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Always nice when the smell of cooking fills the house, even if it's a whole damn bunch of scents you're not used to. Tomatillos; four different kinds of cheese, two of which I'd never heard of before; uncooked tortillas, sizzling gently in the pan atop the stove, lightly frying in a very particular type of oil. Tony had sent me a video recipe in response to my asking him what he'd like for dinner, and while the entire thing was in Spanish, I still managed to pick out the ingredients needed, and had asked him for help with some of the others.

Like, the cheese, mainly. Manchego and Oaxaca. Had I not been listening to the video, neither me nor Dad would've had any idea how to pronounce that second one. Wa-sha-ka or something like that-

"Oaxaca," Tony murmured in my ear, and giggled. "_Wa-ja-ka._Odd, isn't it?"

"Mhmm." My fingers tingled and felt greasy with everything that I'd been doing so far. Boil the tomatillos, blend them up, mix with the other juice, set that sauce aside... now all there was left to do was actually assemble the things and put it all into the oven. Enchiladas suizas. Sounded delicious, if the amount of cheese in a recipe is a good signifier of tastiness. That's what me and Dad usually went by, at least. "I actually think I've seen this before, on the shelf at the store." We had to run to an entirely different grocery store before we could find it. "Never once thought about picking it up."

"Ya sabes, sometimes stepping out of your comfort space is good. Yes?" The cheetah slid up beside me and peered over the pan, tortilla sizzling and bouncing atop the hot oil. "I think that one is done. Uno, dos, tres, cuatro... three or four more?"

"Three I think." I nodded over towards the glass casserole dish we'd pulled out from one of the cabinets. "I'm planning to put a lot in 'em."

"Good, good. That is how I like it." For the briefest of moments, his paw brushed over my hip across my back, and sent a sweet shiver through my body - and then it was gone, him padding back over towards the other counter. Dad and Ms. Amador sat at the dining table in the next room; Dad, naturally, had invited the older cheetess in when she came by with her son, and she seemed delighted to oblige. Every now and then some part of their conversation drifted over, or a peal of shared laughter, or the unmistakable sound of something whispered... and usually followed by sly chuckling from Ms. Amador.

Seemed like they were getting along pretty well. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Tony standing on his tiptoes, leaning over the counter with his long tail flicking idly behind him; his mother caught sight, and gave him a bright grin. He returned it.

"...and that is another thing..." she went on, tilting her muzzle back towards Dad. He lounged back in his chair, one leg crossed over the other and glass of cherry soda held lightly in his paw. When the cheetahs arrived, he'd offered wine to Ms. Amador, but she'd turned it down - and as such, he got that for the two of them instead. "Your son cooks. Cooks! I cannot get my gatito to touch more than the microwave."

Tony had come back to me in the meantime, hovering beside while I folded the tortillas carefully over a good helping of cheese in each while another one fried up. Every time I finished one, he took it in his paw and settled it into the dish. "Mamá," he mewled over his shoulder, "that is not fair! I am a musician. It is not fitting of a musician to dirty his precious, precious fingers with grease and oil and-"

Ms. Amador clucked her tongue and leaned further over the table, a mock-pained expression on her face. "See what I am saying?"

Dad chuckled around the rim of his glass, and flicked his tongue across his lips to catch a drop of the red liquid. "Oh, jeez, Aurora-" -that was Tony's mom's name- "-you should've seen my older son when he still lived here. Packaged oatmeal for breakfast, instant ramen for lunch, mac and cheese for dinner, day after day after day..."

The oil continued to bubble for a while after I turned the heat off, carefully resting the last tortilla onto the plate. Looks like we'd have a good amount of the oaxaca left over. I tapped that last tortilla with my finger, then jumped and brought that fingerpad to my mouth. Hot. "Hey, that's not that bad a way to live."

This time, it was Dad's turn to roll his eyes and lean over the table, and Ms. Amador took up her role and laughed. "You see what I have to deal with? Lee's been out of the house for years now, and my stomach's only just started to shed the layer of thick leather it'd had to grow for his cooking simply because I haven't let Matt go down the same road."

Tony watched me with the tortillas, now finally taking the shape of the enchiladas. He held the others back as I squeezed the last one into the dish, then moved them all around a bit... and reached for the tomatillo sauce, still in the blender. I leaned over close by him - and felt his whiskers twitch against my cheek, which made me jerk back and giggle. It felt nice having him so close by, and for a moment, I almost expected him to close the distance between us and peck my cheek.

Then I realized what I was thinking, and swiftly turned away to hide my blush. Maybe if I opened the oven...

"You have two children, then?" the cheetess went on, in her smooth voice so similar to her son's.

"Yes! Bradley and Matthew. Lee's older by... several years. Did - did you know I'm a grandfather?"

"Ohh." There was a pause in her speech, probably for her to take a sip of her drink. I reached for the oven mitts, just barely out of my grip, and Tony swiped them closer. "You do not look half the age, perro guapo - estas muy bien conservado. I could see what my 'Tonio saw in your son when he first brought him over, but now I can see where that came from..."

Beside me, Tony rolled his eyes and flopped his tongue out of his mouth, sending me into another fit of quiet laughing. After I straightened up from setting the enchiladas atop the rack, I tapped in the cook time and then side-eyed the parents at the table.

Then, I moved in close to Tony's ear, and for a second forgot what I was going to say. Smell of cheetah, soft and spicy, warm beneath the sour-sweet scents of the tomatillo sauce and exotic cheese. He seemed to notice, and once more twitched his long whiskers against my cheeks.

"Isn't-" I cleared my throat, and cast another look over at the table. Ms. Amador threw her head back and laughed, and Dad's grin widened. "Isn't your mom married? I thought th-"

The younger cheetah's look silenced me, stern and worried at the same time. Then, however, his muzzle split into an amused grin, but he very much avoided answering my question and once more spun around. "Oh! Mamá, cuéntale de Estrella!"

"Mm?" She raised her eyebrows, lips pursed around a mouthful of the soda. "Mm! Ah! Yes. I have two as well."

"Two sons?"

"Two kittens. Estrella is - 'Tonio's sister. She plays the violin..."

"Ah! Lord! You got two musicians. I got a programmer and one who doesn't quite know what he wants yet." Then Dad scooted forward and raised a paw to cover his muzzle, and I thought - I thought - I could hear him say "...other than your son," to which Ms. Amador cackled again.

"Ohh, I do not know. How can you say you are done?"

"'Scuse me?"

Tony tugged on the hem of my sleeve, and nodded towards the stairs. I more than agreed; it was time to get away from these two before they really started embarrassing us. "Dad, could you let me know when the oven dings?"

The older dingo nodded and waved to me - and perked his ears as Ms. Amador just went on.

"Well, I am saying - you look like you could still have another; perhaps your third will be a musician..."

"Oh. Jeez. Well, I mean, there was this one woman I dated for about three months..."

Clomp, clomp, clomp of climbing up the stairs, their voices fading away the further we went. Not even halfway up, though, I felt something squeeze around my other paw, and turned to see Tony hovering a few steps behind me, and reaching forward and gripping that paw in his own. This brought a smile back to my face of course, and I tugged him lightly up behind me once we got to the top.

I turned to face him and started to say, "Wow, they're really hitting it off, h-"

But he wouldn't let me finish. The breath was pushed out of me with the sudden force of his body against mine, arms draped lightly around my neck and shoulders, warm rough-soft nose touching up against my jaw. The beginning of the hug actually knocked me slightly off-balance, and for a moment I thought that something was wrong - until the sound of the cheetah giggling again tickled at my ears, and he half-stumbled forward with my tottering.

"It is good to see you," he said, breath warm and soft in my fur. Arms still around me, he moved back and grinned. "I have been hearing things nonstop from Mamá."

"About?"

The cheetah fell away from me but still held my paw, and strolled easily beside me as we went down the hall. The enchiladas wouldn't take too long, but it'd still be nice to get a little bit of time to ourselves before dinner. "You. Me. Both of us. You know, on the ride over here she told me, 'oh, I hope they invite me in, I want to give Matt a big hug' - but, in Spanish, of course..."

"Ah." I pushed the door to my room open with my shoulder and brought him inside. Everything remained exactly as it had been when I crawled out of bed this morning, except how my backpack had fallen over. For some reason I had a feeling that the homework I'd started would stay right there on my desk where I'd left it. "So that's what that was about? You know, your mom gives good hugs."

Tony shrugged. "She gets a lot of practice." The cheetah let his paw fall from mine and then took a moment surveying my room, drawing his sunrise-orange eyes over from that desk, to the window, to the bed, to the posters along the walls - he mouthed some of the band names, some of the quotes - then back to the bed. "Aaah. I always wonder if I should get more posters to put on my walls, but... they get torn up, after moving so much and putting them up and taking them down. Your room looks good." Then he pointed to the bed. "Can I sit?"

"Yeah, sure." For a moment I floundered between remaining standing, or going over and sitting in my desk chair, or just leaning against the wall, or... well, Tony raised his eyebrows once he relaxed back onto the mattress, and pressed his fingers into the soft fabric. Then he smiled up at me again, and before I could put another thought into it, I'd made my way over and took my place beside him. He bumped his head on my shoulder, and my body just naturally put my arm around him and squeezed him closer... and that felt right, more than enough so to push away the tingling thumps in my chest.

And we just... stayed like that for a while. I don't know if he had somewhere he wanted to take the conversation or not, but it felt like the two of us were held there, almost like a pair of magnets. I wanted to stay right here in the little dent our combined weight made along the edge of the mattress; I wanted to run my fingers back and forth over his side, feeling the smooth curves of his waist beneath his fur and the fabric of his shirt; I wanted to continue feeling the rhythmic pulses of breath stirring his body, the occasional twitch of his long whiskers, the way his tail leapt and stirred behind us-

All of a sudden, though, the cheetah straightened up, and rubbed at his nose with the back of his paw. He looked flustered, and seemed to scramble for a moment at finding something to say. "I - ah - Matt... um, thank you for cooking tonight. It means a lot to me."

Couldn't help watch him for a moment longer, but now I felt as if he were trying to avoid eye contact. The cheetah had focused his gaze on my nightstand, over the single lamp there to the digital clock, and the array of discarded fruit snacks wrappers and lost pencils, and the almost-empty water bottle that had been there for probably three months now.

"Yeah, of course. Thank you for coming over. I mean, I just figured that, like..." I shrugged. You know that feeling when you're with the person you like, and you feel like you just gotta keep on talking, even if you don't really know what to say? And you just kind of let your mouth keep running? "It was time, y'know? We've been friends, and now we're... now we're boyfriends, and, like... Dad wanted to meet you, and your mom too-"

A warm, low rumble issued from the cheetah's throat, and when I next looked at him, his sly smile had returned. "I can tell that he wanted to meet her. She seems to enjoy his company too." Whatever it was that had startled him earlier, it seemed to have passed. Tony remained sitting beside me with his body against mine for a few moments longer, then lifted himself up and padded around to the other side of the bed, to look through the window and out at the street below.

So I rolled to the side and watched. Calm, easy expression on his muzzle, even if his ears, whiskers, and tail all twitched of their own accord every now and then. I guess he was just nervous about being alone in the same room, too, even if it was only for like twenty minutes while the enchiladas cooked.

"Oh." He let go of the curtain. "I have wanted to ask. Why did you move this to today, from Wednesday? Is everything okay?" Then the cheetah pursed his lips during my hesitation, and came another step closer to the other side of the bed. "...Is it the Tyler thing?"

Felt cold all of a sudden, without him sitting there beside me. I raised my head and gave him the best smile I could feel for at that moment. "Yeah. I just. Wanted to see you, y'know?"

"Yes, I know..." And instead of walking all the way back around the bed to take his spot next to me, Tony just - sat down on the other side of the mattress, then rolled over onto all fours and came across the bed, eventually settling down behind me and leaning his weight into my back, with his muzzle on my shoulder from behind. I turned my head again, and my body gave a shiver in reaction to the tickling of his stiff whiskers in the fur of my neck. "I have been wanting to see you too. It has... been a while since..."

I thought he'd trailed off. Once more we remained in place for a few sweet moments, our only movements the gentle stirring from our out-of-sync soft breathing and the occasional flick of one of our ears caught by the humming air conditioner, or a twinge of muscle. Slowly he drew himself back up, and this time - rested himself over my shoulders from behind, arms hanging down in front of my chest and his chin atop my muzzle. As another natural reaction, I just kinda stiffened and straightened up; this was the closest we'd ever been, the most we'd ever touched. I wondered if he could feel my heart starting to pound.

But right as I found the confidence, the sureness to reach up and trace my fingers over the back of one of his paws, he squirmed again and moved away, to sit down next to me again. This time he kept a short distance between us; we still sat closer than any pair of "just friends", but that void there felt so large, so empty after where he'd been earlier.

"...I liked a boy once," he said, quietly. My ears flicked towards his smooth voice. "At one of the other schools I went to. I was younger then, and... and I was stupid." The pause here was long enough to make me look up at him, and when I did, those orange eyes held mine for a moment, then flitted away. "He was the first boy I liked."

The fact that he was here, with me, as my boyfriend, meant that this story probably wouldn't end well. Part of me wanted to pipe up and slide in a "you know, you're the first boy I've been interested in," but... time and a place. When I reached over and took his paw in mine, there was that same little electric shock sent shivering up my arm, but just as Tony made no effort to shrug me off, did he put nothing into squeezing back.

He swallowed before continuing. "I was shy. I was scared. I had nobody to talk to, nobody to ask things about... that is what you are doing with - Lexi, yes?"

Quiet: "Yeah. She's a good friend."

"Yes. I wish I had a Lexi. It was just me, and this boy. And for half of the time I went to that school, I do not think he knew I existed."

At that, I couldn't help but laugh a little. Ain't that the way it always goes.

"And then I talked to him. And he talked to me. And I thought it was okay. He was a wolf, ah... grey? Blue eyes. That was the first thing I noticed about him. So, so blue."

Rich orange, orange like the edge of the sky just as the sun starts to peek over the horizon in the mornings - orange like... like a crystal, like polished calcite, rippled and veined...

"And he spoke Spanish, too. That is part of how we got along. We did not have any classes together, but he started waiting with me before, and sometimes at lunch, and he walked me home a few times... and I thought he knew, ya sabes? I thought that - that he could tell how I felt, and I thought... I thought he felt the same way. It was... I thought, because, he..."

Here, I knew exactly how Tony felt, as he struggled to find the words and how to say what he meant. Things like that, you don't always know. It's just a feeling you have, and if you try to peer in and ask yourself why you have that feeling... there's no real answer. This time I took the initiative to squeeze his paw a little harder and intertwine my fingers with his, and I scooted over to close that cold gap between us. He felt tense.

"...ah. We started... hanging out outside of school. I went to his house, he came to mine. Mamá knew what was going on even before I had decided to tell her. I had been so scared, and so worried - I had heard about what had happened to other boys who like boys at school, and... ah. You would not have liked to see me. I was crying, and Mamá was hugging me... I am grateful, and very lucky to have her. Yes? She always knows what to say, and what to do."

The corner of my mouth twinged. I hope she and Dad were behaving themselves down there...

"After our talk, I decided to... to ask the boy out. He said yes. I thought everything was going good. I told Mamá, and she was excited too, and I went... and it was nice. Just the two of us sitting over dinner, talking, telling stories, laughing. Everything we usually do. When we left, he... gave me a hug, squeezed my paw, told me he would see me at school."

"That's sweet." I had to say something, right? It felt bad, just sitting here listening to him tell me this without putting in anything... anything helpful. It was like watching a horror movie: I knew that something was going to happen, knew that something was going to go wrong, but I couldn't yet tell when, or how.

"Mhmm." As he thought about where to go next, the cheetah lifted my paw into his lap and gently traced the claws of his other through the fur on the back, following the lines of tendons beneath the skin, and the little natural growth patterns of the hairs. That, too, made me shiver. "I was happy. Ah - I was... I was what I _thought_was happy. There was this cute boy, and I liked him, and he was spending time with me, and giving me hugs, and going out with me, and... he was my first kiss, too. It was one time when he walked me home, and Mamá had not come back from work yet. It was winter then, cloudy, cold, and I was in my jacket, and he turned to say goodbye, and..."

He trailed off again for a moment. "I was so scared when I first called him my boyfriend. And... I was scared afterwards, too. He did not seem to notice. We were out at a movie then, and I assumed, oh, it is the sound, it is too loud... but then at school the next Monday, I called him my boyfriend again, and he - closed my mouth with his paw,'shh, don't say that out loud'... that should have been my first hint. I was young, and excited, and stupid. He was..." Another shrug.

I so, so wanted to lean in and nuzzle up into his neck, to show him that kind of warm affection... but felt bad about that, since it was both my own wish, and my own desire to do. Because I thought it would feel good, because I was curious, and this here was the first boy I'd had an interest in like that, and... well, I'm young and excited. As for stupid...

All of a sudden, Tony breathed out a scoff. "And he was interested in someone else. A girl. Of course he never told me to my face, but I heard him talking with his other friends. His friends, who he would pretend that he did not know me with. Ah - I am sorry, my English is... he and I would be walking in the hall, and there would be his friends, and he would go towards them, and I would follow, and he would... block me off, pretend like I was not there. That hurt too.

"And then we got the eviction notice from the apartments we were living at. I do not know what that exactly was, but... I remember Mamá crying about it, late one night. She thought she had finally found somewhere, a good place that we could afford. She took out a loan, and... ah, I do not know the specifics of it. Something happened, and we did not have enough money all of a sudden, and the rent jumped up to where even if we did have money, we would not be able to pay it... and we would have to move by the end of the month.

"We had gotten used to this by now. We got our hopes up, but... it was nothing new." Another shrug. "So I went to school the next day, and told my teachers, and the friends I had made. And the boy I liked. I almost didn't, but I told him, and for the first time, he showed emotion towards me while at school. But I did not get a kiss, or a hug. Just a frown, and something that looked like he wanted to hug me, and then changed my mind. I was already in a bad mood, and when I held my arms out and he ignored it... I went away. I did not care if he followed. He did not."

Tony licked his lips and shifted. Now he held that one paw of mine in both of his, and kept a constant squeeze around it. Gentle, but constant. "He showed up at my house the night before we left. It was a Saturday, and me and Mamá were just sitting around... we had packed up the TV, but kept my keyboard out for me to practice, and she was reading a book. I went to get the door, and saw him there, and... I did not know whether I wanted to let him in or close the door in his face. I think he noticed what I was feeling, and reached out to touch my arm. I did not let him.

"I was... angry, but I did not know the words to tell him that. I could not. It did not feel right. Boyfriends do not yell at each other, yes?"

"I don't-"

The tone of his voice silenced me. "That is what I thought at the time. I thought I was being the bad boyfriend. I had to have done something for him to... not want to be with me around his friends. I had to have done something, but I could not figure out what, and that was making me mad at myself and mad at him, and being mad at him just made me even more mad at myself... and I still remember what he said to me that night."

I looked up at the cheetah beside me, and he met my gaze levelly. Then he shrugged again, and the ghost of a smile touched his lips.

"Well, it was in Spanish. He told me - he said - he was sorry to see me go, and that he wished we could have been better friends." All signs of that smile had faded. "That was it. Friends, he said. Ah - amigos was what he actually said. I did not know what to say back to him, so I said nothing. And we stood there, staring at each other. Until he... handed me something from behind his back..." Tony shook his head and made a noise that sounded like another scoffing laugh. "It was a little - ah, a little... soft, pillowy... what is it... toy..."

It took me a moment before I realized, especially with the way he was moving his paws. "Plush? Like, a stuffed animal?"

"Yes. A plush. Wolf. And then he left. The first thing I did with it was throw it into one of the boxes we had packed... but when I went to sleep that night, I could not help myself. I went and - and I got it, and I slept with it... and then did so again, and again, every night. It was not like I did not want to. I wished that I could put it away and forget about it, but whenever I put it under my bed, or in my closet, I... could not sleep. It was like trying to go to sleep when there is something I know I must do, and it was eating at my thoughts, keeping me awake. I hated it and loved it, because it reminded me of him.

"And the more I sat with it, the more I thought about it... the angrier it made me. And I did not know why I was angry. That was the worst part." Again the cheetah licked his lips, and looked up at me again. There was - something in his eyes, something halfway between regret and sorrow, I think. His tail lashed behind him. "I was hurt. I liked this boy, and I gave him my heart and my feelings and my... and he took it and ignored it. There was another boy I liked at the next school, but I did not talk to him. And another at the one after that, but on the day I decided to ask him out, he got a girlfriend. And I still went back to sleeping with that little wolf plush, every night."

I remembered the tattered stuffed animal I'd seen in his closet, sitting up atop unpacked boxes. Somewhere he didn't see it every day, but where he still knew where to find it if he looked.

"It reminded me of him, and I hated that, and loved it at the same time. It hurt to think about him and remember him, but... he had given me the only affection I had ever felt from someone else. Ah - well, there was a girl before him, but... that did not go anywhere. I still..." He lifted my paw to his chest and pressed it there, where I could feel the rhythm of his heart. It almost matched mine. "I still think about him. And I wonder. If that had not happened... maybe I would have... ah, I do not know. I doubted myself for a long time because of him."

"Tony..."

Outside the room and down the hall came the thumping of approaching footsteps.

The cheetah leaned over and bumped his nose against my cheek, just for a moment. Warm breath wafted through my whiskers and made them twitch. "I avoided involving myself with anyone. I was scared. I still am. Friday when you told me... I thought you were going to tell me that you knew how I felt, and that you were not interested. I was scared, and I tried to stay away. I tried to avoid it, just like always. But this time, I could not resist my heart, and..." There was that smile again, this time fuller, steadier. The footsteps came closer, rhythmic. "I am still scared, Matt. I cannot stop that. I am terrified. But knowing that it is you... somehow, for some reason, I am a little less so."

I couldn't stop myself. Something like this... "Did you love him?"

Then - a quick series of rapping on the partially-open door, and Dad's voice: "Matt, the oven dinged - come get 'em and serve us before they burn! Aurora is starting to look like she'd just as soon eat me as the enchiladas."

At that, Tony perked up, and that smile widened into a grin - and for once, I couldn't tell if it was wholly genuine or not. "Ah! Good. I am hungry. Come on, Matt. Eat with me?"