass, working between them.
And at that, Jared jerked like a fish on a line, spilling his own seed and calling out. “Jensen!”
Then the pain in his chest was gone, because Jensen’s heart had stopped and might never beat again.
“Who’s Jensen?” he heard the stranger demand.
“No one. No one at all,” Jared gasped. “I’m sorry, it’s…” Jared looked around wildly, too quick for Jensen to bolt back behind the pillar, or under the water, anywhere. Their eyes locked. He never could hide from Jared.
“Oh, god. No,” Jared whispered.
And as if the words split a chain that was anchoring him to the spot, Jensen was gone.
*****
How stupid of him not to figure it out.
All these years, and he never applied the concept of love to himself. How many stolen novels had he read? How many human stories of pining, of misunderstanding and of adoration, of fighting and winning and living happily ever after?
It wasn’t about casual fantasies while getting off. It wasn’t about just friendship. He wanted to be the one; it was clear to him now, after so many years of hiding it from himself. The one Jared smiled for. The one who made him proud. The one to hold him close, feel him move in his hand, to make him cry out, only Jensen’s name forever.
But he was a beast, some mutant half-animal, and Jared was a man. A man at the very sunrise of manhood, and love wasn’t something a beast could ever offer Jared, nor would Jared embrace it. Three months of every year, Jared had been trapped here, marking time until he could enter the human world fully and for good, all twelve months spent firmly on land. Jensen- water-bound, alien, hiding from view-he couldn’t be what Jared deserved. No stories could be written about their happily ever after.
It was up to Jensen to set Jared free.
Jensen swam on, full-speed through the depths of the night-pitch water, miles and miles and more until he was so tired he could no longer picture Jared’s face behind his eyes for needing rest. Finally, he curled up among some debris trapped in a scooped out hollow along the lake bottom. Far under, safe from discovery. Far north, a place he’d never brought Jared in all their travels.
How wise of him.
On to Part 2