Page 4 of Branding the Bat

"I want to go home with the kitten," Sero mumbled. Trevor really was very pretty. Prettier through the bourbon haze. Sero wanted to pet his hair. He tried. The dark strands were incredibly soft, almost cat-like, and Sero giggled.

"Pretty kitty," he said.

Trevor looked at him with an expression that was somewhere between amused and resigned. Then he took Sero's hand, firmly, so he couldn't wander, and looked back at Amani. "You sure you're good with me taking him?"

Amani held Trevor's gaze for a moment. The teasing was gone. What replaced it was something older, something thatreminded Sero, even in his bourbon fog, that Amani was Lady Leo's son, and the bar he tended was not just a bar.

"His wallet's in his right front pocket," Amani said. "His ID's in there. Be nice to him, Trevor. I mean it."

The last three words had edges.

Trevor nodded. "I promise he'll get home nice and safe."

Trevor pulled him off the stool, and Sero went willingly, stumbling against him. Trevor steadied him with a hand at his waist, casual, competent, the touch of someone used to managing bodies. The duffle bag was on Trevor's other shoulder, and Sero wanted to ask what was in it, but the thought dissolved before it became words.

The elevator ride was a blur. Sero remembered leaning against the wall, remembered Bethany looking up from her crossword as they passed the front desk and giving Trevor a pointed look that Trevor didn't acknowledge, remembered the parking garage being very bright and his shoes being very difficult.

Trevor's car was low, black, and sleek. The kind of car that went fast. Sero briefly worried about that, the pronghorn's driving had left scars, but Trevor drove like he moved: smooth, controlled, a little faster than necessary but never reckless. The streetlights slid over the windshield in long amber streaks. Sero tried to play with the glowing knobs on the dashboard. Trevor moved his hand away without comment.

They didn't talk. Sero was beyond conversation, and Trevor didn't seem to need it. He drove with one hand on the wheel and the other resting on the gear shift, his profile sharp against the passing lights. The fake cat ears were still on his head. In the glow of the dashboard, they looked almost real.

Sero's apartment was four blocks from the club, in a converted warehouse that had been turned into expensive lofts. Trevor found a parking spot, came around to the passenger side,and half-carried Sero to the door. The stairs were an issue. Sero kept trying to shift, his bat brain saying up means fly, and Trevor had to pin his arms twice.

"Stop trying to shift," Trevor said. "You'll hit the ceiling and I'm not cleaning up bat blood on Halloween."

"I could make it," Sero argued, though even he didn't believe that.

"You'd make it to the second-floor landing and then I'd have to explain to Amani why there's a dazed fruit bat stuck in a light fixture."

By the time they got inside, Sero was mostly useless. Trevor deposited him on the bed, pulled off his shoes, and then, apparently, tied one of his wrists to the bed frame with a piece of paracord that he produced from somewhere on his person. Who carried paracord? The kind of person who kept a mysterious duffle bag at a kink club, apparently.

"Why are you tying me up?" Sero asked. Or tried to ask. It came out as mostly vowels.

"Because you keep trying to shift, and if you shift in this bed you're going to break your own wing against the headboard. Sure, if you manage to shift correctly you'll be smaller than this knot, but the chances of you screwing it up when you're this drunk are pretty high I'm thinking, so lay there and stop trying to shift." Trevor tested the knot, then stood back. "It's loose enough. You can roll over, reach the nightstand, and get to the bathroom if you need to. You just can't flap."

That seemed reasonable. Sero closed his eyes and let the room spin.

He heard Trevor moving around the apartment, opening the fridge, closing the fridge, opening what sounded like every cabinet in the kitchen. A quiet, incredulous laugh. Then footsteps, heading away from the bedroom. The creak of the couch. The rustle of a blanket being pulled from somewhere.

Trevor was staying.

Sero smiled into his pillow. The last thing he registered, before the bourbon pulled him under, was the faint scent of Trevor's jacket draped over the foot of his bed. That warm, clean, sharp scent, the one underneath everything else.

He went to sleep still smelling it.

Chapter Two

Sero woke up groggy, hungover, and with one of his wrists tied to his bed frame with paracord.

"What the hell?"

He didn't own any paracord. He stared at the knot, neat, efficient, the kind of knot someone tied when they actually knew what they were doing rather than when they were fumbling in the dark with a phone charger because their boyfriend thought improvised bondage was sexy. That had been the gecko. Sero did not miss the gecko.

He was still fully dressed, which was something. His clothes smelled like puke, which was less something. His mouth tasted like a dumpster behind a bourbon distillery. He shook his bound hand and tried to work the knot loose with his free hand, but the paracord only tightened. Whoever had tied this understood the principle of resistance: pull against it and it held. Relax into it and you could breathe. Sero filed that observation away for later consideration.

"Um. Is there anyone here? Someone who can untie me, maybe?"

Footsteps. Then Trevor sauntered into the bedroom with the energy of someone who lived here, which he did not. He was carrying a bowl of dried apricots and eating them one at a time with an expression of mild fascination.