Chapter One #2
There was also, Sero noticed, a duffle bag.
Black, nondescript, slung over Trevor's shoulder.
He never put it down. Even when he stopped to talk to someone, even when he leaned against a wall with one hip cocked and his head tilted like the most dangerous person in the room was also the most relaxed, the bag stayed with him.
That was interesting.
By the time Trevor made his way back toward the bar, Sero was on his second drink and feeling it.
Bourbon really was a bad idea. His head was warm and loose, and the music had gone from pleasant background noise to something he could feel in his teeth.
The mask was on the bar next to Amani's discarded vampire fangs, and the whole scene felt appropriately unhinged for Halloween.
Trevor stopped in front of him. Up close, he was even more striking: blue eyes bright against dark lashes, a mouth that looked like it had never said anything boring in its life. The cat ears swiveled toward Sero again, and this time Trevor's actual eyes followed.
"I'm Trevor," he said.
"Sero." He took another sip. "You're a black cat?"
"Amani's been talking." No annoyance. If anything, he looked pleased. "What are you?"
"A bat."
Trevor's whole face changed. The casual interest sharpened into something specific, something hungry, but not in the usual way.
It was closer to the look Sero had seen on scientists in documentaries, right before they discovered something.
"I've heard that bats have a high tolerance for pain," Trevor said. He leaned in, close enough that the warmth of his breath danced over Sero’s skin. "Care to test that theory?"
And Sero wanted to say yes. The word was right there, sitting on his tongue like a cherry from one of his Shirley Temples.
Trevor was exactly the kind of man who worked for him: lean, confident, a little dangerous, and interested in him specifically rather than generically.
The arrogance that had been off-putting from across the room was magnetic up close.
Trevor's energy was a low vibration that made his skin prickle.
But then he breathed in, and the word died.
Salt water. Rich dirt. Two distinct scents layered beneath Trevor's own, which was warmer: cedar shavings, maybe, or black tea. Two other men, at minimum. Recent enough that the scents hadn't faded. Trevor had already been with people that night. More than one.
Sero tilted his chin away. The gesture was subtle, instinctive, turning his nose from a scent he didn't want. He'd done it with the pronghorn too, at the end, when the guy had started smelling like the waitress at the diner he claimed he'd never been to. Shifter noses didn't lie. People did.
"Another night, maybe," Sero said. "When you haven't already been so busy."
Trevor pulled back. The sharpness in his eyes flickered, replaced by something harder. He wasn't used to being told no. That was obvious.
"I'm not used to being turned down," Trevor said. Not threatening, more genuinely baffled, as if Sero had been offered a winning lottery ticket and tried to hand it back.
"There's a first time for everything." Sero couldn't help the smirk.
Trevor held his gaze for a beat, then another.
Sero could practically see the recalculation happening, the moment where arrogance tried to decide whether to double down or walk away.
Trevor chose to walk away, but slowly, as if giving Sero time to change his mind.
When Sero didn't, the slow retreat became a stomp.
The duffle bag swung against his hip as he disappeared into the crowd without looking back.
Sero turned back to Amani, who was watching from behind the bar with a grin that could only be described as delighted.
"I don't think anyone has turned him down that easily before," Amani said. "You might have hurt his feelings. If he had any."
Sero laughed. In the mirror behind the bar, between the bottles of amber and green, he caught Trevor looking back at him. The cat turned away fast, pretending he'd been looking at something else. The fake ears, however, were still pointed directly at Sero.
"I'm sure he would've been fun," Sero said. "But I like the guys I'm with not to smell like other men while they're screwing me. I don't think that's too much to ask for."
Amani shook his head. "It's not. You should stick around for a bit. Don't run off like you normally do. It's Halloween. There's plenty to see."
"Sure. What the hell." Sero drained the last of his second drink and pushed the empty glass toward Amani. "Give me a Shirley Temple this time, though. That bourbon is going to my head."
"Already?" Amani's eyebrows shot up. "We're switching you to virgin drinks from now on. Consider yourself permanently downgraded."
"Fine by me."
Amani started mixing the Shirley Temple, ginger ale, grenadine, a cherry dropped in with a flourish, while Sero settled into his stool and let the club move around him.
The music shifted to something slower, darker.
Behind the black and silver curtains, someone cried out, not in pain, exactly, or not only in pain.
The sound carried over the music and dissolved into it, becoming part of the pulse.
A pair of men walked past holding hands, one of them wearing a collar and the other holding the leash with the ease of someone carrying a cup of coffee.
Normal night at Kinky Kritters. With cobwebs.
Sero nursed his Shirley Temple and watched Trevor from the mirror behind the bar.
The cat had retreated to the far side of the room, talking to a man Sero didn't recognize, shorter, broader, with the nervous energy of someone new to the club.
Trevor had one hand on the man's arm and was saying something that made the man blush and laugh at the same time.
The duffle bag was on the floor between Trevor's feet, which was the first time Sero had seen him put it down.
He thought about the pronghorn. The death-wish driving and the wandering dick.
They'd lasted four months, which was long by Sero's standards.
Before Wade there'd been a gecko who turned out to be straight-curious rather than actually gay, and before that a wolf who wanted to be dominated and then sulked when Sero wasn't dominant enough.
His dating history read like a cautionary tale: short, predictable, and always ending the same way.
Sero would find someone interesting. The someone would find Sero interesting back, briefly, brightly, with the intensity of people who confused novelty for connection.
They'd burn through the first few weeks, the part where everything was new and skin-electric and you couldn't stop thinking about the other person.
Then the novelty would fade, and whatever Sero actually was; quiet, particular, a fruit bat who worked nights at a casino and didn't own a car, wasn't interesting enough to hold anyone.
They'd get bored. He'd get hurt. He'd go home, eat dried mango in the dark, and tell himself he was better off alone.
He was twenty-six years old and already tired of the cycle.
Amani reappeared with a fresh cherry for Sero's drink, even though the first one was still there. "It's a party. Stop being a sad bat."
"I'm not sad. I'm contemplative."
"Same thing, on you." Amani leaned on the bar.
The Halloween lights caught the angles of his face, the sharp jaw, the bright eyes, the absolute lack of anything resembling self-doubt.
There was no armor to Amani. He was exactly what he appeared to be: warm, loud, a little bratty, completely fearless.
He flirted with everyone. He protected the people he liked with the casual ferocity of a predator who didn't know he was supposed to be afraid of anything.
Sero wondered, sometimes, what it would take to crack that. He hoped he'd never find out.
"Are you looking for someone tonight?" Amani asked.
"Because if you are, I've got a few suggestions.
There's a new guy, very sweet, very nervous.
Might be your speed. Or," he glanced across the room toward Trevor, then back at Sero with a knowing look, "you could stop pretending you're not still thinking about the cat. "
"I'm not thinking about the cat."
"Your ears are pink."
Sero touched his ears. They were, in fact, warm. "That's the bourbon."
"Mhmm." Amani pushed off the bar and went back to work, leaving Sero with two cherries, a warm face, and the uncomfortable knowledge that he was, in fact, still thinking about the cat.
The thing was, Trevor smelled like other people, and that was a dealbreaker.
But underneath those other scents, beneath the salt water and the rich dirt, there had been something else.
Warm and specific to Trevor, not quite cedar, not quite tea, something in between.
Clean and sharp and a little wild. The kind of scent that got into your clothes and stayed.
Sero stayed.
He told himself it was the music, or the free Shirley Temples, or the fact that going home to his empty apartment on Halloween felt like a particularly pathetic choice.
But when Trevor glanced at him in the mirror for the fourth time, quickly, as if checking whether Sero was still there, Sero's stomach flipped like he was nineteen and stupid again.
He was still there.
By the time Trevor circled back to the bar an hour later, Sero was on his third Shirley Temple but the first two drinks had done their damage. His head was loose and warm, and the edges of the room had gone soft. The music sounded better than it had any right to. The cobwebs looked artistic.
Amani noticed. Amani noticed everything, which was either a lion thing or an Amani thing or both. He appeared in front of Sero with a glass of water and a look that said drink this or I'll pour it on you.
"I'm fine," Sero said.
"You're swaying."
"The stool is uneven."
Amani slid the water closer. "Drink."