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3 - Motel Blues

Helix smoked. This came as a surprise to Nym, who sat on the edge of the bed. Helix stood outside of the door, lighting a cigarette and puffing out into the rain-droplet drenched parking lot. Beat up cars lined one end. Some couple was shouting just overhead.

"You, uh, do that often?"

Helix turned to look at him. Nym had to admit he looked pretty cool, glazed in the deep orange of parking lot lights, smoking drifting out of his nostrils and from the glowing ember in his paw. It almost made Nym jealous. But of what he couldn't tell.

Helix shook his head. "Haven't in a long time. I just didn't want to tremble so much when I needed to keep my head on."

Nym nodded. An hour back he had begun to shake and tears sprung up in his eyes in response to the event. He wrapped his arms around his body, closing in on himself. Something fell just upstairs and the arguing ceased. Nym's ears twisted upwards.

"Want a puff?"

"Hell no." Nym laughed. "If I start I won't quit. Having an obsessive personality does that to you."

"Obsessive?"

"Yes."

"Huh." Helix prodded no further. Nym almost brought it up again, but a brigade of thoughts confronted him instead. Maybe Helix just didn't want to learn more and wasn't just being polite in the face of Nym's bait. Maybe that trick just didn't work on cats like him. Nym leaned back on the bed. It smelled freshly washed, but with a stale scent of copulation odour sticking it it like fog.

Helix snuffed the cigarette halfway through and shut the door.

"TV?" Without waiting for an answer he pawed at the remote and turned the small, buzzing box on. Nym twisted so he lay on his side. The stance of a wanted criminal. The thought sent a shiver down his back. Truth be told, he really had no idea how he was supposed to feel. Enthralled? Excited? Terrified? Morbid? Maybe adjectives just didn't fit in here.

The TV cut to a cat tightly bundled in a blue suit reading off the weather. She stepped gracefully across the screen, gesturing to rain storms sweeping across their part of the country. Helix watched wordlessly.

Afterwards it cut to a female dog reciting the news of an accident in the city, causing two wanted criminals to escape and the death of a third. She cleared her throat, her soft white ears giving no inclination of her emotions. "The first suspect is a snow-leopard," but Helix cut her off.

"We know our story. No need to hear it." He said.

"Well, at least we know we're being hunted."

"The people at this motel don't care. Put your money up front, don't burn the place down, and get out. They specialise in taking care of us sort of folk." Helix said numbly.

The next channel was a springy doe doing an exercise, which advertised meditation with a beautiful, dark-coloured skunk would be up right after.

"Keep those arms flexing!" She said cheerfully, squatting down, the camera catching her tail.

The next channel was fuzzy. The audio was garbled, but from the office set up and the tasteless music, it seemed like a soap opera. The camera panned down, caught in a wave of grey static. It continued to movie, undeterred, and landed on a woman splayed across the ground. Her brown hair was swathed behind her, her head tilted. Her dark human skin was splattered with too bright fake blood. Helix grunted and changed the channel.

"Even the antenna is racist it seems." Nym muttered.

Helix didn't respond. His tail twitched angrily. Nym felt his heart sink into his stomach.

"You know," he spoke up after a moment. Helix had paused on another grainy screen of two otters advertising diamonds. Helix's ears swivelled towards Nym, followed shortly by his head. His gaze centred on Nym. Nym grinned sheepishly, his black lips twitching. "We never discussed our pasts."

"Yes."

"Can we keep it that way?"

Helix nodded solemnly. "I was thinking the same thing. At least for now." As an afterthought he added, "Knowing your past doesn't change who you are in my eyes, I mean. You're still you."

"Yes, I suppose so." Nym sat up. "But also because from now on our lives are a dot in the present on an ever moving trajectory forwards. Our past is a hazy mesh of lines. We focus on the now and the later. The past happened, it's wilted, it's buried in the dirt."

"Are you afraid of the future?"

"Not until it becomes the now. Well, that's what it should be. I'm still scared shitless, though."

A ridiculous thought occurred to him. Blinking straight out of nowhere and flashing in his mind like a lone firework. His phone, tucked away in a police station in a plastic bag for safe keeping. It was probably buzzing like mad with phone calls from his worried family members, begging to know it was him. They probably didn't even realise that his phone wasn't on him. Soon it's battery would drain. Even his plants back at his old apartment would soon die. This old life, this thing that he had abandoned. It was almost funny now. Nym laid back, crossing his paws over his chest. Almost.

Helix laid back. He was so close. They had chosen a room with only one bed. The pigeon smoking up a storm at the front desk gave them a knowing nod. Even after so many bills and protests, inter-species romances, especially the same sex ones, weren't exactly seen with too much acceptance. So a beefy Helix and a run down Nym, probably from some slummy city, had sauntered off to a motel to make quiet love. It was better for her to believe that. Not that she cared, Nym reminded himself. But disguises were nicer than his real face.

Helix wasn't purring. His tail was still twitching. He'd sunk into thought. Nym's own bushy tail curled up at his hip, rising and falling with each breath of air he sucked in. Each breath of cigarette-stained air.

The couple upstairs began to howl again.

"You dumb bitch!" A male voice barked. Nym couldn't help but overhear.

"Oh I'm the dumb one?" The other voice was high pitched and dotted with wheezes. "I'm not the one laundering money and, hell, cheating on the only dog in the world who will ever love him!"

"That's because you're desperate and needy."

"And you aren't?"

"At least I do shit about it! I don't sit on my dumb ass all day!" He went on, his barking becoming even more garbled as it mingled with the female's shrieks. Nym began to tremble, then he curled into himself, placing his paws on his ears and retreating into some place inside of him. Somewhere behind his eyelids.

He felt a heavy paw on his shoulder.

It stayed there for a long while, unmoving. A firm, soft weight on his body. Not letting him float away. Nym knew Helix could feel his body contorting, harsh memories flinging around his brain and trying to tear into his spirit and ravage it. Nym even felt tears budding in his eyes once more. Even still, Helix's paw remained where it was.

After an eternity or more, it moved, patting his side.

"A car drove away. You can barely hear her, but it's better now." Helix's voice murmured. Nym removed his paws. Sure enough, he could distantly hear muted sobbing, but under the TV it was smothered.

Nym didn't quite know how to formulate a word of gratitude. Instead he muttered an apology.

"Don't be sorry. Your parents fought?"

Nym nodded.

Helix let the subject go with a nod. He picked up the remote and moved past the entrepreneur otters. An action flick with rabbits whose fur had been died all sorts of neon colours came on. Helix left it at that, he found it amusing. Nym did too, frankly. He almost Helix would put his paw on him again, but he didn't dare ask. Instead he scooted up to the pillow on his side and curled up, watching.

A rabbit with neon-green tinted ears and a tuft of purple fur was making a phone colour, his audio suffered the inescapable motel-TV syndrome of jumping volumes. His fur was clamped hard. The image went to a bunny in a night club, her tail was bright pink. She was trapped in a cell, calling out. Then back to him. The seriousness in his rather cute face was ironic. Nym chuckled.

"I knew him." Helix said.

"Who?"

"Green ears. His name is Thunder."

"Cute."

"He's cuter in real life." Helix said, pausing. "And, quite frankly, decent in bed."

Nym's eyes widened. His heartbeat quickened. He didn't quite know where to go from there. Helix's tail leisurely swung off the edge of the bed. Was he...? Maybe he was making a joke.

"Too bad Thunder had to get with that vixen. An odd pair, but they're cute, too. She's a vegetarian and likes to dye her fur any colour she can."

It occurred to Nym that Helix had broken their agreement. He pushed that thought out of his head and nodded politely.

"He seems quite, uh, lean. Kind of..."

"Bottom like?"

"Yeah." Nym felt his body flush. He hid it with a guise of neutrality. Which was about as thick as tissue paper.

"You'd be surprised. Had some weird kinks."

"Like?"

"BDSM."

Nym glanced back on the screen. Thunder was rushing through a crowded city street, lunging past cars and jumping over bikes, doing an impossible flip. He landed on a motorcycle, strapping on a helmet, and raced the other way. Neon signs flashed by him. Hard metal began to blare out of the pathetic speakers.

"You were right. I am surprised." More so about you, Helix. But he didn't say this aloud. He wasn't sure how much of his own story he should unfold. Too much and Helix would probably despise him. Too little and he'd seem obscure and, probably, a liar. Or something. Nym mentally beat himself up.

A couple hours passed like this. Helix eventually fell asleep, lying on his back. His snores were like small, playful growls. Nym fell asleep much in the same position, his head tilted back and half his body covered in the bedsheets. The TV ended with that movie, Thunder holding his lady-love in his arms and gazing at the camera. A guitar excitedly launched into a riff. The next movie was a holiday-themed rom-com. But Helix and Nym were long asleep, under the noise, under the quiet sobs, under the veil of night.