It wasn’t often that Brandon saw a boomer he didn’t know.

Most of that was because he didn’t live in a place where kangaroos and the like were in any way common. Those that did live around here, for the most part, were already familiar. And yet there one was that he couldn’t remember seeing before – young, maybe just starting college; that’d explain him being a new face. He looked reasonably fit, as well as could be told given that their kind tended to be rather pear-shaped regardless. He had slate-grey fur and well-kept clothing.

He also looked rather wilted – slouching, ears drooping, a perfect picture of someone who was Not Having A Good Time – and he was scanning the club crowd with an expression somewhere between wistful and envious.

When the music turned to a slow number and the people on the dance floor started pairing up, that expression shifted decidedly toward envious.

A loner at a club, wishing he could be one of the couples… heartbreak, Brandon guessed. Or romantic issues of some kind, anyway. And there was something about the way this new boomer’s gaze lingered… Brandon put that out of his mind. Whatever happened, happened; but here was a good-looking guy who didn’t deserve to feel totally alone. Not on a nice early-autumn evening like this, especially.

(more…)