Orion’s eyes snapped open to blurred vision and a head of pearlescent hair belonging to a seething turquoise glare.

“Watch your lumbering elbows!” the owner of the colorful features snapped, clutching his forehead.

“I’m sorry!” Orion yelled quickly, tamping down the instinctive urge to reach out and provide comfort. “Are you okay? Let me get you some ice!”

“No, no,” he sighed, wincing and touching the pale flesh under his fluffy bangs. “You’re okay.” To be heard on the dance floor required speaking at a stage shout, but somehow this man was able to still sound hushed, like a disappointed librarian. “Just caught me off-guard.”

“That’s the whole reason I stayed off to the side,” Orion hollered miserably, but as he got his bearings again, he realized he’d drifted into the center of the dance floor as if on a rip tide. Sweat, alcohol, and sticky-sweet magic overwhelmed his nose and mouth, and he could feel the beat of the music in his collarbones. “Oh.” He wiped his already-damp neck.

The stranger laughed, the sound tinkling beneath the blaring song. The crowd of dancers pushed him up into Orion’s space, sparking a bit of contact between their chests, although Orion had probably a head and a half on his victim.

“Yeah,” called teal-eyes, “your jiving was very much not stationary.”

“That absinthe.” He mimed swigging a drink and earned a smirk from the stranger. Orion asked awkwardly, “Uh, what’s your…?”

“Nuh-uh.” A finger waggled in Orion’s face. Platinum lashes veiled the shorter man’s eyes, petal-pink eyeshadow glittering on his lids. “No names at the club! You can call me Blue. And I’ll call you…” He looked down at Orion’s left forearm. “Art.”

Orion felt his heart leap as the stranger gazed at his tattoos; most of the ones on his left arm were arts and literary-themed. “I will totally yap about any and all of these themes!”

Blue rolled his eyes, bobbing slightly as a new song spun into the sound waves. He pointed at his ears and didn’t answer, although Orion was sure Blue could hear his big baritone voice. Disappointment, uselessly, stabbed at his chest.

“Sorry,” Orion hollered.

Blue gave him a bland smile, sizing Orion up, his gaze lingering for a time on his antlers. “Imperial Elk?” he called.

Orion’s thick, double-notched eyebrows shot up. Not everybody could tell just from his antlers in human form, since they shrank down to a fraction of their full size. Orion grinned with a mute nod, feeling himself start to sway and then start to wiggle as the energy in the club picked him back up. Blue’s smile relaxed. The dreamy male started to look less ready to shun Orion. Almost like Orion’s appeal increased when he was impassive and silent.

“Oh, I see,” Orion chuckled, “you just like me to keep my mouth shut.” Urged on by absinthe, the words blurted out of Orion’s mouth before he could stop them. He tried to soften them with a smirk, and watched beneath the flashing light of the disco ball over their heads as Blue tried to gauge his tone.

Something sharpened in Blue’s gaze after a moment. He swayed closer, a delicate hand wearing an aquamarine ring on the middle finger settling on Orion’s chest.

“A nice face like yours gets ruined by yapping.” Blue was dressed in a skin-tight babydoll tee and oversized jeans, cinched with a belt that sat low on his hips. He was all pastels and soft curves, a watercolor painting under flashing lights.

Orion gave a false laugh and a simper in response. This tête-à-tête felt good, quieting his rejection sensitivity and letting his anger out in small, controlled bursts. Naturally, his body found Blue’s rhythm and matched its rippling undulations. Blue was like a wave lapping against Orion’s sandy shores.

“You don’t know how much valuable shit I’ve got to say,” Orion argued. He was dancing so close to Blue that his right hand started reaching for Blue’s slender waist because the pumping bass and bright zaps of treble demanded it.

Blue let him, for a moment. As soon as Orion thought it might be possible to enjoy himself as his other hand loosely joined around Blue’s waist, the smaller man slipped free of his grip.

He smirked and shook his head. “I’m not desperate enough for this.” Then, like a dream turned nightmarish, he twisted back into the crowd and left Orion alone.

“What the hell kind of rude shit is that?” Orion exclaimed, to nobody in particular, with enough boom to his big voice that Blue would be able to hear him unless he had left Shimmer altogether. A pair of femme nymphs eyed him disdainfully. He muttered an apology before he set his gaze on the lights bobbing in the darkness overhead, using them as a waypoint to pick his way off the dance floor.

Orion shook out the anger that kept clenching his hands into fists. It didn’t matter what he looked like. He didn’t deserve to be insulted like that by a rando at the club. Especially not after the day he’d had.

He ground his teeth together, resisting the urge to shift where he stood and leap over the revelry to get the hell out of Shimmer. But shifting in public buildings was frowned upon if not outright banned, particularly in mostly human establishments. Orion had done it once as a teenager, and a human douchebag had followed him till he changed back, and then broke his nose.

Eldwick wasn’t perfect, but it was better than his childhood home of Little Rhone. Just a godawful city and awful to the half a dozen supernaturals in a mostly human hellhole.

Like Shimmer. Shimmer was officially a hellhole. Just who did that bitch boy think he was, insulting Orion for literally no reason? He stalked toward the doors of this stupid club, his cheeks ambiguously hot. Was he more hurt or affronted? Either way, this stupid club and its stupid mean pretty boys could suck it.

Orion’s cheeks were damp when he got outside, but with sweat or tears he wasn’t sure. The cold went straight into his bones and made his teeth ache. He didn’t bother to put his flannel back on, because he wasn’t gonna be human for very long. His shaky legs still carried him swiftly down the street, which despite the cold was still bustling with night life. Laughter spilled from a nearby restaurant’s open door, boots crunched over snowy sidewalks.

Orion’s phone buzzed.

And buzzed.

He glowered and pried it out of his pocket. One look at the caller ID stopped him in his tracks. A crease appeared in his brow as his big eyebrows pushed together.

His throat felt tight as he lifted the device to his lightly furred ear and answered stiffly, “What is it?”