George was pretty.

My kind of pretty. The way I'd want a George to look.

Dark and feral and deplorably handsome in that reeling cock-eyed manner that translated into charm rather than puzzlement. He was everything and minus a few pieces, all at once, clashing harmony in his habits that had no ritual or reason. Quite beyond the mortal, flesh and blood, now treading the line, now floating defiantly above it.

Through the crowd of bodies in the hall, George was coming my way. Not for me. By me. Walking, tracking between eddies of arms and bags and hello-goodbye.
Some lack of definition, as I passed, struck my boundary-seeking mind, forced my head to turn, meet his dark eyes coruscating like distant fires throwing up smoke and heat.

He was used to this. These stares. This or that gaze following his movements. Not me. Was I blushing yet.

Definitions, George. That's what I'm after...

Winning but wanting to be won.
Immovable, but uncertain.
Besotted with frustration.
Amorphous, opinionated, receding man.

Reality had earned only scant visitation in the years since George divorced it. Their meetings were chill and brief during these moments of materialization. The terran world left cursory signs... the unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. Vague awareness of not-shaving, his hand stroking his jaw with disapproval. Food. Sometimes, food.

Touches of the human. The rest - inhuman. Disturbingly. Eerie frightening ease of motion, as if gravity and awkwardness didn't exist (he'd divorced them too). His clothes fawned on him, slid against his body, draped over him as did all of his exes who hated him and yet clung deliriously. Everything was an inevitable seduction waiting patiently to occur, waiting to get soaked in the slippery charming humor falling like black rain from a stormy mind that meant no harm.

You have a guileless smile, George.... for a wolf.

On any given day he was picking and choosing which physical laws he wished to obey, picking and choosing, how..., like a Titan... I don't know...

There it was.

The silent look of challenge.

"Defuse me... no, don't... yes... come closer, sweetheart, we're not strangers... intentions, what are those... show me yours and I'll show you mine..."

I won't be a part of your madness, George. I swear to al...

"I'm not uncivilized..."

You only rise to the smell of blood in the water, George. You'll never master yourself. There are simply too many, too many possibilities...

I saw it.

He would helplessly confess to me. In that part of time that still held sway over him. I would await the sign only I could read, announcing where his weakness lay. The Achilles heel in his features, betraying him.

Small agonizing deaths would bring him on, straight into me, his doom. Nemesis. Freight train.

In a boiling flash he caught my understanding. Momentary pale flame of alarm, swallowed by high color. Leggy tottering shyness knee-capped by a carnivore's certain and gorey smile.

"Fight me for the right to your disbelief, angel. We'll go down swinging... "

You're not afraid... are you, George...

Our stare was defeated by passage; he glanced back over his shoulder: I was already looking.

His sudden laugh struck like a knife turning in on its owner's hand.

"Pick you up at 8," he said, quietly.

The fight of our lives was on.

We were in love.