The rain draped over Brisbane like a wet sheet, bringing a chill with every sharp gust of wind. Not the weather Steve hoped for when planning a first date, but he wasn’t complaining. They huddled together in the Siam Palace on Sandgate Road, seated beneath the watchful eye of a giant golden Buddha. “A lucky statue,” Duke said, patting the belly. “Bodes well, yeah?”
“Let’s hope,” Steve replied.
Duke ordered Pad Thai and Steve followed suit. They ate slowly, trading first date anecdotes and vital statistics. Steve learned about Duke’s job as a physio out in Albion, the friendly kitchen war Duke waged against a neighbor after they both learned how to cook a perfect crème brûlée. Steve wracked his brain for interesting library stories to offer, seguing into his tale about the time he accidentally share housed with a straight dom/sub BDSM couple who possessed a lax approach to boundaries.
Despite his fears, Steve enjoyed himself. Wait staff hustled past tables, delivering drinks and plates of fragrant curry. The wind chased new patrons through the front door, candle flames dancing on every table. Their own lanky, blond waitress brought fresh beers.
Duke maneuvered himself into a position where his gaze fixed to the left of Steve’s shoulder. Wet his lips, then swigged the beer, an awkward silence on its heels. Steve eased back, no sense in crowding the man. “You okay?”
Duke paused for a moment, as if unraveling the question’s complexities. “So I’m going to confess something strange, given this is our first date.” He glanced down and took a deep breath. “I figure it’s a lot to dump on you, but life is easier when I’m upfront about it, you know? My whole deals been an issue for other guys. They don’t admit it, but it has. I’ve got this weird thing, and it turns into a bigger deal over time, and….”
Oh god, Steve thought, here it comes. All he said out loud was, “Shoot.”
Duke swigged his beer again, exhaled a deep breath. Steve braced himself for the worst, imagining fell possibilities.
Then Duke explained the regular visits by a flying crocodile, his expression hangdog and worried as he stumbled over his words.
Steve’s relief almost escaped in a giggle, but he caught it. All in all, he’d heard worse on a first date.
After explaining, Duke blushed and focused on the lukewarm remnants of Pad Thai. Used his fork to push the remaining cashew through an obstacle course of noodles and bean sprouts, refusing to look up. Steve found his sudden flush of shyness endearing.
It seemed to Steve that tall, good-looking guys like Duke rarely needed to blush for any reason, and he relished the prospect of offering comfort and understanding. “Well…” Steve tacked a reassuring smile on the end of the pause. “I get it. Really. And I’m glad you told me.”
Duke looked up from his plate, blue eyes wide and brimming with hope. Steve eased back into the canvas chair and sipped his beer, refusing to be snared in that look, not yet. “I won’t tell you it will never be a thing,” he said, “but I can roll with it for now. I’m cool with it. And you.”
Duke fought a relieved smile and lost. Then Steve asked a question: “How often are the visits?”
Dukes swelling eagerness crested and ebbed away, his broad shoulders sagging. “Two, three nights a week.”
“That many?” Steve said.
“That many.”
“Ever tempted to go?”
“Nah.”
“No?”
Duke pressed his lips together. A tight, inscrutable line. “As a kid, sure. Who wouldn’t? Puberty hit and life got hard and man, it tempted me, you know?” He stopped and brought out a wary smile. “But as an adult? Not for ages. I don’t want those kinds of adventures now. The way I see it, there’s plenty of excitement here if you’re looking for it.”
For a moment, Steve said nothing. Then he nodded. “Okay.”
“Really?”
“Sure. Doesn’t sound like a deal-breaker to me.”
“Cool.” Duke glanced up at the Buddha and flashed a grateful smile. His teeth were short and uneven. Steve discovered that imperfection only made Duke even more fascinating.
Steve asked for a second date. Duke requested the third. They didn’t truly ask, after that. Both agreed spending time together was a mutually desired state and defaulted to doing so. And so they stayed the night at Duke’s apartment down on Collins Street, wordlessly agreeing it was the right moment after eating Mexican food at the restaurant down by the river.
Steve and Duke were both in love, although neither could recognize it yet. Steve worried about being too old for Duke, too skinny and overly interested in books, cups of tea, and comfort. He compounded this fear in Duke’s small, one-bedroom apartment with a bicycle stored by the door. All the photographs on the walls were landscapes, taken on frequent trips overseas. The mountains of Tibet at sunrise. The dark rocks and banked snow of an Icelandic plain. Duke wrapped up in a puffy, DayGlo orange coat as he ventured across pristine arctic ice. “I don’t really spend much time here,” Duke said, showing Steve through. “The place is storage, mostly.”
“The Museum of Duke,” Steve joked, but his thoughts flashed to his own house. Three bedrooms stuffed with things. His books, and the artwork, and his fully stocked kitchen. The pantry with everything labeled and color-coded for ease of use. He said nothing and focused on kissing Duke, and their differences dropped away.
Cassie announced she was taking Steve to drinks after work, and he agreed because there was no getting out of it. They absconded to the pub round the corner, took their beers out to the garden and listened to the rumble of the trains going over the Merivale Bridge. Cassie toyed with her library ID, frustration spilling over as Steve avoided the topic of Duke.
“Right,” Cassie said. “How are things with your new man?”
“They’re good,” Steve said.
“Just good?”
“Very good. Great, even. It’s just”—Steve took a long, steady breath and exhaled—“he’s being visited well into adulthood. Warned me on the first date, upfront about everything. Swears he won’t leave, but…"
“You worry?”
“I worry.”
Cassie frowned. “How old is Duke?”
“Old enough to make a final decision.”
“Given he’s an adult, and remains here despite multiple opportunities to take off, sounds like he already has,” Cassie said. “Lovers don’t take off because they spot an opening, Stevie. Lover’s bail because they need to, or because there’s no reason to stay.”
Steve first encountered the crocodile on his third night sleeping in Duke’s apartment.
The visit caught Steve off-guard. He’d assumed the crocodile wouldn’t come while Duke entertained company. It seemed impolite, even for a winged reptile representing a magical land.
Midnight arrived and stubby legs rapped at the window, accompanied by beating wings and an aggravated snort. Steve jumped at the noise and Duke smiled. “It’s only the croc,” he said.
A warm flush crept up Steve’s neck, hidden but the dark. “Oh. Right..”
He’d never seen an airborne crocodile before, and Steve wasn’t truly seeing one now, given his vantage point on the bed. He could hear the steady beat of wings outside and the rattle as displaced air pushed against the panes of glass. All Steve caught through the curtains were quick glimpses of detail: rough skin; sharp teeth; the long, pristine white-feathered appendages that didn’t belong on any reptile. Duke slid free of Steve’s embrace. “Hold on. I’ll make it leave.”
Steve rolled onto his side to watch. He wondered how the crocodile maintained position, jostling against the pane and scrabbling for purchase on the sill. Steve pulled back the curtains and flipped the latch, pushed the window out.
The crocodile snarled at him, a sound like the dregs of water swirling down the drain. Duke gripped the window frame with both hands. “No,” he said. “Not tonight.”
An urgent, questioning grunt in response. Steve flinched, seized by the impression he’d intruded on something private. Instinct urged him to run away and hide in the bathroom until they were done, but given what he and Duke shared, he fought against the impulse.
“Look,” Duke said. “I’ve got company.”
The croc met this with another growl, lower and angrier. Steve abandoned plans to move.
“No,” Duke repeated, more urgently this time. He closed the window and pulled the curtains. Returned to bed and threw an arm over Steve. The steady rhythm of crocodile wings receded into the night. Steve held his breath until the sound faded.
“Sorry,” Duke said.
“It’s cool.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“You seem a little freaked.”
Steve nestled against Duke’s shoulder, planted a kiss on the stretch of bare skin. “It’s fine. In fact, it’s kinda sweet. No one refused a crocodile for me before.”
Duke’s fingers brushed against Steve’s spine. “It wasn’t a hard choice to make.”
His lips sought the hollow of Steve’s collar bone, worked their way towards the neck. Steve didn’t care about the crocodile after that. He found it tough to worry about anything but Duke, during the things that followed.
There have ever been uncharted kingdoms lurking beyond the pages of an atlas. Lands who swept up ordinary people and stole them away, pressed them into service as heroes and champions. Lost boys and faithful children, brave and true and splendid; dreamers and lovers, ill-equipped for the harsh world on this side of the divide; the young, the wild, the brash, and the beautiful.
Steve brushed against those lands as a boy. A black kitten marked by a white star on its forehead stole into his room at midnight, slipping through an open window and nudging Steve awake with both forepaws. The kitten spoke in a wheezy rasp and offered Steve a grand adventure, a chance to steal away and join the Twilight Circus, have adventures with Leanna the Wild Girl as the pair traveled from world to world. Abandon his life, friends, and parents, climb outside to ride the moonbeams off to who knows where.
Steve’s refusal was predicated on having tickets to see the re-release of Star Wars the next week, and his assumption there would be another invitation down the line. But there wasn’t, not for him. The cat never returned, and Steve remained in the world of Star Wars and George Lucas’ horrible prequels and the sequels that followed those. His days filled by school, then university, and the pleasures of the library gig, and if Steve thought about the kitten at all, it was rarely with regret.
Still, the persistence of Duke’s crocodile surprised him. Steve learned to recognize its approach: the regular thump of vast wings flapping over the corrugated iron rooftops; saltwater scents lingering in its feathers; the quiet scrabble of stubby legs searching for purchase on the window sill, and the slap of its tail against the brick wall below. They’d lie in bed together, Duke and Steve entwined, waiting for the tap-tap-tap that signaled the crocodile’s visit.
Duke rolled out of bed to refuse it, again and again. Declared his happiness and sent the crocodile away. Steve took some contentment from the repetition. He let himself relax.
Steve wasn’t sure when, exactly, he realized Duke might say “yes,” one day. They’d been together for almost a year, discussed Duke giving up his apartment. They’d confessed they loved each other, with nerves and caution to start, then with increasing confidence. They’d packed Duke’s stuff and ordered a moving van, ate pizza amid the chaos of half-unpacked boxes to celebrate.
The relationship progressed with ease and order, for a time. Steve and Duke developed routines. Grew used to having each other around, sharing space, sharing ambitions, sharing everything. The doubt started with a question, maybe. Duke slipping into bed and holding Steve tight, fingers brushing against bare ribs so lightly that it tickled.
“What do you dream about?” Duke said.
“I don’t remember my dreams.”
“As a kid, though? What did you want to be?”
“Happy,” Steve said. “And I am.”
“I wanted to be Spiderman,” Duke said. “That’s why I refused, the first time the crocodile begged me to leave. I figured I’d get bitten by a spider, and I’d get powers here in our world instead of needing to go away.”
“I dreamed of becoming a Jedi,” Steve said. “But a cool one. Han Solo with a lightsaber, not Luke Skywalker.”
“You’d make a good Luke.”
“Not Han?
“Oh no. You’d be a shitty Han,” Duke said. “But Han’s a scoundrel. Short-term fun. Luke’s the guy you build something with, no?”
“Oh. That’s nice,” Steve said. Secretly, he figured all Jedi were destined to be a shitty boyfriend. All those rules about feelings and secret loves didn’t bode well for long-term happiness.
Duke fell silent and Steve listened to him breathing, placed an ear against his chest. Duke said, “Do you regret not flying away with the cat, back when you were a kid?”
“Sure,” Steve said. “When life isn’t going well. I get frustrated or stuck, and I daydream about what might of have been.”
“Huh,” Duke said.
“It means nothing,” Steve said. “It’s natural, thinking things would be better, somewhere that isn’t here and now. But places don’t fix you, and problems sneak into the suitcase.”
“I dunno,” Duke said. “I think it’s easier to change when people don’t know your history.”
“Perhaps,” Steve said, “but I doubt it.”
“Of course he might go,” Cassie said, when Steve explained his concerns. “That’s always the risk with dating. Men come into your life and you love them. Most of them go away. If you have 10 relationships across your lifetime, you count yourself lucky if only 9 end with you breaking up. That’s all true love is, mate. You play the odds and you find your one in ten.”
“But how do you know?” Steve said. He was three beers down now, late heading home. The question gnawed at him even though Duke waited for him.
“You don’t,” Cassie said. “You trust him until there’s a reason not too. That’s how it works.”
“But you said—”
“That was start-of-the-relationship advice. It’s different,” Cassie said. “You’re mid-relationship. You’ve got more to lose. And he may go. That’s the risk. That’s always the risk. What matters now is whether the risk is worth it, and only you can judge that, yeah?”
Steve tried to take Cassie’s advice and, mostly, it was easy. He and Duke were good together, most days. Good together most nights, too, but Cassie argued it was the days that mattered. Good nights were meaningless, she said. All you needed was chemistry and hormones and a dark room, a place to fumble through the motions and figure out each other’s kinks. The days were the tricky part, she argued. Managing all that time spent together, establishing mutual support. Building something the both of you valued by accepting the not-so-great parts and celebrating the parts you valued.
On their first anniversary, Steve took Duke back to Siam Palace. Duke ordered the massaman curry, and Steve the Pad Thai. Duke’s curry came out hot enough that he hiccupped through the rest of the meal, and they drank wine and talked and returned home to finish celebrating.
When the crocodile came, regular as clockwork, Duke rolled out of bed. He kissed Steve on the cheek, then the lips, and he crossed over to the window. Steve thought nothing of it. He’d gotten used to the nocturnal visits. He rolled over and dozed. Not really listening.
Then: “No,” Duke said. “I’m happy here.”
The tone caught Steve’s attention. He stopped breathing, kept his eyes screwed shut. The crocodile’s tail slapped the exterior wall.
“Yes,” Duke said. Then: “yes, really.”
Steve exhaled. Smiled.
Then, Duke said, his voice soft as a whisper: “One day, if things change, perhaps. I don’t really know. Right now… for now, I’m happy.”
He came back to bed. Went to sleep.
Steve lay there, repeating Duke’s words over. Perhaps. One day. Right now.
Steve took to lying awake at night. He’d listen to Duke’s steady breathing, the rumble that wasn’t quite a full-fledged snore. He’d study the lines of Duke’s face in the moonlight. He’d wonder what it was like, where the crocodile came from. He pictured an island, and amazons, and pirates, and geese. A place where Duke would be special. Special to everyone, not just to Steve.
And, truly, that’s where the fighting kicked off, even if they never said it. They would have blazing rows over the coffees Duke picked up at the cafe, or the way he’d start complaining about his job the moment he walked through the door every evening. Steve didn’t have the guts to say, “I’m worried you will leave me,” in case Duke turned around and said, “Good, because I will.”
They weren’t happy. At least, Steve assumed they weren’t happy. He wasn’t, but he pretended. Steve excelled at feigning happiness, given the habits built up over time.
Practice honed Steve’s talent for self-deception even further as the weeks progressed, but it’s hard to love someone when you’re waiting for them to go. Anticipating their decision that an unfamiliar somewhere-else is an improvement on the present here-and-now. One day Steve came home early and sat in their living room, surrounded by their collective things: Steve’s books and Duke’s bike and the photographs of his travel.
Steve’s neck ache with a dull pain that first set in right after breakfast. He needed a massage, but his skin crawled at the thought of being touched.
Steve rubbed his face with both hands. Shucked off his shoes and collected a glass of water, his socks whispering against the floorboards. The house felt different now, with someone else resided there. Better, most of the time, but as he drank Steve pondered the practicalities of living alone once more.
It’s not that I hate him, Steve thought. I’m just… tired.
The recognition caught Steve off-guard. He placed his glasses on the counter and massaged the bridge of his nose. Last night’s dishes still filled the sink, waiting for someone to accept responsibility and fill the basin with water.
Steve thought about doing them and decided against it. Content to let it slide, and confident the job would get done in time.
It still came as a surprise, when Duke elected to leave.
They’d gone through a bad week: fights about fines at the video store; fights about cleaning the toilet. Stupid fights about foolish things neither truly cared about. They’d reached détente and built a new peace, started remembering how they’d felt about each other before the fighting broke out. They talked, and they laughed occasionally. They weren’t happy, or unhappy. They just stayed together and trusted in the familiar routines: dinner; laundry; work; bed. The arrival of the crocodile and its offer to leave, the whispered conversation as Duke refused.
Then, one night, Duke said, “Okay, let’s do it.”
Steve’s eyes snapped open, in the dark of the bedroom. He let out an unsteady breath, kept perfectly still. If I move, I could stop this, he thought, and he found himself caught between inaction and panicked motion.
The window creaked as Duke pushed it wide, letting in the cool night air. Powerful jaws closed around him, gentle and firm. Duke moaned as the crocodile pulled him clear, furious wings beating upwards, driving them skywards. Steve rolled free of the sheets and scrambled for the window sill. Caught the dark silhouette of Duke and crocodile against the bright moon, receding into the distance.
Small figures. Smaller. Gone.
Steve shut the window. Returned to bed. Figured, well, that’s that. We’re done.
Steve embraced the relief of an ending, over that first week. No more crocodile. No more fretting, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Steve worked through the motions of daily life: got up, showered, and commuted to work. Let the machine pick up the calls from Duke’s office, when they realized he wasn’t coming in.
He missed Duke, sure. Pined for the little things about having someone you love in the house. Brewed coffee and watching TV on a Sunday afternoon. Conversations over dinner, texts throughout the day. The unexpected kisses and being held as you drift off to sleep.
But you can miss something and be glad it’s over. Steve reminded himself of this, on the days the grief was fresh. Repeated it to friends who asked how he was doing. Embraced his role as the reasonable, coping lover-left-behind, letting people assume Duke was the bad guy. “Duke just disappeared, in the night,” he’d tell people. “No note, no goodbye, no idea where he’s traveling.”
Steve liked that. Reasonable and coping suited him."I don’t really understand how things went bad," he’d tell them. “We just… stopped working, you know? Both of us.”
At night, when the bed felt empty, trying not to feel alone got so much harder that Steve cried until sleep came to claim him.
“I’m okay,” he explained. “It hurts, but it's better that it happened."
Time passed and pain receded, much as Steve expected it too. In the depths of his gut Steve believed that the passage of days healed emotional wounds, even if his sadness whispered lies about the sorrow lasting forever, and there could be no feeling better given Duke left. Steve allowed those thoughts to wash over him, treated it like a tide. It would be deep and it would be shallow. Never quite gone, but often receding.
The reasonable lies he told the world consolidated into a kind of truth. He really was okay. Duke's departure was for the best.
Then, one night, he heard it: the flapping wings; the tap against the panes of glass. That faint scent of saltwater and a low, unhappy growl. Steve rolled over, pretended to ignore it. The crocodile slapped its tail against the bricks, the contact loud as a gunshot.
Steve twisted free of the blankets. Stormed to the window and jerked it open. "What?"
The crocodile reared backwards, tail swinging. It held a coffee tin in its jaws, the label peeled off and the steel pockmarked with indentations from sharp teeth. The croc dropped it into Steve's hands and grinned expectantly, hovering in place.
Steve collected his keys and levered the lid away. He shook the tin, and a letter fell out, a strand of paper with black ink on it.
Come join me, it said. I miss you.
Steve handed the tin back, lodged it between the crocodile's jaws. "No," he said.
The crocodile waited, expecting a different answer.
"No," Steve said, "I'm not interested."
He knew it was a lie the moment he said it. He wanted to go. Wanted it more than anything. The crocodile loitered and Steve wondered if it was grinning.
"No," he said firmly. "We tried. It didn't work."
He pulled the curtains shut and went back to bed, ignoring the wild hopes that gnawed at him.
The visits became a regular occurrence. At first, intermittent. One visit the next month, two the month after that. A new letter from Duke packed full of fresh details of his adventures. I met the Dutches of August Peaches, he wrote. I learned to joust from the back of a phoenix and sail beside the Pirates of Kech. Always, the letters ended with a plea: Please, come; I want you; it's awesome here. I miss you. One night, six months in, the note contained just two words: Steve. Please.
Steve said what he'd been saying, for weeks and months: "Possibly next time, if you come back."
The visits grew more frequent. Weekly, for a time. Then, every night. Steve grew used to the sound of wings again, the urgent rap on the window as the crocodile demanded attention.
He told Cassie about the visits. Her voice rose, just short of anger, when she advised him against leaving. "Under no bloody circumstances," she barked. "Christ, Steve, you're smarter than this."
Not the advice Steve hoped for, after confessing the situation. "I'm thinking about it," he said. "I miss him."
"Of course you bloody miss him," Cassie said. "That's what happens when people leave you. Doesn't matter how nice they were about it, missing them is part of the territory. It doesn't change the fact you shouldn't go. Running away like that, at our age? Jesus, it's outright stupid."
They did not talk about Duke after that, nor the crocodile or the things Steve hoped for. Hours later, following his most recent refusal of the crocodile, Steve closed the window and contemplated the issue in bed. The emptiness bothered him, right after Duke departed. Now Steve stretched across, making full use of the mattress. Steve wondered if he should tell the crocodile to leave for good, just accept Duke's departure and move on.
When the idea didn't sit right, Steve considered an affirmative answer. Give in and embrace the adventure, let the crocodile sweep him away.
That night, around 3:00 AM, Steve dialed Cassie's number and left a message on the machine. "What's so wrong about forgiving someone? Isn't that what love's meant to be?"
He decided and dug through the back of his closet, unearthing old jumpers and thick, neglected woolen socks. Steve shoved them into a backpack, tamped everything down and loaded more clothes on the top.
He added books, in case reading materials were scarce: his copy of Cotillion; the unfinished paperback of Anna Karenina he'd been reading for a decade. Maybe he'd finish it, if the supply of new books proved limited.
The sun set and the rain crept in with the night, sharp needles of ice-cold water that reminded Steve a raincoat may well be useful where he was going. Not that he owned one—Steve settled on being an umbrella man years ago and rarely ventured anywhere where his black brolly was inconvenient.
It would have to do. Steve positioned his pack and brolly on Duke's side of the bed and wrote an email to his boss at the library, asking for a leave of absence. He wrote a second to Cassie, saying goodbye, thanking her for being a good friend along the way.
It's not that I think you're wrong, he said, but I wish to find out for sure.
Steve didn't hit send when he was done. Just saved the message to drafts, in case he needed it later. He ordered Thai food, home delivered, and settled in to wait. Devoured his curry and his coconut rice and the Pad Thai he assumed would go bad in the fridge long before someone discovered his absence.
The night was cold, wet, and crazy. Fast winds and driving rain. Bad weather to drive in, let alone fly. Possibly more than a winged croc could handle. Steve perched on the edge of the bed and watched the storm rage, thought about the good times with Duke and the bad times with Duke and all the times between.
"You know this is dumb," Steve said, to nobody in particular. He just wanted to hear the words said out loud. The storm answered with rain on the roof and a flash of lightning in the distance, where it wouldn't bother anyone.
He knew that leaving was stupid. Steve didn't particularly care. He loitered by windows, searching the horizon for winged reptiles. He fantasized about seeing Duke again: what they'd say, how they'd forgive, what Duke would taste like when they kissed.
The howling wind clawed at the window, rattled the panes of glass.
Steve pressed his nose against them and peered into the distance, dreaming of who he might become when he ventured out past the horizon.