Wedding Mouse, 1 of 7
#14 of The world of the Spirit of '67
I hope you enjoy my latest offering. It's a sequel to 'City Mouse', and also deals with Troy Salcedo and Jennifer Dixon.
If you're here for the yiff, I suggest you skip ahead to parts four and seven, but mainly seven.
Respectful feedback is, as always, very appreciated.
//: 2105, City of Minneapolis. University of Minnesota. Troy hunched his head down, ducking out of the physics lab. His breath frosted in the early winter air, he realized first. Then he realized the sky was dark, and checking his wristwatch he found that it was a little past one in the morning. He shoved his right hand into the pocket of his jacket, shivering in the cold despite the black fur covering him, along with a pair of jeans and winter jacket. The wind chill was catching his ears, big and flared, and was pulling the heat right out of them. Sometimes being a mouse sucked. Gritting his teeth he pulled the hood of his jacket up, yanking it down painfully over his big ears before moving along, muttering to himself. He'd shoved his tail down the back of his pants, and if he stepped too fast it wrenched uncomfortably, but in this weather it'd freeze off if he left it free. He edged down the walk uncomfortably, muttering to himself. They'd gotten tracks of Unbiquadium in the particle accelerator last week, which was exciting - yet another new synthetic atom - but if they were going to use it they had to get a production method in place and getting that together was Troy's job on the research team and Troy didn't know how in the hell he'd do this. About eight hundred thousand New Dollars' worth of uranium should provide a good starting point, ditch it into Greg's new reactors and start fusing before Greg flipped out, but he needed more processing power and sim time to make sure he'd gotten the build-up chain right and they didn't have that kind of funding anyway but- "Hey, Doc Salcedo!" Troy looked up edgily. One of the campus cops, red-faced and cold, but looking comfortable, because even a freakin' campus cop made more money and could afford a decent jacket with a heater coil that didn't fritz out every- "How's things in the lab?" he grinned. It was just Ted. Troy bit down on his annoyance and counted his breaths for a moment. "Not a doctor yet. Still not done with the production sequences. We could fuse it down from hydrogen and try to get a critical mass in the reactor but that's finicky and I don't think we've got a licence for the kind of Uranium mass we need or the funding or-" Ted chuckled. "Whoah! Damn, Doc. From how everyone's talking they're going to have trouble finding anyone specialized enough for you to defend your thesis to. It's in the bag." Troy glanced back over his shoulder at the physics building. Still depressingly close. "Well that's great, Ted, but look, I really need to get home and find my old data-cards from last year and see if I can find my old sim results so-" Ted reached up, scratching the back of his head. "Why don't you take a break, Doc? I mean, everyone else is gone for the holidays. Go get some sleep, try this in the morning." Troy straightened, eyes suddenly wide. "Holidays? What holidays?" "Uhm... Christmas? Jingle Bells, Santa Claus, crappy ten year old media getting dragged out?" He pointed out at the city. Troy looked up at the dark sky again, saw the blimps hovering over downtown Minneapolis, laughing human children and Santa Claus images, and presents and prices and stores and brand names and god knew what else. "Uhm." Troy swallowed, folding his arms, left over right, because his left hand never got cold. "What's the date?" Ted laughed. It wasn't the first time they'd had this type of conversation. "Twenty-second," he replied, checking his security console before dropping it back onto his belt. "Sorry. Twenty-third," he corrected himself. "I, think I, uhm. Might have a flight. In four hours." "Yeah, where to?" "My brother's wedding, but, uh..." "That's great!" Ted grinned. "Who's he getting married to?" "Researcher he met in Antarctica, but, uh-" "Wow, Antarctica?" Ted lifted his eyebrows. "That's swell." "Yeah, it's great, but, Ted, uhm-" "What's her name?" "Anne, but, Ted?" "Yeah, Doc?" "That's the twenty-third of November, right?" Troy asked, pointing at the blimps over downtown. Ted laughed. "Yeah, they haven't really gotten out the decorations yet." He looked up at the lights. "I hear this year they're going to get some cloud cover generated for projectors." Troy glanced up at the Minneapolis skyline. A hundred foot long ad blimp wasn't elaborate enough, apparently. "Uh, would you lock up the lab? I've gotta..." "Yeah, sure thing doc," Ted laughed, getting out his security panel again and flipping through menus to find the locks. "Happy holidays, huh? Just thirty-something shopping days!" "Yeah, happy holidays." Troy hurried off, and found his tail wrenching against his leg, again. "Ow. Fuck," he reached back, pulling his tail out before setting off at a run. It felt practically frostbitten by the time he'd gotten to his apartment. "-about eight hundred thousand and I have no idea how we're going to get our budget that high and I wish I didn't have to drop all this but it's not like I have a lot of time, you know?" Troy paused for breath, staring down at his little briefcase. "Mhmm." Her voice was tired, liquid, husky and happy. Troy glanced at his phone on his workstation desk, then sighed, slumping down on the edge of his bed. He contemplatively pulled a thick pair of socks back out of his briefcase's clothing compartment. "So what's the weather doing down there? Cold?" "Nah," Jennifer replied, with only a heartbeat of time lag. "Equator 'n all. Y'know it's like three in the morning, sweetie." He tossed the socks back into the pile of discarded clothing on the floor. "Yeah but I have to get on a plane in a couple of hours and there's no time to finish and Greg's going to flip out if I don't have a fuel solution for the reactor and-" Jennifer sounded almost like she was grinning there, halfway around the world. "Shh, baby. Shh." "But if we don't get this done by December we're going to need new funding for next fiscal quarter and-" "It's three am, sweetie. Tomorrow you're flying out here, and it's going to be your brother's wedding, and these are not things you should be worrying about. Aren't you presenting your thesis after this too?" "But Greg's going to flip out." "Greg's not going to the wedding, is he?" "No but he's going to get that weird look and bitch about the genetic divide and he won't even say 'hi' when he does that and-" "Shh. It'll be okay. If he does that I'll come over and... and bite him on the nose for you," Jennifer offered, giggling a little sleepily. Troy took a breath. "Okay," he whispered, staring at his phone longingly. "Okay, good, now, it's three in the morning Troy, and-" "Mrf. Who's Troy?" The voice had been entirely unexpected. So much so that Troy felt all of the fur on his body lift in one precise moment. He almost expected to hear it twang. The sick feeling in his gut though was not so much for the surprise of the voice, but the maleness of it. The sweat and six-pack abdomen sound, cologne and musk and too much money. "Go back to sleep Andy," Jennifer said soothingly, with the rustling of bedclothes. She sounded a lot less tired, now. After a couple of moments there was the click of a door. "Uh. Troy, you still there, sweetie?" Troy swallowed uncomfortably. He looked down at his stomach, which suddenly hurt, clenching in on itself almost visibly. He settled his left hand over it, his artificial hand, and it clenched up a little more. "Troy? I, uhm. Andy's just, uhm..." The fear in her voice was almost a tangible thing. Troy lunged forward, snatching up the phone. His thumb hovered over the disconnect button. Hovered there. Maybe he could just delete it. Delete the last minute or so. "It's nothing serious," she whispered, voice close to breaking. "Just. Just me, ah, being..." She choked back on her words. "He's gone in the morning, anyway. I didn't want you to find out, uhm... God, not like that. I don't mean it like that. I was just all alone last night, and he... I... Oh God. Troy? Troy? Are you still there?" He dabbed at his eyes with his free hand, wiping away the threatening tears. "I did say it's okay with me," he whispered hoarsely. "I'll deal with it." "I'm sorry, Troy. It's just..." A pause. "Can I pick you up from the airport tomorrow?" Her voice had a little forced cheerfulness. Troy tried to smile a little. He found he couldn't. "Uh, no. Dallas said he was picking me up." "Oh." Her voice fell again. "Troy I just.. I..." The pain in her voice hurt. It hurt a lot. Staring at the caller icon, her smiling face in the sunshine, hurt too. "You warned me, about the open relationships and all," Troy said, wiping at his nose with a wrist. He tried not to let the sniffles get into his voice. "I mean, if you want me to, I mean... I can crash with Philadelphia, I think, so you can-" "No, no no," Jennifer interrupted. "I, Troy, I, I'd really like it if you'd stay with me again." There was a heartbreaking pause, the total silence of a mute button. When her voice returned a half moment later she sounded on the verge of tears. "You don't have to if you don't want to, but, uhm. If you want to you can. Or we could just meet for lunch somewhere. I really want to see you." There's some guy called Andy in her bed. Right now. Maybe when we're done talking they'll start fucking again, like we used to. Troy didn't like the words he was using in his head. "Troy?" "I'm trying to think," he offered, voice tight. "Okay," she replied. Maybe he was some big human guy. Putting his hands on her fur the way Troy had. Feeling her warmth like Troy had, whispering into her pointed ears, kissing her. Except the pink or brown flesh of a human hand on her thighs didn't look right in Troy's head. Because the hands on those thighs, stroking the tiger-stripes crawling up her leg, should be black furred. Like Troy's. There was a pause with the mute button again. "Uhm. What're you thinking, Troy?" she asked afterward, voice shaking. Troy stared down at the phone in his hands, trying not to rock back and forth, staring at those pretty green eyes he'd taken a picture of trip before last, when she'd met him outside the conference hall during the lunch intermission. The silence dragged on, an acid thing in his gut, until he found himself whispering, "Remember a couple of months back, when you met me for lunch and I told you about the corporate guy who kept mixing me up with Oslo and Denver?" "Yeah. You took my picture." He stroked her image lightly with his thumb, making the icon shift through the picture sequence he had set up for her. "I don't know anyone who smiles so pretty as you do." "You have a pretty nice smile too," she whispered back. "Maybe that Tyrel's, at like, uh, ten?" he offered hesitantly. "Ten," she agreed. "Love you," he said, wishing he hadn't. Don't say it back. Not with that guy there. Not with your fur probably still damp with his sweat, his kisses. From sleeping with him. But she wouldn't. She never did. Her breath caught as she tried to say something, failed. "I, uh. I'll see you at ten." The call died, switched off from her end. The icon blanked and stole away the pretty femme's smiling face. After awhile the phone's illumination died. "Go back to sleep, Andy," he repeated to himself. She'd sounded so caring.