Xaxac sipped his wine and tried not to look at Alex. It would be rude, but he didn’t like the silence in the room, and he hated the ticking of that infernal clock.

It was hard to go back to nothing after his day on the town. It was difficult, after meeting new people, getting new things, and experiencing life outside of two rooms to be back in a sitting room that looked so much like Agalon’s, so much like home. It was difficult not to look at Alex, because he was everything Xaxac wanted to be. He was happy. He didn’t have that cloud of negativity hanging over him that Xaxac sometimes got, though he had once. He was once where Xaxac was now, and he had come out of it unscathed and beautiful.

Xaxac was trying not to think about the bathhouse.

Xaxac didn’t want to think about what had happened at the bathhouse.

Xaxac was trying as hard as he could not to think about what happened at the bathhouse.

“Alright,” Alex said, “I’m gonna say it. You look like shit. I’m sorry as I can be, darlin, but you need to hear it.”

“I thought I was going to die,” Xaxac said quietly to his salad as he moved his fork through it without eating it. “I ain’t never… I…”

Alex’s eyebrows knitted together in his perfectly moisturized forehead. He leaned back in his chair and took in the vacant expression in Xaxac’s eyes and frowned, which Xaxac would have thought was a terrible breach of protocol, a complete disregard for their profession, had he not been trying so hard not to look at him.

Xaxac was trying as hard as he could not to think about what happened at the bathhouse, because it probably hadn’t happened. Agalon would never hurt him, not on purpose. He had been half asleep, there was something in the air, or the wine, or maybe the water that made his brain not function properly, so he had probably dreamed it, or made it up, especially after the other nightmare he had had.

“When?” Alex asked.

It hadn’t happened. It wasn’t real.

And even if it was real, it hadn’t been that bad. He had never been in any real danger.

“Xac?” Alex asked, and when Xaxac gave no response he asked again, “Xaxac?”

“I… I had a really… I got scared,” Xaxac explained, and Alex watched him over the rim of his glass. “I don’t… know if it really happened.”

“You been thinkin too much, honey,” Alex said and Xac nodded.

He still wasn’t very good at breathing with Agalon down his throat, even with the practice. He had learned, well enough, how to breathe right, breath in a rhythm, through his nose, so he didn’t panic, so he didn’t gag himself or start to feel sick. They had worked on that.

But he couldn’t do it underwater.

He didn’t think he needed to know how to do it underwater.

His job was to make Agalon happy.

But with his hands on his shoulders, holding him down, and the burning in his lungs, his body screamed at him, told him that he had to breathe or die, and when it began to shake, when it told him that he was dying, and he needed to do something about it because he was absolutely not allowed to die-

He had scared himself.

It probably hadn’t even happened.

But he had scared himself.

Because in that moment, in that instant before he thought it was going to be over forever, his brain supplied him with one command, so loud it drove all other thoughts from his head.

Bite.

Fight or flight little bunny. That’s a predator, and he’s going to kill you.

Bite him.

“You’re completely gone,” Alex said and Xaxac stopped pretending to eat and folded his hands in his lap.

He didn’t bite. But he was strong, and in an instant he was on the other side of the pool, gasping for air, and Agalon seemed confused, didn’t seem to understand what Lee was telling him, or why Xaxac was clinging to the side of the pool, panting and crying. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t disappointed. He was confused.

He had to have let him go, didn’t he? He had to have released him? Xaxac couldn’t have broken out of his grip. Agalon didn’t understand why he was upset, and Xaxac couldn’t explain it to him because he had to get the water out of his lungs and he couldn’t.

But it had probably never happened, because he had woken up in his bed, back at the room, and no one else said anything about it. It had to be a terrible dream. If no one else said anything, it had to be a bad dream, like the moon on fire. Xaxac had a lot of bad dreams. If it had really happened, Agalon would have said something, would have checked on him, would have probably apologised. Agalon always apologised for scaring him.

So it hadn’t happened. It had just been a bad dream.

“Stop crying,” Alex demanded, dotting at Xaxac’s eyes with a cloth napkin, “Darlin, you’re fuckin your makeup all to hell. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I had a bad dream,” Xaxac explained, “I keep… keep havin weird dreams and I can’t… I can’t tell what’s…”

“What’s real and what ain’t?” Alex asked.

Xac nodded, and Alex stood, staring down at him, as if thinking very hard on something, something important, and trying to figure out how to say it.

“Xac, I wanna like you,” he said, “I really, really wanna like you. You can’t keep actin like this. You can’t keep cryin and carryin on all the damn time. Ok? You can’t. It’ll kill you if you do that. Look… none of us know what’s real. Nobody does. You gotta understand that. But it don’t matter. Nothin matters. Ok? Nothin really matters. We’re just… we’re just humans, just animals. We live short lives and almost none of it makes a lick of sense, and one day you’re gonna die, and everybody you know is gonna die, and it’ll be like none of it ever happened. So stop worryin about shit. Stop thinkin about bad dreams or bad days. This moment, right here? This is all we know is real. Just me and you and this room and this food and this wine and that is it. We’re pleasure slaves. We only got about forty years, realistically. Then I… I think they put us down. You can’t waste it cryin over bullshit! Look at me.”

Xaxac looked up at him and saw the sincerity in his eyes.

“You are going to die,” Alex told him. “It’s important to me that you know that. Tell me that you know that.”

Xaxac, like most mortal creatures, did not like to dwell on his own mortality. Alex was right, of course. Of course he was going to die one day. No one lives forever. And he wasn’t dead, so he was doing better than… most people. Most of the humans who had ever been born were dead.

“I’m gonna die,” Xaxac said, and that simple truth really did make him feel a little better.

“So don’t waste your life dwelling on bullshit,” Alex advised. “Eat your food. Drink your wine, ok? Let’s get drunk and make out.”

Xaxac nodded. Alex was right. No bad dream was going to kill him. It just felt so real…

“You’re right,” he admitted, and tried to smile. It was weak, but it was sincere. “We’re all gonna die. We ain’t got a lot of time. We should try to be happy.”

“And when you ain’t happy… look darlin, nobody is happy all the time. But when you ain’t, just smile and pretend. Just pretend until it looks so real nobody can tell the difference. The secret is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you can make people believe anything. That’s what every bit of this is really all about. It’s just a show.”

“You make it look so easy,” Xac said.

“I’ve had a lot of practice,” Alex said, “Darlin, listen at me. As long as you’re alive, that’s all that matters. Just stay alive, alright? For me? Don’t make me lose another one. Look, once the season starts it’s gonna be all trips and rough sex with hot fighters, and nights when you’re so drunk and so high you don’t know where the hell you’re at, and then it’s gonna be fancy balls and bitchin parties where we’ll all get together and hang out. I’ll introduce you to the other pleasure slaves and you’ll make friends. There’s a lot of good here, ok? That’s what you need to focus on. Don’t think about bad dreams. It goes away. I promise, if you ignore it, it’ll go away.”

“Do you think Aggie loves me?” Xaxac asked.

“Of course he does,” Alex smiled, “And Ky loves me. That has to be true. Where the hell would we be if it wouldn’t?”

“Oh I know you ain’t cryin again,” Lee said as he came into the room, “Good lord, Xac.”

“I’m sorry,” Xac took the napkin from Alex and blew his nose into it.

“Come on,” Lee said to him, “Let’s go fix your makeup. This is a disgrace. What is it this time? What’s got into you?”

“I don’t know,” Xaxac said as he allowed Lee to lead him into the bedroom. Alex refilled their glasses, picked them up, and tagged along.

“What is it, Xaxac?” Lee asked, much more kindly, much more softly, “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I had a bad dream,” Xaxac admitted as Lee mixed the pigment to fix his face, “I dreamed that Aggie tried to drown me.”

Lee’s body tensed, but it was so brief that Xaxac wondered if he had imagined it.

“Ain’t no reason to cry over a dream,” Lee said with great practicality, “I swear, boy, you get some weird thoughts in that pretty little head.”

“I know,” Xaxac said, “I think there’s somethin actually wrong with me. Somethin bad wrong. Maybe it’s on account of I’m a shifter? That might be a thing. I wish I knew more about it.”

“Hey Xac, look at this,” Alex shoved a piece of paper at him and Xaxac took it.

It was a watercolor painting that looked as if it had been done with some sort of black ink rather than regular watercolor paint, and depicted an elven man with long, dark hair, and striking, sharp features. His eyes were not divided, as they should have been, into pupil, iris, and sclera, but were completely black. He didn’t look like an earth elf, the colors were all wrong, and the face was longer than it should have been. The entire effect was offsetting.

“That’s uh… that’s real pretty, Alex,” Xaxac said and tried to hand it back so Lee could paint his face.

“He’s good lookin, ain’t he?” Alex asked, “I saw him in one of the books Ky read to me. I thought you’d like it, since you was a shifter. I done went and painted that for you.”

“For me?” Xaxac asked, “That’s… that’s real sweet.” He paused, and could not think of a polite way to ask the question he wanted to ask, and eventually decided they were far past politeness. “Why, though?”

“That’s Morgani Magnus,” Alex said, “If you’re really a shifter, that’s the feller y’all helped, the reason the moon fell and the world got cold.”

“The moon fell?” Xaxac asked.

“Didn’t nobody teach you the holy texts?” Lee asked as if the information shocked him, “I’da thought Abby woulda… maybe she was tryin to keep it from you. You’re cursed, boy. That’s what that is, a curse. Thesis cursed you on account of one of your ancestors helped Magnus when he tried to kill him.”

“Magnus tried to kill the great god?” Xaxac asked, staring at the picture.

“Yeah, after the moon fell,” Alex said, “see, in the beginnin, elves lived in a paradise called ‘The Crystal City’ where they ruled over all of Xren, all the critters here like us. It’s supposed to have been this perfect place. But then Magnus got mad about it, for some reason, I guess cause he’s a dumbass, and tried to kill Thesis. So Thesis crashed the moon into Xren, as punishment, to kill everythin he had created. Not just Magnus, a bunch of people followed him. He was gonna start over, make another perfect world, but Magnus survived, and a group of humans hid him. Thesis found um and cursed um. And that’s where shifters come from.”

“There used to be three moons?” Xaxac asked.

“Hold still,” Lee told him as he applied the setting powder, and Xaxac obeyed him.

Xaxac heard the door open from the hallway, and then Agalon’s voice rang out in the stillness.

“Where you at, Honey Bunny?”

“Smile,” Lee advised.

Xaxac took a deep breath, hopped up, smiled, and enthusiastically shouted, “Me and Alex is in the bedroom! Look what he made me! He’s so good at painting!”

There was a spring in his step as he bounded into the sitting room and into Agalon’s arms.