Page 44 of Subduing the Shark

"Bed," Jack said.

They made it to the bed. Clothes came off in the short distance between the door and the mattress, Harold's shirt caught on his badge, Jack's jeans kicked into the corner. They fell onto the white sheets, Harold on his back, Jack above him, and for the first time Jack was on top and looking down and the position that had frozen him on the apartment floor during the wrestling didn't freeze him.

"I want to see you," Jack said. "I want to do this face to face."

Harold reached up and put his hand on Jack's jaw. The familiar gesture, thumb on cheekbone. "Whatever you want."

Jack lowered himself and kissed Harold and their bodies aligned, chest to chest, hips to hips, and Jack reached between them and took Harold's cock in his hand and stroked him until Harold's hips were lifting off the bed and his breathing was shot. Then he reached for the bottle on the nightstand and opened himself with his own fingers while Harold watched, and the watching was part of it, Harold's eyes on his body, dark and hungry and tender all at once as Harold stroked over Jack's hips.

"You're so fucking beautiful," Harold whispered.

Jack wanted to argue. He nearly did. But he couldn't get the words out when Harold was staring up at him like that. Like he was precious. Like he was a gift and not just another body, not another hole.

Jack lowered himself onto Harold's cock and they both stopped breathing. The angle was different from the pool and the carpet. Deeper. Harold's hands rested on his hips and held but didn't guide. Jack set the pace. Slow at first, adjusting, finding the rhythm, and then faster as his body took over, the pleasure built. Harold's hands tightened on his hips.

"Jack." Rough, reverent. "Look at me."

Jack looked at him. Brown eyes in a flushed face, the big shoulders pressed into the white sheets, the broad hands on Jack's hips. Harold, who had sat on concrete steps at three in the morning. Harold, who had named the thing the shiver did with one word. Harold, who had stopped every time Jack went blank. Harold, who had shifted to bloodhound and run across the city and pressed his nose against Jack's bloody face on the concrete floor of a pool.

Jack kept his eyes open. He rode Harold with his eyes open and his hands on Harold's chest and the pleasure building in his body like a wave he was swimming toward instead of running from. Harold's hand wrapped around his cock and stroked him in time and the dual sensation pushed Jack toward the edge and he stayed present for every second of the approach.

"Fuck yes, Harold," Jack said when he came. Not a shout, not a gasp. His name, said clearly, with his eyes open, looking directly at the man underneath him. Harold followed him over, his body arching off the mattress, his hands gripping Jack's thighs, and the sound he made was Jack's name in return.

They lay in the white sheets in the apartment with the city lights coming through the window. Harold's arm was aroundJack's shoulders. Jack's head was on Harold's chest. The heartbeat under his ear was steady and slow.

"Stay," Jack said.

"I wasn't planning on leaving."

Jack closed his eyes. He slept in Harold's arms in his own bed in a room with a lock on the door, and he didn't go blank once.

Epilogue

The diner on Industrial Road served breakfast all day and didn't ask questions about its clientele, which made it the unofficial morning-after spot for half the shifters in the warehouse district. Jack had never been inside. He'd walked past it a hundred times on his way to KK, smelled the bacon and coffee through the open door, and seen the booths through the window. It had never occurred to him to go in. The shiver ate at home. Eating alone in a diner was the kind of thing that drew attention, and sharks who drew attention answered for it.

Jack walked through the door at ten on a Saturday morning and found the booth in the back where Harold, Nero, and Amani were already sitting.

Harold saw him first. Brown eyes warm, a cup of coffee in front of him and an empty seat beside him. He'd saved the inside of the booth, the seat against the wall, which meant Jack wouldn't have his back to the room. Harold did things like that. Small things, constant things, adjustments to the world that made it easier for Jack to be in it.

Nero was across from Harold, compact and precise in a black t-shirt, dark eyes tracking Jack's approach the way they tracked everything. He had tea instead of coffee because Nero was the kind of person who drank tea at a diner and didn't care who had an opinion about it. Beside him, Amani was reading the menu with the focus of someone who intended to order everything on it. His hoodie was unzipped. His sleeves were at his elbows. When he looked up and saw Jack, he grinned.

"Sit down," Amani said. "I'm getting a massive stack of pancakes and I need someone to judge me for it."

Jack slid into the booth beside Harold. Harold's hand found his thigh under the table, a warm steady pressure that said I'm here. Jack let his leg press against Harold's and felt the contact settle into his body like a key turning in a lock.

They ordered. Harold got eggs and toast. Nero got oatmeal, which earned him a look from Amani that could have curdled the cream in Harold's coffee. Amani got pancakes, a side of bacon, scrambled eggs, hash browns, and orange juice. Jack looked at the menu for a long time and ordered the salmon omelet because the diner had one and because he'd discovered, in the weeks since sushi with Harold, that he liked fish prepared by people who cared about food.

The conversation was easy. Not weightless, not without history, but easy in the way that conversations between people who'd survived something together could be when they'd come out on the other side and were still sitting at the same table. Nero told a story about a patron at the club who'd gotten his collar stuck on a doorknob during a scene and they'd had to call maintenance. Amani described Reza's latest napkin catastrophe in detail that suggested a full investigation had been conducted. Harold mentioned that his mother had sent a picture of the dogs and passed his phone around and Amani spent thirty seconds cooing over a dog in a bandana.

Jack sat in the booth and listened and ate his omelet and felt the strangeness of it. Four people at a table. No agenda. No ritual. No rules about who spoke and who listened and what was owed afterward. Just breakfast.

When the plates were cleared and the coffee was refilled, Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out the folded hotel notepaper.

The table went quiet. Harold looked at the paper. Nero looked at Harold looking at the paper. Amani set down his orange juice.

Jack unfolded the pages and spread them on the table between the coffee cups and the creamer. Four pages, front and back, covered in names. "Fifty-seven names," Jack said. He was looking at Harold. "Everyone the shiver hurt. Everyone I hurt. Everyone who was part of the system." He pushed the pages across the table. "I want you to have these. Figure out how to help them, if you can. If you can even find them. I'll pay for what I've done too."

Harold picked up the pages. He read them slowly, his eyes moving down the columns, and Jack watched him absorb each name the way Harold absorbed everything, completely, with his full attention. His thumb brushed the paper where the ink had smeared.