FSE

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"So tell me again why we can't stop and get something to eat?" Dan asked, puzzled by Bo's lack of interest in food. Under normal circumstances the man never stopped shoveling food into his face; for him to lose interest in eating was worrying.

Bo grinned. "I've got something planned, and it's a surprise."

"Okay," Dan said, now mildly intrigued, "but if you won't tell me why, can you at least tell me when so I can figure out where I should pass out from hunger?"

Bo rolled his eyes and dug into the belt pouch that he carried with him everywhere. Pulling out a small protein bar, he tossed it to Dan, who caught it with one hand and immediately used his teeth to rip it open. "I think you can probably live off of stored reserves for a few more hours," Bo chided, giving one of Dan's love handles a gentle poke.

Dan gave his mate a deadly glare and chomped into the nourishing but largely flavorless chunk of vegetable protein. He'd apparently run out of the chocolate ones he preferred. Or, more likely, Bo had eaten them when Dan wasn't looking. "Where are we going, anyway?"

"You'll see!" the varius answered happily, increasing his pace and forcing Dan to practically jog to keep up with his partner's longer stride. "Pick it up buddy, we don't want to be late!"

"Late for what?" Dan asked, but received no reply.

Five minutes later they were crossing the doorway of one of the city's trendy coffee houses. "What?" Dan asked, perplexed. "We came all this way for coffee and Danish?"

Bo turned to him. "Stop grumbling," he admonished. "Trust me. You'll like this." He wound his way through the crowded cafe - no small feat considering his bulk. Dan discarded his first thought - that Bo looked like Moses parting the red sea - as inaccurate. Moses needed to raise his arms to accomplish the task. Bo simply strode through the crowd as if it weren't there. He rarely had to say anything; the throng of people just seemed to flow around him like an icebreaker ramming its wa through the arctic.

Bo led him through a glass door at the back of the shop, into an alcove in the back of the building which had once been an open patio. Graffiti artists had left their marks lavishly on the walls, and when the new owners had enclosed the space they elected to preserve the street art rather than paint over it. Dan admired the spirit if not the effect.

Bo pushed a button that was nearly hidden in the graffiti and Dan heard a familiar, muffled *ding* above them. That momentary bit of sensory input allowed Dan to figure out where they were standing. It was quite obvious, now that he had a moment to think about it, that they were in an elevator lobby. But if that was true, where were the doors? He examined the wall for telltale cracks when it suddenly split in two and withdrew to the sides. Dan whistled quietly in appreciation.

"I told you you'd like this!" the morph said smugly, and Dan began to think that he may be right. He didn't usually enjoy when people tried to surprise him, because it seemed that they usually wanted him to do something that he would not have chosen for himself, but today he found himself looking forward to whatever Bo had planned. It had been a while since his bondmate did something spontaneous like this, and Dan wondered what he had up his sleeve.

The two men stepped into the elevator and Bo pushed the single button on its control panel. The door slid shut on silent rails, bringing to mind a coffin being shut. The elevator car would have been close quarters for a pair of sapiens; sharing it with Bo made the accommodations decidedly cramped.

The varius worked an arm around his partner and pulled him closer, prompting Dan to relax and lay his head on Bo's shoulder. For a moment, he luxuriated in the feel of warm muscle and soft fur shifting underneath the fabric of Bo's shirt. The two men didn't often share affections in public, and taking advantage of this small opportunity made Dan feel that this evening was a total bust he would still consider it a success.

When the car glided to a halt, Dan lifted his head from Bo's shoulder and the men moved, as best they could in the tiny space, to put a discreet distance between them. When the doors slid open, Dan was surprised by the bright, open space that welcomed them. After the small, dimly lit cubicle downstairs he'd expected something similar up here, but the foyer they stepped into opened up into a high-ceilinged room which had far more windows than walls.

Dan had passed by the stores on this street a thousand times before without ever giving a second thought to what occupied the second and third stories, and what he saw before them was revelatory. Although the space was not opulent it was certainly far more interesting than he might have imagined, and was made all the more so by the huge metallic sculpture which dominated the central room.

Sunlight streaming in through the windows danced off the metal of the slowly moving arms, painting the walls with slowly moving reflections as they swayed back and forth. Mesmerized, Dan moved closer until he could see his reflection staring back at him through the highly polished surface. His Emily Post upbringing screamed at this violation of what was obviously someone else's private space, but he felt compelled to examine the giant metallic hydra.

As he drew closer to the magnificent artwork, his eye picked out almost invisible joints in the metal, irregularities that looked less like imperfections than than organic variations. As he moved closer, the limbs nearest him seemed to detect his presence, moving slowly away from him with an oily grace.

The silvery arms writhed around him in slow motion, like an anemone in a gentle sea current. Although he had no idea what powered it, something about the machine suggested to Dan that the arms were not motorized. Their elegant action seemed too well-balanced, somehow. On impulse, he reached out and put his hand close to the closest limb. Respect for the artist and a healthy fear of breaking something he couldn't fix - or pay for - kept him from touching it, but he felt such attraction that he wanted to be nearer.

Dan's attention was so occupied by the sculpture that he almost screamed when a loud, "Oy!" came from behind him, followed by quick, uneven footsteps. He yanked his hand away as if he'd been caught doing something naughty and spun to see what was approaching. Had Bo not been nearby to give him courage, what he saw lumbering towards him might have encouraged him to loosen a sphincter or two. It was so coarse and brutal-looking that it had much the same effect on Dan that an eagle's shadow has upon a young groundhog.

The varius world was as different from the one in which Dan grew up as one could possibly imagine, but he had quickly learned after bonding with Bo that no matter how radically different the varius world might look on the outside, on the inside they were just people. Right now, Dan had to consciously remind himself of that. No matter how fearsome it might look, what was shambling towards him was a man, not a monster.

The wide shoulders and relatively narrow hips explained the man's awkward, stomping gait. He wasn't necessarily angry, he probably had to walk like that. The fact that his long, brown hair was a wild tangle meant little, because Bo's headfur looked pretty much the same after a nap. Perhaps they had awoken this man. Yes, he was large - very large, Dan amended. He was about as much bigger than Bo as Bo was larger than Dan, but being big didn't make him evil. The wide, sloping forehead might make him look primitive, but their good friend Sam's head had much the same shape, so that clearly meant nothing. And most telling, he knew that he was in no danger because Bo wasn't actively defending him.

Feeling safer now, Dan turned back to the machine for just long enough to point at it. "You built this, didn't you?" The spark in the man's eyes told him that it must be true. He turned back to the gently swaying machine and used the only word he could think of to describe it. "It's magnificent."

Caught off guard by Dan's honest appreciation, the oncoming beast ducked his head and was instantly transformed into a shy little boy. "Yeah," he stuffed his huge paws into the pockets of his overalls and, to complete the image, actually shuffled his feet. "Do you like it?"

The man's strong accent sounded British to Dan, but it was as likely to be Irish or even Australian to Dan's uneducated ears. "Like it?" Dan asked, astonished. "It's incredible! Is it..." He fell silent, pulling back his question before he said something inadvertently offensive.

"What?" the young man asked suspiciously, wondering what criticism Dan wanted to levy against his creation.

Dan felt trapped. He thought he might know what the device was all about, but he wasn't at all certain he was right. Not wanting to insult the young sculptor by guessing wrong but too curious to restrain the question, he asked, "Is it...does it keep time? Or is it some sort of calendar, maybe?"

The huge, horrible face in front of him split into a wide grin, exposing a riot of blunt, short teeth. "Yeah!" The artist, coming to the conclusion that the man standing in front of him was not an unwelcome interloper but an unannounced friend, began shuffling around the sculpture, animatedly pointing out various hidden features. "When the sunlight hits it, the metals expand at different rates, which moves the arms higher to store the energy. The arms link up here," he pointed to the base, "and here," he moved his finger to indicate an almost invisible joint in the center of the arm.

"At night when it starts to cool, the movement of the arms to a lower energy state moves the mechanism along and...Hey!" he stopped when an errant thought returned home, "How'd you get in here?" He didn't sound angry, only puzzled, as if he'd already made up his mind that he liked Dan, and now it was time to figure out how he'd come to be there.

Dan nodded his head towards Bo, who was silently watching the two men's discussion from the privacy of the foyer. Bo waved a hand in greeting, and the huge sculptor shambled over to him quickly, wrapping him up in an exuberant hug that almost engulfed him. Dan watched Bo get the wind pounded out of him by hairy hands the size of cast iron skillets How strong is this guy, anyway? he wondered.

"I'm glad you made it, Bo!" The bigger man held Bo at arm's length and surveyed him critically. "You're looking good!" Then, remembering that they had an audience, he turned and scrutinized Dan. "So who's your buddy?"

Bo extricated himself from the other's grip and gasped to regain his lost wind. "Levi... I'd like you to meet... Dan. Dan, this mountain of fur... is Levi."

Shyly, Levi made his way back to Dan and held out his hand. Dan took it cautiously, worried that if he got anything close to the treatment Bo had just received he'd never make it to the emergency room.

Levi shook Dan's hand with the excessive care that large varii often showed to smaller, more fragile sapiens, and Dan received only a few popped joints from the experience. "Pleasure to meet you, mate," the young man said, properly.

Hearing such pleasantries come out of such an ominous-looking creature was almost comical, but Dan wasn't about to laugh. "Trust me, the pleasure's mine!" He waved at the sculpture, returning Levi's attention to their conversation. "How long have you been doing stuff like this?"

Levi studied his creation and rubbed his hands together as he thought. Finally he shrugged. "I dunno. Ever since I was old enough to hold a torch, I guess." He scratched the side of his head with one huge handpaw. "I've always thought that things look better when they're in balance, and this gives me the chance to make that happen."

He shuffled over to the machine and gently tapped one of the arms, making it ring quietly and sending it spinning slowly around its hidden axis. "I used to play in my dad's cycle shop when I was little," he said, offhandedly. "I liked to take things apart to see how they worked, but sometimes it was more fun to put them back together again. I rebuilt my first engine when I was six. Well," he admitted, "the first one that actually worked better after I got it put it back together, anyway." He smiled at the remembrance. "My dad got mad because he thought I tore up his buddy's bike, but he wasn't mad anymore after he heard it run again.

He pulled a rag out of his back pocket and polished an already gleaming arm. "When I got bored fixing other people's stuff I started building my own." Levi momentarily looked uncomfortable. "He says I'm wasting my time with this stuff, but I like it. " Then he visibly brightened. "Hey, you want something to eat?"

The man's rapid fire changes in topic had Dan's head spinning, so much so that he almost missed Bo waving his arms out of Levi's sight.

whatever you do

do not say yes

???

that man could burn cereal.

In spite of his rumbling stomach, and even though he didn't have the slightest clue what was going on, Dan trusted his partner. Unfortunately, he also didn't know how to turn down the invitation without giving offense. When in doubt about things like this, he relied on his resident expert in varius relations. "Bo?"

Bo was apologetic but firm. "Sorry, Levi, but we've already got dinner plans worked up. If we come back next week, will you show us the rest of your stuff?"

"What I've got in the shop, sure. But I've sold a few things since you were here last."

Levi tried to sound as if nothing were wrong, but underneath there was an undercurrent of disappointment that was impossible to miss. Dan didn't feel anything negative through his mental link with Bo, but still he was fairly certain that they'd inadvertently made a significant social blunder.

Remembering how significant the sharing of food had been to forming his other relationships with varii, he made his decision and pulled one of Bo's meal bars out of his pouch. "We're not going to eat for a while," he said, ripping it open. He stifled a groan when the aroma hit his nose. Of all of Bo's meal bars, this was his least favorite flavor. Liver.

Gamely, he took a small bite, then broke the remainder into two roughly equal halves and handed one to each man. "I hope you like it," he said, honestly.

because I sure don't.

You have no taste

Bo thought back at him.

They're delicious

Levi seemed more than satisfied at the sharing, and returned to his previous rapid fire monolog, detailing his last few projects. The more he talked the less Dan had to rely on Bo's interpretation to glean his meaning. But then, understanding Levi's speech patterns was academic because he rarely gave Dan the opportunity to slip a word in edgewise. Dan usually found behavior like this to be boorish, but Levi's case he thought that it was probably nothing more than the man's irrational exuberance making itself felt.

The sun had nearly hidden itself behind the city skyline before Bo interrupted Levi to make their apologies. The two made their way toward the elevator, but Levi refused to take the hint, stopping them every few steps with another attempt at conversation. It struck Dan as pathetic, but Bo held firm. "We'll be back in a few days, buddy," he reassured his friend, "You can tell us all about it then."

"But I might forget!" Levi wailed, sounding almost panicked.

"Do you have your notepad?" Bo asked, sounding like the concerned parent of a forgetful child.

Levi looked blank for a moment, then brightened. "Yeah!" He pulled a battered spiral note pad out of his overall's front pocket and waved it excitedly in the air. In spite of its worn condition Dan could see lots of blank pages inside, suggesting that Levi probably had a whole bunch of ideas that never made it into that notebook.

They were almost to the elevator doors when Levi called out one last time. "Oh! Dan!" he cried, "You can come back any time, right?" he said, then turned back to his notebook where he began scribbling diligently. His last words were almost lost to the distance between them. "You don't have to bring anyone with you, if you don't want." And with that puzzling statement he ambled back into the nether regions of his loft, suddenly more interested in the tattered notebook than his departing guests.

***

Bo held the elevator door open with uncommon chivalry and allowed Dan to exit ahead of him. "That was weird," he said, electing to speak verbally instead of diving back into their link. "It usually takes at least a half-dozen meetings before he even talks to anyone new," he said, "but he just started up with you like you were old friends, or something."

"Who knows?" Dan said, with a shrug. "I'm sure the fact that you already know him had something to do with that. If you hadn't been there to introduce us, he probably wouldn't have given me the time of day. We're from completely different worlds." With Dan taking the lead, the two men shouldered their way through the crowd far more slowly than they'd entered. Having a massive battle varius behind him encouraged people to get out of their way, but with Dan in the lead they did so far more casually.

A giggling woman holding a drink in each hand suddenly backed into the space Dan was occupying, forcing Dan to bump into a nearby man to keep from knocking her over. "Whoops, sorry," Dan apologetically offered the man, before turning away. "It's pretty crowded in here tonight.

Lip curled in anger, the man strode towards Dan with mayhem on his mind. Movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. Bo's gaze was calm but intent, and one raised eyebrow was all that was necessary to convince the man to siit back down. "So what do you think about him?" Bo asked his partner, who remained blissfully ignorant of the offense.

"About Levi?" Dan shook his head. "He's unique!" He thought about it a bit more. "I don't think it's fair to say that his elevator doesn't go all the way to the top, but I think it might skip a few floors on its way up."

Bo chuckled. "In some ways he's an absolute genius. In others..." he shrugged. "Not so much. If it interests him, he'll latch onto it and won't let it go until he's either worn it out, or until something new comes along. Then he drops it and won't ever look back."

When they were close enough to the counter to see the pastries, the varius signaled Dan to stop, then waved to get the attention of the sapiens girl behind the counter. She tried to discourage him by looking down at her fingernails, but it didn't work. "Give me one of those big Danish and two cups of coffee," he ordered for both of them. "Medium regular, and V1 French."

She looked up for just long enough to redirect him. "Order at the register," she said, obviously bored with the pastries, with her job, and with him.

Bo's back stiffened in the way that told Dan he was not pleased with the world at that moment. "You're not doing anything else," he noticed, "and you've spent the last thirty seconds doing nothing but standing there looking at your fingernails." He swapped out his casual tone for the Command Voice he'd learned in the military. It had been developed to command varii on the battlefield, and it usually worked just as well with sapiens. "Get busy." The combination of commanding tone and steamroller attitude made resistance unlikely. His scowl sealed the deal and she jumped to obey.

Bo handed the Danish and smaller cup to Dan, then exchanged his ID and card for the larger drink. "Thank you," he said, immediately discarding his surly attitude in favor of one more contrite now that she was acting like he expected she should.

Dan shoved a corner of the pastry into his mouth. "Mrph..." His nose wrinkled in annoyance, but he tried his best to not let his displeasure filter through their link. He wasn't successful.

"What?" Bo said, turning to face him as the girl processed his payment. "I thought you liked Danish?"

"I do like Danish," Dan said, "but not this particular one. I think it's been squatting in that display box since the Eisenhower administration." He held it out to his partner. "See?"

Bo gave the pastry a perfunctory sniff and wrinkled his own nose in disgust. Calling it 'stale' was doing it a favor. "Hey," he said, to get the girl's attention. He turned and plucked the Danish from Dan's fingers.

"Hey!" Dan exclaimed, annoyed. "I wasn't..." He trailed off when it became obvious that it was pointless to continue. Bo had already turned his attentions back to the worker, and once he was focused like this, he was not to be discouraged.

"This is stale," the varius complained. He handed it back to the girl, who examined it with no large amount of interest, then carefully picked a single black hair clinging to the frosting.

"It looks fine to me," she said, offering it back to Bo. "Minus the hair."

"My partner says it's stale, so it's stale," Bo said, obdurately. "Get him a better one."

By that time, Dan had reached the counter. Leaning over, he extended a hand to the girl and motioned for the Danish to be returned. "It's fine, I'm sure," he said apologetically. By this point, the pastry's waxed paper covering had gone through a sufficient number of hands to become disheveled, exposing enough thin frosting to make a sticky mess of Dan's fingers as he handled it. "I could use another wrapper, though." She handed him another square of paper along with Bo's receipt, and disappeared to the back before anything more could be said.

Dan could feel Bo's confusion as much as Bo could feel Dan's ire. "What?" the varius spread his hands. "I was just getting you a better one!"

Dan reined in his annoyance. "I appreciate that you wanted to help me," he said, once again working his way to the front of the shop, "but I didn't need it. I'm not helpless, you know. If I want another donut I can get it myself."

As they broke into the street and rejoined the throng of people, the first thing Dan did was head to the nearest garbage can and discard the time-ravaged pastry. "What did you do that for?" Bo yelped. "You said it was fine, and now you're throwing it away!"

"I only said that so she wouldn't think we were rude." Dan explained.

Bo looked aggrieved. He loved Dan with all his heart and soul, but sometimes he was convinced that he would never, ever understand the man. "Why should you care what she thinks? You'll probably never see her again anyway."

"That's not the point," Dan said. "You were too abrupt with her, and it was making us look rude."

Through their link, Bo felt what Dan had really wanted to say. "Like jerks, you mean," he said, sounding offended.

Dan turned to his mate and allowed the love they shared to overwhelm his momentary irritation. "I really do appreciate it, you know," he said, pulling Bo's much larger handpaw into his own. "I love knowing that I've got a big, strong varius to back me up whenever I need help." He veered to his right and ran into Bo, bumping him a few feet off course. "Even if he is a bull in a China shop, sometimes."

"I'm a battle varius," Bo said, still sounding grumpy. "It's what I do."

"Yeah, well..." Dan said, swinging their hands back and forth, "Last I checked, we're not at war with the pastry girl so I don't have a lot of need for a battle varius right now." He looked up at Bo's craggy-featured face. "Can I maybe just spend time with Bo the man, instead of Bo the soldier?"

"Sure," Bo said, giving Dan's hand a gentle squeeze and looking down into his partner's soft, blue eyes. "I guess I get it." He wanted very much for Dan to be happy and he'd do everything in his power to make that happen, but inside he had to wonder if he was going to be able to wall off a part of himself like that. He'd never been particularly adept at suppressing his personality to make other people happy, even when it was something that he wanted very much to do. Letting Dan fight his own battles when they'd be much easier for Bo to handle wasn't logical, and it didn't seem particularly efficient, but that's what Dan wanted so it was what had to happen.

As they walked along hand-in-hand, Bo noticed several people looking their way with varying degrees of animosity, but none approached. The world had become decidedly less tolerant of homosexuality after two thirds of its population had been obliterated, and it had never been particularly tolerant trans-species relationships. But no matter how anyone might feel about Bo and Dan being together, very few would have the brass balls required to confront them as long as Bo was around. He could take pride in his ability to protect Dan in that way, at least.

In the end, Bo realized, Dan was right. As useful as it might have been to be strong, fast and sturdy in the military, there wasn't much use for oversized battle varii like himself in the civilian world. He was employed at a job which gave him very little intellectual stimulation and could conceivably have been better performed by a robot, and the rigorous discipline trained into him by a career in the armed services hadn't done much for cementing his social connections in the outside world.

This hadn't seemed like such an issue until Dan Blocker had come into his life. Before meeting Dan, every day he lived had just been one more day in his past and one fewer day in his future. He hadn't felt unhappy, exactly, he had just been pragmatic about the part he played in the workings of the world. More and more, he had felt like a burden on society rather than a contributing member.

Now that Bo had a reason to live and had someone to protect, there was nothing to protect him from, and at times, he felt even more useless than he had before. He was a loaded cannon with nothing to shoot, and even Dan's unconditional acceptance of his nature wasn't sufficient to quell that sense of impotence. Irrationally, Bo occasionally wanted something bad to happen so he'd have something from which to protect his Dan, even if that bad thing happened to come in the form of a snotty little server at a coffee house.

Bo rolled the tension from his shoulders and forgot did his best to forget about the stupid pastry. "While he was giving you the guided tour to every weld in that thing he built, I was sneaking a peek at the shipping documents."

!rude!

hush

"That thing you were looking at is a commissioned work for some guy in Japan. "I snuck a look at the shipping documents while you two were talking," Bo continued. "You want to know what it's worth?"

"No," Dan answered, sounding scandalized. "It's none of my business. Yours either, I might add."

curious

Bo grinned. He thought it was cute, how Dan so actively denied the things he really wanted. "The transport company valued it at a half-million."

Dan's eyes just about popped out of his head. "A half a million credits? Not that it isn't really cool, but... Really?"

"And he makes two or three of those sculptures every year," Bo said. "He's making a pretty good living. His dad hit a hard patch a few years ago and almost had to close his shop, so Levi bought the building and dropped the rent to almost nothing."

Dan was less impressed. "But he's still charging him rent."

Bo shrugged. "He's different, not stupid. He's still got to make some money on it. Still, last I heard, his dad didn't even know what he'd done. He just thinks some Western Union investment company bought the property."

Dan thought about how huge Levi had looked standing next to Bo. "He's definitely one of the biggest morphs I've ever seen," he said, wondering if Bo might volunteer anything. Sometimes, Bo would share a friend's most intimate details without a second thought. At others, no amount of prodding would do the trick.

Bo glanced around him, giving Dan the distinct impression that what he was about to say wasn't for general distribution. "Levi's one of those guys whose genetics got a bit screwed up in translation." he said, quietly, "I've done a little reading on it, and I think someone might have monkeyed around with his code. There was talk about trying to make some sort of leviathan class, but it didn't work out like they expected and they scrapped the program."

"They can't make any new varii," Dan said, "so I'm guessing they were trying to manipulate an existing line?"

Again, Bo shrugged. "You might be right. His folks are big, but nowhere near what Levi is."

"Some sort of double-recessive trait coming into play?" guessed Dan.

"Maybe, but I don't think we'll ever find out. I don't think Levi even knows what sex is. He's too wrapped up in his next project to worry about women."

Bo steered them towards another shop about three blocks down, and told Dan to wait by the curb. The outside of the shop was made up to look like an old French cafe, and the smells wafting out of it were particularly tantalizing. Despite the fact that there was a line snaking out the door Bo was in and out in less than a minute, and Dan had to assume that he'd had this move planned well in advance.

His hypothesis was confirmed when he saw what Bo carried - not only did he have a bag full of steaming food, he now had his duffle bag slung over his shoulder.

Dan tried to peek inside the bag but got his hand gently slapped for his efforts. "No peeking." was all Bo would say. Dan saw that they were heading in the direction of the park and he gamely followed along, all the while trying to imagine what Bo might have planned. A picnic, maybe?

As they got closer to the park, the two men heard discordant sounds of musicians tuning their instruments in the distance, allowing Dan to finally guess their destination. "Symphony on the lawn?" he asked, hopefully.

Bo grinned in acknowledgement. "It's Rossini night," he said, as if that would explain everything. And to Dan, it did. Rossini's music was some of his favorite. Fresh and exuberant, it had a good-natured character that few of the ancient composers shared, and he couldn't listen to it for long without breaking into a smile.

Dan looked over at Bo and smiled. Seeing his mate's response, Bo knew that his extensive planning had been well worth the effort, and a flush of pleasure went through him that warmed him to his toes. A part of Bo couldn't help chiding himself for feeling this way. He'd occasionally scoffed at people for all the silly things they'd done in the name of love, and now he was doing those same stupid things. And for what? He looked over at Dan's face, and the answer was painfully clear to him. For Dan. Being in love was like high speed cycle racing - undeniably scary, but at the same time, fun. And like cycle racing, Bo wasn't absolutely certain that he wasn't going to crash. But what a ride!

As they got closer to the stage, the crowd thickened. By this time of the evening all the good spots were taken, and Dan resigned himself to having to sit on the periphery. The music would still be enjoyable, he told himself. He was about to make a comment to Bo about the futility of finding a good seat this close to the stage when he saw Bo headed for a lone man sitting on a blanket about twenty feet from the performers, in the dead center of the stage. The man looked up, recognized Bo, and scrambled to his feet. He gratefully took the credit slip he was offered and turned towards the exit. The man nodded to Dan on his way out, barely noticing him.

"You planned this, too?" Dan asked, touched by his partner's attention to detail. He was even more impressed because this was all for him. Bo didn't even come close to appreciating Rossini the way he did.

Bo gave him his best Cheshire cat grin as he opened the duffel bag and took out all the equipment necessary for their picnic on the lawn. "I'm full of surprises!"

Dan said nothing, but shook his head in appreciation and wonder. He opened the bag from the cafe, and almost swooned at the smell. He pulled out a single serving of Caeser salad which was, no doubt, for himself, then what looked like it must have been a solid two-pound slab of rare beef for Bo. He unpacked several small containers of side dishes and half of a roast chicken, placing them on the plates Bo pulled out of the duffel. In the center of the blanket Bo lit a small candle, then called it done.

The two men looked at each other, and Dan whispered, at a volume level that Bo's enhanced hearing almost couldn't pick up, "I wish I could kiss you."

Bo's eyes softened, and he pressed his lips together in a way that told Dan that he returned the sentiment. Then the orchestra struck up and the two men dived into their long denied dinner, thoughts of unfortunate millionaire artists banished by the music of a man who, for all the beauty of his art, had never escaped poverty.