Clueless ch18: *Pretend* to be gay, suuuure

Story by Ellard on SoFurry

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#20 of Clueless

Sorry for the delay! I've been awfully busy at work, plus I've started descending into the dark hole that is Danganronpa... The silver lining is that it's the longest chapter I've ever written. Let's see, we're finally ALMOST done with introducing the rest of the cast now, so bear with me for a little longer, haha.

I greatly appreciate any advice or comments! Let me know what you think, and thanks so much for checking out my ridiculous story ^^


...Oh okay, it was just Marty. He was probably the last person in the school to actually care about a little verbal ejaculation. Looks like I nearly shat myself for nothing.

Now that I'm not internally panicking, I guess I should introduce him, huh? Marty Thompkins was a fellow varsity football player who mostly looked the part; he was a somewhat muscular and heavyset chocolate-fudge-pop brown Bull with low cropped black head-hair. And of course, as a horned football-playing fur, his horns were removed down to the base so head could safely wear a helmet. He otherwise was of average height, and had soft facial featured and a cute white tipped muzzle. His most defining quality was probably his big puffy black eyes which, paired with his naturally vacant expression, made him look like he was perpetually stoned. This face bellied just how much of a juggernaut of a guard this guy was on the football field, though; when he got going nearly nobody could get past him.

To me, Marty was one of those sort-of-kind-of-friends-by-association who always felt kind of... like an unnecessary tag-along. Especially now, dammit, why did we have to share fourth period and the extra 5 minutes of bathroom time? I mean, he's a nice guy, but the thing was, well... see the football team knew him as 'TMI Marty', for his utterly baffling inability to realize what was, and what wasn't an appropriate conversation topic (which is why it is never a good idea to have him in the same room as Flippy, ever). I don't know if he just had problems reading social cues, or if he was just kinda _schtupid_but talking to Marty about anything was more likely to result in uncomfortable conversation than spending a night over at your 'totally-not racist' grandparents' house. And being completely honest here, when I first met Marty as a freshman I thought he was kind of cute... then he opened his mouth.

My high-alert tension letting up a bit, I tried to walk nonchalantly toward the sink, despite me conspicuously freezing up a few moments earlier. When I didn't say anything, Marty let up his gaze and went back to washing his hands. I walked up to the crusty scum-browned sink next to him. I hoped desperately that he wouldn't bring up my little 'oinking' outburst... but Marty broke the silence and my hopes along with it, "Hey Rob, you seemed to be having an intense time in there. Did your business in there go alright?" he said to me with a concerned smile as he finished washing his hands. Realizing that there wasn't any soap in the barren wasteland of a bathroom, he began drying his hands on the front of his pants.

I cringed. Oh piss biscuits, what am I gonna say? Even if it was just Marty, there was no way I was going to admit I was just polishing my flesh-rod in a school bathroom stall. I had to come up with something (despite how terrible I was at lying), but there was no time to worry about that! Quick, Rob, what do people normally do in bathroom stalls? Smoke joints? No wait, they poop, of course! "Oh yeah uh, you know, sometimes you gotta dump something fierce, haha," I sputtered out with a forced delivery. At the time I was so fixated on thinking up BS pretenses that I didn't even realize I was just standing next to Marty like a total dunce, not washing my hands like a normal person would. A spark of recognition shocked me, and with panic setting in I absentmindedly went through the motions of washing my hands and drying them on my pant legs, getting both my varsity jacket sleeves and pant legs unnecessarily wet.

A curious eyebrow raised, Marty pursed his lips in contemplation. "Oh... But I didn't hear the sound of your poops spelunking against the toilet water," Ewww did he have to describe it like that? "I mean, not that I was listening for them or anything, it just seems weird is all..." I felt an electric shiver rush down my spine, and my whiskers perk up in a panicked response. It hit me then, that opposed to my initial reaction, Marty might actually be the worst person to be here right now because his lack of a filter meant he might talk to anybody about me fapping if he found out, Fuck nuts!

I don't know how to deal with this shit! Emergency Panic Protocol, it's your time to shine!

In a pickle, again huh? And here I was thinking you were finally getting along fine without me for a while.... Query accepted.

Compiling answer....

_Answer found: It's freaking Marty, just come up with any old bullshit and he'll buy it. Hehe, BULL-shit, Hilarious! _

No time to apologize for my racist subconscious, here goes nothing! "B-but, what if you actually did hear them, and just didn't realize it?" The words just slipped out of my mouth as we both began making our way out of the creepy rundown poop depository (bathroom) and heading toward the school's auxiliary gym's locker room for fourth period.

Marty blinked and crunched his brows together. "How do you figure?"

"Did you know that you can, uh, have false memories? There's been studies on it and memories can be altered or blocked. There was totally a BuzzFeed article on it."

Marty was awestruck at my comment, his eyes becoming like big huge saucers. "Memories can be changed?"

Deep down I knew I was digging myself deeper and deeper into a dark hole of lies, how splendid... "Yeah, don't you know that in... uh, North Korea! Yeah, North Korea. They've got this whole facility dedicated to engineering false memories into people. And they can use it remotely through uh... electromagnetic waves? So uh... any of us could have been memory-hacked at any time or any place and we'd never know! Memories can't be trusted dude," I rambled, a fevered heat racing though me causing me to perspire heavily. My mind was racing a mile a minute trying to come up with counter explanations for the questions Marty was obviously going to ask me. I noticed I was suspiciously walking faster and faster, and I had to slow down a bit so as not to open up too much of a distance between me and him. This was looking really bad.

Oh crap... even for Marty this is one heck of a stretch.

There was a moment of awkward wordlessness as we turned a corner, but as I looked back, I noticed Marty's muzzle was wide open, and his large nostrils flared open. "Holy cow man..." Marty said with earnest astonishment, to my equal astonishment. Eyes wide and slightly more vacant than usual, Marty slowed down to a halt and just stared at his hands as if this were some detective drama and he had just realized that 'I was the murderer all along!'. "Oh my God, I never.... realized how unreliable my own memories were!"

...I can't believe that just worked.

*Panic Intensifies* "Am I actually seventeen? What if I've lived years of my life that I just don't remember? AH! What if we're in the Matrix, Rob? Or, or, or, or what if the moon is actually made of cheese like in those kids stories! I'd have no way of knowing! Oh jeez, am I even real? What if I'm just a character in some story or something? What I'm a minor character?!"

My muscles were still stiff and on red-alert from the whole ordeal, but I felt a pang of relief wash over me. Infinitely grateful that my possibly worst lie ever had succeeded, I couldn't help but chuckle a bit at Marty's last delusion. "Oh come on Marty, that's ridiculous, you're so not a minor character," I told him as I went over and wrapped my arm around his shoulders all buddy-buddy like (I actually do that a lot at school, confidence in male-to-male physical contact is a great way to appear straight).

"Look, you can have your existential crisis later, but we need to overtime it to make it to class now! I think you and Toru are on leg day today. Doesn't that sound fun? Leg day!" I gave Marty a push forward, and he stumbled forward two steps, but the big Bull just kept on staring at his hands with that terrified uncertain expression. I pulled Marty's hands away from his gaze and just like that, presto change, the concern melted away from his expression, and he was back to his relaxed-looking derpy self. "Oh right, today is Leg Day! Yeah that sounds fun. Wouldn't want to keep Toru waiting, haha," the Bull chuckled jovially, as though he had completely forgotten his moments-earlier crisis. We began hustling on over through the now vacant hallways to our fourth period.

I wouldn't want to describe Marty as 'missing a few brain cells', but he was definitely... oh what's the word...

...gullible, yeah that's it! Gullible: that was a good word to describe Marty. Or should I say Gulli-BULL, haha...

...okay, yeah, I deserve to be burned alive for that one.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

With no hallway congestion or teachers to tell us to keep it to a walk, Marty and I jogged to the auxiliary gym down in the east wing. By the time we arrived to our locker aisle in the nearly empty (yet somehow still cramped) locker room there was only a measly minute left. In hyper overdrive, I stripped my clothes off and dressed into my gym clothes with intense precision and focus. I normally apply deodorant before and after, but there was no time for that today. Clothes on: dash out. Marty was a bit slow though... Figuratively, I swear I meant that figuratively!

You might be wondering what the big deal is if I'm a little late. Well, Mr. Johnson was our teacher for this class, a big lurking grizzly bear who also happened to be the coach for Varsity Football. He didn't tolerate tardiness very well for practice, but let me tell you; Just don't ever be late to one of his classes. Who knows how many needless laps around the football field or burpees he'd make you do for being late. That man loved working poor defenseless teenagers into the ground. He probably got off to it, terrible hobby, terrible...

Aware that the bell could ring at any second, I rushed through the double doors to the auxiliary gym and...Oh, Mr. Johnson wasn't even here yet. Talk about panicking for nothing...

The auxiliary gym was pretty basic, about the size of a small banquet hall, old peeling white walls, free weights, weight machines for every muscle group, treadmills and ellipticals... In a sense it was a perfect microcosm for Grovedale High: half of the cardio and weight machines were state of the art, yet the other half were all rinky-dink or otherwise straight up malfunctioning, not to mention wallpaper that looked like it hadn't been changed since the 90's... It's always been hard to say whether Grovedale High was well or poorly financed.

The thirty-odd students in the class were scattered around the free-weight and cardio half of the gym, where attendance was regularly taken. As per usual, Scott was waiting over by the heavier end of the free-weights. Straddling one of the benches with his legs with an exasperated look on his face, he was chatting up Marty's workout partner Toru, a light brown, white underbellied Akita Inu who resembled nothing better than a perfectly toasted marshmallow.

"Just made it, phew. What's up guys?" I said as I jogged over, breathing somewhat heavily. Scott's face lit up as he looked over his shoulders, whereas Toru looked at me with his usual vaguely-shy expression.

"Hey Robbie, right on time!" Scott chirped happily as the period bell just rang.

Scott held out his hand and I clasped it with a tight squeeze, me just instinctively going along with the silly bro gesture. "Yeah, got distracted with something. I guess Johnson's late?"

Scott shrugged, "Yeah, someone said something about him being a few minutes late. Guess he caught someone smoking or something?"

"And he makes such a big fuss about attendance too. His yelling would give me a heart attack if I were ever late," Toru added in with a sigh.

At that time I noticed Marty rush out of the double doors, only to then trip and collapse on the ground. He pushed himself up on his feet and clumsily scrambled on over to us. How very 'Marty' of him. Despite his heavy panting he seemed elated, "Lucky me, I'm safe! No extra laps for this guy haha," the cardio-hating Bull declared with a goofy drawn-out laugh. We all cracked smiles at his little performance. "What's up guys? What were you talking about?"

Scott slumped forward on the bench, propping his head up on the palm of his paw, "Eh, nothing much. Before you and Rob came I was just chatting with Bootleg Taro about my girlfriend who's fucking insane needs to be locked up."

'fucking insane and needs to be locked up'? How is that 'nothing much'?

Upon hearing the nickname 'Bootleg-Taro', Toru's ears perked up in shock, and his tail curled tighter than usual. "B-Bootleg Taro?! Why do you varsity football guys keep calling me that?" he responded with another sigh, part upset, part dejected.

Ah yes... that little nickname might need some context. The thing was, Toru was twins with the number 7 on the Boy's popularity charts, Taro. It wasn't hard to distinguish which was which though: Taro always walked with an air of confidence like he was the main character of his own reality TV show, whereas Toru looked as though he was constantly afraid he was going to get in someone's way (it was especially easy to tell now because Taro wasn't even in this class, derp). It made sense though, since Taro was on the Varsity football team and Toru was still on JV, not to mention how Taro had better record on the track and field team, and had a cheerleader for a girlfriend while Toru was still single.

Still though, despite being single and looking like a toasted marshmallow, Toru was still a pretty handsome guy. Even though he was only barely sixteen, his adult fur coat was fully developed, but also short enough so his handsome canine features were on full display, unlike the fluffball-look most Akita dogs had. Like Scott, Toru had his head-hair cropped down to match his fur, but his amber eyes were pretty stunning, and he had worked hard to build up his physique for football, with a particularly well-developed chest and arms. Toru still had a little bit of pudge though, so he didn't have anywhere near the muscle definition that Scott did, but he still leaned farther on the 'muscly-big' side of the scale rather than the 'chubby-big' side. As a matter of fact, Toru always wore a tanktop to this class, and I've found myself secretly looking at the cleavage between his pecs on more than one occasion... wait, where was I getting at with this?

Luckily, Scott neatly paraphrased what I was trying to get at with a cheerful chipper, "It's cause you're just like Taro, except, you know, slightly worse at everything you do!"

Toru's muzzle sunk to a frown and he started whining softly, "Oooh, jeez Scott, you're really not helping me with my inferiority complex here..."

Scott got up and wrapped both this paws around the sad Akita's shoulders in a jaunty manner, "Dude it's just some dumb joke, doesn't mean anything," The Polar Bear chuckled as he jostled Toru forward and back affectionately. Eyes looking off to the side and making no effort to stop the jostling, Toru let out an unconvinced Marge Simpson-esque hmmm. Scott chuckled again as Toru continued to let him jostle him around like some sort of ragdoll, "But apparently that is the reason you got that nickname, though."

At that Toru let out a full-bellied groan. I cringed a little bit at Toru's embarrassment. Marty, who was just now getting his breathing back to normal, didn't seem to quite grasp the situation.

Smile unabated, Scott's eyebrows lowered gently, amused yet somewhat apologetic. He stopped jostling the poor dog and instead opted to affectionately grasp him with both arms instead, head resting goofily on the Akita's right shoulder. "Dude, don't let it get you down, you've got lots going for you! You're smart, good at football, track, oh, and beatboxing; you're awesome at beatboxing, dude! I mean, who else at this school is as good at that that as you? Uh, other than your broth-," Scott let go and covered his painfully fake cough with a fist.

Eyes still not making contact, Toru sighed yet again, "I guess..."

Marty's breathing was back to normal at this point, and so he took this opportunity to make a very lovely comment, "You know guys, I actually heard somewhere on the internet that a lot of special needs kids are really good beat-boxers."

Toru's entire face sunk as if an eldritch abomination had started sucking off his face. "Where's the nearest trash can? I'll just go live in it from now on..."

Scott's eyes narrowed at the dense Bull, "Dude, Marty, really?"

Marty's widened eyes indicated that he was completely surprised at the utterly reasonable reaction. "Oh, no, I didn't mean it like that, but you know how some special needs kids have crazy talents, right? Like I meant it was amazing that you can compete on the same level as retards like that!"

"Jesus Christ Marty, could you be any more backhanded with your complements..." I thought as I shook my head disapprovingly.

"That doesn't make me feel better at all!" Toru exclaimed with a loud aching moan.

"Come on Toru, you know Marty just don't know how to word things right," he told Toru with a paw to the Dog's shoulder, still being incredibly touchy-feely despite trying to be reassuring. "And Marty, maybe you just... stop talking for a while."

"Sorry, I'll be quiet..." the Bull muttered quietly.

Despite Scott's assistance, Toru still didn't seem all that reassured. It was a bit of an awkward scene, and I didn't know exactly how to put myself into it (I swear, looking at Toru's anxiety gives me anxiety), but for Toru's sake, I figured I best steer the conversation in a different direction... "Let's just talk about something else guys, like, I dunno, can you catch me up with what you and Katie talked about a few minutes ago, Scott? Like, you didn't break up with her or anything did you?"

Scott's smile dissipated and his exasperated expression returned with a vengeance. His attention went straight from Toru to me, "No, I wish I did though! Far be it from breaking up: We're having 'special' sex tonight!" there was a feverish desperation in his tone that didn't seem to match what he had just said. Toru yet yet again sighed and sat down on one of the benches, clearly uninterested in rehearing the story.

"...is that a bad thing?" I questioned with an upward inflection. I had figured the weird sex that Katie demanded was a mutual interested between the two, but maybe it was a bit more... dominatrix-y that I originally assumed.

"You don't understand Robbie, she's like a, what's the word... succubus! She's a succubus, man! Every time we do it, it's like I..."

"Gain negative levels?" Marty happily chimed in. Scott and I glared at him.

"Sorry, Wyverns and Chambers joke, I'll just, uh, go back to being quiet now."

Scott continued, "It's like she drains my soul or some shit!" "That's pretty much what negative levels are," Marty muttered under his breath. "The things she does to me and ...my regions... and the tools she uses... those condom balloons.... the grapefruit...," he shivered.

Grapefruit?

I was going to inquire about what the heck kind of sexual function a freaking grapefruit could have, but then I heard a loud snide chuckle coming from a few feet away. I looked toward the source to see a certain Taby cat looking at us with a condescending grin.

Oh, great... Sean was listening in.

Scott wasted no time confronting the laugh, "What's so funny, Sean?" he asked, irritation creeping into his expression. I couldn't say for Toru or Marty, but neither Scott nor I were particularly fond of the guy, varsity football teammate or otherwise.

Sean walked on over to us from the small group of furs he was casually chatting to, all the while shaking his head as if we were a bunch of ignorant fucks that he was going to grace by educating us. "Complaining about having sex with your hot girlfriend? You sound like such a fucking cuck right now, dude."

I glared angrily at the unwelcomed guest; Sean was a brown and black Tabby cat with shaggy fur, piercing yellow eyes and strangely sharp teeth. He was in gym clothes now, but he otherwise always wore a cap and had a penchant for flannel, like he was born on a redneck commune or something. He had a lean somewhat muscular build, and on some planet I might have found him to be somewhat attractive, if he wasn't otherwise a total garbage-person. As far as I can tell he's the opinionated type of guy who just has to butt in, and could never read when people didn't like like him, which sadly meant that he came up to talk to us often in this class.

Before Scott could counter, a certain large grizzly bear threw the main entrance doors open, creating a loud clank as they banged against the walls (yet another reason why the walls were so bad in this room), taking our attention away from the conversation at hand. "Sorry I'm late everyone," Mr. Johnson announced in a near-bellowing voice. "I thought I caught some kids smoking, but I guess they were just doing this thing called 'vaping' instead. Had to spend a few minutes listening to their explanation."

Most of the chatter died down, replaced by humorous whispering as most furs looked at each other with amused/confused looks on their muzzles. When our feared beloved teacher walked over to the head of the group, nobody bothered to correct him that vaping was pretty much just diet smoking, with nifty fruit flavors. "Anyway, let's get straight into role-call, Aaron Aaronson?"

"Here!" responded Aaron Aaronson, an aardvark.

With roll call now starting, Scott's attention returned to Sean, the Polar Bear staring humorlessly, an incredibly rare look for him. Not wanting Johnson to catch on that they were talking during role call, the conversation between Scott and Sean dropped to just above a whisper. "Did you seriously just use the word 'cuck' non-ironically?"

"Well, duh, 'cause you sound just like one! You can't let your girlfriend mess with your body like you're some fucking queer. That's a slippery slope down to Fagsville, man," Sean sneered, completely and utterly convinced of his ignorant opinion.

I gritted my teeth, resisting the urge to pick a fight with this douchebag. I'm sure there's a few furs in Grovedale that had their misgivings with queer people, but this guy was a legit homophobe, and it pissed me off. I've wanted to chew him out for so long, but I knew if I ever tried to, even with Scott backing me up, I would just put myself in a position to be called a fag-lover or worse by the Taby and his lackeys later. So I just continued to grit my teeth angrily while listening for my name get called. I wasn't the only one with a negative response, though: Toru tensed up at Sean's comment, his tail curling up and an uncomfortable look painted across his face. Marty frowned, scratched his butt and murmured something inaudible to himself.

Scott didn't even bat an eyelid though, "Keep your extra opinions to yourself, dude. You're pissing me off."

Sean was taken unawares by the backlash and stuttered slightly with his reply, clearly having no sense that what he was saying was offensive, "Look I'm just concerned and telling you how it is man!"

"Scott Fenton?" Johnson called out.

"Whatever man, just drop it," Scott said decisively before shouting out, "HERE!"

Sean rolled his eyes and started heading over to his spot from earlier. "Phh, fine. Don't blame me if you turn into some queer faggot."

With Sean's back now turned to us, I gave him a nasty scowl, and flipped him off for just a brief moment so that nobody else could see. Scott didn't even bother to glare at him this time. What a way to start off a workout session...

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Never masturbate before rigorous exercise.

That's the thing about fapping: it drains your testosterone levels, which are needed so you can lift and 'get swol, brah'. I was pretty pathetic for today's workout, and Scott eyed me dubiously and questioned me several times when I was unable to complete sets that I've done regularly before. I brushed it off by saying that I was just strangely tired today... which was sort of true.

As per usual, Scott and I talked about a bunch of random inconsequential stuff as we lifted (I got the gist of the Katie scenario so I didn't bring it up any more). We mostly talked about how disappointing it was that the Cleveland Browns managed to throw away a 13 point lead when they finally FINALLY looked like they were going to win a goddamn game this season. At least they're good at disappointing their fans... But hey, OSU was doing great this season, and that's the team that really matters because we'd be playing for them in a few years (at least, according to Scott we would).

When we got to the post-squat leg extensions, my mind darted back to the whole Sean thing, and it suddenly occurred to me just how lucky I was to have Scott as my best friend. I was emboldening to see Scott not take any of Sean's shit (even if whatever-the-fuck kind of sex going on between him and Katie admittedly seemed super fucking sketchy, I'll give Sean that much), especially because heaven knows Marty, Toru and I aren't anywhere confrontational enough to put the homophobic Taby Cat in his place.

But did that mean Scott was actually supportive of queer people though? Hard to say. But I guess if I also consider how I couldn't recall him ever saying anything offensive gay-slang terms, I figured Scott was pretty progressive in his beliefs. Only... I never actually had a straight up conversation with Scott about what his thoughts on gay or queer people were. Mom and Dad mentioned that my friends wouldn't care if I came out to them, and I was starting to think that, at the very least, it would be true for Scott, who I've crushed on known for the longest and mattered the most to me. Couldn't hurt to dance around the topic, right? I was planning on coming out to him... eventually.

Scott was recording his progress on his clapboarded exercise journal (we all had one, mandatory for the class). So I figured now was as good of a time as any to nudge into the topic. "Sean seems kind of homophobic, don't you think? Using words like 'fag' and 'cuck'..." I said in a low voice, after making sure Sean wasn't anywhere nearby to hear.

Scott looked up at me, and momentarily wrinkled his nose is disgust, but then just went back to checking out his journal. He didn't bother keeping his voice down low, "Yeah, it's cause he's a fucking asshole dude. Just don't give him the time of day."

If only it were so simple...

I was kind of hoping Scott would be more 'pro-queer' rather than 'anti-Sean' in his response, but what he said seemed in line enough with my intuition. "I want to just block out everything he says, dude, but he's so loud and it just pisses me off how unnecessarily hateful he is."

"Yeah man, he is pretty unnecessary, after all."

"I just wonder if there's something we can do about it..." I sighed as I wobbled down the leg extension. My thighs were really aching badly.

Scott looked at me get off, and his nose started twitching as it was prone to. He then started rapidly biting down on his pencil a few times in contemplation before taking his seat on the leg extension. "Well, maybe there is something we can do about it... I'll think on it."

...cryptic.

And that was pretty much the highlight of our workout. I powered through the testosterone-depleted exhaustion and finished our workout (don't ever skip Leg Day, kids) without too much further conversation with Scott. I guess he was thinking about what to do with Sean the whole time. He had a contemplative expression on his muzzle for the whole rest of the workout, and even when we were changing clothes and in the showers. Didn't try to slap my ass or pull down my towel or anything.

It wasn't until Toru, Marty, Scott and I were waiting in line for the full-body fur driers that he broke out of his contemplative stupor. And, _oh boy_did he ever break out of it. I probably could have avoid the whole embarrassing fiasco that was about to unfold if I just decided to towel dry my fur today instead of waiting for the Full-body Fur dryers with the other guys. Furs with light coats (like me) could usually get away with shaking water off their body and then towel drying, but for the kids that had thicker coats (or extra time to waste) we had the full body dryers, which were pretty much like showers except instead of a nozzle there was a large metal square-shaped tube that shot out hot hair. Mom told me not to use them because they're full of germs, but there really was no better feeling than having your fur warmed and fluffed up clean after a post-workout shower.

Marty was first of us to enter one of the Dryers, leaving just me Toru and Scott left in line. Scott must have been waiting for Marty to get out of the way, because immediately after the big-bad-Polar Bear starting rubbing his paws together like a cartoon villain. "Dudes, I was thinking about the Sean problem, and I came up with a sick idea." Toru and I exchanged worried glances for a moment, anxious about what whacky hijinks' Scott had brewed up this time. ...We were right to be anxious, "We should totally pretend to be gay and make out to piss off Sean. It'll be hilarious!"

What the fuck?! Did I hear that right?!

Tension spiked up from my sore leg muscles upon hearing Scott's out-of-the-blue suggestion, as panic began to set it. Was he joking? I had no idea. There wasn't any obvious sarcastic intent in his tone, and the sparkle in his eyes indicated that he was genuinely excited about the idea. Not knowing how to respond, I glanced over to Toru quickly to see how he responded; he seemed equally taken aback as me, ears folded back and face painted with confusion. The Akita clearly wasn't going to throw me a bone for this one, so I forced out a noncommittal response. "I-Isn't that a little...?"

Scott just shot me a goofy smile with a dismissive swish of his paw. "No sweat, dude! As long as our balls don't touch, it's totally under the 'no homo' purview! Trust me, I looked it up."

Looked it up where? 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to Making Out with Straighties?' It IS homo, very much homo! ALL of the homo!

...I was at an impasse. For years now I've wanted to make out with Scott, to run my paws through his white fur, feel all over that ripped body and to up those perfect washboard abs of his... But I did my best to block all such thoughts out of my mind so I could survive being the life of a closeted gay guy with a really hot best friend. But now it was possible to make out with him... but no, no, no this was not how I wanted that to happen. And in front of Sean? Fuck no! "I think I'll pass, dude..." I muttered lowly, ironically sounding way more judgmental than I had any right to be.

Scott's nose started twitching as he gave me an exaggerated frown. "Boo, lame Panther is lame. What about you Bootl- I mean, Toru? Wanna gay make-out with me to piss off Sean?".

Toru gave a startled jump now that the attention shifted to him. "I, um..." His tail curled around his left leg, and he started jutting his index fingers together. From the seriously contemplative expression on his muzzle, you think he was trying to respond to Sophie's Choice type question or some shit. Scott won't get angry if you refuse his stupid idea, just say no Toru... I heard the Dog gulp down his spit, "A-Alright, I'll do it..."

!!!!!!!!!!

"haha, yeah man!" Scott said exclaimed gleefully as he gestured Toru for a high five. The now red-eared Akita reciprocated with a weak-sauce slap to Scott's paw. I looked at my two friends, baffled.

...I was so conflicted. On one paw, this could actually be really hot. Like, maybe I could even get off thinking about it later for all I know! But on the other, if I actually tried to watch and soak in the sight of Toru and Scott sucking each other's faces off, it'd practically be the same as sticking a big old sign on myself that said 'Faggy boy loves dick'. Ugh, Fiery hell and demons Scott, why do you do this to meeeeeeeeeee. And on the day that I was planning to finally make steps to coming out to you too? Really?! Agh, whatdo whatdo whatdo whatdo? Do I chicken out and change lightning fast to keep myself uninvolved from such sexy faggotry? But no, shit, I mean, Scott making out with another guy though? I at least had to see a little bit of that though, right? Right?!