“No, totally.” The awkwardness returned with a vengeance, and yet, Bellamy wasn’t sure any misstep had happened. They’d both shared something uncomfortable, and the vulnerability, maybe, would bring them together. “I… I don’t even know what I’m gonna do when I graduate. So I admire the fact that you had made a living from your dreams.”

Orion paused, smiling wistfully. “I did, but now what? You and I are kind of in the same boat.”

Maybe forty-five minutes had passed by the time their ice cream was gone and their bill was settled, with Orion politely declining Bellamy’s insistence to pay for his malt. Bellamy was ready to go to bed, but knowing him, he’d be staring at his phone for another three hours before tossing and turning for another two after that.

“Where are you parked?” Orion asked outside, his scarf re-strung around his neck and his hands in his jacket pockets.

Bellamy pointed toward his apartment building at the end of the block and across the street. His neighborhood was mostly composed of small businesses, tobacco shops squished next to spell shops, and middle-class ramshackle houses with tiny front yards. It was the kind of neighborhood that made Eldwick what it was: average humans living among average supernaturals, all collectively trying to pay their bills and navigate the madness of modern living.

“Outside my place.”

Orion eyed the building with a sideways smirk. The streetlights reflected in his large eyes and caught against his tapetum lucidum, turning his gaze radioactive green. “You really went out of your way to meet me, huh?”

“Mickey’s is great!” Bellamy exclaimed. “Everyone loves Mickey’s.”

Orion snorted. “Yeah, lucky for you. Let me walk you home. It’s dark and late.” Orion jerked his chin and started picking his way over the chunks of ice scattered with salt.

“Why? I look super intimidating.”

“In your fur boots and leggings.” Orion scoffed. “Those better be faux, by the way.”

“Obviously! I’m not rich enough for real fur.”

Orion side-eyed him.

“And real fur is unethical,” Bellamy added with a smirk. Out of the warm and bright diner, he started feeling the familiar way that the winter shriveled up his skin like he was the ice being salted. He felt his chest get so tight it was like someone was sitting on him. He took a gasping breath and said conversationally, “Okay, like, I’ve never lived anywhere but Eldwick, but my body has never accepted the winter.” He shuddered. “I get sick, like, every three weeks.”

“Maybe you’re not just human,” Orion observed with a shrug of one shoulder.

Bellamy faltered. He raised his eyebrows. “I mean… pretty sure I am.”

“Aquatic shifters, sirens, mermaids, kelpies, draconids, imps and any of the infernal families… there’s plenty of cold-sensitive supernaturals.” Orion chuckled. “Admittedly, not in Eldwick. But if you go down south to Bright Scale…”

Bellamy hummed dubiously. He’d had a lot of people over the years assume that his delicate appearance was inhuman, but he didn’t think much of it. Caroline and Brian Hirsch were pretty mundane as far as he knew. He stopped and peered down the street to cross, Orion getting a few steps ahead of him without noticing.

Bellamy heard a sudden clattering of footsteps and soft breathing right over his shoulder. Bellamy swore he felt a sighing breath on the back of his neck. He jolted in terror, his heart leaping and thundering in his ears as he spun around so fast that he almost wiped out.

His sharp gasp made Orion stop short and turn back. “Oh. I just kept on…” He frowned, leaning down slightly toward Bellamy. “You good?”

The rouge of Bellamy’s wind-chapped cheeks had turned ghostly pale. He swallowed hard, eyes darting across the naked trees and velvety shadows. He couldn’t see clearly, and if he couldn’t see, then that meant that there might be—

Bellamy forced his mouth to work. “Y-Yeah. Just… felt creeped out for a second.” But it wasn’t a second, because time had stopped, and Bellamy was back in that winter night outside his dorm years ago, and he was frozen by the memory. 

Orion’s frown deepened. He followed Bellamy’s gaze, shoulders pushing back and chin lifting as he flicked his glasses off his face and held them under his chin. His elk vision was made for the dark like this. His pupils were designed to spot predators. He would be able to see if someone was after Bellamy.

Bellamy took an instinctive step closer to the shifter’s bulky form, and some of the darkness lost its danger.

“Nobody there but a cat in the window.” Orion nodded to the dark bedroom window on the second floor. “I don’t see anyone out here with us.”

Bellamy nodded mutely, letting out a puff of frosty air and slowly turning back to the road. His apartment building looked like a welcome safe haven, four walls and plenty of locked doors between him and the dark unknown. He glanced up at Orion, whose furred ears twitched restlessly as the man continued scanning their surroundings with his glasses hooked onto his scarf.

“I’m glad I wasn’t alone,” Bellamy murmured. “Thanks for offering to walk me.” When Orion looked down to meet his gaze, Bellamy offered a small smile. Before Orion could say anything awkward, Bellamy asked, “Where’d you park?”

“I didn’t.”

“I thought you said you can’t shift just to go out for a milkshake!”

Orion grinned as he put his glasses back on. Bellamy surprised himself to admit, privately of course, that Orion’s chunky glasses didn’t detract from the overall rugged appeal of his features. “I never said I can’t.” He slid his hands back into his pockets as they reached Bellamy’s apartment door, sending Bellamy digging into his crossbody to pluck out his lanyard.

“Well, lemme see it,” said Bellamy, keys in hand but arms crossed. “Your elk form.”

Orion looked quizzically down at him. “How did you know I’m an Imperial Elk, anyway? Not even most supernaturals are able to notice something like that when I’m in my human form.”

All the color that had fled from Bellamy’s cheeks came rushing back. He was so flushed that it made his eyes gleam like glass beads as he looked bashfully toward the streetlights. “Lucky guess.”

“Liar.” Orion beamed.

“Well,” huffed Bellamy, “it’s definitely not because my phone’s evil algorithm has created an intense hyperfixation on popular influencers like Buck Charles and hornythe06. Oh, and my parasocial husband, Imperial Pierre. One time, he even responded to my flirty DM.”

Orion threw his head back. His laughter boomed against the apartment building, mighty and jovial. He wiped a tear from his eye and said, “You’re something else, Bellamy Hirsch. Fine. Let me make your night.” He stepped off the curb, giving Bellamy a bemused smile, flipping up the lapels of his jacket, and shifting.

Man turning to beast defied practicalities. Clothes were not a barrier, and there was no particular point where flesh became fur or muscle stretched and grew. There was simply man, and then there was elk. Like a new frame in a movie. The chemical change smelled like balsam and autumnal detritus.

Orion had already towered over Bellamy as a man, but his elk form was massive. The average bull was horse-sized, but Orion was… godlike in the space that his form took up. More like a moose, it seems, thought Bellamy, his jaw dropping. Orion’s pelt was dark like his antlers had been, not the tawny brown that most elk were, rather a glossy sable. Shifting, rippling darkness. His eyes were the same kind amber as before, and the slow blink he gave Bellamy maintained his amusement.

“See ya in the morning.” Orion’s voice projected farther in his elk form, words made not from lips but from some uncanny shifter power.

Speechless, Bellamy lifted a hand and waved as the elk reared back. Orion’s movements were graceful, his musculature lean and powerful as his front hooves—big enough to shatter Bellamy’s skull—landed with a crack on the pavement. He leapt easily over the hood of a car and pranced down the street, melting into the night.