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1. Aftermath

The dragon was a veritable clusterfuck of emotions. On the one hand, he was hurt and terrified by Marc's words. On the other hand, he was relieved - actually relieved - that he, too, could finally begin to move on now that there was no going back; there was no point in hoping for something that would never happen.

He decided to keep his ring; it would serve as a memento for all that he had gone through and all that he had done. He tucked it away in the back of his nightstand like a memory.

He felt motivated to write again, but didn't know what to write. That's how it always was: the inspiration would strike him and suddenly his fingers would ache and tingle unless they were curved over a keyboard or wrapped around a pen and pad. He fell into his desk chair and began typing:

Winter was always a slow season; no one wanted to ski anymore. Everyone wanted to go somewhere warm and sunny; the prospect of sliding down a mountain at terrifying speeds, balanced upon one or two small slats of plastic... well now that was just out of the question when you could be lying on a beach, feet warmed by the sun banked sand instead of stuffed into tight, clumsy ski boots...

A few hours passed before he finally stopped. His back and his ass hurt. His legs were asleep and maddening pinpricks erupted up his calves and the soles of his feet when he stood up and stumbled into the kitchen for dinner. One sandwich later, he showered. After that, lying naked on his bed, he lit up a cigarette. Smoke wafted upwards in a gentle spiral until it hit the current of the ceiling fan and was blown out of existence.

He fell asleep and slept peacefully, all things considered.

The next day at work, Toby had lost his artificially cheerful demeanor. He walked awkwardly, as if his backside was sore. The first thing he did - after there was a lull in customers - was call Keurin to the back room.

Great, Keurin thought, Marc's turned him against me too; probably conveniently forgot to tell Toby that he threatened me.

"Yes, Toby?" Keurin said as he entered the room.

"I want to apologize for Marc's behavior."

"You didn't make him come over and scream his ass off at me."

"I might have on accident... I was talking to him about you and went on and on about how much I loved your books and how lucky I was to have met you and how awesome you are, and that might have come off as wrong to him."

"No shit."

"I even... and this is really funny," Toby paused to giggly, "...Sort of made a joke about you, him, and me... you know... Spending the night together."

The dragon scowled. "Why the hell would you do that?"

The fox shrugged.

"All you can do is shrug? Seriously? Your stupid joke cost me any chance I had at being his friend!"

"I'm sorry."

"Oh, well, good thing; there's that at least!" the dragon whipped his hand through the air and scoffed.

"I didn't know it would affect him like this; I wasn't thinking. I guess he thought you and I were flirting or something and took it the wrong way."

Keurin covered his eyes with his palm. "I need to step out; I-I need some air." He left without waiting for permission.

Toby watched him leave, looking pleased, his eyes twinkling in the dim light.

Keurin fell out of the door into the street. He slipped into the alley behind the bookstore and lit up a cigarette and sucked it down with barely enough pause to gasp for air.

"I can't believe he did that - why would he do that?" he murmured as he paced up and down the alley. "Why would the little asshole do that!"

He threw the cigarette down on the ground and stomped hatefully upon it. Staring angrily at the sky, he jerked a finger toward it and hissed:

"If there is some asshole up there dumping all this on me, stop it. It's not funny!"

Later, when Keurin calmed down, he went back to work. He plowed right through his lunch break, working constantly in the back room, organizing and stocking. His fingers began to cramp after the first few hours and only then did he pause, and only long enough to flex his hands to get the blood flowing again. Toby would look at him apologetically, his large around eyes glassy, blinking slowly. It was a good act.

When it was quittin' time, Keurin left without speaking to the fox; that was fine with Toby, anyway. The evening was bright, beautiful. Thunder roiled in the distance, bumbling over the ocean like a siren's call, seducing anyone who heard it to turn and gaze at the sea, suddenly wracked by an alien nostalgia and a feeling of irrepressible desire to wade out into the water and disappear into the deep.

Keurin drove home with the radio blaring and all of the windows down. The air was clean, salty, it smelled of sand and sandwiches stuffed into a cooler for a day at the beach. The dragon wasn't crying, but tears fell in great numbers regardless. Already his hand, as if on its own, had reached for his phone to call Marc and explain, but he knew that the man wouldn't believe him. The damage was done.

When he got home, he wrote. The words came effortlessly, manifesting in the front of his mind, against the back of his forehead; like a brand pressed against his skin, they burned.

How... how formal should you be in a note like this...? He thought, looking at the half-page of text before him on his lap; his usual messy handwriting little more than an illegible scrawl; the words melting into one another; filled with confessions, apologies, wishes... and an explanation.

His phone vibrated in his pocket. He fished it out to turn it off when the image of Aderrian, shirtless and grinning, appeared on the gently glowing screen. He picked himself up off of the couch and walked over to the window, bringing his phone up to his ear.

Hey is what he would have said if the words had come out. He cleared his throat and tried again.

"Hey, Aderrian," he said. His voice was rough, exhausted.

Hey, kiddo... you all right?

"Yeah - no - yeah, I'm fine... Just... you know, just writing something." Keurin turned and looked at the half-finished note on the coffee table.

You sure there isn't something on your mind?

Keurin suddenly broke down. He fell to his knees, his forehead pressed against the window. He clenched his teeth, trying to force himself to stop. One palm was pressed feebly against the cold glass, fogging up an imprint of his palm. Tears streamed down his snout, tickling his skin.

All Aderrian could do was hear the dragon's sniffling, then a cough, whimpering and whining, and finally a sneeze. He got up from the bed in his cabin and moved to the porthole window. He could barely make out the coastline. The moonlight fell on his bare chest like a coat. His blue eyes glowed.

"Keurin, listen to me. I'm looking at you. I'm looking out of my window right at Upper Portdam and I can see you." The orca prayed this would help. He couldn't actually see Keurin, but he hoped the sentiment would cheer the dragon up. "Do you see me? Look out into the ocean."

Keurin obeyed. His vision was blurry so he blinked a few times to push past the tears. "I... I can't..."

"Try harder."

The dragon shoved open the door to the patio. He looked down over the wall, down at the alley behind the condo. There was a dumpster down there with open arms. He stopped looking and stepped back from the ledge.

"I'm tr-" a hiccup, "trying, but I can't!"

"Well I can see you," the orca paused. He thought he had heard a door open, and he could hear the wind blowing in the earpiece of his cell phone. Okay, Keurin was outside on his patio. He began again, slowly, "Standing there out on the balcony, looking so beautiful in the moonlight; so very strong and so very smart; my dearest friend; someone I love so very much; someone who I am very much looking forward to seeing tomorrow night; hugging, kissing, holding. Are you sure you can't see me?"

The dragon tried again, gazing out at the ocean. He could just barely hear the waves kissing the shore. The wind carried the scent of the ocean to him: briny, fishy, like sushi. He had tried sushi for the first time on that cruise so many years ago... Just he and Aderrian; Marc was having fun in the casino...

"You'll like it, I promise!" Aderrian said, thrusting a piece pinched precariously between two chopsticks up to Keurin's mouth.

_ "It smells awful," Keurin replied, turning his nose up at it. "Like low tide."_

_ "Parmesan cheese smells awful too but there was no shortage of that on your spaghetti the other day!" Aderrian laughed. He slipped his hand under Keurin's chin and turned his face back to the little mount of fish and rice. He kept his hand there, his thumb ever so gently stroking Keurin's cheek. "I wouldn't give you anything I thought you wouldn't like."_

_ Keurin flushed a little, his eyes staring up into the orca's. Timidly, he accepted the piece of sushi and ate it._

_ It was right then, right there, that he began to have feelings for Aderrian that transcended friendship._

_ _ Suddenly Keurin's eyes opened and he realized he had moved forward to the ledge again, his hand clamped firmly around the rail. He looked ahead, through the night, through everything that had happened earlier that day and yesterday and he saw Aderrian standing before him; bathed in moonlight, dressed in his favorite outfit: cargo pants and a plain white tee shirt with the frayed collar; his arms held wide open in a beckoning hug that promised to sweep Keurin away from all the torment and agony that filled him.

The wind blew gently, ruffling up Keurin's shirt and jeans. His hair fluttered in the breeze. The moonlight twinkled in the twin rivulets of tears that ran down his snout. He could hear gulls calling overhead. Somewhere far off someone beat on their car horn. A large truck went by. Someone sneezed downstairs. A hundred people lay their heads down to sleep. A couple on the other side of town just kissed for the first time. Another couple broke up after three years of going steady. It was life, this was life; it was all the music ringing in the spheres that only the blessed could hear and the damned could lament; the sounds of millions of lives thrumming in sync, pushing forward day by day until the very end; and there at the end stood Aderrian.

Smiling, his eyes bursting into tears once again, Keurin stretched forth his hand to take Aderrian's, and began to fall forward over the balcony ledge.