‘Ready to go?’ Jairo asked from the doorway, keys jangling in his hand.


Gavrin glanced up from sanding a ding in a fish board, blue eyes alight. ‘Night surf?’


Jairo grinned. ‘Not tonight. The water’s flat.’


‘Shame. It’s a full moon.’


‘I know.’ Jairo tossed the car keys in the air and caught them again. ‘Let’s not waste it.’


‘Swimming?’ Gavrin asked as they drove along the darkened country roads, shadowy trees looming on either side of the unmarked bitumen.


‘No.’


‘Skinny dipping?’ Gavrin’s voice lifted.


‘You’ll see.’


‘Sex on the beach?’


‘Nope.’


Gavrin’s fingers caressed Jairo’s thigh, trailing up, up …


‘Hey!’ Jairo laughed and jerked his leg away, the toe of his shoe catching on the clutch pedal. ‘I’m trying not to wrap us around a tree.’


The questing hand returned, squeezing Jairo’s knee. ‘You’re a god. You’ll save us.’


Jairo flashed Gavrin a grim look as he turned the car onto a dirt track. ‘I can’t guarantee that. Please be careful.’


‘I know, I know. I’m just teasing.’


‘Well, save your breath. You’re going to need it.’


Gavrin arched an eyebrow, but said nothing further.


At least until they reached the beach, a private stretch no one ever visited.


The day’s heat had taken all the breath out of the air. Before them, the deep blue-black of the water glittered under the rising moon, the remains of the sunset a faint smudge of washed out indigo where the ocean met the sky. Down on the beach, above the high tide line, lay a smooth square of parquetry; next to it, a stack of CD cases reflected the red glow of the stereo’s standby light.


Gavrin stopped. ‘J, I don’t know how to dance.’


‘I’ll teach you.’


Still Gavrin hesitated, but Jairo twined their fingers and skipped down the uneven path gouged in the dune, shoe bags swinging from his other hand.


‘I’m not that graceful, you know,’ Gavrin said. ‘Except on the waves.’


‘You can learn. And there are no waves.’ The ocean rippled before them. Jairo stopped at the edge of the dance floor and turned, meeting Gavrin’s uncertain gaze. He gave a sly grin, thinking back to their first meeting just weeks ago. Weeks that felt like a lifetime. Like providence. ‘You have something better to do?’


Gavrin’s eyes grazed Jairo’s face and Jairo’s heart beat faster. Maybe it was too soon. Maybe he’d read more into Gavrin’s words than was there. But he’d learned to dance at a studio back in California, and when he’d mentioned his love of dancing to his sister, that she might better understand the humans they sought to save if she joined them sometimes, she’d scowled.


Love is a silly human affectation, she’d said. You waste your time.


Jairo thought that these past weeks were the only time he hadn’t wasted.


Gavrin took a deep breath. ‘Let’s do it.’


For the rest of the summer and into a dry autumn, they came to the beachside dance floor every night. Jairo taught Gavrin the rumba. A rhythmic cha-cha. An energetic jive, although he was careful not to let Gavrin overdo it.


‘I used to think there was no saving the world,’ Gavrin said, body caught close to Jairo’s in a rumba cucaracha. ‘But now …’


‘Hmm?’ Jairo murmured into the point where Gavrin’s neck curved into shoulder, breathing in seawater and skin and deep heat gel. They’d taken on a tough reef break that morning, destructive turn-of-season waves forming thrilling barrels and fast rides, but it’d been hard work. Jairo suppressed a sigh. He’d give Gavrin all his supernatural strength if he could.


They turned into a New Yorker, each of them facing the ocean, then the dunes, then the ocean; spot turn.


Gavrin’s smile as they came back together lit up the night. ‘The world might be saved if more people danced.’