Page 20 of New Beginning

“You know what they are?”

“No idea.”

“They’re marine worms.”

“Oh.”

Teddy leaned closer, lowering his voice as though revealing a secret. “They’re also known as penis worms.”

Mikkel blinked. “Penis worms?”

“Yes.”

Mikkel sipped his wine. “I should’ve guessed from the name priapulid. Priapus is the Greek god of fertility.”

Teddy smiled. “It is.”

“So the oldest creatures you’re fascinated by are giant prehistoric penises?”

“They’re not giant. Most are only a few centimetres long.”

“That might actually make it worse.” Mikkel wriggled.

Teddy chuckled. “Some can get as big as forty centimetres. They’re called penis worms because they look like penises. They have spiny mouthparts and a turning throat they can use to trap prey in muddy seafloor sediments.”

“Er… my penis doesn’t look like that. I hope yours doesn’t either.”

That made Teddy laugh out loud and his heart lurched when he saw Mikkel’s smile.

“So you have a fascination with horrible-looking creatures?”

“Yes. Because they’re so interesting. For example, when a predator comes too close to a sea cucumber, it pushes its own insides out of its arse to confuse and scare the attacker.”

Mikkel gaped at him.

“And there’s terrifying fungus in Brazil that affects ants. It makes its home in an ant’s brain, controls the ant until it kills it off, then takes its spores elsewhere. Zombie! And the Eurasian roller birds protect themselves from would-be predators by throwing up putrid-smelling orange intestinal fluid.” He opened his mouth to say more, nerves were making him chatty, then said, “Sorry,” and pressed his lips together.

“Don’t be sorry. I’m entranced,” Mikkel said. “What did you do for a living?”

“I…was a compliance and transaction monitoring analyst.”

“That made less sense to me than the penis worm.”

Teddy sighed. “My job was to stop financial crimes. I worked in a bank reviewing financial data, stared for hours at automated software flags and checked the same regulatory boxes repeatedly for every single corporate account we had.”

“Did you like it?”

“It was boring.”

“You deserve better than a boring job.”

Teddy was tired and he kept sliding towards Mikkel, mostly not on purpose. He’d enjoyed talking to him, though he’d done too much talking.

“Let me show you where you can sleep.” Mikkel pushed to his feet.

Ah, not with you then? Teddy felt his cheeks flush with heat at the thought.

Mikkel stumbled slightly as he walked away and Teddy frowned.