Archive of Our Own

There's a night, right after Misha gets back from winter break, settles back into his apartment and looks at the list of books he'll need for this semester's classes. And in this night, there's a moment—just one moment, when nothing can get worse.

In silence, Misha unpacks from his latest trip back home. Thinks about Mom's latest financial windfall and how it isn't working out as well as it should. About how Tom and Allison, Misha's younger siblings, aren't finding their new lives as undergrads as easy an adjustment as they thought. About how everything's a mess, and a constant disarray, and going wrong on every level—and how, on top of it all, Misha has to lie to everyone he loves. Not that this is an especially long list. It's the ease with which he takes to the lying that bothers him.

But, regardless, he can't answer any questions of how he's doing honestly anymore. Because he can handle that himself, the same way he handles refolding his clothes, handles putting them away. Everyone else has real problems. Misha has problems where he feels powerless to do anything positive, and where he thinks that everything's his fault or might as well be, and where he can't help letting himself get sick and worried over things he can't control.

Not just the average things that people can't control. At least, Misha assumes that most people don't jump from some bullshit about, nothing I plan out ever goes how I want, to some other bullshit about, but human life is so dwarfed by the rest of the universe and individuals are so pathetic in relation to the rest of the world, what would it even matter if I died. He hopes that normal people don't worry about that, anyway. He wouldn't wish it on anybody.

Misha can handle everything on his own, though. He's had plenty of chances to off himself, just since he caught his train back down here. And he didn't go through with it. Didn't even get close, technically speaking. He's still.

Out of nowhere, a chill jolts up Misha's spine. He smacks the back of his neck, gets the feeling of something crawling along his skin. Another shock follows. Misha jumps at a noise—a clamor comes up from the alley, clanging and clattering on the dumpsters and trashcans. Misha's head snaps up and he fumbles at his light-switch. Snaps it down into place, so he can see and so someone might not think he's a threat.

Misha blinks out into the half-darkness. All he sees is the fire escape and the brick wall opposite his building. He keeps his hand on the switch, hovering in place because he can't make anything out of the shadows, but that doesn't mean it's not there, looking at him. The middle of the night creeps closer and the street's still partly illuminated by all the street-lamps and the lights coming out of other windows. He ought to be able to see if something's there or not. But all Misha gets is the bone-scraping sensation that he's stuck under a magnifying glass, being observed.

The fire escape creaks. Something drops onto it—something heavy, and the bang has a thud to it that makes Misha think of boots. His heart beats so hard, races so quickly, it might as well try to claw its way out of his throat. He dashes over to the window, starts fumbling with the latch and mostly coming up with the feeling of cold metal and smoothed, painted wood digging at his fingers. All the while wondering why didn't he bother checking in with Genevieve before he came back, or why didn't he look into any reports of break-ins or robberies going on around here lately.

His head snaps up again before he even registers why. Before he notices the rapping on the window. And his breath catches in his throat—his hands flinch away from their work, jump back like the window's on fire—his whole body tenses up. It only releases in a heavy sigh when Misha once again can't see anything outside his window. He presses his forehead and hands into the glass, sighing with all the pent up exhaustion he'd rather not acknowledge. Shuddering so deeply that it hurts.

And he jumps again—leaps at the next round of—rap, rap, rap! rap!—Misha springs back like gunshot and blinks—and for a moment? Just one moment, Misha thinks he sees someone in the moonlight. Thinks he sees the outline of someone tall, lithe and muscular. Something bright flashes near the shadow of a head. It looks like a grin—but when Misha flings open the window and leans out into the cold, he finds himself alone. Again. Naturally, he thinks.

Misha smirks—a small, private little curl of his lips. Because thankfully, he doesn't have to impress anyone right now, so it's perfectly alright for him to climb up on the defunct radiator, then through the window onto the groaning, frozen metal and blink through inspecting his surroundings while making jokes about songs that came out before he was born. And no one can judge him for his irrelevant pop culture references or take them away from him, because there's no one here to judge. Absolutely no one.

No stray cats shivering in cardboard boxes. No drunk-off-their-asses randoms hopping and staggering back to their apartments or dormitories. No one. No one. There is absolutely no one on Misha's fire escape, or in the alley, or on the nearby rooftops—so why the off-kilter roiling in his stomach and the itch at the back of his throat? Why does he still have the uneasy, skin-crawling feeling on the back of his neck? This sensation that he's being watched under the worst of microscopes?

The fire escape's joints whine underneath him—great and fucking thank you, I really needed to remember that Mom spent break trying to fatten me up and she probably succeeded—and as he slithers back into his room, closes the window behind him, he can see only one explanation: he's going crazy, in old, familiar ways as well as some way that's unprecedented in his history. He sits down and the radiator's coils dig into his ass, and it's all clear as day. He's going crazy.

He's potentially (very likely) relapsing, he probably has to have a talk with Doctor Edlund about psych meds, and he's developing some new kind of insanity. One that involves imagining stalkers hanging out around his apartment. One that he definitely can't chalk up to his thesis or postmodernism or the fact that wanting a reason to stay alive is what's keeping him alive itself, which is about as pathetic as Misha's ever gotten. But there is, in all of this, a simple comfort. Nothing can get any worse—except for the part where it does.

Except for the part where he wishes that there had been someone on his fire escape, peering into his window—preferably someone dangerous, someone different and maybe carrying knives around with him. Misha's heart hasn't raced like it did just now… ever. Or if it has, he can't remember it. And he'd love for that rush, that thrill to fucking stick around.

When he finally crashes out, Misha goes down with the thought that he's even more of a headcase than he ever expected. Fucking great. Just awesome.

***

The nightmares start as soon as he gets around to dreaming. And unlike the rush that Misha wants, they stick around. And that makes what would otherwise be something annoying but normal so much worse.

Misha's standing alone with no idea how he got there. The room's all dark. Not even any light getting in through the window. But Misha can still see enough to make out the driver's license in his hands. It's his. He sees it trembling, and it's only because of this that he notices his hands shaking.

It's only because of this that he notices that they're not his hands.

They should be—they move where he moves them, when he moves them. He can flex the fingers. He stares at them until his eyes burn and beg for him to let them blink. But the skin's all cracked and peeling—it has a consistency like scales. And his nails all grow out into claws, filed down to sharp points at the end, scratching at his hands and scraping off the skin.

Leaving behind the second layer. Which itself gets hard, starts turning to stone, breaks into pieces that fall off of him and expose the muscle and ligaments, all a web of angry pinks and reds. They don't harden in the same way as the skin. They don't fall off. They just desiccate. Dry out with a sound like radio static turned up to eleven, like crunching leaves but louder. And Misha can feel it, which is even worse.

His hands tremble so hard that they drop the card. All the way up to his shoulders, his arms shake. The muscles convulse. They twitch, tense up so they might as well be rocks. Trying to hold onto the moisture.

But Misha can't just let that happen. He tears through the thickening air—claws his way through it, for all it refuses to go down his lungs without first putting up a fight or trying to choke him. His lungs writhe inside of his chest and still he presses on. Until he's outside, shuddering on a front porch. Until the bright sunlight hits him and he turns to dust. If it would happen quickly, he could suffer it, but it doesn't. He watches as his fingers crumble, as their remnants fall to his feet or blow away in the wind—and he shivers.

He shouldn't be able to shiver. But something convulses through his chest and ricochets out through every inch of him. It shakes the dust of him off faster. Until the only thing left of Misha is blood. Blood and the walls that contain it. All stretched out and laid bare, like he's been stripped down to some anatomy textbook model of the circulatory system. Just webs of veins and arteries spidering out into the air. Sticking to the paths where Misha used to have limbs and flesh and bone. No idea how it sticks around. No idea how it's survived when all his other moisture's disappeared. No idea how any of it supports itself—he wills his hands to move and the mess of blood vessels even bend like fingers. Like tentacles? Like both, maybe.

Misha shudders. Takes deep breaths even though he has no lungs. The air rushes around inside the red tracks of him, stretches and strains against the vessels, even though he doesn't have a heart. Then the vessels in his hands start changing, too. They grow out long. They turn hard. They slice through the air, take on shapes like claws. He raises them to his cheeks and they tear through flesh that isn't there. Rip through his face, tearing long, bloodless, jagged tracks that Misha feels, that he ghosts his not-fingertips over.

That's when the pain kicks in. It hits him slowly. In waves. Slow. Spreading down his phantom-limbs and wracking him deep in the guts he doesn't have anymore—twisting around in muscle that disappeared with a pierce like knives, a throb like twenty migraines, a drag like a barbed wire straitjacket—and as Misha's doubling over, flailing in his pointless attempts to hold himself, feeling his non-heart race and his head spin with the threat of throwing up against his will—as he's close to passing out anyway, everything flashes green—

Misha wakes up with a start. Jolts awake, gasping, throwing him onto his side and fumbling for the bedside wastebasket because every fiber of him feels like it's got knives twisting around inside of it. Like getting kicked in the stomach, the back, the teeth by a bunch of heavy, steel-toed boots. He coughs, convinced that he's going to be sick everywhere. He dazes out, but never quite manages to get back to sleep. And if this is a sign of things to come, then he isn't entirely convinced that he needs to hang around for it. He wouldn't miss anything he cares about.

If he can't phone in his life or make somebody else handle it for him? Then there are plenty of options that look nicer. Razors, pills, alcohol poisoning—they'd all have their downsides, but they'd all get the job done. He can't go through with anything, not right now. He's too tired to bother, and it seems a bit extreme, just yet.

There's still that urge, scratching at the back of his skull. The one that Doctor Edlund, for all his uselessness, is supposed to be keeping at bay. The one that Misha really thought he left behind after the first time this happened, and the second, and his seventy-two-hour hold in a psych ward following the second. The one that keeps hissing, go on, though. do it. everything will get better once you do.

***

"What you need is to get out of your head, Pretty Boy. At least, you need to get out of it more often." …or so goes Genevieve's advice, and immediately, Misha wonders why he expected any different out of her.

Even considering that he didn't tell her everything—that he couldn't tell her everything—shouldn't she have had something to offer beyond what he could've heard from the fucking fake-shrinks at student health services?

It's been a few days since the first nightmare and Misha hasn't gotten any reprieve yet. They're at the campus bookstore, prowling through the stacks, hunting down this semester's reading, and he just wanted his best friend to offer some kind of better advice. For all it smacks Misha upside the back of the head, though, he did ask for her input. He might be lucky that she didn't jump right to the solution that Misha's constantly afraid of getting handed from Doctor Edlund.

At least there's some consolation in the fact that she hasn't mentioned medication yet. Simple solutions are kind of Genevieve's thing. She doesn't just use Occam's Razor; she wields it. And her proficiency with it is why they've waited two days to actually get out of the apartment and buy any books. Her simplest explanation for how they should go about handling that involved staying out of the way of.

For one thing, they haven't had their first classes of the new term yet and they still have time to prep. For a crop of others and more importantly? Most of the undergrads have already gotten back to work. It's the middle of the day, so a good number of the other grad students have clearly taken to shopping on Amazon, or else have jobs that keep them from being here. Today's a perfect day for buying books because the store is practically deserted.

Misha could shout, hey, are you as gay as my roommate thinks, because if so? she wants us to date, at the dirty-blonde, jock-looking guy across the floor—the one in the black peacoat by the art supplies, with his nose stuck in comparing different sketchbooks, whom Misha wouldn't mind dating but wants to find any flaw in just so Genevieve doesn't get to win. And if he did get to yell at the pretty guy, Misha would probably make everyone else in the store go deaf. That's how empty and quiet the place is.

Which is just as well for Genevieve. Even the scattered, twenty-or-so other people in the shop have her all but clinging to Misha's side (periodically, she clutches at his sweatshirt, but so far, there's no clinging). She's jumping at the smallest sounds, drawing in sharp, gasping breaths over tiny shocks. Sometimes, she pales, and starts shaking, and leaps out of her skin at noises that Misha can't even make out—and considering he can hear the two cashiers arguing about music choices?

This is weird. Even for Genevieve, who wears her scarf around her face when they're outside, keeps her gloves on while they're inside of the store, restricts herself to night classes or online classes, and wears full-length jeans on summer days then complains about the heat.

Not that Misha wants to call her crazy. That's a pretty shitty thing to say about your best friend, especially over something that she really can't control. Besides, it's a total pot meets kettle situation. But he guesses that he has to be imagining some of the purportedly creaking floorboards, and exaggerating about how shady some of the other customers "look."

The way that Gen tells it, she has severe social anxiety and agoraphobia, and since medication does nothing for her, she just has to keep seeing Doctor Edlund and stand everything as well as possible. The way that Misha tells it, Edlund has an overly inflated opinion of his therapeutic prowess, though he freely admits that he's biased by Edlund's vague resemblance to his creepy Uncle Tony. At least Edlund hasn't forced meds on Misha or Genevieve, the way that other shrinks might.

And Misha guesses that mental health issues explain Genevieve's skittishness, her avoidance of crowds, the way she hates being touched and especially by anyone but Misha and Danneel, her girlfriend. …But they don't explain the way he looks down and sees a look in her eyes. One that he only has one word for: Hungry.

Misha pauses, hand hovering over a copy of Our Vampires, Ourselves. He squints at Genevieve, zeroes in on her eyes. Her brown irises loom, huge and encroaching, around her shrinking pupils, and her mouth hangs ever-so-slightly open. She takes a deep breath. Then another. And it could just be to steady herself but she leans her head back, swivels it in a long, slow arch like she's trying to suss out where a certain stench is coming from.

Trying to bring her back to reality, Misha asks if Danneel got her pregnant or something. Because he's heard that a certain hypersensitivity to smells goes hand-in-hand with that for some people. But Gen says nothing back. Not even her usual retort about how her girlfriend's dick is none of Misha's goddamned business.

Another breath, deeper than its predecessors—then she snaps back to normal. Except for her eyes, which still have that constricted-pupil look to them. And she picks up right where she left off:

"Trust me," she says, brushing her fingers over a row of books, "I know it's hard? But keeping yourself locked away? No matter how appealing it looks, t's not going to end well for anybody. Especially not you. Self-inflicted solitary confinement isn't a good way to go. Maybe you need to suck it up and join a club?"

"Easy for… well." Misha wilts under one quick arch of Gen's eyebrows. One that asks him if he really wants to go there. Instead of risking that, he drops the book onto the stack in the basket he has on the crook of his elbow. "Okay, not easy for you to say, but I can't help it. Other people tend to be douchebags and the only ones I really want to deal with are my siblings, your girlfriend, and you."

"Exactly my point—and part of why you need to get out more." Genevieve glances down at the basket as Misha slides in the Norton Critical Edition of Dracula. "Our Vampires, Ourselves," she says. "What's that on about?"

Misha blinks at her for a moment. The words she's using all fit together perfectly, but the tone's wrong. She sounds like she's asking him this to make sure that the book isn't real. Which makes about as much sense as any of Danneel's black-and-white so-called "art films."

Misha sighs and drops in a paperback copy of some book called Twilight And Philosophy, following it up with Carmilla, Interview With The Vampire, and Let the Right One In. As though the selection of books makes it obvious that no, Genevieve, the book isn't real. It's just here because Doctor Vantoch is as mildly off her rocker as the rumors about her suggest. She must be, on the grounds that she's teaching a Gender And Sexuality (in literature) course about vampires.

And without another word, Misha presses ahead, on to the History section. Next on the list, he needs to round up the books for Doctor Abrahams's Writing Queer Histories course.

***

As he's kneeling on the carpet, feeling it dig all hard into his knees, even through his jeans—as he's getting kind of used to some peace and quiet and a moment without the two of them picking on each other, Gen slouches on the bookshelf and says: "No, really, Misha. What is that book on about?"

Misha rolls his eyes and shakes his head. "Well, it's literary criticism, so it says about vampires? But I'm guessing that what it's really on about is dicks, Christology and trying to say everyone is Jesus, more dicks, arguing that Shakespeare was gay and secretly Mary Sidney, even more dicks, some Freudo-Jungian pick and choose pseudo-psychoanalysis bullshit, and phallic symbols. Because at some point, you have to be polite and half-subtle when you're writing about a bunch of goddamned dicks. …Oh, and maybe some vaginas, sometimes? But mostly dicks."

"Well, I'd throw down some George RR Martin, epic-length shit over Danneel's cock, but that's just me." Genevieve's sigh sounds too relieved. Her laugh, a little too forced. So it goes when they're in a situation with too many other people for her comfort. "Y'know, for being a baby academic, you sure do have a dim view of academia, Pretty Boy."

Misha arches an eyebrow up at her. "I'm just critical of what we do. It's not my fault if I express it through snark to make myself feel better about all of the intellectual masturbation going on in my field." (This is about the only accurate statement he's ever heard come out of Edlund's mouth, so he doesn't mind repeating it.)

"And how's that working out for you, huh."

He shrugs. "Well, I haven't run screaming into traffic, tried to jump off that three-story ledge the library, or tried to throw myself out a window yet, so… guess I'll give it a C for trying?"

"There's a plasticine shield in the library specifically to prevent that. And I thought they finally got around to putting bars on upper-level windows after Sarah, Nick, and Paget last year?"

"Why do you know the names of the undergrads who tried to kill themselves?" Genevieve is quickly slipping into mildly pedantic, Hermione Granger mode, and Misha doesn't have the patience for it right now. What he's just said scrapes on his eardrums and he gets a pit in the bottom of his stomach, but he doesn't feel guilty until Genevieve says—

"Nick succeeded, dumb-ass."

Nothing else. Only those three words, entirely without adornment. No snark, barely any inflection. Her voice doesn't even sound heavy. She just says it like she'd report a statistic from a textbook. Which hits Misha with the force and precision of a bullet to the head and sends his heart and stomach plummeting like cartoon anvils. Whoosh. Boom. Splat.

He's probably a terrible person for saying nothing as he blinks up at her. He's easily the worst person for wondering if Nick Brendon's sound effects went whoosh, boom, splat. Not to mention for thinking about that day the way he does and only because he didn't know that Nick succeeded.

Misha doesn't think about why Nick might've did what he did or any of the human elements. Instead, he thinks about what the whole process looked like from Nick's eyes. From other people's, as well, but mostly from Nick's. Misha wants to know the most unfathomably stupid details. They have nothing to do with anything and he knows that, but still, he's curious. Did Nick take the elevator in the creative studies building.

Did he climb the whole twenty-two flights of stairs up to one of the floors where they host creative writing classes—a finer aspect of the story, which Misha only knows because he was in the same building that day. He'd been in one of the basement's sound stages with Danneel, letting her paint him some ghostly shade of pale with exaggerated black eye makeup, then direct him in a bunch of indecipherable, disparate-seeming actions. He was there because she had a due date and he didn't feel like studying or working on his thesis.

By the time they came out some several hours later, they were talking about dinner instead of lunch. Nick's body had already been cleaned up and the story had mutated, turned into what Misha heard, the one of an attempt. There were probably announcements and condolences offered after the fact, but it was finals time. Misha must've lost them in all the other emails he didn't read in those two weeks.

Did anybody know what Nick was planning. If they did, then how'd he get away with it. Did he have a haunted look about him, or was his face resolute or even peaceful. Did he look sick. Or did he pass for normal so well that nobody noticed anything off at all until he opened one of the big windows, despite last December being a bone-chiller and teeth-rattler.

Did he look at the pavement in the building's center courtyard and think, Thank God nobody's hanging around right now. Did he notice the way that the air writhes around when cold hits the radiator's heat or did he just throw himself past all the minutiae and jump. For that matter, how did he look when he hit the ground—

Misha bites hard on his lip and knocks his forehead into the bookshelf. Okay, he can see where Gen's coming from when she says he needs to get the fuck out of his head more often.

***

"Anyway…" he sighs, and thumps his forehead against the sharp corner all over again. "I guess I see what they're going for, but making the place look like a prison isn't going to help anybody. We're stressed and fucked up enough to each other without adding that shit to the mess."

"You guess you see what they're going for? Well, okay then, Mister Tact. Somebody's skipping his sensitivity pills, isn't he." Gen huffs like she's offended. But she snickers right as Misha starts to explain himself. "I get what you're trying to say, Pretty Boy, but lest we forget? Plasticine might be bulletproof and probably more effective… but it's expensive and our school is perpetually broke."

"And trying to find the cash for it's just out of the question because we have to dump it all into promoting the fucking Chupacabras."

Misha grunts. Has to drag himself back to standing, after being on the floor for so long. But at least he doesn't have to blow the bank on most of Doctor Abrahams's overpriced selection of books. Turning the one he does need to buy over in his hands, he continues: "Because never mind that all of our sports teams are on a perpetual losing streak, we just wouldn't be Kripke-U without an unshakable case of terrible judgment. It's so central to our identity that… what would we even be if not for that…"

He trails off as he looks up from the book. Less because he's pausing. Decidedly not because he's done ripping his university a whole army of new ones. But entirely because he finds himself blinking at the pretty guy from earlier over two rows of shelves. Making direct eye contact with the pretty guy from earlier. Feeling like he should stop looking at the pretty guy from earlier, but that this is also the worst idea in the world.

Misha wants to ask the guy to stop staring at him. But he's a little distracted by how unearthly green those eyes are. As he opens his mouth, though, the guy twirls his up into a half-smirk, half-grin. He winks at Misha—which shatters everything of… whatever this has been, and leaves Misha with this sick feeling like he's just eaten a basket of nachos and gone on a roller coaster—and as the guy walks away, Genevieve apparently can't help herself. She ducks her head and giggles like there's an invisible Danneel tickling her.

"Okay, sure, Sour-Face," she says through her increasingly breathless laughter, moving away from the shelf with the most obnoxious, knowing grin on her face. "I totally believe that you have no interest whatsoever in opening yourself up to relationships with people who aren't me, Dani, and your kid siblings. So. much. believing."

"Please. If I ever did anything with that guy, he'd be opening himself up to me. Well, he'd be opening himself up to my cock, anyway, because there's no way in Hell we'd be more of a one-night-stand."

Misha doesn't even need to think about that. High on the list of things he doesn't want? Is the very simple item: some green-eyed, bow-legged Abercrombie and Fitch reject topping him, much less thinking that they're ever going to be In A Serious Relationship, or Facebook official, or whatever the Hell terms that guy uses for love-related nonsense.

"You just stared at him for a full fifteen seconds, Meesh. Don't even try to tell me that you wouldn't fall head-over-heels in gooey, mushy, sticky, cum-flavored luuuuurve with him. Or at least you'd let him top you into the mattress, and you know it's true."

Some days, Misha really questions his taste in friends. But then Genevieve says things like that and reminds him that pretty much nobody else would be able to handle his preference for being snarky and vulgar all the time. She can handle it because she can throw it back at him and magnify it—but he doesn't want to deal with this right now. Not even a little. So while she keeps laughing, Misha takes a slow, deep breath, tries to think happy, relaxing thoughts, and ever-so-calmly hip-checks her.

"Need I remind you who's carrying your fancy-pants photography books right now, Short, Dark, and Caustic?" he says. "How about we just hurry up, check out, go to Lucky Chen's for lunch, and forget this nonsense ever happened, huh."

Not that Misha feels hungry, or that he really wants to eat anything. But he does want Genevieve to shut up, and even if she can't judge him when he's picky about food, he wants to keep the bases covered. Just in case he doesn't get a handle on himself in time and she gets suspicious.

***

Not long after, the green-eyed guy starts showing up in Misha's nightmares.

Misha doesn't entirely mind that. The green-eyed guy is pretty, if a bit conventionally so for Misha's tastes. Even his unconscious mind won't let the jack-off have tattoos or piercings or body modifications or anything that might make him more interesting than, "Abercrombie reject with nice eyes and good taste in coats."

What he minds is the capacity in which Green Eyes keeps showing up in everything. The fact that Misha never tops him, for one thing, and even worse than that? The details of the dreams themselves. What they probably say about Misha, what desires they're reflecting and what they're trying to tell him. None of which is any kind of good.

The first night, he's a whore, and Green Eyes is Jack the Ripper, and the dream starts with him shoving Misha into a brick wall. Misha hits it before he can react—his head smacks into the bricks along with his back—and he knocks his head into them again, harder than gravity got to him. Slouching into the wall, Misha sighs. Waits for Green Eyes to get over here. He groans, waits for the pain to start hurting. It never does.

They're in some seedy London back alley, straight out a Frank Miller wet dream. Gritty. Grime glimmers in the moonlight and Misha feels like he needs a shower just from pressing his back further into the wall. The night's cold and heavy and thick; the air coagulates in Misha's mouth before he can get any down properly. Gasping as he crashes into the wall, Misha thinks to run away. That would be the smart thing. Even in a corset and period costume. He thinks he should struggle. He pushes off it, tripping over the heavy skirt and petticoat he's stuck in—and Green Eyes catches him. But only to shove him back harder.

Misha gasps again—charges right back into choking on the air. There's hardly any difference between that and feeling Green Eyes's forearm digging into his neck, Geen Eyes's ice cold breath scraping across his cheek. Misha shudders, and his toes curl up in his shoes. He pushes back so Green Eyes will knock him around. He leans forward so he'll have more pressure on his neck. And he knows better. Knows that he shouldn't find any hot, sticky lust pooling in his stomach. Shouldn't want any of this. He's played with danger before, with dominance and submission and sadomasochism—but that isn't this. They're not even remotely similar.

This is struggling to breathe, feeling his lungs catch flame and writhe around inside of him, and wanting it all to be that much harder. This is hearing his pulse race in his ears and hoping that Green Eyes really does have a knife tucked away somewhere, wishing he'd hurry up and jerk it out so they can get to the good part. This is swallowing hard so his Adam's apple will bob against Green Eyes's arm and getting flashes, images, of Green Eyes slitting his throat for real—and knowing, even while passed out, that this hits him in ways that it shouldn't. Pushes buttons that should never be pushed. It's wrong. Who the Hell gets off on thoughts of being murdered.

But in the dream, he grabs onto Green Eyes's hips and jerks their bodies closer together. He drops a hand to Green Eyes's ass and digs his nails into its firm curve, holding fast so Green Eyes can't get away. He snakes the other hand up and around to the back of Green Eyes's neck, pushing him down into a kiss, thrusting and grinding into his hips, letting a breathless, whining moan slip past his lips when Green Eyes finally obliges and presses harder on his trachea—

And in the morning, when he wakes up late, Misha's real-life sheets and boxers are coated in his cum. Even thinking about that nightmare in the shower gets him hard and messy again, and for taking care of himself in the shower, Misha only barely makes it to his library shift on time. As if he really needed further confirmation of how he's losing his goddamn mind.

This doesn't get better, either. All that happens is that Green Eyes takes on other guises. The scenario stays basically the same—he overpowers Misha and gets dangerously close to killing him, or outright succeeds, at one point. His costumes are the only difference. Despotic, evil emperor. Schoolmaster getting Misha on his knees, smacking him around with a ruler. Master to Misha's slave—in a very literal, painfully non-roleplay sense that, in its morning after, finds Misha fingering the back of his throat, making himself sick up on purpose, because he's disgusted with himself for finding that dream so hot.

At least the dream where he's a vampire isn't all that terrible. At least it could never actually happen, so Misha doesn't need to feel quite so guilty for how hot he finds it, or for how blindingly hard thinking back on that dream gets him. All he needs anymore is the memory of Green Eyes holding him down, digging his fangs into Misha's neck, and yanking on his hair, forcing him back into the dirt when he tries to struggle.

***

Outside of his dreams, Misha barely keeps track of the next few weeks. Nothing happens worth noting. He feels like he's being followed, and he keeps thinking about the green-eyed guy, and not just in his nightmares either. He keeps catching glimpses of people who look like him, or doing double-takes in large crowds because he thinks the guy in the corner of his eye is him—but since Misha's apparently slipping off his rocker anyway, who cares about those parts. They're not exactly unusual, as far as how everything's going lately.

He tries thinking about his nightmares, getting himself worked up over them and then getting himself off, but this never tires him out the way he wants it to. If anything, it wakes him up worse than an IV shot of caffeine would.

Everything feels like he's watching off-yellow paint dry and can't even move his hands, risk getting paint on his fingers just to see if it's done yet. Nothing stands out from that because everything finds an equilibrium of emptiness. Nothing really registers as different until the insomnia kicks in, and that's not the style of different that he wanted. Even when he manages to nod off, it's not restful. Just a break from having to deal with consciousness. Not that it's much better. Not that he can really sleep with these fucked up dreams.

Besides, he generally manages to crash out and spend most of a day in bed, sooner or later. And for all the nightmares make him regret sleeping, they're all starting to blur and fade into each other. They make Misha's heart start racing, make it speed up just for a bit, but they stop shocking him. Stop scaring him. Stop being more than the vague annoyances that leave him nauseated and exhausted, no matter what he does.

After a few weeks of this, and after a three-day run of not really sleeping, Misha's mostly given up on chasing after that. He's only managed naps lately, and nothing ever helps him feel better anyway.

Everything feels exactly the same. Which is to say that it doesn't feel like anything. The empty sensation takes over everything. Everything, in turn, melts together. Sleeping and waking, same thing. Movement and stillness, same thing. Hunger and fullness; idea and reality; speech and silence—they're all the same thing, all indistinct boundaries and nothing else, and that makes it harder to sleep. The lack of difference between the states means there's no goal in sight anymore. Nothing to aspire to. Long nights of frustration and nothing else.

Rain batters into his window and Misha tries picking out patterns in the noise. When this fails, he blinks up at the ceiling and tries to let the chaos of it all lull him off, but no dice. He's drowning underneath two comforters tonight, plus one of Grandma Krushnic's oversized, hand-knitted sweater, and a billowing t-shirt that seems like it fit him just fine not that long ago—but all he ever gets from trying anything is bone-deep shivers and an inside view of his eyelids, punctuated by staring at the wall.

Nothing ends in sleep. Nothing ever does. Not Nyquil or a nightcap or the sleeping pills from Doctor Edlund (not that they could when Misha's still fuck-all upset about them being medication). Not even when everything's all so still and quiet that Misha hears the faint beat of his heart. Nothing serious, aside from how it's gone on for two weeks. He just can't sleep. And tonight, he figures that since he's not going to rest, so he might as well work until he passes out.

Which means he's unintentionally awake when Genevieve gets home at her typical time: an ungodly hour of the morning.

She works the graveyard shift over at Java Hut, and Misha should at least be horizontal and tossing in his sheets when she gets in. But he's not. He can't sleep. Finding himself hunched over the kitchen table and submerged in his heap of research notes and library books, in his textbooks, course packs, articles printed off of JSTOR, and a pot of coffee, so lost in scribbling in his notebook that he doesn't mind how fast the coffee's disappearing? Misha can't nominally get behind this. Not so much. Not a good plan at all.

He tells himself over and over again that he'll just work for another five minutes, just finish up this section of reading and jotting down some thoughts on it, just reread these few pages of notes and adding things to his thesis's outline. Eventually, he stops checking the clock. Five more minutes never works out anyway, so what's the point of looking.

Having some functional awareness of the time might keep him from jack-knifing into the deep end and completely forgetting the rest of the world. But on the other hand, it just makes Misha feel stressed, pressed for time, lost and hopeless and completely beyond help. Because he never feels like he's getting anything done, or like he's getting enough done, or like five minutes is enough time for him, these thoughts are important and he'll forget them if he doesn't jot them down.

Which is so par for the course these days that Misha can only bring himself to mind these moments of worrying and anxiety for cluttering his mind and distracting him from his work. Besides, at least he's feeling something slightly different from the off-yellow paint sensation. That's got to be a plus.

***

He wouldn't mind all of the dazing out if he had any idea what happens when he fades out.

But he doesn't. But it's all a mystery. But Misha knows his hands keep moving—he's looking at the words in his books, and he's scribbling on his note-cards and his spiral-ring, college-ruled book, and he's turning pages, he's grabbing other books to cross-reference things, he's taking down page numbers to reference later because he knows he'll need to cite things properly, at some point.

His head feels heavier than his eyelids do. They all start lolling. His blinks last too long, his chin reaches for his Adam's apple—then! A startle—he gasps and springs back up. Not because he moves. Just from the force of needing to breathe. He steals deep breaths that feel like having knives jammed into his lungs over, and over, and over again. And he keeps taking down thoughts that he doesn't remember having. But he must've had them because where else would they come from, and they have to come from somewhere.

And dazing out isn't even relaxing for him. How can it be when all he can do is stare into the darkness that drops into his view? When he tries to move his arms and all he gets is the feeling of being held in place? Of someone's heavy boot stomping on his trachea?

And then sensations fill the darkness. Images. Almost like dreaming, but how can they be dreams when he's not asleep. He blinks down at his arms and sees them carved up. Webs of scars and fresh slices. Sections of his flesh removed, leaving only bone and the walls of pulsing muscles. But his blood vessels stay in place—just like the nightmare that started all of this. They lace between all of the holes. Keep Misha's arms tied together. And all that's just on the top.

He manages to move his arm and see the bottom of it, once. He turns it over. And at first, he thinks the skin's intact, so he must be fine. Maybe everything's okay. But some unseen hand unzips his skin. It's all stops and starts, but it does. Picks up at his wrist and hacks in deep, dragging slow and slicing into his bones, sawing through them, down to his elbow. Misha should feel sick. This isn't real—he knows that it isn't—but it's real enough to his imagination, so shouldn't he be able to feel sick. But he doesn't.

The worst part is that it doesn't hurt. He smiles faintly, staring down at the gaping wound on his arm. He chuckles. And it doesn't hurt. Not even some echo of pain to complement an image that should trigger him or set him reeling or have some kind of an effect.

But all he feels is a warm flood of relief. Orgasms have never made him feel this good. And he curses everything when he reaches out to touch his arm, then has to watch as everything falls away.

***

He's in one of his reveries when the door slams, even without minding the clock. Or losing track of time on purpose. And then, he wants to curse the door for taking away his reprieve.

The slam jolts through his whole body. He leaps up and back from the table. His hands flail, fling his pen and try to catch it at the same time. Without his consent, a whine slithers out of his mouth and his face scrunches up so hard that he can feel it. His lungs clench around themselves, spasm and flop in his chest like dying fish. His fingers curl up like claws and drag his whole hands along into the game, as though their curling up will fix everything.

And he gasps again, shivers when something cold drops onto his shoulder. He shudders so deeply that he feels like puking. But it all melts away when his head snaps around. When he sees that it's Genevieve's hand, and when he glances up at her. All his tension dissolves when she squeezes him.

He can hear his neck creaking as he tries to keep looking up at and making eye-contact with her. With her furrowed brow and not with the half-fading screen-print of Strawberry Shortcake sprawled out on her t-shirt. He takes a deep breath, trying his best to affect some kind of facial expression, and his reward for putting in this effort? Is that Genevieve knots her forehead up that much more, wrinkles her nose like an irate rabbit, and gives him a curl of her lips that asks what the Hell is wrong with him. Which is by way of asking if he has any idea what time it is and has he seriously been up all night.

Misha starts to argue with everything Genevieve hasn't said. Starts saying that nothing's wrong with him, he's fine, he doesn't have to know what time it is to know he's okay—but in response, Genevieve rolls her eyes and sidesteps out of his way, letting him get a first glimpse out the common room's window. Outside, there's no sunrise bruising the sky—not properly yet, anyway—but little splotches on the black horizon have started purpling. And behind Gen, the green digital numbers on the microwave flash, 6:53.

"You startled me," he says as though it isn't completely obvious. Because there's nothing to make a big deal out of, not really. Because this isn't anything out of the ordinary. Nothing to worry about. Downplaying it means they can get back to normal. "Did you bring home milk," he asks.

Still giving him an eye of, Pretty Boy, I currently disapprove of everything that you're choosing to be, Genevieve holds up the half-gallon of two-percent. She smiles faintly—just a quick flash of one, a quirk of lips and thick eyebrows as she says that yep, she handled it. She hasn't even tried to wash off the black marker scrawl of JH that says she took it from work.

They've pilfered food and drink from Java Hut before, in the two years they've lived together and before, when Gen worked there and just objected to Misha working himself half to death without having a brownie. But they don't have any financial reasons for borrowing anything from the coffee-shop this month and she could've gone to Hiller's because it's on the way home and open twenty-four-seven. She just didn't. Probably because, for some inscrutable reason, she didn't feel like it.

Misha doesn't manage a smile, but he kind of loves Genevieve for her sneaky moments. Her casual disregard and how cool she can be about it, even though she could get totally fired if her manager found out about this. And that goes without mentioning how she sits down opposite him, once she's put the milk away, and instead of throwing out the patronizing concern Misha's gotten over the timestamps on some of his recent emails, simply asks how the research and the thesis are coming.

Also, they've been out of milk for three days now and Misha's forgotten to get it. Thank God for Genevieve.

***

Later on, just a little past eight, after Misha's zombie sleep-walked through a cold shower and still doesn't feel all that awake, he only even remembers that the milk's there because Genevieve swoops in behind him, grabs his shoulders with those freezing hands of hers, and reminds him that a thermos full of coffee doesn't count as breakfast.

"Neither does a glass of milk, really," she says. "But it's a start and it's better than just coffee."

"Yeah," Misha says as he pours himself one. "Like you can talk." For all he rolls his eyes, Misha still gets himself an apple off the bowl on the counter, and a packet of chocolate fudge Pop-Tarts from the freezer.

It's the damnedest thing, though, now that he thinks about it. Genevieve doesn't eat or drink that much or that often, at least not when Misha's ever seen. But she never shows the side-effects of that. None of the ones Misha's acquainted with, anyway. No weight loss, no hair loss, no exhaustion, no easy bruising, no anything. She just stays the same way that she's always looked: short, slender without being fragile, with a mane of dark hair haloing around her heart-shaped face. Danneel never eats, either.

And Genevieve's always cold to the touch, but she never complains about feeling cold, or not being able to get warm. Which could just be something like what Grandma Krushnic has—but Genevieve's hands are so much colder than Misha's sweater-knitting, Russian Grandma. Genevieve's hands never get warm, either. They always feel like she just took them out of a two-hour ice bath. Again: Danneel's are the same way—constantly freezing cold. Almost like… but no. That's not even a thought worth acknowledging.

Come to think, she never complains about the weather in any sort of respect, except for her avowed hatred of sunlight. Even now, she's standing here in a wife-beater and pink pajamas cut like hot-pants while Misha's bundled up in two t-shirts, a sweater, a scarf, and his coat. He feels like he ought to have something clever to say about the pattern of cartoon cherries on her shorts, but nothing comes to mind. The only things he thinks are that someone needs to yell at their super about the heat, and that he is not seriously considering that Genevieve and Danneel are vampires.

He is absolutely not seriously considering that they're vampires because that is stupid, because vampires are fictional, and Misha might be crazy, but he is not seriously considering this.

Misha shakes his head by way of dismissing his own ridiculous notions, and begs off because he has a class to go teach. Heading for the door, Misha waves at Genevieve to acknowledge her shouting at him to take care of himself and refrain from murdering any of his students. She doesn't have the wherewithal to break in a new roommate because he got himself killed or sent to prison. And his promise to do as asked is halfhearted, but at least it's there.

Keeping with it, he crunches halfway through the apple on the elevator. Since no one's around to care, though, he chucks the half-core and the Pop tarts into the trash once he's outside. Misha sighs. Adjusts his bag so it rests on his hip, only notices that the crosswalk signal's changed because some giant-sized jack-off in a leather jacket knocks into Misha's shoulder. Sends him hurtling to the pavement. And walks off without saying anything.

Misha opens his mouth, but gives up before saying anything. He stands, shuts up, wipes the residue from the filthy street off on his jeans. Just walks and keeps his complaining to himself because it's almost February and it isn't worth the effort it'd take to yell at this guy. Anyway, momentary discomfort's better than feeling nothing.

***

"You smell hungry," is far and away the worst attempted conversation-starter Misha's ever heard in his life.

So, in retribution for Whoever-The-Fuck McDouchenozzle, Esquire, for using it, Misha doesn't even dignify him with a glance up from his book. "Your aftershave is absolutely pungent and that doesn't even make any sense," he says. "As I hope you can see, I'm working here. Please go away."

"I don't use aftershave, Pretty Boy—and wait, did I say, 'smell'? Because I meant look. You look hungry."

Misha wrinkles his nose—trying not to make too much a show out of sniffing for the distinctly aftershave smell that he knows he got—and shakes his head. "Well, you stink like aftershave and that makes even less sense. How, exactly, does someone look hungry?"

"Well, I don't really know. I'm kinda like a poet? Words just kinda come to me. We should do lunch and I'll show you what else I can make come to me. If you get my drift. Because, as a kinda-like-a-poet, sometimes, I employ… subtlety. And grace. And clever as shit wordplay."

"Clever as shit's a good way of putting it. I've never met a clever turd, and thankfully, your new data's not going to be the one outlier that ruins everything. Huzzah, the world's safe for another day." If this guy's a poet, then Misha's next in line for the throne of Lichtenstein. Come to think, he'd rather take on those responsibilities than put up with another second of this conversation.

But he'd also rather sleep in the dirt than have to let his intellectual inferiors get the last word, so he still tacks on: "What you are? Is coming on stronger than your nonexistent aftershave. Go away. Run along. And otherwise, leave." Misha can't help rolling his eyes at all of the verbal posturing going on. At all of the sheer effort that McDouchenozzle's putting into this stupidity. That whole mating display-type behavior. Everything about it's wrong, wrong, wrong, from the word choice right down to the twangy, Texas drawl.

He's one writing workshop, one section of freshman comp, and one meeting with Doctor Vantoch down, and Misha still has his library shift and a class where he'll be in the student's role for once. He's poring over his research notes and trying to work, hence shoving himself back here, at his favorite library table—which has that honor simply because no other table is so far away from anyone else, so it's usually pretty lonely—

The chair sitting opposite Misha slides back and a bag hits the floor with a thud. One that's echoed in a pair of elbows landing on the table. "You don't get out all that much do you," says the asshole, who apparently doesn't understand the meanings of very simple words like leave.

Misha sighs and blinks at the guy. Takes in his fine cheekbones, the casually artful muss of his short hair, the half-tarnished silver ring on his right hand and how it looks so old—like medieval history museum piece-class old. He can't even say the guy's not attractive because he is. He's right up Misha's alley, actually, and if this were any other day? Misha probably wouldn't mind the immediate, uncalled for use of endearments, or the way this guy's choice in pickup lines makes Misha feel embarrassed for him. It might even be endearingly cute.

But today? Misha has neither the time nor the patience.

Of course the world would wait to drop to this guy on Misha. Of course it would save him for a day when Misha actually has something to do with himself aside from clicking around on his laptop or failing to take a nap until his shift starts.

***

Of course the universe would choose to interrupt his work on a day when it's hard enough for him to focus.

All of his allotted study time has gone the way of how he tried to work last night/this morning. He'll get into the reading, he'll be taking notes, and next thing he knows, he's staring at his wrist, thinking how good it'd feel to just hack one up. Not just to cut himself, but to actively mutilate his arm. Drag something sharp along his bones, get the knife or razor or scalpel all stuck up in his muscles—

And now, he can barely even keep his mind aimed on the guy sitting opposite him. Everything's too hazy. All muddled up around the awareness of the chill shuddering up his spine, and the sudden urge he has to get thrown against the nearest bookshelf and choked. How much he wants this guy to stop talking, just pin him down to something—anything—and grip his throat until all the air's been forced out. And to make matters worse, Misha's desperate attempts to turn himself off only barely work.

Unappreciative doesn't quite go far enough in describing how Misha feels about reality and all it's throwing at him right now.

***

And whatever reality has up its grubby little sleeve, Misha has absolutely zero patience for this right now. Not even when he looks up from his notebook and his notebook and his Monsters In The Closet: Homosexuality And The Horror Film to see that the asshole with no sense of boundaries is pretty.

Really pretty. Like, unfairly so. There's got to be some dark magic or non-Euclidean geometry straight out of Lovecraft involved because normal people do not look like this. Normal people don't have lips that full, and they don't manage to look hot while licking their lips, arching their eyebrows with eager half-smiles. Normal people don't have cheekbones that fine, or pale smatterings of what look like freckles on skin that milky (not even very, very pale freckles).

Normal people don't have eyes this vibrantly green, or that draw Misha in and don't let him look away. Normal people are not this pretty.

Well, Genevieve and Danneel are, but Misha hasn't wanted to sleep with either of them for a year, give or take. He's not really sure he'd sleep with this guy, either, though. He'd consider it. Maybe. If it weren't such a guaranteed waste of time. But even so, who the Hell even creeps on people in libraries?

"Look," Misha tells Mister Gorgeous Asshole, lowering his voice even more than the current surroundings of library already require and blinking at the guy when he leans closer. "I know I've got my tacky employee name-tag on right now? But I'm not on duty. My shift isn't for another hour-and-a-half. I'm really busy, and if you want someone to help you with something. Go talk to Gabe and Kat behind the circ desk."

"Actually," says the guy, "I don't think Gabe and Kat can really help me out here. Not unless one of them gets turning into you when you take 'em to lunch. Or buy 'em a drink, if lunch isn't your scene?"

Misha sighs, knowing full well that he shouldn't stare—but still getting this slimy, chilled feeling on the back of his neck that says looking away from him would be the worst idea ever. Seriously, what the Hell is this guy's deal? "If you're trying to ask me out, could I make a suggestion?" He waits for Pretty-Face to nod, and then says, "I don't even know your name, much less what you want from me. You're coming on like a ton of bricks to the head, and as I mentioned before? You're really not as clever as you like to think."

"Sorry 'bout all of that," he says with a shrug and a playful smirk. "I was going for, 'completely, irresistibly adorable,' but since that's not gonna… Hi. My name's Jensen Ackles. You look hungry—" He squints at the name-tag, blatantly faking the need to read it closer—"Missha. Let's you and me do lunch."

"It's pronounced Misha, like see ya later. Which is still what I'm saying to you." Still, he takes Jensen's hand and it's like grabbing an icicle. "Besides, you still haven't explained the part where you started this off by saying that I smell hungry, which, just for your future reference? Is less adorable and more creepy."

"Oh… well, I meant look? Sometimes my mouth doesn't really work right, y'know? I have that… that disorder where my brain-to-mouth filter's kind of broken." He smirks like this is supposed to be hilarious.

Misha rolls his eyes. "I might not be a psychologist, but I can think of a few different diagnoses for that symptom. Which one's yours?" Seriously, why does he only attract creepers, closet cases, and douchebags. Or some mix thereof, since Jensen currently seems like a creeper and a douchebag.

An assessment that he doesn't help by shrugging and answering the question with, "Which one's your favorite? Whichever one you want me to have? I can have that one."

"Personally, I'm favor of the one where you shut up and go away, but otherwise? I wouldn't with any of them on anybody. Not even overly forward weirdos who creep on people in libraries and don't understand the meaning of, 'leave.'" Smiling probably doesn't aid Misha's case any, but in his defense, he's hoping for a very sardonic, also, I can kill you with my brain sort of expression.

Whether or not he was successful, Jensen just grins. Flashes a whole mouth full of crammed-in teeth. Teeth that look like they could chomp through diamonds, too. It's like staring a shark head-on, facing a pearly white abyss, and Misha's breath catches in his throat from a glance at Jensen's incisors. They're sharper-looking than the rest—Misha purses his lips and swallows. He tries to clear his head because his head is wrong. His head's had to steep in fucking vampires lately. Of course it's wrong. And it's even worse that he knows he's staring.

And it's even worse that he keeps meeting Jensen's eyes. That he knows he should look anywhere else, but can't bring himself to make good on that because there's just something off about Jensen's eyes. He looks… hungry. Hungry in the same way that Genevieve looked in the bookstore. In the same way that Misha's seen Danneel look when she thinks no one can see her, or when they walk by the all-girls Catholic school en route to the park she likes to shoot in. Jensen's pupils are so tiny, surrounded by bright green, and between that and the way he licks his lips and teeth… It's downright unsettling. Like he sees a world of grade-A steaks instead of people.

"I'm serious here, jack-off," Misha says with a huff. He hates the tremble that creeps into his voice, but presses on anyway. "I'm working. You're obnoxious. I'm not interested in anything you're offering, so kindly get lost."

"Well, your lips say, 'no, stop, leave me alone,' but you know what your eyes are saying, don't you, Gorgeous?" Misha supposes that he has no idea what his eyes are saying, since they can't talk, which gets Jensen to snicker as he says, "Your eyes're telling me that you want to see me naked. And I'm more'n happy to oblige you on that count, darlin'. Maybe we could do lunch and then head back to my place?"

"That's an incredibly flippant attitude to have about consent." Misha wrinkles his nose, furrows his brow, and tries his best to look Incredibly Disapproving. "Since I'm keeping score here? So far, you've been an asshole about consent, and mental health, and just leaving me alone when I ask you to—but you still seem to think that I should go out with you. Because you showed up and asked, and for no other reason at all. I don't know if this usually works out for you, but it makes me think you're not worth my time, so… go away. Run along."

He's trying to be Very Serious and Make A Very Serious Point. Misha blushes as he says all this, though. He tries to help it, but he can't. He's back to meeting Jensen's eyes—back to staring at something other than his teeth—and it's not any better than before—he can't look away, and Jensen's seeing everything as his cheeks flush all hot and sick and red—and that realization makes Misha's breath catch in his throat. Makes his stomach writhe and twist all around on itself. Makes Misha's pulse pick up the pace, makes his heart throb faster, harder. Makes every inch of Misha itch with wantfuckneed.

The realization that Misha wants Jensen to see all of his reactions makes him feel that much worse. There's a brief moment where it hits Misha like he's stood up too quickly, leaving him with a head-rush and a pit in his stomach, hearing his pulse pound and ring in his skull. He scoots his chair closer to the table, and to Jensen, without realizing what he's doing. It still doesn't hit him until his legs knock into Jensen's and Jensen nudges a foot back into Misha, slithers it around until he's hooking his ankle around the back of Misha's calf.

***

For one thing, Jensen's ankle is a fucking icicle. Even through his jeans and Misha's, that much makes itself obvious. Misha shivers—his entire leg tenses up and he bites on his lower lip—there's a feeling all up his calf like he's just stepped out of a pool and he can't get himself dry.

For another thing, Jensen's strong. Stronger than any person has any right to be. Misha struggles against the hold that Jensen has on him. He yanks. He tugs. He tries to wriggle back and get his leg free, and… no dice. Never any progress that sticks around. He manages, for a moment, to drag his leg back into his own personal space, but before he can get used to it, Jensen wrenches his leg back into place and never once stops kneading his ankle into Misha's muscles.

And it makes no sense because Jensen does not have the sort of build that would have this strength. Maybe he's got a nice body to match his pretty face, but he doesn't have a body-builder's physique. He doesn't have the kind of muscles that would be this strong. Which doesn't help Misha shake all the stupid ideas he shouldn't be entertaining. The notions of vampires and other dangerous, make-believe creatures.

***

It doesn't help more that he actually rather enjoys this? He can't like this, though. He knows he does, but he can't. Not least because the fluttering that's carrying on in his chest really comes close to compromising the point he wants to make. The point where Jensen needs to fuck off and go bother someone else.

"That's not running along," Misha hisses, glares.

Jensen smirks, and it makes Misha want to fucking throttle him. "Yeah, and starting up a round of footsie isn't exactly telling me how much you want me to go away."

"It's not footsie; your legs were just in my way, moron. Besides, you should've left before I had the chance to start up anything that could've been misinterpreted as footsie."

"All I'm interpreting here is that you're scared of how much you want some of my dick—and again? Happy to oblige you on that."

Misha has never felt more inclined to punch someone in the stupidly perfect teeth. He knows that he's completely dreaming things up, but… he could swear that he sees lumps along Jensen's gums. Like the sort where a vampire might tuck fangs away. Any vampire who could hide fangs, anyway. And they wouldn't really be a vampire without fangs… How else would they get the symbolic penetration that Doctor Vantoch never shuts up about in class? Nothing else would manage it as well as fangs, and they have the most potential in terms that Misha can't really name or identify? Probably because they're entirely limited to his desire…

Jensen might have a fantastic set of fangs hidden away past his full, cock-sucking lips and his gleaming, razor-like teeth. Jensen might have knives masquerading as fangs—and God, to feel those digging into his neck… Misha wishes he could stop squirming. That he weren't being such an idiot about this. His mind drifts away from him, back to his nightmares with the vampires, and he hopes that Jensen really is one. He hopes that Jensen really does have fangs, because feeling them on his neck…

Just the thought of it makes Misha grind his teeth together, helpless against the erection straining against his jeans.

Which is stupid and Misha knows that he's just letting his fucked up, sleep-deprived imagination get the better of him. Because vampires aren't real. They can't be real. There's no evidence beyond the barest, most circumstantial things. People would've heard something—anything—about them over the course of human history. There'd be more support of their existence than a bunch of folktales that got turned into a billion-dollar cultural phenomenon.

But myths and legends have to come from somewhere. And porphyria and superstition only go so far as potential explanations. Misha licks over his own teeth, still dawn into Jensen's eyes—the magnetism there cannot be human. But it can't be inhuman, either. But how can Jensen have the eyes that have been in Misha's nightmares time and time again for going on a month? He wasn't the guy in the bookstore. Was he? Or is it just that Misha doesn't want him to be? And why is it getting so hard to take a breath that goes deeper than his mouth?

Jensen looks too much like the guy from the bookstore—the Green Eyes who's invaded his nightmares—for Misha to ignore, and yet, that idea seems so far-fetched… "This is going to sound so stupid," he says without fully realizing it. "It's gonna sound stupid and paranoid and kind of crazy, but… Have you been following me?"

The words all sound so far away. Misha might as well be someone else saying them. He's too busy, trapped in the floaty, head-rush sensation, and the only things he can feel are his heart going nuts on him, and this rustling, burning need to just… keep looking at Jensen. Doing lunch with him is starting to sound like a better idea… doing lunch and going wherever he wants after that—

Which, no. Just no. Misha can't let himself keep going on that track. Lunch is a bad idea. Lunch with someone else is an even worse idea. Lunch with people means getting watched, getting made to eat things and held to task when he doesn't—and Misha needs to get his own sense of mind back. It's Jensen's eyes. It's looking at them that's fucking him up, making him think things that he'd never think on his own.

But even with his heart racing full-throttle, Misha can't look away. He doesn't want to look away.

Well. He does? Or he thinks he does. He can't be sure, because it just feels so right to be looking at Jensen?

Jensen shrugs, keeps grinning. "So what if I have?" he snarks, and immediately clarifies, "That was a joke, Sexy. Just so you know. So you don't go making any huge to-dos out of it. I mean, maybe we've seen each other around somewhere? But it's not like it was intentional or anything. It's a small campus, man. Paths cross and shit happens, you know?"

That sounds about as trustworthy as the late-night infomercials Misha's gotten to know in the past few days, and he's still not sure if he wants to look away from Jensen or not. He does, doesn't he? He knows better than this, right? So why can't he just look away. Doesn't he want to free himself from this?

No, no—he definitely does, he absolutely wants to look away from Jensen—he needs to break eye-contact and go back to his work. But trying not to meet Jensen's gaze makes him feel sick. So nauseated that his muscles writhe and it's a miracle he doesn't puke. How could he even consider this an option. But he has to get back to work—work for his degree, for his career, for the rest of his life.

But trying to turn his attention back where it belongs, back to his book and his notes and his thesis… It makes Misha's cheeks and the back of his neck flush hot with guilt. Even thinking about it leaves this hollow feeling in his stomach.

Not just the sensation of emptiness—that'd be nothing new. Aside from coffee and his so-called breakfast, his stomach's basically empty anyway, and all the stupid thing does with that is gurgle a little bit, making him wonder why he even bothered to eat anything. To keep his half-promise that he'd take care of himself by way of not making himself throw up. Everything's settling inside him like rocks, and he can't even be anxious about how not sicking up will ruin the rest of his week.

He might get sick anyway—if not from the food sitting so terribly, then definitely from the quivers and the trembling that seep out from his chest. The gut-wrenching urge to drop everything and run, get as far away from this place and from this Jensen Ackles guy as humanly possible. Which he can't tell apart from the desire to let Jensen fuck him into the mattress, but only as long as Jensen leaves bruises on his neck.

All Misha knows is that he could fucking kiss Gabe when the little shit stumbles over and asks if Misha could start his shift early, just to cover the end of Gabe's. "I really hate to ask," he says, "but I just spewed everywhere and Guy's making me go home, so… please?"

Misha agrees, if only because it's a perfect excuse to get the Hell away from Jensen. He gathers up his things, haphazardly shoving them into his messenger bag, and makes a pit-stop at the bathroom to get himself off before he meets Kat at the circ desk. Well, he can't be working with an erection, now, can he.

***

Kat dashes Misha's desire to have a nice, easy, quiet shift without even knowing about them. Misha hasn't been sitting down for five minutes before she says, "Who was that you were talking to?"

Misha doesn't look up from the article he's reading in Doctor Abrahams's course pack, because Kat might mistake that for encouraging her. "Hmmm?"

"The guy you were talking to when Gabe went to get you." She doesn't need any more support in… whatever the fuck she thinks she's doing. She's already content enough to chirp, "Who was he?"

"He's nobody." Misha shrugs, leans his chair back into the wall and puts his bare feet up on the table.

"Like Odysseus and Polyphemus?"

"No. Like, 'drop it and leave it alone, Kat, before I start getting angry.'"

"He's cute. You'd make a hot couple. You should go out." Kat's smile, when Misha finally looks up at it, strains her face.

If magic were real and Misha were a witch, he would literally curse Guy, his and Kat's boss… manager… guy. Whatever he wants to be called today. And he'd deserve it, too. Because whatever roadkill Guy's trying to pass off as a brain led him to conclude that it was a good idea, letting Misha's and Kat's shifts have any potential overlap. Why didn't he just infer that Misha would get his mood completely spoiled by some jack-off who came on way too strong and have to fill in for Gabe.

Kat's an undergrad, in her senior year and on a work-study scholarship, and most of the time? She's fairly tolerable. Even outright likable, every so often. She's tall, leggy, with her tangled blonde waves tied back in a ponytail that still skirts her waist. Pretty because of the awkward way her too-big eyes and lips fit on her apple-cheeked face. Majoring in Psychology with minors in Literature and Gender and Sexuality Studies, which sounds like a big degree in reading too much into things.

…Says Misha, whose undergrad work wasn't really all that different. And who wound up in grad school for the same stuff.

"We barely know each other," he informs her flatly, only throwing in an exasperated sigh when she waggles her eyebrows at him. Well, she can look as incredulous as she wants, Misha sticks to his guns: "I know that his name's Jensen, his sense of humor is really gross, he may or may not be a stalker, and he wants to buy me lunch—"

"So let him." Kat shrugs in a way that, if anyone asks Misha (and he doubts anyone will) doesn't become someone who attends Eating Disorders Anonymous.

He'll just let it slide for now because of something even more egregious: "Did you miss the part where he might be a stalker?"

"But he's probably not, right? I mean, campus is pretty small and the city's pretty big… That probably evens out to there being a good chance of you two just running into each other a lot."

"That doesn't make me feel any better about the prospect of going out with him."

"Just let him buy you lunch," she says. "We've just been guessing you keep missing Group because you're busy, and if money's tight… Go out with the hot guy. Let him pay for you. Get lunch and meet someone new. Seems like a good compromise to me?"

"Katherine," Misha huffs. "I've been missing Group because Sera moved away, Emily had to go home for her semester of mental health leave, Rob's not back from inpatient yet, you and Gillian are the only two people left I really feel comfortable talking to about…"

Trailing off, Misha drops his course pack and waves his hands around in the empty space between himself and Kat. Because that totally makes his point. "About stuff," he says, suffering from a similar lack of clarity and just trusting Kat to get what he means. "Oh, and, on top of that? When Sebastian stepped up to be Group's leader, he turned into an insufferable twit and wouldn't shut up about how much he wants to fuck me—"

"Yeah, God forbid anybody express an interest in that. Or in dating you. Or anything like that. But I'm hoping this for their sake instead of yours? Because if they do express an interest, you'll turn around and start telling everyone they're basically Satan. Y'know, I'm starting to see a real recurring theme in your interactions with hot guys—"

"Oh for Christ's… Listen. I don't want to go out with Sebastian because of the Thirteenth Step. Don't get sexy and fraternize with each other, it's bad for you. And I don't want to go out with Jensen because I don't."

"Well, gee golly wow, the sky is up and things are shaped like themselves—"

"Oh, you want reasons? How's this for reasons: I didn't want to go out with him before he talked to me. I want it even less now that he's told me how I smell hungry and tried to chalk it up to having Tourette's, but couldn't even name the thing he was trying to blame his idiocy on."

"That's not even how Tourette's works…" Her face falls as though she actually expected some guy with a body like the Lycian Apollo and a face like Derek Zoolander to be a genius and perfectly respectful all the time. It's almost adorable that she's still a little bit naive at twenty-two.

"My point exactly. He's swaggering and full of himself and doesn't have any idea what he's talking about. About anything. And I don't want to enable his delusion that he's God's gift to men who like dick."

"That's cissexist," Kat points out. Because her degree gives her a license to do so, or… whatever's going through her head. "Remember how dicks don't make the man and not all guys have them? Because some have vaginas."

"True. But he bragged about his cock while trying to flirt with me. So maybe it's just me? But I think I'm pretty safe in talking like he has one."

Misha gives Kat a Thoroughly Unimpressed smirk. It's not that he doesn't appreciate what she's saying. It's not that he doesn't appreciate what she thinks she's doing. But whenever Kat gets like this, he really wants to introduce her to Danneel. He'd have to ask Dani how she felt about that first, but for being so aware of other people's nuances (even when she has to make them up), Kat remarkably fails to notice that she only ever talks about trans* men.

Kat sighs and scrunches up her face like an irritated kitten. All she needs is an incredibly frustrating piece of string to play with and the image will be complete. "Well, I was going to ask how you've been doing lately, but I'm sort of getting that the answer to this is, 'not so good.'"

"Understatement of the century," Misha says, not entirely sure where the sudden honesty's coming from. But since he's on an honesty kick: "About the only thing that could beat it, in the understatement category, would be somebody saying, 'Kat's being nosy and pretending that the degree she hasn't finished yet makes her Carlotta Fucking Jung.'"

Kat's face falls even further, into some mix of emotions that Misha has to stare at for a moment before he can suss out everything. She's pouting, but she actually looks hurt, and there's still a gleam in her eyes like she's just figured out how right she is about him. And it makes Misha crash back into feeling guilty from the plateau he'd found in righteous indignation—it's the damnedest fucking thing how he even got there in the first place—like not being around Jensen makes him forget all of the reasons why the douche seemed so attractive back at the table.

Sighing, slouching until his shoulders ache from it, Misha shoves a hand back through his hair and musses it up. "Okay, look… I'm sorry," he says, and forces himself to look her in the eye. If only she had the magical magnetic eyes, like Jensen. "I shouldn't have snapped at you just now. Even if I don't like your whole… playing therapist thing? I should've… been nicer about that. Or something. At least I could've not expressed it by lashing out at you. You were just trying to help. And I'm sorry."

She considers it for a moment before nodding and telling him the apology's accepted. "Can't say I haven't done worse to anybody in all my times of not feeling all that hot."

"And I can't say that I haven't done worse to people in terms of being nosy in the name of purportedly helping them. So I guess we're about even here, and… as long as we're cool, I think we can move on?"

Seriously. Misha can't say he's any better now, and he definitely wasn't any better than she is now during his own undergrad work. About playing therapist for people or about trying to be the best about telling other people when they were wrong. And it's probably just a flaw of academia that real life kicked his ass into understanding things more than a thousand articles ever did.

And it's definitely a flaw in Misha himself—in Misha's utter total lack of awareness, in Misha's inability to even be self-aware—that he doesn't notice Kat's been saying something else, or that he's been zoning out again, until she's snapping her fingers in his face. Making him jump. His breath comes in a deep shudder. Even as he settles down, his stomach writhes, keeps reminding him that he hasn't eaten since the half-an-apple from this morning.

Misha blinks up at Kat. Tries to remember where his thoughts meandered, or what they were talking about, or any notions at all of what she was saying. And all he comes up with is the familiar itch in the back of his throat. The one screaming, "scratch me, scratch me, throw up what you haven't really eaten, come on, you know you want to, it'll make you feel better." And for a moment, Misha thinks that it might not be a bad idea to run off to the bathroom and do just that.

As he takes another breath in the name of steadying himself, it's joined by all kinds of thoughts. Images without words. None of which Misha likes kicking around in his skull.

There's a wrist—his wrist, just judging from how bony it is—and no one slices it. No invisible hands or unseen razors, no anything. His wrist just bursts open. Like a pomegranate with blood instead of seeds. There's not even some alien parasites or dangerous bugs doing it. Only the clean line, opening down past his muscle and to his bone—like a surgical incision, barring a few jagged edges—cutting down the forearm from wrist to elbow. And the bleeding's clean. As clean as it can be. Tendrils of red seep out in the most orderly fashion—Misha can almost feel the warm, thick gunk trailing down his real arm—

Except, next comes another image, one that's not quite so warm or so initially reassuring. It interrupts how real the exploded wrist feels. And to start off: Misha sees Jensen. Sees him baring a whole mouth full of fangs. Rows upon rows of them, jagged and so sharp that he cuts his tongue from brushing it over them, all arranged in an impossibly gaping maw. Like a shark's mouth. He opens it, lets all the darkness and teeth gleam at Misha—then swoops in and kisses him. Smashes their mouths together and grinds his lips against Misha's like rending flesh from bone.

Fangs tear through Misha's lips. Drag deep ditches into his tongue. And Jensen never needs to stop for breath. Not once. He sucks on Misha's kiss, steals the breath right out of his lungs, but it feels like he's reaching deeper. Finding something else and yanking it up from the pit of Misha's chest—

Crack! Misha startles, shocks back down to reality. Kat snaps her fingers in front of his face another time, just to make sure he's back. They crack like whips. Breaking bones. Misha stares at her, gets a chill rustling through the fine hairs on the back of his neck. Tries to find the words he wants and can't. He just stares, gapes at her. Shakes his head, which still doesn't help him feel any more stable. He must look sick or something, because she squints at him, brushes a piece of his hair and asks if he's alright?

"Yeah, I'm fine. Aside from the stuff we already talked about it. Just haven't slept well lately." He lies as easily as breathing, and guilt over it stops building at the vague notion phase. Which should really worry him. He should be a mess with anxiety. But the only urges he has for anything are a muddled heap of curiosity and still wanting to throw up.

***

Tonight, Misha should crash out, but instead his insomnia's still hanging around. That, and he's refilled his coffee thermos twice before he finally ends up at Java Hut, sequestered away in a back corner booth and taking advantage of their bottomless black coffee. Danneel's finishing her shift when he shows up, so Misha takes half of a turkey sandwich and a chocolate chip cookie back to the table with him.

Mostly for the joint sake of looking like he's eating properly and having an excuse to give Danneel a tip. It's not like she, Gen, and Misha don't already share their money anyway.

Gen's not on a shift tonight, but by the time midnight's getting closer, she and Danneel are both sitting at Misha's table. With Gen sitting next to him, specifically so as to keep him from getting up. Even though he ate the half-sandwich hours ago, at this point, so throwing it up would probably be pointless. The three of them don't need to talk. They do, sometimes, but for the most part, they just stay focused on their own shit. Misha on his thesis, Danneel on writing her next screenplay, and Genevieve on sketching other patrons.

The only thing that ever changes is the chill that shudders through him one time the door swings open. The one that doesn't come from the fact that it's cold outside, but that's accompanied by looking up and seeing Jensen walk up to the counter.

There's no second-guessing involved. Misha doesn't need to do a double-take or squint and try to make out that face among the small crowd standing on line. It's unmistakably Jensen. Wearing a black pea-coat that makes the hairs on the back of Misha's neck stand up—it's that same exact coat. The same one that the green-eyed guy in the bookstore was wearing. Well. That Jensen was wearing when he winked at Misha in the bookstore. So it was him. So he has been following Misha (very probably—and fuck him for still having plausible deniability).

And more than everything, Jensen looks so… different. And Misha has no other word for it, because staring at Jensen doesn't help him to suss out exactly how Jensen looks different. The specifics of his appearance are all in their proper places, but something about the overall effect of them doesn't feel quite right.

Jensen's standing taller, holding his head higher with a mien like an old money aristocrat—but not like someone who grew up learning it. It's more like someone faking and mocking that demeanor. His lips are curled up in a half-sneer, but he aims it at no one in particular. He might just have it on because he thinks he should.

There's a laundry list of other differences that Misha notices in all the time he sits here quietly, surveying Jensen's appearance. Again, he's aware of how he's staring and should stop, but he doesn't want to—and this time he has an excuse. Who the Hell does Jensen think he is, saying that he's not stalking someone and then showing up at their favorite coffee place? Sure, anybody could show up here at any time, but that doesn't mean Misha's principle isn't sound. And that's what this is all about: the principle of the thing.

Jensen's still pale—though Misha can still make out the dusting of his freckles from this distance—but on top of that… maybe he's a little pinker in the cheeks? But it looks like the kind of flush Misha gets after a long-distance run, so maybe Jensen's just sensitive to temperature changes? Maybe he just put in his time at the gym and hasn't properly cooled down yet. But if not that, then maybe it's just the lighting? Everybody gets on an unhealthy look to their skin under the library's lights. Java Hut's are kinder, more comfortable.

But Jensen's skin isn't the only thing that's changed here. His eyes look sort of different, too. He's too far away for Misha to tell how different they are, or what's changed, but even from back here… he can tell. Something about them's miles off from how they looked this afternoon. Maybe they look greener? As though they weren't unearthly green enough. As though eyes could actually change color like Misha's thinking they have? Well. This could be the lighting, too, though. Something about how the lights play off of colors? Something Danneel and Gen, being artists, could probably explain better.

That wouldn't explain everything, though. It wouldn't cover how his whole face isn't giving off that feeling that Jensen looks at people and only sees pieces of meat. But again: that could easily be Misha losing his grip of his imagination. God knows he's doing more than his fair share of that, lately.

It occurs to Misha, once Jensen gets up to the counter and asks Julie for… whatever it is he drinks, that the asshole's hair looks blonder. But this notion, Misha knows, is definitely something to chalk up to the lights. Because there's no way that anybody's hair could just change colors. Unless Jensen's been to a salon lately. Because he doesn't look like the type to handle dyeing his own hair.

Misha's cozy in thinking that Jensen's oblivious. For a moment after Jensen looks his way, he doesn't even startle. He leans a little further over the table, barely missing Danneel's notebook with his elbow—and the thought that he's getting closer to Jensen doesn't bother Misha as much as the fact that it doesn't bother him. They blink at each other. Misha feels like it's the prelude to dazing out. Jensen looks like he's sizing Misha up—and he furrows his brow, gets this skeptical smirk.

And when Julie hands him his cup, he winks at Misha. Grins at him, flashes those teeth that look sharper than ever. Nothing else registers outside of him—Jensen turning his back, Jensen heading out the door, Jensen making the bell above the door ring louder than it ever has before.

Nothing sinks in until Genevieve thwaps Misha on the back of the head—like getting hit by a snowball that has secret ice hidden in it—and snaps, "Excuse me? Paging Mister Tact? Misha, for fuck's sake, if you're gonna try to go to bed on the table, I'm carrying you home and making it as embarrassing and Hellish for you as possible, you got that?"

Misha blinks. Finds himself gaping at Danneel, who's giving him this Look, as though he might snap and start killing people if left to his own devices. With a heavy sigh, he sinks back into his seat. "Yeah, yeah, I got it," he mutters. "But I'm not trying to pass out on the table or anything, swear to God. There's no need… You don't have to mother hen me or anything."

"Call me a mother hen again and I will punch you in the mouth," Genevieve says, in a voice that's for the most part affectionate. She and Danneel throw Looks each other's way instead, this time, and neither of them looks especially pleasant. They seem more like conspirators than anything. They nod at each other, and it's ridiculous, impossible even, but it does seem like they have an understanding here.

"So, who were you just staring at, Honey?" Danneel says, putting her pen down for once. They have to think this is serious if she's going to stop writing. Why would it be serious.

"It's nothing. He's nobody. Just some jack-off who got dangerously close to getting slapped with a sexual harassment suit while I was at work."

"Coworker? A patron?"

"I don't know, Dani—he might not even be a student, for all I know. I mean. He tried to talk like one, but he got in before the turnstile cards you for student ID, so… He's just some good-looking douchebag who tried to take me out to lunch and couldn't go sixty seconds without saying something disgusting."

Well, there were the parts where Misha didn't think he could look away from Jensen's gaze—where he felt sick for trying—but how the Hell is he supposed to explain that? How can he put words to it without sounding like he needs to get fifty-one fiftied? Trying to ponder what he needs to say, Misha starts dazing out again, flopping further into their booth and resting his head on the back of it, pondering the words, which start spelling themselves out in boldface letters that start dripping the dark, vibrant red of blood and slowly melt away in that drip… drip… drip—

He only rouses when Genevieve jerks on his right arm and starts wrapping something hard and rough around his wrist. Whining more than he likes, he blinks down at what appear to be Buddhist prayer beads.

"Whatever the Hell you do, Pretty Boy?" she says. "Do not take those off. Take them off and… Well. You might not die. But that's a risk, and just… Keep those on, they might save your life, okay?"

Misha sighs, starts fussing with the beads, moving them around his wrist just to feel the texture of them on his skin. "Am I huffing glue or did you just get superstitious at me?"

Genevieve looks at him like he just suggested they go skydive off a cliff and take no safety precautions, or like he insulted her fucking 49ers. "Promise me you won't take them off, Misha," she hisses. "Don't ask me why. Just trust me and make that promise, okay?"

He doesn't get it, but he promises anyway. It's not asking a lot of him, and Genevieve really looks upset. Giving her some peace of mind just seems like the right thing to do.

***

As everything carries on, presses forward, Misha swears to himself that none of this will come to anything. That any of his fantasies and obsessive thinking will stay inside his head.

But the week drags on and Misha can't take it anymore. Even after getting sleep, he's seeing things that he hopes no one else can see. Imagining them and feeling them so strongly that he can't help thinking that maybe they are? Maybe they aren't? They could be real, possibly?

The violence is the only constant. And it's still nagging at him. Scraping itself down the back of his skull like nails on a chalkboard. Only getting louder and harsher, the longer he tries to ignore everything. Until he stumbles out of a shower and, as he wraps up shaving, finds himself staring down his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Tilting his head and peering at it in utter confusion. Wondering who the Hell that other guy is and why he doesn't even look human.

Well, he must look, in some way, human because there's nothing else for him to be. What else could he be? "Human" has to have a broad definition, in terms of appearance, because Misha's human so he must look like one. Mustn't he? That's ridiculous, thinking he could be anything else.

Imagining his nails hardening, growing out into claws. Thinking that his skin's hardening, that it'll turn to dust. Thinking that a mirror would show him anyone who isn't him. Blinking down at his hands and at the reflection's hands and wondering where the talons went. Blinking at his face and wondering why his eyes are big and blue and tired, but otherwise unaltered. Where's the hungry, animal look that they just had about them—

Misha knows he's looking at himself. Brushing his fingers down the sharper angles of his cheekbones just serves to remind him of that. Watching the mirror-Misha do the same helps—but Misha catches himself watching the reflection too closely. As though it's on a two-second delay, as though it's not really him but someone else and, if he just pays it enough attention—if he's mindful enough—he'll catch it screwing up.

That never happens. And Misha takes some comfort in that—at least, he does until he remembers that it means he's going nuts.

Everything else is in an even sorrier state than his mental health. Bones protruding further than they should—and without having checked a scale lately, Misha knows that he's lost weight lately. Knows he's been restricting too much, and excusing it with how he hasn't purged as often as he wants to—but he hadn't thought he'd lost enough weight for his ribs and hips and collarbone to strain against his skin like this.

His skin's fucked up without that being true. Normally, he's pale, but this is a few shades too far. More than pale, he looks almost translucent. Up under his eyes, he's got bags and rings dark enough that he might've gotten punched. And underneath his skin, his veins and arteries make themselves just as clear as the utter failure to sleep makes itself on his face.

And the dark blue line on his arm looks so appealing. He blinks down at it, he sees it ripping open, he feels it ripping open but the relief that hits him isn't warm enough or fast enough—it just smacks into him and dissipates as quickly as it got there.

He brushes his fingers up and down his inside forearm, feeling sick from how cold and smooth and unmarred it is. How there's no blood. There's only one thought he has at first—vampires are pale and cold and they wouldn't sleep, or bleed, or anything either. And next he knows, he has his razor in his hand, he's breaking it free from the stick and case with a chorus of sickening cracks that hit his ears like fists.

If ignoring them doesn't make these thoughts go away, then maybe this will. Misha brushes the blade down his arm, not cutting yet but just pressing the flat edge into his skin, down and over all of the older, mostly faded scars. He takes a deep breath and digs it into place, right where the vein starts. Down the road, not across the street—he knows the way he's thinking of doing things is a worse idea than cutting in a horizontal line, the same way he made all of his scars.

But when he slices into his flesh, he drags the blade down his arm. Just like all of his little imagined scenes. Not long or deep enough to put himself in the ER, but enough that it hurts. Enough that it bleeds. Enough that he shudders from the warm rush of relief.

He gasps, drops the razor into the sink. With a heavy, shivering sigh, he caresses the wound. Fingers at it, until they come up with blood, and then he rubs his thumb along his fingers. Gets all of them wet, and sticky, and warm. And there's the rub. He's not turning into a vampire; he's just still failing to get a handle on how bug-fuck crazy he is going. Only insanity and an overactive imagination. Nothing more. Nothing serious. Nothing to write home about.

And it's all a patently ridiculous line of thought anyway. Even if vampires were real—which they still aren't (as far as Misha knows, as far as anybody else knows, as far as anyone with any sense at all knows)—Misha couldn't be turning into one. Once his arm's bandaged up and hidden underneath long sleeves, he inspects his neck. Finds no puncture marks or anything to indicate that he's been bitten by anything. Vampires don't turn without the bite, insofar as the stories go. That's evidence enough, isn't it?

Well, it's going to have to be. Misha sighs and picks Genevieve's prayer beads up off the floor, off the messy pile of his dirty clothes, and wraps them around his wrist. Tighter than Genevieve wrapped them, so they'll rub up against the bandages, make the bandages seem less obvious, on the one hand. And make them feel closer to his injuries, on the other.

Maybe carrying around that pain will keep Misha from having so many little daydream fits. Maybe it'll help.

***

"So, how've the sleeping pills been working out for you?"

Sometimes, Misha could just throttle his psychiatrist. Today, that option's so appealing, he could swear he feels Edlund's neck underneath his hands, Edlund's Adam's apple bobbing against his thumbs. He doesn't. It's just his imagination running crazy on him again. But just to be sure, Misha grips onto one of his own wrists. Twists his hand around and makes his haphazard bandaging job chafe against the cuts on his arm.

They're about mid-session, maybe getting toward the end? It's hard to tell. Time's slipping away from Misha in terms of days anymore, not in terms of minutes or hours. And in lieu of causing this idiot actual bodily harm, Misha would love to just scream at him. Something to the tune of, Do I look like I've seen the insides of my eyelids lately, you fucking twit?

But since that would probably just exacerbate things, he shrugs. Scratches at the back of his neck. Says, "They've been pretty great? Yeah, y'know… about the only thing I've really noticed that they've done I don't like is? I mean, I have some trouble getting up in the morning, but I had that anyway and I don't really think it's gotten worse. It's not good or bad, I can just throw some coffee at it and it's usually fine."

Doctor Edlund nods, and his heap of flyaway brown hair makes that action look so much bigger than it is. He scribbles something on the inscrutable pad on his lap. "You haven't had any problems with… nightmares or anything like that?"

Misha rubs at his eyes and lies without thinking about it: "I don't think so? I mean, not anymore than usual. Not anymore than anybody else?"

Besides, why in God's name would I call them nightmares anymore? They happen all the fucking time. Like, right now, for instance? I'm thinking that you'd look so much better if you'd let somebody slit your throat. I mean, it'd really balance out that stupid, mutated hippie soul-patch… thing you've got growing on your face. Aren't you almost fifty or something? Why are you trying so hard to look like a teenager from forty years ago? Why won't you just shut up? Why can't I just skip these sessions? Nothing I've ever done has merited the choice between enforced psych care and losing everything I've put into this fucking degree.

"What about anything else you've mentioned lately," Edlund says, glancing down at his notes and making Misha's heart plummet into his stomach harder and faster than a cartoon anvil. "Over the last few sessions, you've brought up… the insomnia—well, we've addressed that one. But then there's the return of your disordered eating patterns? And of the thoughts associated with them? And there's the suicidal ideation, which is especially worrisome to me, considering your history and how averse you are to medication…"

He continues rattling off things that they've talked about before, and as he goes on, all Misha can do is stare at him. Toe out of his sneakers so he can fold his legs up on the sofa, then hide his hands in his lap where he can twist them around in peace. Why the fuck are you looking at those. Why are you cross-referencing things. You're supposed to be useless. Stop doing your job and let me get out of here unscathed already. It's my day off classes and work, Doctor. I just want to go back home and do something more productive than talking to you.

"I don't need medication," Misha blurts out, interrupting Edlund mid-list. He sighs, waits for Edlund to say something back, then continues when the doctor tells him to go on. Shaking his head, Misha tells Edlund again that he doesn't need medication—and that's when his mouth wrenches control away from his brain. "All medication's ever done is fuck me over. All I need is for reality to calm the fuck down for me."

"How do you mean?" Edlund's scribbling, and Misha wants so badly to just smack the pen out of his hands, hit him upside the head with his fucking hardcover Diagnostics and Statistics Manual, and tell him to get a real job. One that isn't based on judging people to be crazy or insufficient or whatever, then handing them pills like that makes everything better.

"I mean that sometimes, I'm not even sure where reality starts and my imagination stops," Misha snaps. The words smack him, even though they're his own. "I mean that… I'm just supposed to be depressed and anxious, right? So why doesn't anything feel real anymore and why am I going crazy like this."

He doesn't realize what he's saying until he's said it, and for all the build-up he's given spitting this out and putting the right words to it, or anything… It's so much easier than Misha expected. He could've done this sooner and saved himself all the fucking angst over it. He could've gotten it out of his head earlier, admitted it to Genevieve and Danneel instead of to someone with the power to prescribe psych meds. He could've cleared his skull instead of sitting on it, letting it build up and gnaw on his nerves until it just boils over.

And his mouth carries on, spilling everything else for him: "And I shouldn't even have to ask, because it's probably the not-sleeping thing hanging around and making me miserable. It's probably just that I'm going insane and you're going to send me off to Belleview after this session's over? But I've been steeping in this one class. About vampires."

Misha sighs, flops back into the sofa and only stops wringing his hands so he can muss up his hair. Vent all his nervous energy over something that he can't hurt. "Well, actually, it's about sexuality, but we're talking about its presentation through the metaphors of vampires, that's not even important, is it. And anymore? I just don't even know why I thought I should take it, because it's brilliant. Doctor Vantoch is, like, a genius… but it's throwing off every-fucking-thing else about my entire life."

Edlund misinterprets Misha stopping to breathe as Misha being done talking: "How is the class throwing everything off? Is it the workload? These two things seem fairly incongruous—"

"Aren't you listening to me?" Misha groans. "It's that the fucking class is driving me even further up the goddamn wall. I keep thinking things like monsters are real. Like my roommate and her girlfriend are vampires, and like this guy who tried to ask me out is a vampire. Which is stupid, right? Because vampires aren't even real."

Misha tries to hold eye-contact with Edlund, but can't manage it. Not while he's assaulting him with word-vomit about why his entire life, for the past nigh-on-six weeks, has been turning into an ungodly fucking mess. "They're not real. And my nightmares aren't real, either. And feeling like my arms are all mangled, being so sure that I can see them bleeding and in pieces, and… None of it's real. But I keep thinking it is. I even accused some poor guy I'd only just met of being a stalker because we'd been in the campus bookstore at the same time once."

And now that everything's out in the open? Misha can't remember why he got so worked up. All the frenetic energy behind that rant seeps out of him, and he slumps back, tries to bury himself in the sofa's cushion. "So… go on, then," he mutters. "Tell me I'm out of my mind and a danger to myself and others and I need to get committed immediately."

"Well… I would say that, if I thought any part of it were true," Edlund says, slowly, like he's considering every single syllable. "But it's not my professional opinion. It does make me even more concerned about your insistence on avoiding medication, but… psychotic features coinciding with major depressive disorder aren't uncommon, Misha. And they may not be curable, as of yet? But they're usually very treatable and quite manageable."

"Oh, great," Misha drawls at the ceiling. "It's not that I'm crazy, it's just that I'm crazy with a super shiny official diagnostic word slapped on it."

"Psychosis doesn't mean you're crazy, Misha. None of what we've ever discussed here means that you're crazy, or dangerous, or unstable. All the diagnoses mean is that you have illnesses and they need treatment."

No matter how many times they go over that point, it never sounds any truer. And today, all it does is remind Misha of how tired he is, how little he's been able to sleep lately, and how much he would love to kick Doctor Edlund in the teeth. He doesn't help his case by ending his little tirade with the question, How long have you been having these feelings and sensations?

And Misha doesn't have the strength to keep dealing with the other discussion, so all he says is in return to that question: "Almost six weeks? I mean… they started up around the same time as the semester?"

Edlund hmms and jots something down, mentions that they should definitely consider medication. Then asks, "Why wouldn't you tell someone about them sooner?"

"Why would I?" Misha huffs. "I thought they'd get me shipped off to an institution, for one thing, and then… Sometimes they're the best part of my day, you know? They're like… I can't actually do anything violent, and I can't act on any of these desires I don't understand, and imagining them all the time is making me want to claw my eyes out, which makes the whatever-the-fuck-they-ares that much worse?"

Misha shrugs. "But keeping them around is like a release valve for all of that, and I just… There's no balance for anything, is there?"

Edlund doesn't have an answer for that. He doesn't think that there's any kind of easy one. He does, however, have a few suggestions for how to proceed, and Misha leaves his office with two new prescriptions, scrawled in Edlund's half-illegible chicken scratch. One's for some antidepressant whose commercials he's seen on late-night TV, and the other's for an anti-psychotic whose name he can't pronounce.

Since he's apparently letting his doctor play around with his brain chemistry anyway, Misha wishes Edlund could give him something for the nagging thought that he has just failed everyone in a wholly unprecedented way.

***

"Well, don't you look like a big ol' bag full of sunshine."

Misha looks up from the table, from the translucent orange pill bottles resting on it, and blinks at Danneel. She's still wearing her purple smock with the stitched-on decal of a coffee cup and the words, 'DANI HARRIS' stitched underneath it in bright pink thread. He didn't think her shift got over so soon. Undoing her ponytail, shaking out her mess of auburn hair, she asks if she can sit with him.

Misha supposes he wouldn't mind the company, but that he doesn't know if she can or not, and it seems sort of presumptuous of him to guess about her ability, doesn't it?

"Ah, yes, you're so clever," she drones at him. "Whatever will I do when faced with such amazingly witty repartee. I might just be defeated, because I haven't any idea how to respond to that."

"Please, like I could ever defeat Lady Danneel the Snark Knight."

"And now I'm just not sure if you're being sarcastic or not—"

"Mostly, I'm not." Misha shrugs. Manages the barest hints of a smile.

"So I'm just going to ask you again?" Danneel says, resting her chin on the palm of her hand. "Well, don't you look like a big ol' bag full of sunshine. You wanna talk about it?"

"Not particularly, but I probably should." Misha huffs and rolls the bottles across the table at her, waits for Danneel to pick them up and examine them before trying to find the right words for conveying the seriousness of the situation.

He opts for being a sarcastic asshole instead: "Let's play a game of Guess Who, huh? …Guess who got a particularly awful truth-bomb dropped on him in therapy today. Guess who's starting psych meds for the first time since he was… oh, nineteen? Twenty? And guess whose major depressive disorder has apparently picked up psychotic features."

"I'm gonna guess you, you, and you, so tell me what I won, Vanna." Without looking up from reading the labels, Danneel pays him back in sarcasm, and Misha kind of loves her for that. It's not that either of them are necessarily acting like he doesn't have any problems—but she's letting him pretend they're as manageable as Edlund seems to think. "So how're you dealing with this batch of crap, hon?"

Misha shrugs, slouching in his seat and flopping his legs into Danneel's personal space, but being careful not to get them tangled up. "It still seems kind of unreal, but that's not exactly different from how most everything else feels lately. It's either this lethargic mess of nothing feeling like anything, wondering if maybe I'm not dead already because that'd explain how I don't feel anything? Or else it's rage and anxiety and a whole mess of not-good things until they pile up enough to get boring and go right back to feeling like nothing."

"Sheesh. How'd you even manage to keep that quiet? Not like I've ever felt anything like it, but if I had? I would've been climbing the walls and word-vomiting all over you and Genevieve before you could spit." Something's off about Danneel's face. The concerned half-smile and furrows in her brow look too shifty for them to be exactly true. Like maybe Danneel really has been in that kind of a place before.

But, then again, Misha's just admitted to being an untrustworthy judge of… well, everything. A category that he's pretty sure includes other people's body language, facial expressions, and mental health. "The thought that you guys would get me committed kinda helped," he supposes. "And then there's all of the… all the thinking like, no, it's fine, I can fix it on my own."

The bell rings at the front door, and Misha perks up when he sees that whoever walked through has short, dirty blonde hair and a black pea-coat. Jensen—maybe, from the distance, it's hard to tell? But Misha hopes it is, if only so he can apologize for being a dick while his neurochemistry was fucking with him. It's a perfect excuse to talk and ask if maybe he's not too unbalanced for Jensen to want to take to lunch. Even if that answer's, "no," then Misha can still hang around and leech off whatever it is about Jensen that makes his cheeks flush and his stomach tie itself in knots.

His heart starts fluttering just at the thought of this—but it dies off pretty quickly, sinking back into his chest and leaving him with the feeling of an impossibly heavy weight dragging on his shoulders. First of all, this guy doesn't have bow-legs. And more importantly, blinking at him doesn't leave Misha feeling impossibly drawn in. There's no chill creeping up his spine and the back of his neck. There's none of the rush that looking at Jensen gives Misha.

And as he looks back to Danneel, Misha must look especially crestfallen, because the first thing she does is ask if he's okay. She follows that up with asking if he's sure.

"Well, I'm as okay as I can be under the current circumstances?" Misha tells her. "I just thought I saw somebody, but… it wasn't him."

"Was it Jensen?" Danneel asks, and all Misha can think—past spluttering, how the Hell do you know his name—is, oh fuck, don't tell me to stay away from him. "It doesn't matter how I know him," Danneel says. "All I know is that you want to stay away from him."

Fuck, shit, dammit. "Well, if you're going to put it that way, I'd say it kind of does matter how you know him?" Not even vampires have that small town, everyone knows everyone nonsense going on, so seriously, Dani. Spill it.

"We went to high school together," sounds like one of the biggest fucking lies Misha has ever heard in his life. But it makes more sense than the explanations his brain keeps making him think sound reasonable.

"Maybe he's changed. It's been ten years since any of us were in high school—"

"And I really don't think Jensen has the capacity to change."

"Well, that's really cynical and judgmental of you, don't you think? Next, are you gonna tell me that starting my psych meds is pointless because I can't change either?"

"I didn't say that people don't have the capacity to change, Princess." Danneel huffs like an agitated teapot and tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. "And I definitely didn't say that you don't have the capacity to change. But Jensen doesn't have the capacity to change—at least, he doesn't have it enough for me to trust him. Probably not enough to make him stop being bad news for anybody and everybody, either. …At least, he's bad news for anyone who likes living, and I'm assuming that you do."

"Living is all I can say that I do sometimes, so… yeah, slightly partial to it." Misha sighs. "It's still really cynical and judgmental of you, but… okay, point taken." Pausing, he combs his fingers back through his hair, and takes a long drink out of his coffee. "So you don't want me to ask him out. Okay, fine, I trust you on that. But what if it wasn't that. What if I just wanted to apologize, since… he tried to ask me out and I was kind of a dick."

Danneel just shakes her head and reaches over to squeeze Misha's wrist. "Trust me, honey? You do not want to mess around with Jensen Ackles. Not even just for a second. Not even just to apologize. There's not such thing as not even just in this situation Don't do it or else Gen and I will probably find you in a ditch, or else get called into the morgue to identify your body—and that's if we are all very, very lucky."

Unfortunately, there's really no way to tell Danneel that this isn't scaring Misha off of going after Jensen. That having any reason to think Jensen could kill him makes the jackass sound that much more appealing, for reasons Misha does not understand but that Edlund blames on his mental health shenanigans. That her insistence on how Dangerous and Bad Jensen is and how Misha needs to stay away from him if he wants to live makes him feel like some scolded asshole teenager. Not to mention how it makes running off after Jensen sound like a great plan, on the grounds of it being forbidden, of Misha getting specifically told not to do it.

Saying any of this is especially out of the question based on the Look that Danneel's giving him. Her eyes are wide, her mouth's hanging ever-so-slightly open, and the knot of her eyebrows suggests she's ten seconds or one tasteless joke away from begging Misha not to go anywhere near one, Jensen Ackles.

Misha sighs. Barely manages not to roll his eyes. "Fine," he says. "I hereby promise that, in addition to not taking off Gen's superstitious beads, I won't talk to Jensen. Not even just to apologize for being a douche the first time we talked."

Danneel gives his wrist another squeeze, then pats him on it. "Good boy. And thanks for not making me resort to barring you from my Valentine's Day party."

***

Valentine's Day comes, and with it Danneel's party and the pilgrimage to the place she shares with Julie, Adrianne, and Megalyn—none of whom Misha really knows that well. And for all he's looking forward to this, Misha hasn't noticed too much of an improvement in anything else.

Or too much of any differences at all. None that can't get attributed to the relief of having a diagnosis and a plan for handling it. And the party reminds him of that clearer than any other sign could. As soon as he trails after Gen into the hot, heady throng of people in Danneel's living room—all of them closing in on each other, barely any room to breathe—the whole place seems to close in on him.

The walls collapse, and the other bodies get closer—so close that he can smell the sweat and perfume and soap and weed reeking off of all of them, even if he can't differentiate between people's scents. Misha ends up holding his breath—terrified by the prospect of letting it out and never getting it back because there is no room to breathe in this huddle—then spluttering, gasping for more air, and repeating the process all over and and over over again because it feels like there's no other option.

He knows that there is. And as he stumbles into the kitchen and finds the night's first drink—a red SOLO cup full of vodka and cranberry juice, but mostly vodka—Misha tries any of the potential aids he has in mind. He tries taking deep, easy breaths. He tries reminding himself that nothing's going to go wrong here. Danneel wouldn't have invited him if she thought it would get this out-of-hand. Word of mouth is a motherfucking pain in the ass like this, but nobody here wants to hurt him, or kill him, or humiliate him.

The rush he's getting isn't the kind he likes. It's not the thrill of danger. It's just a painful, heart-pounding, gut-twisting, head-spinning reminder of how little control he has over the situation. And in this case, the situation is his entire life.

As he fumbles through ladling some of the who-the-fuck-what's-in-this-drink alcoholic fruit punch into his cup, it strikes Misha that… really, his situation's kind of hilarious. He gets relief out of hurting himself. He has some psychotic features peanut butter in his chocolate depression, and most of them involve him dying, or being hurt, or getting mutilated. He takes comfort in all of those things—but when his fear takes over, what is he afraid of? Dying. People wanting to hurt him (emotionally instead of physically, sure, but the principle's the same).

He wants to feel things, yet he's afraid to feel things, and so far, the medication he's taking? Is supposed to let him feel things, but only in moderation, so that the emotions don't overwhelm him—but it's not doing its job. So much for miracles. So much for surrendering control of his life to the pills, in the hopes of regaining control of his life.

Genevieve and Edlund both think this makes sense, the part where Misha's meds aren't working right, by his standards. They're not supposed to be a magical panacea—it might be nice, but neurochemistry and mental health just don't work that way (because Misha hasn't figured that out for himself already). Besides, he hasn't been on the pills for a full week yet. That's not even remotely enough time for the meds to kick in. They say he needs to be patient, no matter how much he doesn't want to do so.

Misha says he needs for people to stop telling him how he isn't giving his meds enough time to settle in, how of course they won't work immediately, he needs to relax and just let them do their thing. Not try to rush them into working. They'll never settle in right if he keeps expecting too much of himself and his pills. He doesn't need to hear that realistic expectations shit. He needs to hear something more reassuring, more sympathetic to his side of things.

At least the alcohol does a pretty good job of settling Misha's mind and stomach, for all his attempts at breathing and calming himself don't work. By the time he finds the mixed up bowl of prescription meds and Lord only knows what else (condensed into the form of multiple pills), he's even laughing. Quietly, sure, but that's just social self-preservation. He's floating through the party by himself. And no one else would really appreciate why he finds this situation so humorous.

No one's saying anything particularly amusing, that he can hear, either. Besides, he wouldn't want them to think he's eavesdropping on their conversations. He'd have to answer for himself, and they'd probably develop delusions of being interesting when most of these people are anything but. Misha sighs, blinking down at the heap of multicolored tablets and capsules. He recognizes some of them, either as meds he's taken before or as meds he's seen other people take. There are the orange, plastic-looking capsules of methamphetamine salts—whoever brought those must've found brand-name Adderall too pricey—and Misha recognizes Vicodin from watching Grandma Krushnic take it after her second knee-replacement.

He doesn't get picky over what to take, though. He doesn't care very much. Scooping pills out with an empty double-shot-glass that someone left on the table, Misha chuckles to himself and starts humming that song from Cabaret—So, if you kiss me, if we touch… Warning's fair, I don't care very much… I don't care much, go or stay… I don't care very much, either way… The contexts might not line up exactly, but it's still so very fitting for this moment right here.

All he cares about is how his own pills don't work. Vaguely, he cares that Danneel wouldn't have planned for this thing to be here, much less for him to get into it. And he cares that she'll be the one who gets in trouble, if her name is on the party registration form in campus security's office. And he cares that she and all of her housemates will be in deep shit if they didn't register the party because it was never supposed to turn into this over-crowded mess.

But the loudest concern is how the pills he has a prescription for don't fucking work—which seems so ridiculous because the shit he takes from the candy bowl hits him immediately. Instant fucking gratification. But oh, no, he's not giving his real meds "enough time" to settle in.

Never mind how the "enough time" clause only seems to apply to him and his expectations. It's sure as Hell been enough time for Genevieve to glare at him and demand to know what the fuck he thinks he's doing, when she catches him sitting off to the side of another room with a plate of jello shots. There are fewer people in this room, and since he's drinking and most of the others have split off into make-out pairs, Misha's not even all that upset at Genevieve for bringing this up. It's not like anyone's going to be listening in, or judging him for being crazy and taking crazy-pills.

"It's a party," Misha tells her, tossing back one of his shots. "Besides, Danneel and my shrink both think I need to give myself a break and I don't have to work tomorrow. And I'm not fucking nineteen, so if security gets called, they won't write me and Dani up. If I wanna drink, I'll drink."

Genevieve crosses her arms over his chest, and gives him a look that would turn him to a pile of ash, if she had heat vision. "So we're just ignoring the part where your prescription information packets specifically said not to mix either of your new rounds of meds with alcohol?"

Misha shrugs. Nods. "Pretty much, yeah. I'm taking a break, and cutting myself some slack, so deal with it. And you know what I need? Maybe I just need people to stop condescending to me like I'm made of tissue paper. So… deal with that, too." It's a true testament to his force of will that he doesn't cap this off by blowing a raspberry at her.

He reaches for another shot. She reaches to smack it out of his hand. He skirts away from her hand, just barely missing it, and tosses back the shot. She asks how much he's had, and he doesn't really have the capacity to lie right now, so he confesses that he stopped keeping track about an hour ago. And the look that Genevieve gives him… Misha can't place it. At all. There's a gleam of anger in it, but the more he squints at her, the more that looks like a mask over something like concern.

"Don't land your ass in the ER," Genevieve tells him, huffing by way of (failing) to mask a sigh, stealing four of the remaining shots (which still leaves two behind). "Because if you do? I will fucking leave you there. For long enough to think about your life, your choices, and every questionable decision you've ever made."

Misha waves her off with one hand, and with the other, throws back another shot. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Jeez, you'd think you'd be happy I'm not sitting here, agonizing over all the empty fucking calories."

***

***

Misha's in the upstairs bathroom when it hits him that Genevieve might've been right. Mixing everything like that was probably a bad idea. Very, very bad. It might land him in the emergency room. It could kill him—and unlike all of his fantasies on the matter, this doesn't excite him. It just finds him staring down his reflection again, all wide-eyed and paler than the white tiles on the wall but still sweating, flushed hot.

Trembling and shaking. Feeling sick but reeling too much to know if it's real or not. It doesn't feel visceral enough. He could jam Danneel's toothbrush at the back of his throat and probably get nothing for the effort. He knows more than well enough how to make himself puke, but he doesn't think he could do it right now.

Is he even alive right now. He can't answer that question. Left unchecked, all his breaths quiver and stagger and feel too shallow to be real, no matter how much he tries to make them go deeper. He's not dead. Not yet. But is he alive? It's not clear. Maybe he's neither—except he knows better than to think there's any middle ground on this issue. Any grey area between life and death.

He has no idea what his heart thinks it's doing. He's not sure that he wants to know, either. Walking takes more focus than he likes. Just breathing takes focus—because his heart races, then it slows to almost nothing; it beats against his chest like trying to claw his way out, and then it digs the other way, trying to burrow down into his stomach.

Misha's equally unsure of what to do. He could go find Genevieve, tell her she was right, beg her to please, please, please get him to the ER. But she might not take him. She might make good on that threat. He stands at the sink for several minutes. Pondering his options. Washing his hands under the coldest water he can get (which doesn't freeze like he wants, but at least it's cold enough to prick at his skin), and only notices how long this has gone on when someone knocks on the door and asks if everything's all right in there.

Misha jumps up, flicks the faucet off with a start. His major incentive to act, to get the fuck out of here already? People are knocking. He doesn't want to deal with them—but that tune changes when he flings open the door, finds himself staring up into the same green eyes that he promised to avoid.

He knows them because his heart finally sticks to a course of action at the sight of them—namely: leaping into Misha's throat and fluttering around with the grace and delicacy of a screen-door in a hurricane—and Misha wants to drown himself in those eyes. He licks his lips, blinking as the rest of Jensen's face slowly comes into view, and he tries to shove past, get out and away, because he promised Danneel that he wouldn't so much as talk to Jensen—

But he stumbles. Doesn't fall as much as he trips himself on purpose and stumbles so that he lands on Jensen's chest, splaying a palm on top of his collarbone and knotting the other hand up in Jensen's t-shirt. Misha chuckles, lets his voice lilt up more than a little bit as he whispers, hiiiii… fancy running into you here, innit? Danneel doesn't really like you… I'm seriously, though, I didn't think she'd let you in…

Jensen snickers, wrapping an arm around Misha's waist and resting his own hand on the small of Misha's back. His hand is huge and freezing cold—Misha shudders as it slips under his sweater and ghosts in circles around the base of his spine; he groans as Jensen kneads his icy fingers into Misha's hip—and this spurs him on. He rocks his hips into Jensen's, has to lean up into his face to make out anything when Jensen whispers,

"Well, Julie invited me, but hey, I won't tell Danneel if you don't, Pretty Boy."

It occurs to Misha that he probably should tell Danneel. She made such a big deal out of how dangerous Jensen apparently is. She was worried—but still he snakes his arm up and around Jensen's shoulders. He hovers in the distance between their mouths—Jensen's breaths are colder than his hands, and dirty puddle-shallow, and his lips twitch, showing off a brief glimpse of those teeth… of how sharp they are… Misha yanks on his t-shirt, feels his nails dig through the fabric and into his own hand.

He yanks on Jensen next, dragging him down into a kiss. One that it takes Jensen a moment to reciprocate—Misha doesn't start off slow, with pecks or caution. He throws himself headlong into it, instead. Opens his mouth and digs his lips at Jensen's, bites on Jensen's mouth by way of telling him to get his act together, then sucks on them, just in case the pain scares Jensen off. They're as bitter and arctic as the rest of him, Jensen's lips. Even the inside of his mouth pricks at Misha like it could turn his tongue to ice—every motion of their lips against each other hurts, but Misha keeps on, licking at Jensen's teeth, batting his tongue into Jensen's or trying to curl them up in each other—

And he's the one who has to tug back for breath. Which sets his heart plummeting to his stomach, leaves him staring at Jensen's lips instead of at his eyes, because shame creeps up the back of Misha's neck like centipedes. Thousands of them with all their tiny, creeping little legs. All hot, thick, sticky, and matched only by the needfuckwant that spills all throughout the deepest pit of his stomach, twisting itself up in everything and making him rut his hips against Jensen's again. Thankfully, Jensen gets the hint and holds Misha closer, tighter. Digs his fingers into Misha's hip for real.

"You're feeling pretty forward tonight, aren't you," he says, snickering all over again, rewarding Misha with a kiss—one that involves him biting on Misha's lower lip, and hard. "Whatever happened to, I don't like you, asshole, I want you to go away."

"You know… I might've misspoken," Misha huffs, tugs pointlessly on Jensen's shirt and scratches the back of Jensen's hard. He goes to brush his fingers over the area, next—and he knows that he scratched on Jensen pretty hard, but he can't feel any marks. No signs that he scratched at Jensen whatsoever. "You're really pretty. And still an asshole. But I'm okay with that, you know? If you're okay with how I'm a dick."

Nodding, supposing that he doesn't really mind, Jensen tries to guide them out of the doorway, and as he does, Misha fakes stumbling again. Just to be difficult. Just to have an excuse to rub up on Jensen that much more. And Jensen handles it better than expected—before Misha knows his ruse worked, his back slams into the wall. The gasp goes deep into his chest and he rolls his shoulders. Leans forward and drags Jensen back along with him, forces Jensen's shoulders down into his own.

To his credit, Jensen goes along with this. Presses harder into Misha. But Misha's still basically using Jensen to hold himself in place.

As he slips one of his legs between Jensen's, kneads his thigh into Jensen's crotch, Misha hauls him back down into another kiss. He goes at this one like hyenas and honey badgers go at carrion. He bites harder, sucks Jensen's tongue into his own mouth and chomps on it, grinds his lips against Jensen's like rending flesh. Bucks his hips up into Jensen's, knocks his shoulders into Jensen's and doesn't have to tell him that he wants to be forced back into place—Jensen learns quickly; Misha will give him that much.

But all the pretenses of doing this roughly shatter in just a moment—that's all it takes. A moment. Jensen trails the backs of his fingers down Misha's cheek. Tenderness smacks into Misha, and the tremors rock all the way to his core—to the deepest parts of his chest, his lungs; to the base of his spine—he trembles, clings to Jensen as his head spins, whines into the gentle kiss that Jensen gives him and tries to suck all of the breath from Jensen's lungs because somebody has to keep this going in a way that Misha likes.

"Whoa, whoa, Darlin'—let's chill out a little here. Just a sec. You feed on someone who got into the pills or what?" Jensen mutters, voice all thick and throaty, rubbing up on Misha's cheek like ice cubes—

And Misha starts to reply, but the words die in a mess of half-formed syllables. All he can manage is gaping at Jensen, blinking at him and wondering if he really just said that—how could he feed on someone who got into the pills, why wouldn't Jensen just ask if Misha's high—but then again, Misha's intoxicated and his diagnosis involves the words psychotic features. He probably just tricked himself into thinking he heard what he did. Imagined it, like he's imagined so many other fucking things lately.

He shakes his head, nips at Jensen's lip again, and without thinking about it, Misha lies: "Just a little bit drunk," he whispers into Jensen's mouth. "Wouldn't try to drive right now, but I've got my wits around enough. Now are you gonna fuck me or do I have to fucking beg?"

Jensen answers him by scooping Misha up, dropping his arm to under Misha's ass and lifting him off the ground. Looping his legs around Jensen's waist, curling his arms tighter around Jensen's shoulders, Misha mutters that whatever gym Jensen goes to must love him, seriously, how often is he in there to get this strong—and next thing he knows, he's kicking a bedroom door closed behind them.

Next thing after that, Jensen throws him off onto the bed—swoops in on Misha so much faster than he should be able to and rips off his sweater, his t-shirt. Shivering as Jensen scratches down his collarbone, Misha kicks off his shoes and socks—he brushes his hands down Jensen's shoulders, blinks up at him, then shoves, knocks him down into the mattress and rolls so he's straddling Jensen's hips. Which is where he slows things down.

He wants Jensen's shirt off, he does, but Misha goes about getting there slowly. Teasing. As a consolation prize, a preemptive reward for how patient he's going to make Jensen be, Misha grinds down against his hips and crotch—rubs his ass against Jensen's hard, straining dick and smirks to think that he's already made Jensen want him, made that want take over Jensen's dick. He shudders to think that Jensen's hard before he is—

Misha almost forgets himself and his purpose, in that moment. He drags his hands up Jensen's sides without concern for time—pushes the t-shirt up so slowly, so painfully slowly, focused more on digging his nails into Jensen's skin and his rigid muscles than he can bring himself to care about how hard he has to push just to make centimeters of headway—he puts as much force as he has in him into clawing at Jensen, but Jensen doesn't even seem to squirm—

Closing his eyes, Misha imagines Jensen squirming and screaming and crying for mercy. He sees himself leaving deep trenches up Jensen's sides, exposing blood and bone and organ and muscle, then doing the same to Jensen's chest to see his still-beating heart. At the very least, if he's not getting as deep into Jensen as he wants, Misha knows he's leaving some kind of mark. Raw, bone-chilling blood pools up under his nails, sticks to his fingers and worms into the grooves of his fingerprints—

But once he flings the shirt off to the side, Misha slithers his hands back down Jensen's and feels nothing. No evidence that he's done anything to Jensen at all. The skin's as smooth and unmarred as it was before Misha started.

Misha stares at it. Gapes. Keeps tracing over the paths he knows that he carved out—has an explanation kicking around in his head but doesn't trust it—and doesn't notice Jensen moving until his back crashes into the mattress, until he's blinking up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling that tell him they're fucking in Danneel's bed.

Jensen doesn't keep any distance between them when he straddles Misha's hips. He sprawls out on top of Misha, digging his thighs in and making a perplexed, groaning noise—probably from Misha's bones digging at his his muscles in return—and with a snicker and a smirk, Misha rolls his body underneath of Jensen again, knocks his hips up into Jensen's ass, tries to tease him with how his dick's still limp and flagging over here…

Instead, he ends up with gasps. He ends up whining as Jensen grips his shoulder until it hurts and doesn't notice the deep, bleeding scratches Jensen leaves behind until after he's shoved Misha back into the mattress, hissing something indistinct about Misha's nerve. He's a heavy weight on Misha's chest, and his kisses are deceptively tender—gentle until he digs his teeth into Misha's lips.

Misha gropes at his ass, drags him down harder into his own hips, keeps hoping that Jensen's teeth might actually make him bleed—"Tell me what you want," Jensen murmurs into Misha's mouth. Another kiss, another bite. "Tell me what you want me to do."

"I want you to fuck me, you miserable fuck," Misha snaps and digs his nails into the small of Jensen's back—and finally, he does it hard enough for Jensen to react. Even if it's just by letting the smallest, measliest groan slip out.

"I mean, how many fucking times do I have to say it—" Never mind that this is the first time. Misha hasn't been exactly subtle here. "I might not be here too much longer? And, like, if the lights are going out tonight? And they might be? Just take me a-fucking-part, okay? Make me scream. Literally take my breath away. Just let me go out with a smile and an orgasm, huh?"

Jensen's mouth falls open and his eyes go wide. He wrinkles his nose, and looks like he's about to say something, but by way of impressing the urgency of this upon him, Misha leans up. Catches Jensen's lips in his own and bites Jensen harder than he has before. Doesn't let go until he breaks the skin, feels a pool of blood well up under his teeth, and tastes it slipping around his tongue—cold and coppery, even diluted in their shared saliva.

Misha swallows it. He goes back for more, but finds the wound closed up—and he can't even bring himself to care. Because as he's tonguing at the inside of Jensen's lip, Jensen's getting the message through his fucking head. He snakes an arm behind Misha's shoulders and drags him up, only to hurl him back into the bed again. He dares Misha to move, then pins his wrists, clenching his hands around them and digging his nails in, letting them worm around until he breaks the skin and playing like he might peel it away. Moving's not even an option. Misha wouldn't want it to be, either.

The only thing that gives Jensen pause is the strand of prayer beads still wrapped tight around Misha's wrist, and he growls from the back of his throat as he tears them off, sends the beads scattering across Danneel's floor.

Of all the fucking things to inspire him—it had to be that. One word, promise, flashes through Misha's mind—and it's followed by another one: wrong. He hesitates a moment, staring at his wrist, at the lack of anything on it—then flings himself up into kissing Jensen, gnashing lips and teeth and holding onto this even as the mattress bats against his back again—the only thing that breaks it off is also what finally gets Misha hard: Jensen's thumb. Jensen's thumb on Misha's neck. Jensen's thumb nudging gently up and down the length of Misha's neck, lingering on his Adam's apple, then pressing into Misha's throat.

Jensen takes his hand away, then, but only to tear off their jeans, their underwear—and again, like so many things he's done, this happens faster than it has any right to do—but Misha can't care. Not when he has both of Jensen's thumbs pushing down on his throat before he even knows he's naked. He knots his hands up in the sheets, digs his fingers into the mattress, and even that gets Jensen to push harder on his neck, gets him to slither against Misha's chest and stomach, then whisper right up in his ear, Didn't I tell you not to move?

Misha doesn't nod, just stares up into Jensen's eyes—as much of them as he can make out in the faint hints of moonlight—and he doesn't mind not being able to see them proper. Not entirely. Seeing hints of them is enough to make Misha's stomach writhe, make his muscles twist and burn with the sensation of something here being bad and wrong—trying to breath sends his Adam's apple knocking into Jensen's thumbs, makes him startle and gasp every time he gets close to enjoying any part of the whole breathing process… He can't enjoy it. He can barely get enough air to survive—how could he enjoy taking it in.

And that fact is what sets Misha's stomach churning, roiling with the thick, cold lust that's building up inside him, burning with the need to just get released already. Jensen's taking to this like a professional, too. Holding Misha and holding his throat down just right—so he gets enough air not to completely pass out, but so that he's still mostly denied what he needs… And that thought—the thought that Jensen's done this for other people, the thought that he could do it again if Misha makes it through tonight? It makes Misha groan, buck his hips up into Jensen's without meaning to and get his throat compressed even tighter for that misstep. Because he moved after Jensen's told him not to several times over.

But he can't be sorry for it. How could he think about getting this again without getting turned on? Without wanting more out of Jensen in the here and now? Without whining from the deepest pit of his chest and letting a stray mewl of, Jensen… please… slip past his lips.

As soon as he's settled back into place again, they're both so still, so quiet, that Misha's at risk of dazing out again. He loses track of how long Jensen holds him down. Even Jensen's move to start rubbing his neck doesn't leave Misha more aware of time. Just of how Jensen smirks as he drags his thumbs up and down Misha's throat, presses harder here and goes softer here, makes Misha gasp, then lets up like he's afraid of breaking Misha.

Right as he starts feeling lightheaded, he feels Jensen's cock rubbing at his thigh—he hopes he's right in guessing what'll come next—he wants it, he wants Jensen's dick inside of him, as deep as Jensen can conceivably get it—but Misha still risks getting choked into unconsciousness to fumble for the lube on Danneel's bedside table. Jensen startles, pulls back his hands, and while Misha's lungs spasm around on him, flail over being allowed to breathe properly, he squirts the lube onto his hand and fumbles it onto Jensen's dick—hisses that Jensen's not allowed to judge him, it's just been a while since he's bottomed okay—

Jensen says nothing, he just chuckles and kisses Misha gently enough to make him squirm. Misha's used to how cold Jensen is, but he's not ready for the full extent of it. Jensen fingers at his hole, rubs the thick head of his cock against it, and Misha has to force himself not to jump back, not to move even the slightest bit because he's not sure if he wants Jensen to choke him at the moment—but that's quite cold enough, and the chill just gets worse. As Jensen works his dick into him, it's like being sliced through with ice. Misha shivers, lets out a bone-deep and nauseating shudder that quakes through his whole body.

Like a caress, Jensen presses the back of his hand into Misha's throat—not enough to really rob him of his breathing, but enough to make it ever-so-slightly harder for him—it makes his cock throb and he gasps just before Jensen's fucking glacial dick bites and grinds into his prostate—Misha squirms as everything starts going white around the edges—Jensen thrusts into him harder, dragging his stomach along the underside of Misha's cock and forcing Misha's Adam's apple back into his throat—

Misha gasps. His apple bobs against Jensen's hand and all he can think of is whether or not he'll actually die—whether or not the spinning sensation in his head is legitimate, if he's lightheaded from the lack of oxygen or something else—Misha splutters, trying harder to get some air into himself—and for all the effort he puts into that, he only makes things harder, makes his breaths shallower and his head lighter—until finally, he whimpers, knocking his hips up into Jensen's one last time—almost automatically, almost entirely without thought—grinding into Jensen as he cums on their stomachs.

***

They're in the post-coital haze when the next thing hits Misha, and it's a wave of nausea more powerful than any he's ever felt before. It wallops him, sends him reeling and rolling out from underneath of Jensen, curling up instead of doubling over—and Misha fumbles. Tries to get to the edge of the bed, tries to get the bedside wastebasket… but he doesn't move fast enough.

Another wave hits him as the wastebasket topples over. Sucker-punches him. Even harder than the first one did. He groans, and whines, and hurls—everything comes back up all over Danneel's floor, to the tune of Misha's heart beating so fast, so hard that Jensen has to be hearing it, there's no way he can miss any of this. The first round burns a trench up Misha's throat. He coughs, tries to breath, but all this gets him is the second round coming up because breathing's like getting kicked in the fucking stomach.

Through everything else buzzing in his ears, everything else he's feeling, Misha makes out Jensen hissing a string of fucks, and shits, and a stray goddammit. He feels Jensen's frozen hand squeezing his shoulder as he gropes for the wastebasket, gets it up right and gets the third round of vomiting into it. That one and the fourth are so much smaller than their predecessors. Misha almost wonders why he bothered getting the basket.

None of this has the relieved, purified feeling of making himself sick—he might not ever be able to purge again, assuming he lives though this—because even on the other side of it all, even feeling like he has nothing left to vomit… Misha's entire body still trembles, still leaves him feeling sick down to the deepest pit of his chest and stomach. Jensen's hand rubbing circles up and down his back feels like too much to take on top of it, but Misha says nothing about it. He just whimpers, tries not to open his mouth until he's sure that he can do so without puking.

Once he's sure, he starts to apologize for this sickening display, intends to ask if Jensen can get him to an ER, he might need one—but Jensen cuts him off, says, "Your heart… What the Hell all did you take tonight?"

Misha tries to reach for the tissues and wipe his mouth off but his arms feel so heavy. His whole body feels just so tired—even Jensen's hand on his back makes this worse—it takes an unholy amount of effort to mutter that he has no idea what he took, just between the liquor and the pills and the everything—Jensen's hand slips around Misha's side and comes to rest on his chest. Right over his heart. Which doesn't start racing, or fluttering, or doing anything at all. It just keeps up going thud…… thud…… thud……—dragging on, ponderously slow—

"You're dying?" Jensen says with a Valley Girl's upward inflection, as though he's just noticed that the sky turned neon pink.

"News to me," Misha mumbles, and feels like he's going to hurl again. "You want to get me out—"

"But that doesn't make any sense, how can you be dying—" Jensen grips harder onto Misha's chest, digging in his fingertips and making Misha whine.

"I'm sorta wondering how I'm still conscious," Misha bites out, for all talking makes his chest ache and his stomach churn. And the word blood flashes through his mind, hits Misha hard enough to make him cough up more vomit-remnants that drag along his lips, trailing off instead of just dropping into the wastebasket. "It's called alcohol poisoning, last I checked. Or an OD. How about we get out—"

"But alcohol poisoning's not lethal for… But overdoses can't… Neither of them's supposed to be able to kill us!"

"Jesus Christ, I just fucked a deluded optimist? You're supposed to tell people these things before you put your dick in them—"

"Misha!" Jensen grips his shoulder again and nudges Misha onto his back, tries to coax him up into sitting and slumped against Danneel's headboard. His hands are still fresh-from-the-freezer cold, but the sensation… feels so distant, even when he's smacking up and down Misha's cheeks with a kitten's force and persistence.

Even when he pauses and flicks at Misha's forehead with two fingers, it's doesn't hurt, it's not properly cold, trying to chill him and soundly failing. It's just like the memory of something cold hitting him. Misha whines, tries to bat Jensen's hands away—limply, because his arms won't just move already and won't just play along in getting Jensen's hands off—maybe Misha's dying, but seriously, this is just fucking uncalled for, on his arms' part.

"Misha," Jensen says again, snapping, actually hitting Misha this time—not the gentle, almost playful tapping, but an honest-to-God smack—it takes its sweet time registering… Misha hears the crack of Jensen's hand on his bone and his skin before he feels anything, and when he does… The pain's a pinprick, more than piercing or anything that feels real. Misha guesses he can't blame it for being insufficient. It has a thick haze to cut through. About the only thing he can make out, as the room starts getting fuzzy around the edges, is Jensen's face. Jensen's eyes—they're burning at him, for all he doesn't look that angry—

"Misha, you are literally dying," he snaps. "This doesn't happen to us. It just doesn't—everybody says so. We're not… It's impossible, so for fuck's sake, take it seriously!"

"Oh, take your face seriously," Misha groans. "If you're not going to take me to the ER, can I at least go out quietly?"

"No, you fucking can't! Aren't you listening to me? It's impossible—"

"Well, it's clearly not, since it's happening to me, are you gonna help me or shut up, because this is—"

"No, Misha. It's not. possible. It isn't, it's just not… Drugs cannot kill a fucking vampire!"

Misha laughs at that—he can't help it, even as nausea racks his body again and a wave of vague, stabbing sensations follows it, pricking up all along his muscles. "Oh my God," he manages to get out, breathlessly. "Oh my… Oh my God, Jensen—here I thought that I was the crazy one in this bed, and that I was the one who was gonna get fifty-one fiftied for some… lunatic ideas about vampires—but holy shit, you… you just take… the fucking… cake…"

Misha trails off, and Jensen's face comes into clearer view in front of him—he hadn't even noticed it was a little bit blurred, not until now. Not until Misha's blinking into that face, those wide, smoldering eyes. The way Jensen's jaw's dropped all over again. How his eyebrows are trying to escape his face—Misha forces one of his arms up and rubs at his neck, right over his Adam's apple, right where Jensen was choking him. Just brushing his fingertips over it makes Misha whine, wince in pain…

It's the first thing that's hurt since they finished up. Misha risks the waves of powerful nausea—rides them out to look down at his shoulder, at the clear beginnings of bruises in the shapes of Jensen's fingers. And sure, he's been lax about eating properly, lately? Okay, he knows eating disorders and weight loss can make it easier to bruise—but Misha looks back up to Jensen's face. Stares at him, at his contracted pupils, at his expression that's fear, or hunger, or maybe both—at how sharp his teeth are, and two little hints of white sticking out amongst his gums…

"Oh my God," Misha whispers. "You're serious?"

And Jensen says, "You're human?"

"Of course I'm fucking human, you fucking moron! What the Hell else would I be, do you just assume everybody's like you—because we're not, y'know. Least, I'm guessing we're not, and wait, how did we even… You. You are a walking corpse and we just had—how does it…" Misha groans. Makes a limp gesture in the direction of Jensen's cock. "How can you get it up? How can you—"

"You're literally dying," Jensen snaps, with a barking laugh, "and you're stopping to ask how my dick works—"

"I just had it inside my ass, so yeah, asshole, I think I have a fucking right to know how it fucking works—oh my God, it's not… Vampirism isn't an STD, is it? Why don't you carry condoms around with you if you can give it—"

Another honest-to-God smack cracks into Misha's cheek, and the sound shuts him up before he feels anything.

"Misha!" Jensen huffs. He pauses, glares at Misha, looks down at his own wrist and then back up. "For Christ's sake! Vampirism's not an STD. I could have sex with you because I fed tonight. Julie isn't—she's not like me, but… sometimes she points me to people, and that's not important!"

"Jesus," Misha mutters, chuckling, smirking. "And I thought I was bad about babbling like an idiot–"

"How are you not fucking getting that this is fucking serious. You're probably only even conscious right now because you've had a little bit of…"

A whine creeps into Jensen's voice just before he trails off, with this look where Misha can see the sparks going off and the gears turning in his head. And he says nothing while Misha shrugs, tries to explain that it doesn't really feel that fucking serious to him—then Misha smells it. Thick, and heady, with that hint of something that reminds him of a coppery taste—blood.

He glances down and sees that Jensen's wrist is cut open. With a bright red line in the middle of his translucently pale skin. He gets another whiff of it and his stomach turns over—his heart does some impressive gymnastics of its own, stutters as, for a moment, it gets back to beating properly.

Misha looks back up and sees the fangs protruding from Jensen's gums—long and white and sharper than the rest of his teeth. His mouth hangs open awkwardly, trying to accommodate them. A little more grace and he'd look like a snake, but the fangs are too big for his mouth. And cautiously, like he's approaching a terrified animal, Jensen raises his wrist. Uses his other hand to coax Misha's up, guide Misha into holding his arm. He stops moving them with his arm just inches from Misha's face.

"Just so you know? This is about the absolute last thing I planned on doing tonight," Jensen says, and his accent's gone missing, slipped out of the Texas drawl into something Misha can't place. Something that sounds like it's been all over Europe, all over America—Jensen goes on and it doesn't get any easier to tell what's up with his voice: "And if we had another option…"

He leaves the exact words unspoken. They're still clear enough: If we had any other option, but we don't.

Jensen clenches his hand over top of Misha's, pressing their fingers into his flesh, holding them there—escape's definitely not an option and, unlike Jensen holding down his wrists, this prospect makes Misha tremble with anxiety. "But if you're not going to listen to me…" He sighs, squeezes on Misha's hand again. "If you won't listen, then… then I have to show you. Open your mouth."

Misha doesn't see what other option he has. He doesn't know what else he'd want. It's this or dying—even with super-powered speed, there's no way they're getting to an emergency room now—and the heavy darkness… the trembling that doesn't make anything feel better, it just makes him feel sick, and flawed, and broken down… Misha opens his mouth. Wraps his lips around Jensen's freezing skin. The first drink rushes into his mouth, gets his heart beating properly—and something smacks into Misha. Rouses him better than anything ever has—

Desire, burning sick and twisting all around his stomach, lurching, sending his pulse racing—he bites Jensen's wrist and tries to drink more—he wants to drink more—if it makes him feel this good, then he'll drain every drop—but Jensen jerks his arm away. Sighs and shakes his head.

"Don't," he whispers, trailing his fingertips down Misha's cheek. Misha can feel the chill, finally—he even shivers from it. He can tilt his head and see the drops of blood hitting Danneel's sheets. And Misha groans as Jensen presses two fingers into the pulse point above his jugular vein. He prods at Misha like trying to tap the vein just right, like a nurse who needs blood to run some kind of test.

Jensen explains why they stopped in the sort of voice that's supposed to be reserved for delivering unfortunate diagnoses: "I can't just bleed in your mouth—not for more than that. That's enough to keep you alive for now, just for a little while, but it won't save you. Not unless you want to be a Wraith instead—"

"Like the kind of ghost or like on Stargate, or—"

"Like neither, smart-ass." Jensen doesn't say it, but just from his expression, what he's thinking is clear: How can you be making stupid pop culture references while you're fucking dying.

It's so clear that, for a moment, Misha thinks he hears the words inside his head. In Jensen's own voice, even. He blinks at Jensen, and Jensen blinks back, slightly agog himself. But he shakes his head and goes on: "Wraiths are sort of like a vampire's personal thrall. Like Renfield to Dracula? But that's dangerous, and perverted, a crime against nature—

"Yeah, right, says the walking corpse who feeds on human blood to have sex and who's been alive for how long exactly—"

"I'll tell you later, if we can actually get on with this." For all Jensen rolls his eyes like a petulant teenager, that's a threat as much as a promise. "I'm serious, Misha—you have to know what's going on. And you have to pick, and 'Wraith' isn't on the table. It's a half-life, trapped between life and undeath. Nothing anyone deserves. We even—my kind stopped making Wraiths after the Black Death. And my family hunts down any vampire who Sires one—"

"Sort of vampire vigilante justice, then?" Misha says with a huff, one that turns into another groan as he leans his head around, tries to push his neck further, harder, into Jensen's fingers. Maybe he's having trouble finding the pulse. Maybe they'll get on with this if Misha helps.

"You're not helping with that," Jensen informs him—and they stare at each other again… Did Jensen just hear Misha's voice in his head? Are they both losing their minds? Jensen shakes his head. Picks up where he left off: "And being incredibly snarky isn't helping either. Now do you want to die, or do you want me to—"

"This is a serious one-eighty from what you were pulling on me about consent before, you know that, right?" Unhelpful? Definitely—but the clarity in the room's starting to slip away again—Misha's heart's back to fucking around on him… beating faster, then slowing down, then—"If you're gonna turn me, get on with it, Jensen, because this is…" He tries to wave his hand between them by way of making a point. But his hand's heavy again. His whole arm feels like lead. "I can't with this… I don't… Please hurry up, okay? I don't want to die…"

Jensen sighs and takes his fingers off of Misha's jugular. He caresses Misha's neck instead, laying his whole hand out over the length and curve of it. Gives him a tender, gentle kiss. "As I was trying to say," he hisses into Misha's mouth. "I can't just bleed in you. I've got to drain you first."

Misha nods. Curls a hand around Jensen's still-bleeding wrist. Looking right into the hearts of those green eyes, he whispers, "So do it already. I consent, okay? I consent."

And even if he hadn't? He wouldn't have had time to stop it. Jensen jerks him around in a fluid motion, loses one hand in Misha's hair and grabs his bicep with the other. And Misha splutters. Coughs. Feels like he's going to be sick again. And the whole room erupts in white as the fangs chomp deep into his neck.

***

The damnedest thing is that it doesn't hurt.

And it should hurt—it definitely should—Misha's no expert, but he's being drained of his blood, and he's certain that this should fucking hurt. But it doesn't.

The room never comes back, either. Instead, Misha finds himself stumbling through someplace foggy. And cold. The horizon's grey and practically impenetrable, for the haze sitting on it—Misha knows he's never been here. He's seen pictures that resemble it, just never been himself. But it feels like he has. He shivers as he stumbles down one of the green, muddy hills, heading for a thicket of trees, but his heart still warms with one word in mind: home—

Everything jumps, and Misha's already in the trees. No idea how he got there. But he's taken off his worn, weathered, hide boots and the cold soil worms between his toes, underneath his nails. He draws a cloak tighter around his shoulders—is he waiting for something? What is he waiting for? What could he be—snap! Misha whips around at the sound of breaking twigs. He gasps. Shudders, staring up into the trees at some creature like nothing he's ever seen before. And not just because of how it's so at ease and comfortable, sitting there, perched between two limbs.

It's pale and skinny, clean-shaven but with its nails grown out until they could be claws, a mess of long, scraggly limbs. Its eyes are almost black and it sighs, contentedly, like it's just taken a deep whiff of the finest coffee. "You smell hungry," it whispers, the driness of its voice slices through the thick, moist air. "What are your kinsmen doing, child. It's not yet time for my sacrifice."

"There's been a famine in the village," Misha says, but he's not speaking with his own voice. He recognizes it as Jensen's. Even when the accent's off—is this a memory? "All of us are hungry. And the Elders thought… They decided to send you another. To see if appeasing you would turn the crops around. Bring us better fortune. My lot was drawn, and I'm happy to serve you."

The creature laughs, confesses that it isn't a god but that it can find a use for this sacrifice anyway. It leaps out of the tree and out of sight. Smashes the twigs as it lands behind Jensen. Slithers its spidery fingers around his neck. It all happens too quickly to react to, beyond the pounding in Misha's chest—or is it memory-Jensen's chest—there's the so-cold-it-burns pang of fangs cutting into his neck all over again—the sticky, coppery dripping of blood in his mouth—

Just as Misha tries to glimpse the world through memory-Jensen's new eyes, the scene shifts again. Italy, around the Renaissance, perhaps? Judging from the clothes. It's a dark night in Rome, and the underground tunnel is lit by weak torches but it's still so bright as to be daytime. Misha-but-Jensen stands at the front of a throng of other vampires. There's no body heat among any of them. Only quivering, a few stray whispers.

The creature from the thicket—Nuallán, Misha knows with no idea how that got in his skull—stands at the front of the group, atop a small makeshift stage, cuffed in a stocks that must have something special about it. He struggles but he can't get free. And another vampire, clad in the crimson robes of a Bishop paces along the stage, carrying an elegant sword. Without knowing how he's placed this name either, much less anything else, Misha recognizes this man as Caecilius, one of the eldest vampires, purportedly a descendant of Cain himself.

Wait, but the Biblical Cain wasn't real. Never existed. There's no way that he can be—Misha's own thoughts find themselves drowned out before they can get too far. The anxiety's too loud. And the guilt. Both of them twist and squirm in his chest, fighting for dominance.

Still caught up in his pacing, Caecilius tells everyone assembled how they have brought this apostate before a court whose solemn duty is protecting the safety and traditions of their kind. This court has found him guilty of misusing Wraiths—of soiling the food source of all European vampire-kind by testing his wild theories about disease, turning his Wraiths into carriers of the Black Death. In their unending mercy, the Elders have offered clemency to the apostate's progeny, on the condition that he serves with the Coven of the Left Hand, mete out justice on behalf of the for a minimum of two centuries, or until he should perish himself.

But for this horror, there is only one fate that serves the best interests of their community—and it is too merciful. Had they the time, they would pay him back in full… but if their kind is to survive, this cannot be allowed to passs. The sword crashes down on the back of Nuallán's neck, sends his head dropping to the stage with a sick, wet thump. Caecilius grabs one of the torches off the cragged rock wall, sets it to both head and body.

And over the roaring cheer from the crowd, he shouts that so has their kind's greatest enemy become their friend, purifying vampire-kind of this pussing sore—

The rest of the images come and go too quickly to properly understand. He's clawing his way through mountains of corpses on one battlefield. And then another. And finally, one that Misha recognizes as the Civil War—blue and grey… It can't be anything else. And in the middle of the field, he stops to suck on some dying soldier's wrist.

He sees flashes of faces, all of them in different rooms at different times. There's a short vampire with chestnut hair and eyes the color of honey. There's an impossibly tall one whose hair ought to be in a ponytail, and whose smile looks desperate, straining his face, like it was hacked there by someone with no idea how to wield a knife. Misha almost feels sorry for the second one—he looks so lost.

A blonde girl with full, pouting lips and enormous-looking eyes. Another blonde, who has a haughty expression on her face, and links arms with a smiling, friendly-looking brunette—Misha can't make out what the latter's saying, but he can peg that accent, Londoner, and fairly contemporary. There's the tiny vampire again, in a bridal carry, held by another tall one—this one's hair is darker, though, and tamed. Faintly curly, a little long, but slicked back off his face. And there's…

…Doctor Vantoch? …It's unmistakably her. She's wearing her Kripke-U faculty ID in a clip on her jacket's front pocket, and she's warning Misha-but-Jensen to be careful with whatever it is he thinks he's doing, because she won't answer for him to the Elders if it goes pear-shaped and fucked up on everybody—

The next sight is a window. It's Misha's window. He can see his own silhouette—is he unpacking? It looks like he's unpacking—but no. No, this can't be—but is it?

The light in Misha's room flips off and Misha-but-Jensen jumps off his perch on the next building's roof. He leaps over the whole alley and lands with a thud on the fire escape. Misha-himself comes up to the window—oh, God, he was even looking thin and exhausted then, he must be in a right state now…

And Misha-but-Jensen smiles, then jumps back up. Scales the other fire escapes, all the way to the top of the roof, and runs. Hops from rooftop to rooftop until he's some forty blocks north of Misha's place and certain that he's made a clean getaway—

And then the room shocks back into clear focus, but not from Misha-himself's perspective.

There's something on his wrist—something warm, and wet, and he groans more powerfully than he's ever done before—and he looks down.

He sees himself. Lips around an arm that isn't his but has to be. A trickle of blood still trailing away from the puncture wounds on his neck.

Misha is watching himself drink Jensen's blood.

Then the wrist pulls away and darkness smacks into his view, whallops him and he's certain that he's staying down this time. Maybe he'll just die here after all.

***

But he doesn't die. Not right off. He just crashes back into himself, into his own body.

Misha gasps and blinks up at Jensen. Licks at his lips, drags his tongue around his mouth, just in case he's missed any blood.

Jensen's kneeling before him, but sighs. Sinks back into sitting there—Misha grabs for his arm again, and his heart skips a beat when he moves his quickly enough to grab Jensen. Yank his wrist back to his mouth. Misha bites into it again and sucks on the wound.

"No. No, no, no… Misha—stop that… Misha, no…" Jensen groans, struggling until he gets away. Drags himself back, away from Misha, and says, "You've had enough, alright? You don't have to drain me for the change to happen."

"But I don't feel any different," he snaps. "When's it going to start. How can it start when I don't feel any different?"

Misha sighs, shaking his head, itching to tear something apart, like all his so-called psychotic hallucinations have made him want—and how many of them are called into question by this whole oh, by the way, vampires are real after all business… Misha starts trying to comb his hair back off his face. But he doesn't get very far at all.

His hand's trembling. He doesn't feel any different, but his hand is trembling. The trembling spreads to the rest of his body, spiders out through his muscles and turns into a hard, sick shaking—the last thing Misha knows, he's muttering, "Oh, God dammit…"

Of all the fucking times for him to have to eat his words. Of all the fucking times—

***

Pain. White-hot and searing through Misha's vision, his muscles, his mind.

He lurches forward. Crashes onto the mattress so hard he's afraid of his nose breaking. He curls up, drawing his legs up around himself. He scratches at the back of his neck, drags his nails over his hairline in long, slow strokes. Then he springs back up, drops onto his back like an anvil.

And still, there's only pain. That's all Misha feels. All he's aware of. In myriad manifestations. The feeling of thousands of insects creeping and crawling through his body, prodding and scraping at his muscles, snapping at him with pincers. The itch of his skin and how it burns, how it keeps telling him to just scratch until he bleeds already, it's the only way to get the bugs out, the only way to get rid of this feeling, and he does want to get rid of it doesn't he, of course he does, why wouldn't he, all he has to do is scratch—

He can see the rest of the room around him. He can see the bedsheets and pillows, the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. His heart races, pounding and ringing all the way up to his ears, and he can hear, if only vaguely, Jensen's voice telling him that everything's going to be fine, Misha just has to wait it out—how's he supposed to wait out his body flinging him around like the fucking Exorcist, how's he supposed to wait out wanting to claw his stomach open—Misha takes control long enough to put his hands on his stomach, and he gets used to it—

To the lull in the action. Even if he can't hear anything but his pulse—speeding up and slowing down, and speeding up, and slowing down, and slowing down, and slowing down—and even if the sharpest feeling is the empty rushing in his skull—Breathing's like kicking himself in the lungs. His chest heaves. And that's just for the shallowest breaths. They come in slower, and harder, and slower still, because Misha has to force himself to take them in and they're so wobbly, so unstable—Letting each one out, Misha can't be sure he'll get another one in again—

He jolts up again, his body moving without his assistance, his bones cracking as he falls on his stomach at the side of the bed. Misha clings to the mattress—or tries to. As soon as his fingers press into the corner, the nails start growing. Faster than they should, and harder. They rip through the fabric, cut down to the stuffing, and the cracking noises get louder. They wrack through his hands, forcing them to bend. Then through his back and shoulders. His legs end up contorted with a stomach-turning sound that Misha hopes he never has to hear for the rest of his life.

The rest of Misha's body is a crash of sickness as his heart finally stops. It roils up and around inside of him—he hacks and gags as something burns up his throat—coughs on it as his body tries to hold it back, feels it straining inside him, too large to get out without his help, without him coughing harder, all but punching himself in the stomach to make what little air he has in his lungs come back out and take this infernal whatever-it-is with them…

Misha watches as the thing slips and drips too slowly out of his mouth and into the wastebasket… It's black, and it's thick, and as it slops into the mess with Misha's vomit, he could swear that he sees it moving. Squirming around the bottom of the basket, pulsing like a beating heart…

Misha screams as his body takes control back from him—as it bends him back further than his spine should allow him to go—as the sickening crack hacks through the air—and it's a small mercy that this is where he finally passes out.

***

Misha blinks around somewhere else entirely. Somewhere cold. He's on the floor in a basement—at least, he guesses he is, based on how hard it is and the fact that the room's so chilly. He's also clothed—back in his jeans, t-shirt, and sweater, even his shoes—but he feels the dirt and grime around him slicking over his hands. And he can smell something that reeks like soap and antiseptic, so someone must've cleaned him up. Misha can't imagine that was a nice job.

Trying to sit up rewards him with a sharp pang in his head—sets him reeling and groaning back to the floor. So he rolls onto his side and just tries to breathe. First thing he notices about this: deep breaths don't really make him feel better, physically speaking. His lungs expand, but it doesn't hurt, even as they push against the inside of his chest. Holding his breath for a count of five makes him feel calmer, but… it's not physically. And he can tell the difference, though he's not sure how or why.

It must be some side-effect of the change that Jensen didn't warn him about.

Not that Jensen had time to warn him about that much of anything.

Anyway, it doesn't matter. Misha will just get used to it, he guesses—and more important than any other aspect of this crap is that Misha's head hurts. Even staying on his side, there's a throbbing, aching feeling in his skull, rattling around in there and beating itself against his insides. Whatever's kicking him in the brain needs to let the fuck up. He's gotten the point already: changing into a vampire isn't for wimps.

Accompanying that pain is the sensation of hunger gnawing at his insides, and Misha actually wants to eat something for the first time in… Christ, it's probably been months. …He doesn't want just anything, either. There are hints of blood throughout the basement. Misha can smell them—he can also make out the mostly faded stench of bleach that must've been used to clean up the mess—but more than anything else? He smells the blood—mostly human, some cattle, a few hints of… is that rat?

Misha's stomach churns at the thought of being in the same room as old rat blood—vaguely, he wishes he'd throw up—but that lasts until he remembers the last thing that happened before he passed out, remembers puking up the thing, that… whatever-it-was that was moving and seemed alive—and this just makes him more acutely aware of the gaping, empty sensation, the hunger, scratching at his stomach, his chest, his muscles.

And all of this would be so much easier to deal with were it not for the disembodied, unidentified voices that Misha hears shouting at each other. Especially since they're apparently discussing him: "I'm sorry, Jensen, but the last time I checked, your name-tag doesn't say, Doctor Come With Me If You Want To Live!"

"Jesus Christ, Richard, I saved his life—" There's one that Misha can pick out, even if Jensen's still missing that Texas drawl, still talking in the amalgam accent that Misha can't place. And something else that's off about Jensen's voice, and about the others—

"That's exactly our point, though—" But first? Misha knows that voice, too. It's just weird to hear her raising it, instead of lecturing with it.

"Vicki, how the Hell are you on his side here? I kept Misha from fucking dying. He asked me to turn him—" They sound sort of… not muffled, not exactly, but far away. Or like Misha's hearing them through a barrier.

"I'm on the side of good sense here, Jensen," Doctor Vantoch says, slipping back into the voice that Misha's more familiar with, sounding more like she's done in classes, "and what you did was noble, in its own particular, highly debatable way, but it still wasn't a good idea—"

"Why not—"

"Hi, new guy," says someone whose voice sounds so much closer. It's louder, too—at first, it slashes through Misha's awareness of the room around him, makes him flinch and reach to cover his ears—but the next sensation is someone rubbing at his shoulder. Someone's large, strong hands helping coax Misha up. Sinking into someone's huge, solid chest once he's mostly vertical, and someone's burly arms wrapping around Misha's shoulders, giving him a hug.

Misha can't remember the last time he's gotten a hug, lately. He's pretty sure that it would've come from Genevieve, and he doesn't count Jensen holding him up before they fucked… but it's been a while. Sighing, he lets himself slip further into the embrace, even if it's cold and whoever this is is too muscular for leaning so heavily on them to be comfortable. Vaguely, he hopes for Jensen—even knowing that Jensen's body is completely different, even knowing that he's off somewhere else, getting called to the fucking carpet over this—

And anyway, the stench around this guy's all wrong. "You smell like cigarettes and cotton candy," Misha mumbles. "…Sorry if that's, like. If that's not kosher or anything? Jensen didn't really explain all the vampire etiquette, but… I kinda got that you—well, I guess that'd be we… I got that talking about smell's a thing that happens."

"Usually that's, like… We usually save it for if you want to fuck somebody or turn them?" The guy explains, in a lazy voice that somehow manages to be deep and chirpy. "And not like Jensen's claimed you or anything, but… It's too soon? The next few days are gonna be Hell, you're not gonna want me to go making that worse for you? So… you're just getting used to it and you, I'm not gonna hold you to it."

"Thanks for that," Misha sighs, and drops his head back onto the guy's shoulder. Slowly, he gets to work on opening his eyes again, waits for the room to come into focus. He tries to listen while the guy explains that his name's Jared, he's one of Jensen's fellow members in this chapter of the Coven of the Left Hand, and they're waiting for someone called Rachel to get back from fixing up Misha's room—

First off, though, Misha's distracted by how not only are there vampires? But they have secret clubs, too? What do vampires even need secret clubs for? Aren't they secret enough

And more importantly, there are the voices in the other room: "Jensen," insists the guy who's apparently called Richard, "there are reasons why we don't turn someone who's dying for some cause other than us. Did you just decide you wanted to forget that today, or what?"

"They're just myths, though," Jensen snaps. "All the stories about them, about the… mental and emotional linking, or whatever's supposed to happen. In all my centuries, I've never encountered anything like that. We can't even verify that the stories are true, or that any of the characters actually existed, or that this isn't just some human superstition that we let ourselves adopt because it made us feel better about being monsters."

"You know that I love your optimism, Jensen," Doctor Vantoch says with a sigh, "but there's a time and a place for it, and both of those are, not right now. This is serious."

Misha snickers, thinking that it's under his breath enough that Jared won't hear it—but he still asks what's so funny. Sighing, Misha asks if super-hearing comes standard with the vampiric change. And Jared confirms that yeah, vampires have a really fine-tuned sense of hearing—but he's not sure why Misha's asking, really, even considering how little Jensen told Misha about the change?

"Because I'm hearing Jensen, Doctor Vantoch, and some dude named Richard yelling at each other?" Misha tells him. "And… I don't even need them to shut up, but… They're in another room, so… I'm just over hearing it? You know what I mean, right."

"I think I follow, yeah…" Jared huffs and rests his chin on top of Misha's head. "But they're not even in this building? They're… Well, last I heard, they were on the other side of the compound?"

Misha sighs and starts to ask for clarification—hopes to God that this isn't what Richard and Doctor Vantoch seem to think it is—but before he finishes his sentence, the door opens with a creak. Standing on the other side of it is the wide-eyed, pouty-lipped blonde from the visions, or whatever they were, that Misha had while drinking Jensen's blood. She helps Jared get Misha on his feet, and with a shrug, introduces herself as Rachel.

Misha just wonders who he should ask about the whole situation with his psych meds, and whether or not he'll still need to take his pills, do psych meds even work on vampires—but all he gets out of Jared and Rachel is stared at. They understand what he's asking, but don't have any answers for him. Jared rocks back and forth on his feet, frowning in a way that's less awkward and more cowed puppy, which is when Misha realizes that Jared was in his visions, too. Jared was the vampire with the desperate, broken-looking smile.

Jared and Rachel lead Misha to his new bedroom in utter silence, after that. The crunch of snow underfoot grates on Misha's eardrums, harsh and head-splitting. And in an odd way, it's kind of nice to know that getting turned into a blood-sucking leech-monster doesn't mean that Misha's completely lost who he is? There could be better signs of this, but… he still makes things awkward for people, and that has to count for something.

He still ends up asking to have some alone time, though, once they're at the room. It's quiet, comfortable enough but sparse—just a desk, a made-up bed, and the wastebasket—and Misha just needs to spend some time alone. Nothing personal, he assures Jared and Rachel as he goes to shut the door. He's just tired, and he's got kind of a lot to wrap his head around.

Rachel wishes him the best of luck with that, and Jared gives Misha's shoulder a reassuring squeeze. As soon as they're gone, Misha crashes into his bed, intent on relaxing somewhere comfortable and sussing out whether or not he can sleep like this. As a whole new species.

***

He doesn't have an answer to that by the time Jensen and Doctor Vantoch let themselves in. The bed's comfortable, at least, and Misha knows that he can daze out. It's sort of like a half-sleep. Like all the times he's ever nodded off in the middle of working—and it's a point in vampirism's favor that Misha doesn't have any manifestations of his psychotic features. No wandering thoughts that turn into hallucinations about mutilated wrists or cheery fantasies of slicing his psychiatrist's throat.

Doctor Vantoch has a thermos in her hands—Misha smells the blood even before she cracks the top off. He knows that it's human, he knows that he ought to care that someone's just died for him, but he still grabs at the thermos as soon as it's close enough. He drinks the blood, throws himself headlong into doing so—it's not exactly delicious. In fact, it's on the chilled side and he comes up with more than a few thick patches that roll around on his tongue and make him wonder if it hasn't started coagulating on him.

Still, Misha might not mind drowning himself in this blood. It hits the palate well enough, quiets the hunger, even makes his head ache less. He only slows his pace because Jensen, sitting on the furthest edge of the bed from Misha, warns him not to go making himself sick.

"I'm a vampire now," Misha scoffs. "Since when is getting sick on blood an issue?"

"Well, it's usually not?" Jensen says. "Not for most of us… You're still pretty new to this, though, and it's kind of a mess—the first few days after getting turned, I mean. Plus, there aren't a lot of ways to know… We can't be sure if the blood's—"

"Matt and Katie brought it in for you, and they can be fairly indiscriminate, as hunters," Doctor Vantoch explains, pushing her silver wire-rim glasses up her nose. "They care more for the chase than for whether or not the end result is worth the effort that they put into it. There's little way of telling what all they've brought back for you, whether or not the human was intoxicated or in good health, so caution is advised."

"Oh," Misha says, and feels like an idiot for not thinking of that on his own. Fortunately, he doesn't need to think that much. Doctor Vantoch does most of the talking, and all he needs to do is keep up with her. She makes it easy enough. At least there aren't any more major revelations to stomach.

As far as Jensen told them, Misha's change was fairly standard—barring the circumstances under which they embarked on it. There hasn't been a case like theirs for untold centuries, so research needs to be done before anyone can tell what they should expect. Aside from that, though, Misha's going to be disoriented for a few days, not to mention the hunger—and these are both very important reasons for his presence here. He can't ride out the early transformation alone or around too many people.

He could become an incredible danger to himself, to humans, and to other vampires. Hence, coming all the way out here. They're outside the city, by a considerable amount—some fifty miles or so. This farm compound has been in Doctor Vantoch's family since she first came to this country from the Old World. It initially belonged to one of her descendants and, thanks to a crafty arrangement, she came into ownership of it. Strictly speaking, they prefer to turn people out here, but extenuating circumstances are what they are.

More important than a personal history lesson, Misha's currently in the care of the Coven of the Left Hand—so named because they represent, in antiquated terms, the swift left hand of the Council of Elders, the governing body of vampire-kind. Meaning, the Coven dispenses justice upon those who break the laws that, while strict to some, keep their kind alive.

(Misha keeps his eyes firmly on the mattress and his lips locked around the rim of the thermos when she mentions this, intent on not telling her that he heard this already—because if there's any risk of getting himself or Jensen in trouble for whatever it was Misha saw during his change? Then Misha's not willing to take that chance. Not when these people rain unholy Hell on people as a calling. Not when there's no way to trust that they wouldn't completely obliterate Jensen and Misha over this.

…Never mind that Jensen is one of these people. He's currently at risk of getting into shit over this, too, so he's not like them. He's different. …As soon as he thinks this, Misha can't quite fathom why. Whether or not Jensen saved his life, he has no reason not to think that Jensen's any different than his fellows.)

Apparently, there's at least one count on which Misha hasn't been going crazy: Genevieve and Danneel are definitely vampires—and Doctor Vantoch rattles the bare-bones versions of their histories out of a register of local vampires that she keeps on her PDA. Genevieve was turned in Renaissance Italy, en route to the convent her parents meant to send her, and Elton Daniel Harris was turned in pre-Revolution Paris, when he still went by Étienne—the name change happened at some point around the turn of the twentieth century, while he was living in New Orleans—

"Her name's Danneel, actually?" Misha pipes up. He cows immediately, barely able to make eye-contact with Doctor Vantoch—he nearly misses it that she's smiling at him. A small smile, and hard to read—but nevertheless, it's a smile.

"That's the next part of her profile, yes," she tells him. "You'll have to forgive these write-ups. We've had a few of the neophytes—that is, younger vampires—digitizing all of the Coven's and the Council's records, but no one's had time to groom them. It's a crapshoot enough with finding the grammar updated to something more legible and less flowery, never mind more complicated issues of gender and identity."

Misha sighs and supposes that this makes sense. "There's not any way that I can call them, is there?" Holding the thermos between his legs, he absently pats himself down. His phone isn't in his jeans anywhere. "They don't—I didn't know that they're… They're going to wonder where I am—"

"Jared's probably got your phone," Jensen says, rolling his eyes. "Good rule to keep in mind with Jay? Don't trust him with anything shiny."

"And we've sent someone to talk to your friends," says Doctor Vantoch. "They should be getting a visit from Alona very soon, if she hasn't gotten there already. She'll let them know that you're in good hands, for now, and if you don't want to stay here when the adjustment period is over with, you're more than welcome to return home."

"But it's generally kind of better to… Strength in numbers?" Jensen combs a hand back through his hair, looking more worried than Misha would've thought him capable

Doctor Vantoch smirks. "And needless to say, you have an extension on all of your assignments for my class."

Misha guesses that this all sounds fine to him, but he's thankful that: a. Doctor Vantoch doesn't have too much more to go over with him; and b. the biggest revelation is that he's allowed to call her, "Vicki" now, as long as they aren't in class. Even after being long since past the point of thinking that teachers' lives only exist in classrooms, Misha still feels so weird and unsettled by this idea. It's like trying to force a dog to walk on its hind legs.

The rest of her chat is just going over what vampirism means—newfound strengths, newly acquired weaknesses, how every vampire has some unique manifestation of the different traits and it might take a while to figure out what all of are Misha's—not that she advises pushing his limits until he's settled into his new species. Misha hardly looks up from his thermos. He mostly used how tired he is as an excuse to get his free time back from Rachel and Jared—but it's catching up to him now, and he likes Doctor Vantoch—Vicki—but he can't wait to see her back.

***

After Doctor Vantoch's left, Jensen and Misha spend a decent while sitting in silence. Jensen doesn't make a move to get closer to Misha, and Misha mostly contents himself to finish up his thermos. Even if the blood's gotten colder and Misha's gotten less forgiving of its less-than-appetizing state, as he's drunk more. But he's still hungry, so he can still handle how it feels heavier, thicker.

Finally, though, the silence has gnawed too thoroughly on Misha's nerves, and he just has to say something. He has no idea what, and no idea whether or not it's fortunate that his mouth takes over for him: "I heard what you guys were saying," he mutters. "While I was with Jared while you and Vicki and Richard? His name's Richard, right? …Well, I heard it from the other side of the compound."

"Yeah, that'll be the…" Jensen sighs and, with two fingers, mimes tracing a line between his forehead and Misha's. "That'll be the psychic link thing. …You'll probably meet Richard sometime tomorrow. He and Vicki run this chapter of the Coven. I've been with her since the Council killed my Sire."

"I saw that," Misha admits in a low voice, like this is impossibly precious information—and who knows? It might be. "When you were changing me? I… I saw a lot of different things. Memories of yours? Things you were thinking about while killing me? I've got a few theories, as much as I can come up with any right now, so… stop me when I guess it?"

"Your guesses are as good as mine, Pretty Boy." Jensen chuckles, and Misha kind of wants to punch him, reiterate that this is serious and not a laughing matter—but, then again, he probably deserves this. Karmic retribution or whatever. "Anyway," Jensen says, "just so you know? Following you around like that was part of a courtship ritual, though… it's probably nullified by the part where you weren't a vampire until a few hours ago."

"Yeah, no, I… I sort of picked that up while I was kicking around inside of your thoughts. They were… interesting would be a good word for them?" Idly, Misha licks around his mouth, just making sure he hasn't missed any blood.

"Hey, I saw some pretty choice things about you, too… What the Hell possessed you to go to your senior prom in drag and a tiara? I mean, you looked great, but… why?"

He says this fondly, and smiling, and all Misha can do in response to it is shrug. "I just can't believe that my dying thoughts were about my fucking prom."

"Pre-death thoughts," Jensen corrects him. "Technically, your dying thoughts were probably about getting up that bile—don't ask me what it was, we still have no idea and… poking at it with different eras' approaches to scientific investigation has gotten our kind approximately nowhere, so… commonly accepted theories? Magic did it, it's some inherent humanity that our species's bodies reject—the milk of human kindness, like?"

"What do you think it is?" As soon as he says this, Misha realizes that he cares about the question and its answer so much more than he thought. The desire to just know what Jensen thinks writhes around his lungs, until Jensen says—

"I've got no idea. I thought it was my soul, for a while… That was after Christian missionaries started coming up into the British Isles. Nuallán hated them, so we moved to hang with some of Vikings for a while. They didn't buy his, 'I'm a god given humanoid form' shtick, but we managed to find a nice life. And the things the Christians had said about souls and taking care of them… They just made sense, you know?"

Misha doesn't know, but he nods and pretends that he does, just so Jensen won't stop talking. His and Jensen's reference points for Christians talking about souls must be worlds apart, and Misha's not sure there's that much common ground between them. Mostly, he's used to the particularly offensive assholes back home who told Misha and Mom that both of their souls were damned after the prom incident—Misha for wearing a dress to prom, not to mention taking another guy as his date, and Mom for letting him.

"I know you don't know what I'm talking about," Jensen tells him. He mimes the link between them. "I can't really hear you thinking it, but I can sort of feel it? Anyway, hearing a bunch of Christians go on about souls was what started my, 'I'm such a damned, inhuman monster, why am I like this' period. From what I can tell? We all go through some version of it, but bit of advice? Get it out of the way quickly. It sucks to go through when it's yours, and being on the other end of it's insufferable for everybody else."

Jensen pauses, sighing heavily and scratching at the back of his neck. Every word he's thrown out there so far has a dusty quality to it, like it's been a while since he's told this story and he has to get the cobwebs off. "Which doesn't really answer your question, I guess… But, yeah. I don't have any idea what the stuff is. All I know is that souls are real, and I'm pretty sure that I still have one, so… Got any other questions? Maybe I can answer something else for you."

"Yeah, I do," Misha sighs. He's not even sure that he wants to ask it, but even so, he has to know: "If there are so many problems with changing someone who's dying, then why not just let me die? I mean, isn't it pretty shady? Telling people you'll save them, but the only way is to turn them and not going over what it means—and it would've been easier for you? So why not just let me die?"

Jensen wrinkles his nose, and this quickly spreads to wrinkling his entire face. He looks at Misha as though he just proposed jumping off of buildings. "What kind of asshole would I be to do that to you?" he says. "Left you to die, or dumped you in an emergency room when you were past the point of them being able to help you? It's not like I sought you out while you were dying and went, 'I'll save your life and not tell you anything about what this means, at all, nothing.'"

Misha supposes that that makes sense, but still doesn't really address the whole issue of problems that arise from turning a dying person to save them.

"Turning's a consent issue for a lot of our kind," Jensen explains. "Werewolves can get away with not asking for it. They don't have to live until, 'to be decided, plan for forever' and most of the wild ones die pretty young—but it's more complicated with us. That's why I asked about everything. Turning someone who doesn't want it… That's what happened to Jared, one of the many things that did—"

Misha frowns. "Werewolves are real? …And I mean, what's wrong with Jared? He seems okay, just from the little bit—"

"Well, he isn't," Jensen huffs. "Give him time. It'll show. All of the gentle giant, adorable puppy crap is masking more problems than you want to deal with—and that's why I tried to make sure you had your wits about you. That you wanted it. And I didn't know about the other stuff. The link stuff. I'm old, Misha, and all the vamps I know who are older than I am? They think all of that business about empathic links is a bunch of bullshit myths—"

"Would it change the situation any," Misha cuts in, still reeling from some of Jensen's revelations, "if somebody were to, say… Sleep with someone they had reason to believe was dangerous, potentially lethal, hoping that he'd kill them? And maybe he changed his mind when he actually started dying, but now he's still not sure if he's. Y'know. Just speaking hypothetically, here."

Jensen blinks at Misha for a moment, and arches an eyebrow instead of saying that he knows this isn't as hypothetical as Misha wants him to believe. "Well," he supposes, "I'd say that that's pretty shady of him. It doesn't completely change anything that happened, since he still decided that he wanted to live, but… Look, I hate equivocating about it. Can we just agree that we're mutually sketchy, so maybe we deserve each other?"

"Just what I've always wanted," Misha sighs. "To be some parasitic walking corpse who's bound to someone who admits they're both fucked in the head. Oh, and I'm a whole new species, too—also a parasitic walking corpse. Hell is other people, indeed."

"Well, all I can say to that is: you're gonna have to get used to it, Pretty Boy." Jensen's smile… isn't even really a smile. Misha can clearly see the force and strain tugging at it, and the thought that flashes through his head is simple: that Jensen doesn't have the patience for this.

"Yeah, well… We've still got vulnerabilities, right? What if I didn't want to get used to it?"

"Then get used to it anyway," Jensen says as easily as reporting the weather. "Because I've been shot, stabbed, run over by a MAC truck, force-fed garlic by the clove, and about twenty other different things… and I'm still kicking around. We've got our weaknesses, but it's almost impossible for anyone but a werewolf or another vampire to kill us. Even fire isn't foolproof; there's a technique to it. You're not getting out of this, so you've got to make do."

Misha sighs and supposes that Jensen has a very good point. "And on top of everything else I've had to learn tonight?" he says, fully intent on changing the subject to something nicer. "I guess that werewolves are real too, now?"

"And ghosts," says Jensen. "And selkies, sirens, mermaids… all of the aquatic half-humanoids. I've run into some dragons, but they've mostly died out, I think. Or learned to disguise themselves as people—it's hard to tell with them, they're tricky. Manticores are definitely endangered, though, and chimeras. The Seelie and Unseelie Courts are extinct, but no one really cares because the fae were assholes anyway."

"What about witches?" Misha wraps his hands tighter around the thermos and tries to drain the last few drops of it. "Are they real?"

"No. No. God, no. Don't be ridiculous." Jensen sighs, looks pensive for a moment. "…Well, I mean, there are historical witches, I knew a couple of them, attended a handful of executions for them, but they weren't actually doing magic. Magical thinking, sure, but… no real spell-work or anything. Just a bunch of rituals and some humans with overactive imaginations. Don't be ridiculous."

"Hey, you try having your introduction to the supernatural be waking up in somebody's fucking basement, as an entirely different species—or, y'know, getting told that you're dying and having someone say, oh my god, you're human like it's some big deal—and then you get back to me on whether or not it's unreasonable to ask if witches are real." Misha guesses he's being a little bit vindictive in saying all this—

But, on the other hand, all he has to do is smirk while he polishes off the rest of his blood, and Jensen laughs his ass off. Finally decides that it's alright to move and, in a flash, he's slumped against the headboard, at Misha's side.

"So, I take it that means you're okay with this after all?" he says, and there's a glint of eagerness in his eyes that makes telling him the truth seem like a very, very bad idea.

Misha tries not to think about walking out into the sunlight, or drowning himself, or hoping that he has a counting weakness, then setting himself with an impossible task—counting all the sand in the Sahara, or something equally ridiculous. He tries to stifle his thoughts about just… not drinking blood until he's, for all intents and purposes a corpse, or if that's even how it works.

At least consciously, he thinks about Tom and Allison, about their Mom, about how he's lucky that his two best friends are vampires but what's he going to do about his family—and he throws in some thoughts about cute kittens, just in case Jensen is listening.

And as far as responses go: Misha just nods, and tells Jensen, "I don't know if I'm okay with it yet? I'm as okay with it as I can be… But it's been a really eventful night, so it's hard to tell, and… I guess if I'm not okay with it tomorrow, then all I can really do is work on that, you know?"

There's so much hope in that statement. And in the enthused smile that Jensen gives him, the gentle, excited kiss. But the rush of everything's subsided—the thrill of getting into danger, the relief of getting out, the kick of draining Jensen's blood—and, sure, Misha might not have the psychotic features anymore… but the empty feeling's back. The one that got him into this mess in the first place. And now Misha has no idea what to do with it, since he rather doubts that pills work on vampires. Not unless they drink from someone who's taken the meds.

Just… fuck. Misha doesn't know if he can handle only drinking blood from people who take antidepressants for the rest of his fucking eternity. He doesn't know if he can handle eternity. Or if he'll even last that long.

— fin —