Page 37 of Branding the Bat

Trevor's careful neutrality cracked. Just a fracture, a softening around his eyes, a loosening in his jaw. "I meant every word."

"I know you did. That's why I'm here." Sero sipped his drink. The cherry was bright red and perfectly placed, because Amani understood that some days required a perfect cherry. "I want to ask you some things. And then I want to tell you some things. And then we'll see."

"Okay."

"The hardware store. Is that real?"

"Boulder Highway, near the old Walmart. I stock lumber and plumbing supplies. My boss is a human named Doug who calls me 'kid' even though I'm twenty-nine." A ghost of a smile. "The pay is terrible. The work is surprisingly satisfying. Turns out I like organizing things. Cat thing, probably."

"And the healing alchemy?"

"I've been talking to a woman, a raccoon shifter, retired nurse. She works with elderly shifters whose transformations have become painful. She thinks alchemical salves could help. I've been experimenting with some base formulas, nothing extracted from anyone, just plant-based compounds activated with the magic circles. It's slower work than the serum. Harder. But it doesn't require taking anything from someone else."

Sero turned that over. The alchemy itself had never been the problem. It was a gift, like shifting, like echolocation. The problem was what Trevor had chosen to do with it. Using the same gift to heal rather than exploit wasn't redemption. It was a different direction. A first step on a road that might take a long time to walk.

"My turn," Sero said. "Here's what I need you to understand."

Trevor straightened. Attentive, still, the posture of a man who understood that the next few minutes would determine the shape of his life.

"What you did was wrong. Not complicated, not gray-area, not a mistake that got out of hand. Wrong. You built a device to extract something from people's bodies without their knowledge or consent, and you used it on me during the most intimate, vulnerable experience of my life. That is a violation. I need you to say that word."

"I agree. It was a violation." Trevor's voice was steady. No flinching.

"I need you to understand that the pleasure doesn't offset it. The space, the orgasms, the crying, the eye contact, all of that was real, and all of that was beautiful, and none of it excuses the fact that you were simultaneously taking something from me that I hadn't agreed to give. The quality of the experience doesn't determine the ethics of the extraction."

"I know."

"I also need you to understand that I'm not over it. I may never be over it. If we..." Sero paused, weighing the word, "if we try again, the machine is going to be in the room with us. Not physically. But the knowledge of what happened will be present in every scene, every touch, every moment where I choose to trust you. You will be earning back something that you broke, and the earning will not have an end date. Do you understand that?"

"Yes."

"Good." Sero drank his Shirley Temple. The grenadine was sweet and the ginger ale was sharp and the cherry sat at the bottom like a small red heart. "Now here's what I want you to understand about me."

Trevor waited.

"The space is mine. You told me that, and you were right. Whatever happens between us, whether we try again or we don't, the thing you showed me about my own body belongs to me. My pain tolerance, my capacity, the place I go when someone pushes me far enough and precisely enough to find the door. That's mine. You were the first person to find it, but you don't own it. If I decide to explore it again, with you or with someone else, that's my choice. Not yours."

"I know."

"But here's the other thing." Sero set his glass down and turned on the stool to face Trevor directly. Their knees were close, inches apart. Trevor’s scent swirled around him cedar and black tea and, underneath, something new. Soap. Simple, generic soap, the kind people bought when they couldn't afford the expensive stuff anymore. The kind that smelled like a fresh start.

"I don't want someone else to find it," Sero said. "I want you."

Trevor's composure gave way. Not dramatically, no sobbing, no collapse. Just a quiet surrender of the control he'd been maintaining since Sero walked in. His eyes went bright. His mouth trembled. His hands, still wrapped around the water glass, shook once and were still.

"You don't have to—" he started.

"I'm not doing this because I have to. I'm doing this because when I think about being in that space again, I think about your hands. Your voice. The way you counted the orgasms like reps at a gym and then fell apart when I looked at you." Sero's own voice shook, the level facade cracking, because this was the truth and the truth was terrifying. "You showed me something about myself that I didn't know existed. You did it while betraying me. The betrayal was real. I will never forget it. But I also can'tpretend that what you found in me isn't worth going back to. And I'd rather go back to it with the person who found it, a person who has to earn every second of trust I give him, than start over with someone new who doesn't know where the door is."

"That's—" Trevor pressed his hands over his eyes. "That's not a small thing you're offering."

"I know. Don't waste it."

"I won't."

They sat at the bar. The club hummed around them, afternoon quiet, a few people scattered in the lounge areas, the play rooms closed until evening. Amani was at the far end of the bar, pretending to inventory bottles while obviously listening to every word. Sero would give him grief about that later.

"Here's what I want to do," Sero said. "We start over. Not from scratch. I'm not pretending the last month didn't happen. But from here. We go slow. We date. We eat food. Watch documentaries. Do the normal things that normal people do when they're figuring out if they want to be together. No scenes. Not yet. Not until I say so."