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“It would honestly mean the world,” I say. “We’re celebrating something rather special tonight, and having a bit of room to spread out would make it perfect.”
I’m not lying. Being friends is something worth celebrating. Weekdays are also awesome.
The tired boredom on Kyle’s face eases into something almost fond, and I couldn’t tell you if it’s a gift I was born with or simply the fact that most people respond well to being properly looked at and properly seen, but either way he prints out six tickets with three gaps built neatly into the seating plan, entirely against whatever policy he mentioned thirty seconds ago.
“Enjoy the film,” he says, and he actually means it.
“You’re disgustingly good at that,” Felix mutters, as we head towards the screen.
“Years of practice,” I beam.
“It’s a more useful skill than turning water into wine, I’ll give you that.”
The joke hits like something sharp. A jagged catch of my breath. But Felix didn’t mean anything by it. He hasn’t started treating me differently since he found out about the whole Brian Almighty thing. So I shrug it off.
We grab popcorn and then settle into our seats. Felix, then a gap, then Adam, then a gap, then me, then a gap. The whole row looks faintly ridiculous, three humans spaced out like we’re expecting more friends who might be running late. The couple in the row behind us are giving the arrangement a distinctly puzzled look. I decide there’s no version of explaining it that would help matters, so I simply smile at them until they look away.
We are in fact, expecting more friends. Just not human ones.
The lights dim for the trailers to begin. The whole cinema is plunged into near darkness.
I feel him before I see him, the familiar cold sliding down my spine. When I glance sideways, he’s simply there, settled into the seat beside me like he’s always occupied it, solid in the dim cinema light. Down the row, past Adam, Hex has draped himself into the gap beside him with theatrical flair. Dis has taken his seat next to Felix with the quiet formality of a man attending a state occasion rather than a nine o’clock screening.
I grin, and reach over and take Dark’s hand.
Felix’s head whips round so quickly I hear something in his neck click. Adam actually gasps, properly gasps, hand flying to his own chest like he’s witnessing a proposal.
Apparently there is enough light from the screen to reveal hand holding.
“Finally,” Felix hisses, at a volume the cinema absolutely does not require. “Finally. Do you know how long I’ve had to watch you two dance around this?”
My face heats. “We’re just dating.”
“Bah!” Felix waves his hand dismissively. “Whatever you want to call it, it’s finally happening.”
“About time,” Adam agrees, beaming so hard it looks like it might hurt. “I was starting to think we’d need an intervention.”
Down the row, Hex leans forward, entirely unbothered by anyone overhearing, since in the dark, to any ordinary person nearby, it just sounds like one more stranger chatting to their friends before the trailers start. “I offered to arrange one. Multiple times. Elaborate ones. Nobody ever lets me do the fun interventions.”
“Congratulations,” Dis says, with immense gravity, inclining his head towards us both like he’s bestowing a formal honour. “Dark is worthy of the cheerful human.”
“Thanks, Dis,” I say, touched despite the formality of it. Or maybe because of it.
“I mean it sincerely,” he says, as though sincerity were something he needed to state for the record.
“I know you do.”
I feel something in my chest loosen that I hadn’t even realised was drawn tight, some small anxious knot I didn’t know I’d been carrying around about how this exact moment might go. In its place comes a lightness I can feel all the way down to my toes. Nobody’s shocked. Nobody’s horrified. It’s just us, exactly as we are, being celebrated by the people who matter.
Beside me, Dark grins into the dim light, quick and pleased, his amber eyes flaring bright for just a second before settling back to their usual glow.
The lights dim properly before Felix can launch into what is likely a prepared speech. And the film begins. Something involving a small coastal town and a creature rising from the harbour depths that the trailer promised would be absolutely terrifying.
It is not, as it turns out, absolutely terrifying, at least not to the three members of our party who happen to have some personal expertise in the terrifying.
“That is not remotely how a summoning works,” Dis says, twenty minutes in, quiet but deeply offended, as the film’s protagonist draws an elaborate circle that bears no resemblance to any actual summoning circle I’ve ever seen Felix attempt. “The proportions are wrong. The candle placement is decorative rather than functional. Whoever wrote this has never once opened a proper text on the subject.”
“It’s a film, my sweet Disney-boy,” Felix whispers.
