Page 3 of Branding the Bat

"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 likea 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."

Sero drank. The water helped, a little, but the damage was done. Two bourbons on a fruit bat's empty stomach was a mistake he should have known better than to make. He felt warm and reckless and slightly invincible, which was exactly the state in which fruit bats made their worst decisions.

When Trevor appeared beside him, Sero reached for the front of his pants.

"He's drunk," Trevor said to Amani. The words were flat, clinical, an observation, not an opportunity.

Amani snorted. "I know. Apparently I need to remember to cut off bats well before I thought. He handles fruit drinks fine. Not so much when it comes to bourbon. I was going to take him home as soon as I got off work in a few hours. He doesn't live far from here."

Trevor glanced at Sero, then back at Amani. Sero was still reaching for Trevor's pants, which Trevor gently pushed away without breaking eye contact with the bartender. "I'll take him. It's better than leaving him here, just in case someone notices he's not all there when your back's turned."