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David makes his first appearance one crisp day in October, when the leaves in Prospect Park have become a riot of golds and oranges.
It’s not a surprise, exactly. Henry had been so excited when he’d announced it to their little group, gathered one evening at the pub, that David was going to be coming over to the States. He’d gone on and on—an impossibly soft look in his eyes—about how much he missed him, and how great it would be to finally have him here, and how everyone would love him.
Alex has his doubts. He’s not jealous, because that would be absurd. Henry’s one of his best friends. It’s not— It’s not like that between them. He’s happy for Henry, truly.
He just doesn’t understand why Henry wouldn’t previously have mentioned that his boyfriend is a fucking shapeshifter.
“Alex!” Henry calls out to him when Alex comes around a bend in the path. He’s all windswept and pink-cheeked from the slight chill, and there’s a huge, crinkly smile on his face that makes Alex’s heart lurch in his chest.
Alex’s answering smile is reflexive and utterly impossible to suppress. So sue him. He’s happy when his friends are happy. He’s come to realize somewhat recently that he’s especially happy when Henry is happy, which is not something he’s particularly interested in interrogating further, thank you very much.
At first it seems like Henry’s alone despite the fact that he’d invited Alex to meet them at the park, but a moment later a beagle comes bounding up next to him. Henry’s grin gets broader. “Alex, meet David.”
Wow, ok. Unexpected, but whatever. Alex can roll with it. He waits a moment for David to shift back to human, but nothing happens. David sits at his feet, looking up with his tongue lolling out of his mouth, and Alex isn’t sure what to do now.
The thing is, you don’t ask a shifter to change unless you’re a fucking cop. It’s just… rude. Alex would know better than most, since he’s a shifter too. That’s why he also knows it’s really fucking weird not to shift back into your human form when you’re meeting new people. David, however, seems to see no problem with hanging out in his doggy form, nor does Henry say anything. Maybe things are different in England.
That doesn’t help much right now, though, so Alex ends up giving a kind of awkward half-wave down at David. “Hey,” he says. “Nice to meet you.”
David stares up at him, unreacting. Not even a head tilt.
For some reason Henry chuckles. “He’s a little shy at first”—Alex supposes that might explain his insistence on remaining a dog—“but I promise he’s friendly. You can pet him if you like.”
“Oh, uh,” Alex says uncertainly. This is also fucking weird. Getting pets from your friends and loved ones is one of the very best things about being a shifter, but the idea of getting pet by a stranger makes his skin crawl. Alex has drawn blood before when some assholes have gotten handsy. He stuffs his fists in his pockets. “I’m good.”
Henry frowns a little. Shit, Alex hopes he didn’t offend either of them. He feels like he’s on unfamiliar ground, which is not a sensation he particularly enjoys. For Henry, though, he’d put up with a lot.
A moment later, Henry’s expression clears and he shrugs. “Suit yourself. Do you want to walk?”
They set off on a stroll around the park together, enjoying the autumn weather and scenery. It’s a nice break from his endless studying and coursework, and Alex feels himself unwind as Henry rants about a recent meeting with his publisher, who’s been jerking him around on the edits for his latest novel. The whole time, David trots along at their feet, occasionally running off to sniff something but coming back a moment later. There’s nothing particularly odd about his behavior, except the fact that David seems to be completely uninterested in whatever Henry is saying. Being in dog form may make you more interested in doggy things, but it doesn’t excuse not paying attention. Alex doesn’t get it. Henry is constantly gushing about this guy, but from where Alex is standing, he could do a lot better.
“How’s David settling in?” Alex asks eventually. He’d ask David himself how he’s liking New York, but, well, David’s current form really puts a damper on conversation. Alex is starting to understand why his sister was so annoyed at him whenever he’d shift and slink off to avoid talking to her.
“Oh, he’s doing well,” Henry answers, smiling fondly down at David. “He’s used to a big city, living in London for so long, so New York isn’t much of a change in many respects.”
“Plus, you’ve already got a stash of all those weird British snacks.”
Henry just grins. “Yes, well, thankfully he doesn’t eat my Jaffa cakes, or we’d have problems.”
“Next you’ll be telling me he doesn’t drink tea, either,” Alex jokes.
“Not a drop.”
Alex makes a scandalized face, one hand pressed to his chest, and the way it makes Henry laugh is pretty much everything. How David can just ignore this—the crinkles next to his sparkling eyes, the wide stretch of his full lips, the pink flush of his cheeks in the slight chill—in favor of investigating the base of a tree, Alex is sure he doesn’t know.
Maybe it’s just a weird day. Alex is trying to be open-minded, here. There’s gotta be a good explanation, or at least a decent one—he’s sure of it.
“I’m telling you, there’s no reasonable explanation for this,” Alex insists. June looks exasperated. Nora at least looks like she’s considering his argument. “He’s lived here for more than a week now. You don’t find it suspicious that he’s never in human form in public?”
“Well, yes, but—” June allows, but Alex doesn’t let her finish.
“He’s probably a criminal. Maybe he’s wanted in the States, and that’s why he didn’t come over before.”
“Or Interpol is after him,” Nora puts in. She dumps some sugar into her coffee and briefly looks around for a spoon; upon finding none, she conjures one out of the air and uses it to stir once before pointing at Alex with it. “He had to leave London because they finally tracked him down, and now he’s hiding out here.”
With a snap, the spoon disappears again. Alex has always wondered where they go; physics and the conservation of matter seem to be at a loss when it comes to conjurers. And shapeshifters, for that matter. There are people that study these things, of course, and Nora has tried to explain some of it, but it’s far beyond Alex’s understanding of the universe. He’s much more interested in the legal and moral issues behind magic, which is why he’s in law school. He’s read dozens of cases about shifters hiding from responsibilities or legal ramifications. His suspicions didn’t come out of nowhere.
June groans. “Don’t encourage him,” she tells Nora, then shoots Alex a patronizing look over the top of her latte. “Not everything is a conspiracy.”
“It could just be that he’s horribly ugly,” Alex muses.
“Yeah right,” Nora scoffs. “There’s no way Henry doesn’t pull someone ridiculously hot. Also, David is cute.”
“In dog form,” Alex says. “That doesn’t mean anything about his human form.”
“Yeah, just look at how pretty your cat form is compared to how you normally look,” June says.
Alex very maturely sticks his tongue out at her. He takes a sip of mediocre coffee—this new coffee shop they’re trying out isn’t really up to snuff in his opinion—and tries to look nonchalant. “You could do a read on him,” he says to June.
“You know very well I can’t read shifters in animal form.”
“I meant Henry,” he mutters. June’s answering expression is withering, and he winces. “Forget I said anything.”
June, predictably, does not forget. “You want to spy on your friends, find a different empath,” she says icily.
“I know, I wasn’t being serious,” Alex protests.
He was, a little, even though he should have known better than to suggest June break her strict moral code of confidentiality. Most of the time she can’t help but see other people’s feelings as colorful visual auras around them, so early on she took on the mantle of secret-keeper for her friends, and she takes it seriously. Sometimes Alex thinks life would be easier if he was like her or their mom, who reads people’s emotions through touch. At least then he wouldn’t get blindsided by these things.
“Besides,” she adds, “if I went around spilling about people’s secret feelings, Henry wouldn’t be the one in trouble.”
Alex frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, pipsqueak,” June answers, punctuating it with an eye roll. “Here’s a thought: did you ever consider that maybe David is just a dog?”
“No way,” Alex scoffs. “Not even Henry would name an actual dog David. That’s a boring shifter name for sure.” He looks over at Nora beseechingly. “Back me up, here.”
Nora just shrugs. “More data needed. If David has been spending the majority of his time in animal form, it’ll be harder to tell the difference. He could be hiding something,” she says, and Alex feels triumphant until she adds, “or he could just be a dog.”
“Y’all are crazy,” Alex huffs. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this, and then you’ll see.”
“See that you wasted a lot of time being jealous of a dog?” June says.
“Why would I be jealous?”
“Wait, he doesn’t know?” Nora asks June, as if Alex isn’t sitting right there.
“Know what?” Alex asks.
“Sadly, he does not,” June answers, ignoring him. “You know how men can be. Completely blind to their own emotions.”
Nora nods sagely, and Alex is annoyed. “You can’t scold me for wanting to know about Henry’s feelings, then turn around and tell Nora about mine,” he accuses. This, at least, finally makes June and Nora look at him again. “Especially if I don’t know about them.”
“Babe, I don’t have to be an empath to see how you light up around him,” Nora says.
“Or how disappointed you were when he said David was moving here,” June adds.
“Or how grumpy you’ve been since he did.”
“Ok, ok,” Alex interrupts, even as June’s mouth opens again. “You’ve made your point, even if you’re wrong. We’re just friends.”
“That doesn’t mean either of you want it that way,” June mutters under her breath.
Alex doesn’t think he was meant to hear it, but he does. Blame his better than average hearing—an unusual bleed-over from his animal form, like his fucking excellent night vision. So he heard her just fine, not that he understands. “What do you mean, either of us?”
June winces. “Fuck. You didn’t hear that. I’ve said too much already.” She pushes back from the table and stands, hurriedly gathering her jacket and scarf. “I gotta go.”
“Bug, wait,” he tries, snagging one of her sleeves, but she shakes him off. “You can’t just run away now.”
“Sorry, Alex, we really do have to leave,” she tells him, not unapologetically. On his other side, Nora is also getting up and shrugging her jacket on. “We’re supposed to meet Pez at his place. He’s trying out some new eye-hair color combos and wants our input.”
Like that’s a good excuse. As a shifter who can change aspects of his own appearance instead of transforming into an animal, Pez is always trying out new combinations of features. Sometimes the only way Alex can recognize him is by the ring he always wears on his pinky. Still, Pez is Henry’s best friend, and has known him for a long time, which means he probably knows all about Henry’s boyfriend.
“Ask him what he knows about David,” Alex suggests, even though they’re already walking away from the table.
“I will not. Ask him yourself. Or better yet, talk to Henry,” June calls back to him. The bell jingles as she yanks the door open, and then they’re gone, leaving Alex with too many questions and far too few answers.
It’s Wednesday, which means movie night. They call it movie night even though they don’t always watch a movie; Alex isn’t sure exactly how it started, but at this point it’s a standing event for them, assumed to be happening unless someone explicitly calls it off. That had been Alex last week, slammed by midterms and unable to take even two hours off. It’s rare that either of them do cancel, though, and it just means Alex is very ready for this week.
He gets to Henry’s apartment early, as he often does, because Henry has huge south-facing windows and the sunbeams in the afternoon are unparalleled. Henry isn’t actually there—he’s probably out running in the park or something like that—so Alex lets himself in with the spare key Henry keeps under the plant by his front door. This is part of their routine, too; Henry won’t be surprised to find him curled up in the spot on the couch that gets the good sun.
Shifting feels a lot like a really good stretch, particularly if you haven’t done it in a few days, which is precisely where Alex is at right now. He leans into the shift and indulges by arching his back up once his forelegs hit the floor, then pushes back on his haunches, letting his long tail twitch in the air above him. The sunlight picks up the subtle reddish-brown tones in his black fur as he leaps onto the couch and curls into a circle. If he starts purring—because let’s be real, there’s not much better than sleeping in cat form in a sunbeam—that’s nobody’s business but his.
Alex is pretty sleep deprived, so he doesn’t wake when Henry comes in; not at the sound of the front door, nor that of Henry dropping his keys on the front table and kicking his shoes off, nor that of the shower starting up. What does wake him up is when a cold, wet nose suddenly bumps up against his. His reaction is rapid and instinctual: he startles out of his nap and swipes irritably at his assailant, who yelps as one of Alex’s claws catches him on the snout.
Fucking David. What is he even doing, sneaking up on Alex like that? For that matter, what’s he doing here, tonight? This is Alex and Henry’s night. They don’t invite other people.
Before he can attempt to make sense of what’s happening, the shower abruptly shuts off and Henry comes hurrying out into the living room. Then Alex is too stunned to shift back, because in their years of friendship he’s never seen Henry like this: chest bare and glistening with water, the V of his hips disappearing under a low-slung towel wrapped around his narrow waist, his normally floppy blond hair plastered to his head and dripping onto broad, muscular shoulders. Honestly, thank god Alex is in cat form, because he’s not sure what his face would be doing right now if he was human.
“Oh, Alex, it’s just you,” Henry says, exhaling in something like relief. “I thought there was an intruder. What’s going on out here, anyway?”
Alex looks over at David, who’s really fucking milking it with his tail tucked between his legs and those huge puppy dog eyes out in full force. Alex barely scratched him, didn’t even draw blood, and it all was David’s fault. Not that Alex can say anything, because he’s currently a cat and unwilling to risk shifting back for fear of what his human body would give away in the face of Henry’s… well, everything. Instead, he does his best to convey through irritable tail twitches just how fucking annoyed he is about all of this. David tries to nudge him again with his horrible cold nose, and Alex hisses at him.
Henry sighs. “I do wish you two would get along better. Please behave while I get dressed?”
Alex meows in a way that he hopes conveys that he is not the problem here.
He does shift back once Henry leaves, but of course David doesn’t. Alex isn’t surprised, but he is disappointed. They’re in private, surely now is the time for David to reveal himself. The fact that he still doesn’t isn’t helping Alex’s suspicions at all.
“I don’t know why you’re hiding, but I do know that Henry deserves better,” he says, low enough that he’s pretty sure Henry won’t overhear him. “What’s the point of coming here if you’re just going to do this?”
David just stares at him, and Alex stares back, looking for any sign that the being in front of him is actually a dog rather than a shifter. It can be hard to tell, even for other shifters, but David has a certain awareness and intelligence in his expression that Alex doesn’t think could possibly belong to an actual dog. Maybe that’s just his natural cattiness talking, though.
“This is getting absurd, man. If you’re going to be sticking around, you’re gonna have to show your face eventually. Unless…” Alex trails off as something else occurs to him. “Are you stuck like that?” he asks David. “Is that even possible? Fuck. That feels like something I should know about. Bark once if yes.”
David blinks at him.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Alex huffs, rolling his eyes.
David snuffles lightly at one of hands. Alex does not pet him, because that’s still weird. He doesn’t know the guy, despite having met him a few times now. It occurs to him that he has no idea where David is living, and maybe he’s living here, with Henry. It’d make sense that Henry’s boyfriend would move in with him when he’s just relocated across an ocean. Why didn’t Alex consider this possibility before? All of their movie nights might be shared going forward, and Alex doesn’t know how he feels about that.
(That’s a lie. He doesn’t like it, at all. He refuses to interrogate that feeling, either.)
By the time Henry returns, clad in a t-shirt and pajama pants and looking impossibly soft, they’ve reached a sort of détente, in that they are sitting together without antagonizing each other. It’s something, and Henry seems pleased.
“Indian tonight?” he suggests as he walks over to them, no doubt already pulling up a menu on his phone. “I’m craving curry and naan.”
Alex shrugs. “Sure. I’m easy.”
David does not express an opinion. Unsurprisingly.
The evening turns out pretty normal, despite how it started. They eat dinner on the sofa with their knees pressed together and argue about what movie to watch, only for Alex to suggest something completely different. It’s just that he’s had a hard time getting out of his own head lately and movies rarely do much to help that, even those featuring enchanters as actors. Sure, they’re more immersive than movies starring non-enchanters—there’s a reason Arthur Fox’s Bond films always had audiences on the very edges of their seats—but they’re nothing compared to seeing performances on stage. It’s like reading a book written by an enchanter versus getting the story told to you in person. And it just so happens that Alex has, at his disposal, one of the best enchanters out there, at least in his opinion.
“I was thinking…” he says slowly, drawing out the last word.
Henry’s mouth is tipping into a knowing smirk before Alex even finishes speaking. “Truly, a momentous occasion.”
“Fuck off,” Alex huffs, unable to keep from laughing. “You know what I mean.”
“I do, and as it turns out, I could use some feedback on my latest chapter. My editor says it’s too much.”
“Your editor is an idiot, as we’ve previously established.” He’s always trying to get Henry to tone back his prose and, yes, enchanters have to be careful about the way they tell stories or else risk people actually getting lost in the narrative, but still. The reading public has no idea what Henry’s truly capable of. Alex, however, is more than a little bit addicted to his stories. He narrows his eyes at Henry. “I can’t believe you finished the new chapter and didn’t tell me. You know I’ve been waiting since that last cliffhanger.”
“All right, all right, I’ll get the manuscript,” Henry laughs.
When he returns with his notebook, they settle into the couch and Alex shifts again as Henry flips to the right page. Being in cat form helps quiet his racing brain, and it’s just nice and cozy to curl up on the cushions next to Henry’s hip. Plus, often he gets pets. It’s an all-around excellent arrangement. Tonight, though, David is on Henry’s other side, snuggled close with his chin laying on top of Henry’s thigh just above his knee. One of Henry’s hands moves to the top of David’s head, scritching behind his ears, and Alex isn’t sure what comes over him.
Before he really knows what he’s doing, he stands up again, placing one paw on Henry’s thigh and looking up at him. He gives a tiny meow, and it’s pretty obvious what he’s asking, even though they’ve never done this before. Henry’s eyes go slightly wide and he makes a soft little, “oh” sound, but he lifts his arms slightly to give Alex better access, and Alex doesn’t think about it further before he jumps on the invitation. He climbs into Henry’s lap and curls up like he belongs there, and it’s only better when Henry’s hand drops down to pet him in long strokes down his back.
David chuffs slightly, apparently put out by this new development. Alex should probably be ashamed of himself, but cats don’t feel shame, so. He can have a whole crisis about it later, when he’s a human again.
“Jonathan wakes with a gasp to complete darkness,” Henry begins, and Alex feels himself sink fully into the low, rich cadence of his voice as the story comes to life around him.
Someone is pounding on his bedroom door.
Really, there’s only one person that it could feasibly be—maybe two, but June probably wouldn’t be currently knocking hard enough to make the door creak. Sure enough, Nora’s voice comes a moment later, shouting through the shitty plywood.
“I know you’re in there, Alejandro!”
The doorknob rattles. This is why he locks his door in the first place, or else she’d already be in here, and he is not in the mood to talk to anyone.
“Go away!” he shouts back.
A moment later, his phone buzzes with text: open up or i’m just gonna conjure a key
Ugh. He knows from experience that when she gets like this there’s no stopping her, so he peels himself out of the bed he’s been plastered to since he got back from Henry’s—so, like, almost a full day—and walks over to the door, then yanks it open.
“What’s a guy gotta do to have a crisis in peace around here?” he mutters grumpily before turning around and faceplanting on the bed again.
“Good to see you’re not dead,” Nora says as she walks in after him.
“Didn’t know you cared,” Alex says, muffled into his pillow. Somehow she understands him anyway.
“Yeah, well it would suck to get rid of the body.” A moment later his mattress dips and she shoves at his hip to get him to roll over. “What, may I ask, the fuck is wrong with you?”
Alex sighs and grabs a pillow to half bury his face in. “I spent yesterday evening in Henry’s lap.” Nora’s eyebrows shoot upward in a bid to become one with her hairline. “As a cat,” he clarifies.
“So?” she says. “You do that all the time.”
“Yeah, with you and June. Not with him.”
“Ok, then I’m guessing things got awkward?”
“No,” he admits with more reluctance than that answer would seem to warrant. It wasn’t awkward at all, and that’s entirely the problem. It felt perfect, like everything Alex shouldn’t want because Henry already has a boyfriend. A boyfriend who was there while Alex was shamelessly inserting himself into Henry’s space.
When he explains this to Nora, she frowns. “So you’re feeling guilty for putting the moves on someone else’s man.”
“No,” Alex protests immediately, before huffing in frustration. “Maybe. I don’t know what I was doing, Nora.”
“Hmm,” she hums skeptically. “I think if that were true, you wouldn’t have been having a day-long crisis about it.”
“Ugh, I didn’t ask you to come in here with your logic.” He takes a deep breath that shudders a little in his chest and burrows his face a little deeper into the pillow. “Any tips for getting over your best friend? You know, just hypothetically.”
Nora is quiet for a moment, and he can feel her thoughtful gaze on him even though he refuses to look her in the eye. “You really are gone on him, aren’t you?” she asks eventually, her voice is softer now. He doesn’t answer, and she loops an arm around his shoulders, tugging him into a sideways hug. “C’mere. You’ll be ok.”
“Yeah,” he mumbles into her shoulder. “I know.”
By the weekend, Alex has reached a kind of equilibrium with his new knowledge. It’s pretty clear he’s got feelings for one of his best friends, but also that it’s not going to go anywhere because said friend is already seeing someone who obviously makes him very happy for reasons Alex can’t fathom. Plus, there’s no guarantee he’d be into Alex even if he was single. Alex tells himself he should take a step back to try to preserve his own heart, but all it takes is one text from Henry suggesting that they hang out in the park to throw that idea right out the window. He’s still going to take every opportunity he can to spend time with Henry, even if it also, inevitably, now means spending time with David.
Today Henry had suggested a picnic lunch in the park, which Alex is well aware is so David can be with them. The weather is nice, though, and Alex is determined to have a good time no matter what. Henry already has a blanket spread out over the leaf-strewn grass in a quiet corner of the park by the time Alex gets there, but he pops up from where he’s sitting immediately.
“Oh good, you’re here,” he says, putting a casual hand briefly on Alex’s arm that nevertheless manages to light Alex on fire. “Can you watch David while I run over to the corner bakery? I meant to grab a baguette on my way over, but they don’t allow dogs inside.”
“You should have just texted, I would have picked it up,” Alex tells him.
“No no, I’ll get it,” Henry insists, then before Alex can protest further, he’s hurrying off down the path.
Alex doesn’t even see David, so he’s not sure how he’s meant to watch him. Not that he’s really worried, because he’s pretty certain David can look after himself. With a sigh, he settles down onto the blanket, and a few moments later David comes bounding up from god knows where with a stick in his mouth. He drops it in front of Alex, then sits expectantly next to it. Alex glances down at the stick, covered in slobber, and grimaces.
“Absolutely not,” he tells David. “I’m not playing these games with you.”
David whimpers softly and nudges the stick.
“Gimme a break. You and I both know what this is.”
Fortunately, he doesn’t have to wait long for Henry to reappear clutching a long paper bag with a loaf of bread stuck out the top. A little frown creases Henry’s brow when he sees them sitting there in clear discomfort, there and gone in the blink of an eye, though it doesn’t stop a little rush of guilt from flooding through Alex as Henry’s words about hoping that they’d get along come back to him. Of course he’d want that, and Alex has been too wrapped up in his own feelings to consider how hard it must be on Henry to have one of his good friends and his boyfriend be at odds.
Ugh. Fine, Alex will try to be friendlier, but it’s not going to be easy. He still doesn’t trust that David isn’t up to something, plus there’s the whole fact that having to be friends with the boyfriend of the person you’re kind of in love with is a miserable proposition.
The things he’d do to make Henry happy.
Alex lifts a hand and gives David a somewhat perfunctory pet on the top of his head, doing his best to look at ease as he does so. It still feels wrong, but David’s tail immediately starts wagging and Henry smiles as he settles down on the blanket next to them, so Alex resigns himself to more weirdness in his life than he might prefer, at least for now. That resolution is put to the test when David scrambles over the top of him to get to Henry, and he doesn’t quite keep himself from recoiling.
It doesn’t escape Henry’s notice. “Can I ask you something?” he says as he scratches David behind the ears.
“Anything,” Alex says, and means it.
“Do you just not like dogs? Is it a cat shifter thing?”
That’s… not what Alex expected, although it’s a fair question given Alex’s behavior lately. “No, it’s not that,” he sighs. “Dogs are fine. I have a hard time trusting shifters who hide all the time.”
Henry frowns and his brows knit together in obvious confusion. “What?”
“Just— why isn’t anyone allowed to see what he really looks like?” Alex blurts, gesturing at David. Ok, he’s being rude now, but he doesn’t really care. He just has to know what the fuck is actually going on here.
There’s a beat of silence, then another one as Henry stares at him, and Alex thinks maybe this is the breaking point. Maybe that was too much. Maybe they were just supposed to never acknowledge how fucking weird this is.
“Alex,” Henry says slowly, “are you under the impression that David is a shapeshifter?”
“Well, yeah, of course,” Alex huffs. “Isn’t he?”
Henry laughs, which Alex does not particularly appreciate. It must show on his face, because Henry tries to school his expression, biting his lip as he shakes his head. “No, Alex. He’s just a dog.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m very certain.”
“But his name is David,” Alex protests.
“Which I gave him when I got him as a puppy several years ago,” Henry explains with a kind of amused patience that Alex isn’t sure how to take.
He’s not crazy. He wants to say that Nora and June weren’t sure about David either—well, at least Nora wasn’t—but then he’d have to explain why they were talking about this in the first place. Instead, he doubles down.
“Why would you name a dog David?”
“After Bowie,” Henry says, as if it’s obvious.
“Henry, sweetheart”—the endearment slips out without his permission, and he doesn’t miss the way Henry’s eyes go wide—“did no one ever tell you that you shouldn’t name animals with human names?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“Because people will think they’re shifters!” Alex says a little too loudly. They’re starting to draw attention from people walking by on the path nearby, so he lowers his voice and nearly hisses, “Especially when you’re always talking about them like they’re human!”
“I’m sorry that I gave you that impression, but he really is just a dog,” Henry says gently. “So that’s why you didn’t like him this whole time? You thought he was up to something?”
“Well, yeah,” Alex huffs. “It’s shady as fuck.”
He thinks, maybe, that he can get away with not letting on that a large part of his problem was the whole boyfriend issue. Unfortunately for him, Henry knows him too well to let it go at just that. His brow creases again and he tips his head slightly as he stares at Alex like he can see right through him.
“That’s not all of it though, is it? Something else about this has you bothered.”
Alex groans and buries his face in his hands, so he knows it’s not intelligible when he mumbles, “I thought he was your boyfriend.”
“What?” Henry asks, predictably.
Alex heaves a dramatic sigh and pulls his hands away. Henry’s still staring at him, achingly beautiful in his worry, and yes Alex might have just found out that David isn’t his boyfriend, but that doesn’t mean Henry wants Alex. They’re friends, and Alex is about to torpedo all of that because he’s a fucking idiot. Henry deserves an explanation for his bizarre behavior over the last couple of weeks, though.
“I thought David was your boyfriend who moved here from England,” Alex confesses miserably.
“Oh,” Henry says. He looks more than a bit stunned by this information, but Alex can’t tell if it’s a good stunned or a bad stunned. “Well. I can confirm that David is not my boyfriend.”
“So you’re not dating a shapeshifter?” Alex asks, just to be sure.
Henry shakes his head. “No.”
He’s already shooting himself in the foot; he might as well take off the entire leg. “Would you like to be?”
Henry’s voice is a little strident when he asks, “What do you mean, in general?”
“No, not—” Alex starts before he cuts himself off with a strangled sound. “Me, Henry. I’m talking about me.” If possible, Henry looks more shocked, his mouth gaping open like a particularly sexy fish, but he doesn’t say anything so Alex keeps hurtling along over the edge of the cliff. “And if the answer is no, then that’s fine, but I just had to take a shot because I really like you, and I think we’d be really good together—I think we are good together, actually, and—”
The rest of what he was going to ramble out is interrupted, because Henry’s lips are on his and then Henry’s tongue is in his mouth, and Alex thinks, a little hysterically, I guess that’s a yes. Henry kisses him with an abundance of enthusiasm, his hands desperately clutching the sides of Alex’s face as their lips move together, and something hot and wild goes zipping down Alex’s spine and spreading out through his body to tingle at the tips of his fingers and toes. Alex knows there’s no such thing as kissing magic, but if there were, Henry would have it in spades.
Henry’s eyes are a little wild when they break apart, as if he can’t believe what he’s just done, as if there’s a chance that Alex isn’t a thousand percent behind this development given everything he’s just admitted.
“I, uh,” Henry breathes, his cheeks flushed and his lips a pretty kiss-bitten red. “I hope that was all right?”
“Baby, what about any of that made you think it wasn’t?”
Henry whimpers softly and kisses him again, slower and softer than the first time, and Alex rethinks his conclusions about kissing magic. Maybe it’s just the excitement of it all, but it’s impossible not to read too much into the energy thrumming beneath his skin. Maybe enchanters have additional ways of casting a spell, maybe Henry’s just special, maybe it’s somehow the combination of their magic—
“Alex, love,” Henry breathes in between kisses.
“Hmm?”
“Stop thinking.”
“Right, good idea,” Alex gets out before he loses himself in their kisses again, just as easily as he always gets lost in Henry’s stories.
A few days later, Alex wakes up from his sunbeam nap feeling much warmer than normal, especially given the chill in the air. It takes him a moment of slow blinking, his cat eyes adjusting to the afternoon light, to realize that the additional heat is coming from another body pressed against his back, small and furry like his own. He lifts his head and looks over his back to see David lying behind him. Trying to encroach on his sunbeam, maybe. But then David notices that he’s awake, lifts his own head from where it’s lying on his front paws, and settles his chin on Alex’s side, unvarnished doggy affection in his huge brown puppy eyes.
Alex still thinks David looks a little too intelligent at times—a little too knowing—to be just a dog, but in the end it doesn’t really matter. He trusts and loves Henry, and by some miracle Henry loves him back, so he’s more than willing to accept the dog as a fixture in his life now.
Even if it means sharing his sunbeams.