Page 5 of Branding the Bat

"Do you know that you don't have anything to eat that isn't fruit?" Trevor asked. "And you have five different kinds of dried fruit. Plus grapes, strawberries, two mangoes, and something in the back of the fridge I think might be a pomegranate but honestly could be a tumor."

"It's a persimmon. And I'm a fruit bat." Sero rattled his bound wrist. "Mind telling me why I'm tied up?"

Trevor grinned and ambled farther into the room. He moved the same way he had at the club, unhurried, precise, aware of every surface and angle around him. The fake cat ears were gone. Without them, his dark hair was messy from sleep, sticking up at angles that should have looked ridiculous but didn't. He was barefoot. He was still in last night's clothes, the black shirt untucked and rumpled, the jeans sitting low on his hips. He looked like he'd slept on a couch, which, based on the state of Sero's living room blanket, he had.

"You kept trying to shift while you were drunk," Trevor said. "It was safer to keep you tied down. At one point you got halfway there, wings out, face still human. Very unsettling. I almost took a picture." He popped another apricot into his mouth. "But you seem fairly sober now, so I guess it's okay to let you go."

He came to the bed and undid the knot in two quick motions. The ease of it, how fast the paracord fell away once Trevor wanted it to, sent a flush up the back of Sero's neck that had nothing to do with the hangover.

Trevor wrapped the paracord into a neat ball and shoved it into the front pocket of his jeans. He carried rope the way other people carried chapstick. Sero decided not to think too hard about that.

"Was I okay last night?" Sero sat up slowly. The room tilted, then settled. He swung his legs off the bed and stood, wobbled, found his balance. The bathroom was six steps away and he needed to brush his teeth before he said anything else to anyone. "I don't get drunk often. Or ever, really. I wasn't weird or anything... right?"

"You tried to take my pants off," Trevor called after him. Then, with a chuckle: "Does that count?"

Sero brushed his teeth faster than he'd ever brushed them in his life. "You didn't let me, I'm assuming." God, he hoped not. He wanted to be sober if he ever got into Trevor's pants. He wanted to remember it. He wanted to—

He stopped brushing and stared at himself in the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot, his dark hair was plastered to one side of his head, and there was a faint imprint of his pillowcase on his left cheek. He looked like a man who had been tied to his own bed by a stranger and was already thinking about doing it again.

"No, of course not," Trevor said from the other room. There was no defensiveness in it, no performance of virtue. Just a fact. "You were drunk. I don't play with drunk people."

Sero finished brushing and joined Trevor in the living room. The apartment was small: living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, a closet he used for shifting when he needed the enclosed space. His favorite blanket was spread on the couch, and one of his bed pillows was dented with the shape of Trevor's head. The morning light through the warehouse windows caught the dust motes and the edges of Trevor's cheekbones simultaneously.

"Thanks for getting me home safe," Sero said. He meant it. That mattered, the getting-home-safe part. He'd been drunk and vulnerable and Trevor had driven him home, tied him to the bed so he wouldn't hurt himself shifting, and slept on the couch. In Sero's experience, that was not standard behavior for men he'd just met at a kink club. Most of them would have either left as soon as the door was closed or stayed for the wrong reasons.

"Not a problem." Trevor gathered his things, his jacket from the foot of Sero's bed, his boots from beside the door. He moved efficiently, as if he'd already mapped the apartment and knew exactly where everything was. Which, given that he'd apparently explored the entire kitchen while Sero was unconscious, he probably had.

"Can I buy you lunch sometime? As a thanks?"

Trevor turned back from the door. The morning light hit him full on, and Sero watched interest sharpen into calculation behind those blue eyes. The cat deciding whether to pounce.

"Can I test your pain limits while we eat?" Trevor asked.

Sero rolled his eyes. "That would be the strangest lunch ever."

"Stranger than you getting drunk on two bourbons and trying to steal my pants?"

"Fair point." Sero leaned against the wall. He should say no. Every sensible part of him said no: the part that remembered the pronghorn, the part that recognized arrogance when it walked through his door, the part that knew men who carried paracord in their pockets and mysterious duffle bags were men who came with complications. "Sure. Whatever. Just nothing weird. No blood or anything."

Trevor snorted. "Blood really isn't that strange. You're made up of a good amount of it. But fine, I'll leave my knives at home."

"Thanks. That's very reassuring."

"Tomorrow at noon? I'll rent a room at KK. You can bring something for lunch. I like most meats. I'll clear bringing food in with Amani." Trevor pulled on his boots, one at a time, balancing on each foot with a cat's casual grace. "Sometimes he's a little pissy about outside food behind the bar."

"I can imagine." Sero watched him lace up. "You're really just... going to test my pain limits? Over sandwiches?"

"Over whatever you bring." Trevor straightened up and came toward him. Sero's back was against the wall. Trevor stopped close, not crowding, but close enough that Sero could smell him clearly for the first time without the interference of bourbon or other men's scents. Just Trevor. That warm, sharp scent. Cedar and black tea and underneath both, a charge like the air before a storm.

Trevor kissed his cheek. Softly. The contrast between the arrogance in his voice and the gentleness of the gesture knocked Sero sideways more than the bourbon had.

"I look forward to having you on your knees," Trevor said. Then he was gone, the door clicking shut behind him, leaving Sero standing in his own apartment with his pulse hammering in his ears and the fading scent of something he already wanted more of.

***

Sero spent the rest of the day doing what he always did after making a questionable decision: he cleaned. The apartment wasn't dirty, it was never dirty, he was meticulous about that, but there was always something to organize, something to rearrange, something to do with his hands while his brain chewed on a problem.

He refolded the blanket Trevor had slept under. He washed the bowl Trevor had used for the apricots. He ate a mango over the kitchen sink, juice running down his chin, and thought about pain thresholds.