And The Night Was Young

Story by Gruffy on SoFurry

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#24 of Hockey Hunk Season 1


Standard disclaimer:

This is a furry adult story containing gay males in sexual situations as well as explicit language and descriptions. No kids are allowed so this story is only for those who are 18/21 or whatever the age is at your legislation. If you are not of the legal age, you shouldn't view this story because you might lose your innocence. Also, by browsing this story you have done so by your own consent and wish to view such material. if you do not wish to view such material you should leave this site immediately.

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_Hello, and welcome to the sadly overdue new instalment of the ongoing series.

If you have any comments, please be more than encouraged to drop a few lines once you're done. It'll help me to become a better writer, and I am always amused by the feedback. Votes, faves and watches are appreciated greatly as well.

This also happens to be my 80th post on SoFurry, and I passed 96,000 views just today. We're gonna hit the big six digits soon, folks! Yay!

Have a fun read, everyone!_

G

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By the time the big stylized clock on the shop wall hit 13:29, I was ready to phone up NASA an ask whether a strange time-dilating black hole had suddenly formed straight above Earth and caused the time to run at extra slow speed, just out of spite at one Rory Gliese.

My claws tapped the glass surface of the counter on either side of the cash register and I idly wondered whether I might be sued for copyright infringement by the makers of The Groundhog Day if I'd coin up a spec script about a worker in a bookstore who is stuck in a temporal loop that causes the same day to happen over and over again.

Now that I thought about it, and my tail agreed with its sway, a Victor date day going again and again might not be such a bad idea at all in the end, if the date ended up being a fantastic success.

I wanted to stomp my flicky tail down for thinking about the date again, and with almost comical slowness, the hand of the clock turned to cover the number six to tell me that it was half past one, and I could go to have a break while Crystal took over for me. She was already there, hovering nearby and looking like she had nothing to do now that she had restocked all the shelves and ushered around customers and generally been busy all early afternoon, unlike I, who stood fixed behind my cash register and made happyhappy Rory faces at everyone within radius. That included Marge, standing next to me, currently busily serving some wolverine with a stack of cookery books in his paws.

I gave Crystal a quick smile, signed myself out of the register and walked about the store floor, not really paying attention to anything in particular. My mind was muffled by the relative lack of sleep and the ample nerves keeping my belly as a bundle of rumbling activity, and my tail almost swiped against a coyote's back while I walked past him on my way to the steps to downstairs. I tried to keep my tail better in check for the last few strides it required for me to reach the door marked "STAFF ONLY" and take into the coolness of the back room, currently unpopulated but for me. The steps rattled under me, and I got that strange sinking feeling I often did when I took these stairs, but that, too, offered only a momentary distraction from the fact that my mind was going all !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! at the fact that tonight I was going to do something fun for once.

A Victor date...a Dobie date...a date...

Well, it was just a date, a date we had agreed on, and filled out an itinerary for it, so we knew that was going to happen, but the road there was yet untraced and we would definitely have plenty of fun finding out just how winding that path was. My tail made mimicries of tight bends on a road while I walked, flicking nicely behind my slowly swaying Rory-rump, hell, my paws swayed a bit too as I walked, my shoulders on the move. Was I doing a strut walk?

I almost stopped to check my posture and my gait, but snuffled at the ridiculous nature of the whole idea and decided that what I needed was a nice mug of coffee and a sitting down to get off my uneasy legs and generally just calm down and enjoy my precious break time while the others toiled upstairs trying to sate any wish of the unruly customers. I reached the coffee corner and checked that there was water in the electric kettle before I turned it on, and I rummaged the cabinet for my favourite mug that I had stolen from Marge.

The kettle made a little gurgling sound and my ears flicked, and I yawned, and my tail played possum behind me, surprisingly, and I wondered what Victor was doing right at the moment. He was probably stuck in the office, I decided, in his cubicle, staring at the spreadsheets, the stacks of paper growing around him like some strange towers keen on mimicking the natural source of the paper in his precious documents. His tail probably stood out cutely from below the belt of his very nicely fitting jeans, and he of course wore a while, collared shirt, and a name tag, and had a mug full of pencils on his desk next to a photo of a naked lion.

Well, that was me being naughty again, I did know as much, at least by the time I located my mug and put it down to the coffee-stained counter, right next to the omnipresent package of coffee that was thankfully provided by the employer. Having things otherwise would have probably been grounds for a riot, or at least a strike, with barricades being put up out of piles of books, and me standing there with my beret and shouting viva for le revolution.

I snuffled at my generally insane disposition to even the most normal of things today, and while the kettle hissed and offered a tiny hint of distraction, I tried to think of something that wasn't coffee, butt, date, books, cash registers, Victor, tail, Reader's Digest, Frasier or Victor.

There was Peter, of course, I decided with a little smile as I leaned on the counter in a perversion of my usual "How Can I Serve You?" posture, this time poised over a sink as if planning to hurtle. The cougar had showed up last night and hung around for a couple of hours, getting my...regretfully, divided attention. While Victor was keen to talk about ice hockey and his complete collection of JAG DVD's and of the date, one half of my brain wasn't laughing at his sometimes witty, sometimes clumsy jokes and smileys, but was hanging out with Peter, my Peter, present as a small blinking box that directly competed for my attention with its very presence. It was poised there right next to Victor's, A Peter Sinclair communicating with a Rory Gliese without the knowledge of a third party, a Victor Holden. Peter didn't talk about Frasier or hockey, and I had to say it for him, he also didn't talk about...lemme get this right...calcineurin inhibitors, or serum, or kidneys falling off, or George, or germphobia, or...

Well, everything was anti-Victor, and there were moments when Peter was just Peter, making rude remarks and being curious about the Mistwillow incident, and how he wikied the guy up and said that he didn't seem to be a big time thing, which certainly amused me. He sounded happy, as much as someone can sound like something when the medium of communication is typed text...he also typed very neatly, and didn't use abbreviations or textspeak or smileys like Victor sometimes did, but Peter didn't sound like an English professor either. That was probably an achievement in its own right, considering how much time he spent with professor Hartnell nowadays, poring over notes of completely esoteric quality that were of utmost importance to the old grizzled academic's research. At least Peter could be useful in that, and I told him as much last night, too, between Victor's joke about mail boxes, and me getting a snack from the fridge. He even implied that he was having someone visiting him during the weekend, which was also a good thing, since as far as I knew, nobody really came over, or was invited, for that part. Even I sometimes wondered how I managed to pass his tests to enter without wearing one of those yellow suits from that movie where the cute little pet monkey spread the killer virus everywhere.

The kettle's automatic power switch popped as the water reached the boiling point. I quickly poured steaming water over a couple of spoonfuls of grain coffee in the mug to make a brew that probably would have required a hazmat rating of its own, really, but here I was, stirring the powdery stuff into the hot water. Lovely scent rose from the black, frothy depths and my nose wriggled pleasurably, and I purred, just a little, at the prospect of having something soothing in my system. Agreed, I as going to consume a stimulant while practically hyper-active, but a cat had to have his cuppa, and I wasn't going to be denying myself of that little pleasure while there were still so many minutes before my date.

Armed with coffee and a chocolate chip cookie that was courtesies of Marge - leftovers from her Goggy's place, apparently, but delicious nonetheless - I meandered over to the old couch and sat down, finally off my itchy paws and peaceful enough for the time being. I mean, I almost managed to take a sip before I again thought about the date...and that was...well, almost 30 seconds not thinking about something that could be traced back to the date, at least through the six degrees of separation.

I let the suspicious substance tangle itself with my tongue within my maw and leaned back and sighed, hoping that it would already be the evening and I could be doing date things and not work things. Maybe I should have called in sick...got bit by a pet monkey, have a strange nosebleed, might not come work all next week...

The door to the staff room opened beside me and my ears jumped, my tail batting the coffee table and making its odd assortment of things become rattled by the sudden shock while my eyes spied the familiar shape of something grey and shaggy and clad in red and black, the colours of the shop.

"Good day, Mason" I smiled at the wolf who had apparently been preparing for his afternoon shift back there while I was making my coffee.

"Hey, Rory," the wolf greeted, his tail swishing behind him slowly while he stood there for a little moment, on the doorway, before he made his way slowly to the coffee corner to grab himself a mugful, too.

I wondered whether he was hung over, seriously, after what the lynx friend of his had implied to be a rowdy night out at none other place than the local gay bar, the Ramrod, after that I wouldn't have been surprised if the wolf was feeling a bit under the weather, even so late in the afternoon. The door to the staff room did close with a mild clang, and his ears jumped, but I didn't see any flinching, so probably he was better off by now...if thanks to some aspirin, if nothing else.

I spied him a little, going through the motions of drinking my coffee while Mason made some for himself, and even followed him when he came over and settled down to his customary place and tucked his tail down against his leg and sat back, the mug held in his paw while he relaxed in the way only a frat dude could. He wasn't just sitting there, he was chilling out. He didn't have his MP3 plugs in, though, which was something like...progress, I guess, in his reintegration into the wider society.

I sat back and scratched my chest quickly, careful not to use claws through my shirt, and put my paw down again, my coffee sitting on the table in front of me, leaving me with two paws doing absolutely nothing at all. The temptation to scratch was an ever-growing woe for me at the moment, but I could just about keep it in check with the thought of Mason's face should he see me going to town to my balls. I decided to be a good kitty and just clenched my paws and did nothing.

"You had any fun last night?" the wolf asked me after a silence that was just about starting to border the limit of 'If we don't talk now we might as well not even try to start talking at all'.

My brow perked as I listened to his casual words, and smiled a little.

"Nothing that didn't involve my couch and my television," I chuckled, stretching a bit for emphasis of a total laziness from my part, and simply because it felt good.

"Heh," Mason replied briefly, and sipped his coffee, his ears flicking when the taste hit him, I think, and he smacked his lips once he was done.

"You suffering from any after shocks?" I smiled, trying to look a little bit knowingly, as if I was sharing a secret and not really making a curious question about the wolf's private life that might or might not have involved a visit to a gay bar.

Mason gave me a brief "Whut?" face and his brow knit before he seemed to catch my drift. He didn't look all too happy all told, and rubbed his chin before he spoke.

"Not too bad...a bit dehydrated."

"Coffee's not the best for that y'know," I chuckled.

"Marge's stolen my spare Coke from the fridge," Mason snorted.

"Ouch," I made an empathetic face and sipped coffee from my stolen mug.

"It's okay...uhh...I sure as hell didn't have to pay for it or anything," he smirked toothily, looking ever much like the chilling frat boy that he was...only missing one of those red cups from his paw, really, full of cheap beer.

My ears flicked curiously now.

"Ohhh...was your friend Haakon that generous?" I smiled curiously.

Mason avoided my eyes for a moment, choosing to stare at his mug for a little moment before he spoke again.

"Well, he kinda...got us a lot of free drinks..." he flicked an ear.

"Oh?" now this was fishy.

"Yeah...well, in fact, we didn't have to pay for one drink all night, heheh," he chuckled quickly.

My eyes widened a bit.

"Now that's one savvy lynx...just how did your buddy go on doing that?"

The wolf snuffled.

"He kinda...got a little bit of attention, you know...."

"I'd imagine he would...you don't see lynxes every day," I suggested while biting my teeth together to keep my smile from broadening too much, or accidentally slipping out that you didn't see such a cutie every day.

Mason shook his head really slowly.

"Well...Rory...it was Haakon's idea....eh..shit, man, I didn't know...." he frowned, quickly.

"Eh?"

"We went to The Ramrod," Mason snuffled.

I decided not to play around just quite as much as I could have, and just smiled.

"Well, Haakon did mention me something like that...."

The wolf slapped the armrest of the old chair with his paw.

"Damn, he said he mentioned to my workmate that we were gonna go out having a party but he didn't tell me that he told you that we were going there....oh man..." his tail flapped against the chair in an almost-wagging motion.

"Should I have warned you?" I asked him, tilting my head a little while I looked at the wolf. "I kinda thought you knew already...I assumed that Haakon knew..."

Mason's ears dropped.

"I only found out once we were standing at the door," he shook his head.

"Could've been worse eh?" I tried to make it sound like it wasn't such an unusual thing to happen to a frat wolf...to end up to a very special place.

"Well we got all those free drinks...," the wolf mused, seeming thoughtful now.

I couldn't help but smile at his expression and pressed on, carefully, just a little, to probe the ice.

"So did he win a dance competition or something to keep you well watered for the night?" I suggested, thinking that a dance show-off was a common enough a feature in night clubs...not just the place where you got extra points for the most stylish leather cap and dip during the tango.

"Nahh...man, he just...well...he just let guys talk to him and buy him drinks...a lot of drinks, " he was shaking his head again.

I stared at him, my maw probably a little bit open, while my eyes practically bulged a little bit out of their sockets.

"Uhhh...wow...," I chuckled very briefly to make it pass as a joke.

Seriously.

"Yeah, seriously , I dunno how he did it," Mason seemed puzzled again, even more than I was at the moment, from the sheer amount of...Jeeeessssshhh that I was experiencing in such a short period of time.

I wasn't even thinking about the date.

No!

I was thinking about the date!

At least Mason kept speaking and provided distraction for a little bit longer.

"I mean...seriously...all he did was sit down there and flick his ears and flick his tail and look...dunno...hunky..."

He rubbed his chin and I tilted a polite paw over my opposite knee to make sure that the wolf would no catch my body's approval of the statement that the Norwegian cat was almost more than hunky...he was cute as hell, his butt was suitable for underwear modelling, I was sure of that, and his smile was probably a contributing factor to keeping the Fjords free of ice during the winter months.

"And...," I spoke after a little while, my lips feeling oddly dry, "he'd get drinks and..."

"He'd hand them over to me, or the girls, yeah," the wolf smiled again.

I shook my head in disbelief again, unable to believe the things these modern kids got up to...and I wasn't too unmodern yet, and I hadn't done anything quite that...cool!

"...but they really started coming when he took off his shirt...", Mason added.

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_....and next off in the series... THE DATE!!

Seriously.

It all starts to unravel in the next chapter._

Read it.

The date is there.

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Thank you for reading my story.

If you have any comments, please drop a few lines. You're most encouraged to do that since it'll help me to become a better writer.

Cheerio!