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Around The Fur

by

Dissident Love

All Rights Reserved

For No Particular Reason

Chapter 13 - Nobody's Fault But Mine

There was a few minutes there where, amidst the flurry of drinks being poured, introductions being made, congratulations excitedly offered and graciously received, I completely forgot to be terrified. Have you ever had moments like that? You can spend all day dreading something, having it utterly dominate your every thought and creep into every activity, but when the actual event occurs you're too busy taking part to remember the fear. Terror goes and stands in the corner, has a smoke, and patiently waits for you to have a moment to think.

When I had a moment to think, the terror came back and I nearly dropped my drink.

Well, that's not entirely true. I did drop my drink, the whisky-Coke-and-whisky plummeting in a straight and true vertical direction, but it was only at knee-height when Myles caught it with almost casual ease. The drink sloshed, the ice cubes clinked, but then it was back in my hand and he was patting me in the shoulder as though I were a toddler who had just fallen down and gone boom.

"How many of those have you had, hon?" Rosie asked in a deep backroom voice, which turned out to be her default mode of speech.

"Just the one," I said, blushing with embarrassment. I looked down at Myles and he just smiled reassuringly. He did EVERYTHING reassuringly. It was maddening. "Sorry, hand cramp."

Rosie's fist caught me in the shoulder, followed by her manic giggle. "Hand cramp, eh? I knew living by yourself would be a bad idea."

"Hah. Hah. Yeah."

Myles was looking back and forth from Rosie to my dad, and I thought we were going to see molar soon, his smile was so huge. I could see the wheels turning in his head. See, DL? A skin and a fur! How can he possibly be mad at us?

Myles is two months younger than me. Oh, to be that young and naive again.

"So when did this happen?" I asked, also looking back and forth between my father and Rosie, mostly because I was awkwardly unsure of where exactly I should be looking. I was dimly aware of Myles retreating to the counter to fix himself a drink, and his tail decided to follow a few moments later.

"Couple weeks ago," he said, sitting down at the table with a faint creak. "You were still a little broken up about Tanya, and I didn't think it was the right time. Then you stopped answering your phone and started practising for your career as a drifter."

I blinked. "Fas Gas?"

"We saw you walking on the highway," Rosie purred, leaning against Daniel's shoulders and pressing her almost unfairly ample bosom against the back of his head. "Couple times. The first time we were going to stop and ask if you wanted a ride since it was raining, but you was going the wrong way, and the NEXT time, well, we just figured you wanted to walk."

I could feel three sets of eyes boring into me, but what was there to say? I shrugged. "I like to go for walks."

My dad nodded, the sure sign that the issue was not closed and would, at a future date to be determined by dice rolling and the phases of the moon, be brought up again.

Myles came back, ice cubes clinking in his own tumbler. His tail was wrapped casually around his legs, keeping most of his fairly obvious girth hidden, but there was no way to conveniently conceal the sheer volume of his balls weighing heavily against the front of his pants. Why did it have to be corduroy, I thought. It's like looking at one of those pictures where, if you stare hard enough, you see the fucking sailboat.

"You going to introduce me to your little friend, DL?" Rosie asked, tilting her head so much farther to the side than a person should be able to do. Damn cats.

I took another soothing, burning sip of my drink, hoping it could scour away all the bad memories I was forming of things that hadn't happened yet. "Right, sorry. Rosie, this is Myles Coyle. Myles, this is my dad's girlf-... well, we're past that now. Fiancee. My step-mom?"

"Call me mom and I'll claw your eyes out," Rosie said, baring her teeth in a grin. She seemed to consider it a moment, and continued, "Actually, that could work. Call me 'mommy', see how it sounds."

"I don't think so."

"Come on! Do it, do it, do it!" she said, bouncing up and down and giving my father a slightly more X-rated neck rub than either of us expected.

"Rosie," Daniel said warningly, raising one hand as though he were drawing a meeting to order.

"Fine, fine," the kitty said, crossing her arms under her breasts which really didn't solve the problem of where to rest my eyes. Myles had no compunctions and was staring openly and approvingly. "What does he do?"

"Well, he-"

"Let the boy answer, DL!"

Daniel sighed again and held up the card that Myles had given him. "Huh, what's this? Hello, Mister Bender, blah blah blah, smart young man, blah blah blah, still can't... talk? Really? You can't talk?" Myles nodded, tongue lolling. "Oh, you poor dear! That's terrible! Can't they fix it?"

I rolled my eyes and moved around Myles to sit at the small kitchen table opposite my future self, while Myles tried to pantomime himself sensible to the voluptuous tabby. Rosie Reynolds had always been good company, despite her somewhat larger than life personality and appearance. She was short for a feline, more than making up for it by expanding into the other two available directions, and she seemed to treat everyone on the planet with the same friendly regard that I would treat a long-lost friend.

Well, not Myles... if she treated everyone the way I treated Myles, she wouldn't have any time left for my father. No, what I mean is she is genuinely interested in talking to everyone she meets, coaxing conversation out of them and brightening their day, by force if necessary. When we first met I thought she was just high on meth, but it turned out to just be Rosie's way of dealing with the world.

How someone like that fell for my dad, I'll never know. I guess between the two of them they make a functional person, balancing optimism and cynicism.

"You could have told me earlier," I said. "I was broken up about Tanya, sure, but I'd have been happy as hell for you. Probably would have snapped me out of it."

My dad just nodded, sipping his own drink. "You needed snapping out of it, that's for sure."

"What do you mean?"

He reached out and before I had a chance to dodge, flicked the orbit of my left eye. "You been fightin' again?"

I winced, holding one hand to my all-but-forgotten bruise, reminded that it was certainly not gone yet. Had that really been just the night before? "No, dad... well, once, but it wasn't like I was spoiling for it."

Rosie had dragged Myles over to the refrigerator and was getting him to spell stuff out with free-form poetry magnets. "You never did," my dad said.

"Dad," I started wearily, but he held up his hand with a faint smile. That was worrying.

"DL, relax," he said, and against all probability that was what he seemed to do, shoulders slumping. "You're not the boy you used to be, I know that. If you get into a scuffle, that's your business, but..."

He glanced back to Myles, and even moreso than I was able to pluck the little coyfox's meaning out of the air, I was able to read my dad like a book. "Myles and fighting in the same day," I said aloud. He nodded imperceptibly.

Myles' ears perked up and he fished around in his back pocket for another card. He sorted through them as swift as a Vegas blackjack dear and handed it to my dad. "'Mister Bender, DL did not start the fight.' My goodness, you really did plan ahead, didn't you? 'He was attacked at... at Bushfur by some speciesist bucks.' It looks like the 'b' in 'bucks' has been written over a previously-erased letter."

"Thanks for that, Myles," I said with a grin. He flashed me a thumbs up and went back to to trying to communicate with Rosie through the age-old medium of magnetic word fragments.

"Bushfur?"

I nodded and was about to start in on the subject of how my long, aimless walks led to the last two nights of Bushfur and how that led to meeting Myles again when a cloud of steam rose from the stove. An enormous pot of water had just boiled slightly over onto the burner, and my dad moved nimbly across the kitchen, turned down the heat and started to rummage around in the cupboards. "Pasta time," he said, "hold that thought."

I had almost forgotten that the entire flimsy premise for coming over had been dinner. I felt a little guilty since Myles' presence probably stole a little bit of the wedding thunder that dad and Rosie had been cooking up. I wandered over to the fridge to try and pry Myles away from the clingy feline while my dad poured the pasta through the colander.

"DL, honey, glad I got you for a moment," she said before leaning in close and continuing in a more conspiratorial voice, "I didn't want to bother you or your dad. You know... when you're talking." She swirled her hand in small circles near her breasts, the universal hand-talk symbol for 'awkward'.

"No, by all means, that's the best time to bother us."

"Oh, you," she chuckled, slapping my chest. She was a big believer in percussive affection. "No, I just need you to translate for us! I'm getting nowhere with him, he just keeps talking about sunshine."

I glanced at the haphazardly assembled word magnets and chuckled. "Yeah, I don't think they threw in enough words for that. Dad never mentioned Myles?"

Rosie shook her head. "Should he have?"

"Not really. Dad doesn't like to talk about... anything."

"What? Honey, he talks non-stop, mostly about you."

"I'm guessing he has to break out a thesaurus to find more synonyms for 'disappointing bum'."

Two furry fists struck me that time, and I was a little bemused when I realized one of them was Myles's. "You shut the hell up with that kind of talk," Rosie said sternly, the sound of pasta being schlurphed back into the big pot behind us punctuating her sentence. "He loves you and he's proud of you, even if you're a dumbass now and then."

"I'm feeling the love," I deadpanned, trying to ignore Myles' glare. "Anyways, Myles is just an old friend from when we were kids. I haven't seen him in about ten years, and then we met up at Bushfur."

"Bushfur?" Rosie said pensively. She looked over and down slightly at Myles, and her jaw dropped. "Fuck me sideways, that's where I know you from! Lacuna Coyle! Oh my gosh, it really is you!"

Myles grinned victoriously, throwing both his hands into the air. I just rolled my eyes, recognizing the rockstar persona coming over him again. It was as though his entire demeanour changed, he seemed somehow taller but at the same time, more slouchy and relaxed. There was probably a posture course you had to complete if you wanted to be a lead singer.

"Danny! Danny!" Rosie was practically leaping up and down now, which was a thoroughly enjoyable if slightly awkward sight for the two young males standing in front of her. "It's Myles from Lacuna Coyle! I told you about them, I have their album in the car, they do that cover of Night Moves you hate!"

Myles's grin twisted with wry amusement when my dad looked over, but from the lack of surprise in his eyes I could tell that he wasn't hearing anything he didn't already know. Knowing that Myles had to carry around cue cards, though, that just raised further questions which I desperately wanted to ask, but since my dad was holding a pot of bubbling spaghetti sauce in one hand and I had a lot of exposed flesh, I decided to hold my tongue for now.

"I don't hate it," he said with a straight face, "I just said I didn't think it needed to be covered."

Rosie was gripping Myles's shoulders and hopping up and down now like a demented fangirl. "Ooh! Ooh! Sing 'Overflow'! Or 'Headin' Out'! OOH! OOH! Sing 'Shuddershell', I love that one! Wait..." I watched the traincars of the night's events pull into the station one by one. "Wait, you can't talk. You can't talk! You can't talk?"

"Three different full-stops, wow," I said, and managed to dodge the next punch. "It's a bit of a story. I'll tell you after dinner. I don't want to talk with my mouth full. Hey, my drink is empty, excuse me a second..."

By the time I had refilled my drink, a pleasing haze starting to settle onto my jagged, jangling nerves, the cauldron-like pot of pasta had become the centrepiece of the small kitchen table and my dad was scooping everyone enormous platefuls. I'd like to just take this opportunity to point out that while my dad might be dour, unpleasant, slightly racist and homophobic, borderline alcoholic and a menace to every other vehicle on the road not travelling half the speed of sound, he has always been the best chef I've ever met, and his spaghetti was the crown jewel on his portfolio. I've watched him make it, and written down every step as he did them, and still have never come close to reproducing it.

I sat down between Myles and my father, mostly to keep them separated, and inhaled the wonderful scents. The coyfox's jaw was hanging open, tongue lolling and eyes nearly rolling back into his head. "You ok?" I asked.

He just pointed to the pasta, and I laughed. "Yeah, I guess it has been a while since you've had my dad's spaghetti. It's gotten better, too."

"The secret is vodka," he said, dumping cheese onto his own plate.

"The booze evaporates, don't get your hopes up," I laughed, seeing Myles's tail start to hum.

Around the immensity of the steel pot I could see Rosie stroking the back of my dad's hand in a strangely adorable way, and even more mind-blowing was the way my dad seemed to smile at her and pat HER hand with his OTHER hand, making some sort of hand sandwich. "So did you two meet in homeroom?" I asked, eyebrow arched, scooping sumptuous pasta into my mouth.

"You shut up," Rosie said, not unkindly. "I am sorry to hear about Tanya, by the way. She was such a lovely girl."

"You knew her?" I asked. I had only brought Tanya over to my dad's place a couple times, and Rosie had never been there.

"Well, sure, not many knockout redheads in a town like Forks. Besides, I been buying my clothes from her momma for years."

For some reason, that last part had never clicked. Tanya's mom owned one of the more esoteric boutiques in town, the sort that sold silk wraps and sarongs and other things that just looked downright odd on most people, as though picking and choosing from the buffet of cultural fashions ever gave the desired effect. Rosie usually wore the wraps low on her hips, which gave her lots of room to wear increasingly small shirts. "Makes sense," I agreed. "But it wasn't meant to be, I guess. I really am over it, you know."

"Good, dear," Rosie said, reaching over to pat MY hand and almost splattering her shirt with spaghetti. "You're better than her. Chasing any tail now?"

"Rosie!" I was sitting there with my mouth open, and yet the sound hadn't come from me. I looked over to my dad, who was glaring severely at his bride-to-be. "That's not dinner talk."

"You're right. Stuff him full of food, get him good and drunk, then pry the truth out of him."

"That's not what I meant."

I glanced over at Myles, who looked as though he were having a pasta-related orgasm. I cocked my head meaningfully at the squabbling grownups, and he just winked, wriggling his tail and miming a pair of running legs with his fingers. I felt the blush creep into my neck, but luckily the whisky stomped it back down. Chasing tail, indeed!

"No, I'm not chasing any tail," I said, which was technically the truth. I had caught some tail. Or he had caught me. One of those two.

That vein in my dad's forehead was starting to go, so I shifted gears. "So how did you pop him the question, Rosie?"

She laughed uproariously. "Oh, hon, he really did ask me! It was so romantic, in a weird sort of way. We were at the peelers over in Port Angeles for our anniversary," she said in a strangely wistful tone, "and we got eachother a lapdance-"

"Rosie..."

"-and he had the girl giving ME a lapdance give me a little black velvet box with her TITS! It was magical!"

My dad was now nearly as red as the spaghetti sauce. "I thought we had agreed-"

"Oh, we agreed to tell a slightly expurgated version of the story, sure, but come on, he's old enough, right? Sure he's been to the peelers in PA!"

"Actually, I-" I started, but in typical Rosie fashion, I did not finish.

"Daniel, have you never taken him?!"

The conversation did not improve dramatically from there, but the three men at the table silently agreed that it would be best if they let the bubbly redhead handle all sides of the discussion for the remainder of dinner. She managed to wear herself out by the fourth piece of garlic bread, and one refill of her wine managed to settle her on the topic of Bushfur again.

"You," she said grandly, gesturing with a wobbling pinot noir, "promised me a story, you know."

I had pushed back from the table, wishing I hadn't had thirds, and Myles and my dad were busy clearing the pots and plates. "I... suppose I did," I said slowly, feeling the Wiser's trying to slow my lips down. Alcohol was a powerful source of chemical energy, why did it make everything go slower? That's so unfair. "Which story was it now?"

"You! Him! The whole... no-talky thing! He can't talk? He can fucking wail!" It was obvious that Myles and my dad could hear her. People outside could probably hear her. "I saw him last year, playing Heroes Pub! Hellcion opened for them, and I just went to see Hellcion but holy crap! He was a screaming demon, werent'cha!" Myles leapt into the air, surprised by Rosie's powerful backhanded slap against his rump.

I sighed. "There's... a lot to tell. Do you want the fast version or the slow version?"

"Oh, gods, honey, the fast version, I don't think I could make it through a slow one before the wine takes me down."

I was surprised how quickly the recap went, actually. I'd spent so many recent hours sorting through our shared history, everything from the playground incident to reading comics in the attic to running away together that it was like watching a sitcom clip show. I omitted a lot of little facts... or some not-so-little facts, I thought wryly, glancing at Myles's pants, but I think I covered it all pretty well. It was less than ten minutes to get all the way through to meeting up at Bushfur, and the elder Bender and young coyfox had returned to the table.

"Wow," Rosie giggled, "that's... that's really incredible! It sounds like a Soderbergh flick, or something. It's so effing tragic, him not talking but being able to sing! Oh, sorry, you're back, Myles, I didn't mean to talk like you weren't here, but... can you make any noises? Can you, like, honk or something?"

Myles shrugged, pursed his lips and whistled the Old Spice jingle.

I chuckled and pat his knee reassuringly, making sure that it was the un-stuffed knee. "Don't worry, if you hang out with him often enough you start to pick up on the hand-pidgin." He flashed me the thumb-up and grinned, tongue lolling. "See? That means 'pour me another drink'."

Rosie laughed, howling with such force I thought she might have been having a heart attack. "Oh, you two. Honestly, it's like looking at two brothers, although obviously one of you had a genetic baldness issue."

I rubbed my generally-hairless arm a little self-consciously and it was Myles's turn to pat my knee. "Don't worry, we get hairier when we get old. Right, Dad?"

"It's a protective layer," he said mock sourly, sipping his drink. "Keeps me warm in the winter."

"So, Myles, if DL's being a stick in the mud what about you? Knee deep in groupies?"

Myles grinned and placed his had mid-thigh, which didn't really draw attention away from his more huggable portions, and raised it up to his chest with a chuckle. I felt a little twinge of... ok, it wasn't jealousy, I don't think, since we'd already talked about the whole groupie thing, and let's face it we'd been a couple for less than twenty four hours, but it was still a weird twinge of... something.

Which made me feel even dumber when Myles then shrugged and shook his head 'no'.

"Really?" Rosie said, gawking. "But... but look at you! I don't mean, you know..." she gestured vaguely, somehow managing to be wholly and inappropriately offensive just with one motion of her wrist, "but you're still a damn fine-lookin' boy, and you're the lead singer! Ugly lead singers get chicks you wouldn't believe!"

"Do you ever end a sentence without using an exclamation point?" I asked, wriggling a finger around one ear.

"No!"

Myles opened his mouth, paused thoughtfully, and seized my wrist. I yelped in surprise when he dragged my arm over to him and tried to stifle a giggle when his claws started to play gently across my skin. After a moment I realized what he was doing and closed my eyes, trying to focus. "Uhm... he says he hasn't... oh, he hasn't found the right g... er, girl yet, and you know, groupie chicks can be scary." He whapped me upside the head. "I added the last part myself."

My father was being strangely silent, although with Rosie in the room that was the default state of most intelligent life forms. He just sipped his drink and observed us, me and Myles. He didn't even seem to notice Rosie anymore. I squirmed in my seat, realized I was squirming in my seat, took another pull of my drink and tried to act casual. Myles didn't have to act, he was casual by nature.

"Here, maybe I can just intermediate here for a bit, ok?" I said, but the coyfox was already standing up and stretching, slender arms shaking with the effort. I tried to look somewhere, ANYWHERE except his pants which were heroically sacrificing themselves to keep him decent, but all that I seemed to be able to pull off in my current state was staring at my dad, which probably raised a few flags. The immense floof of his tail brushed my face as he passed behind me and I shivered.

"Where ya goin', sweetie?" Rosie called.

A card appeared and was passed to my dad. He took it, glanced at it once, and then gestured towards the living room. "Go ahead."

I turned to watch him go, bouffant tail swishing. "Where's he going?"

"Ask him."

"Thanks, Dad." I chuckled and ran my fingers through my hair. This night was not going at all as I had planned, but then again what night over the last week actually had? "So... you two! When's the big day?"

Rosie was practically foaming at the mouth to tell me, but a sharp "We!" from my father derailed her. He lowered his voice, coughed politely, and continued, "we are still working that out."

"Soon!" Rosie said triumphantly before she could be cut off again.

"Yes, soon," Daniel conceded. "We're thinking late November, see if we can't get a good Pacific snow storm going at the same time. Get it all out of the way before Christmas."

"Very romantic, honey," the feline deadpanned.

"Oh, you know what I mean."

"Absolutely! Our wedding is something that needs to be crammed in between your Veteran's Day drinking and your pre-holiday shopping, though we can't do it on the 20th because that's Transgender Day of Remembrance and that's just too much of a bummer."

My dad arched an eyebrow at her, and she rolled both of hers. "Should I-" I said, gesturing to the living room and already making to stand.

"No no no, we've done this before," my dad said, grinning slightly and earning another smack upside the head from his bride-to-be. "Come on, I'll join you."

I had gained my feet, a little unsteadily thanks to the Wiser's. It was a damn good thing I wasn't driving tonight. I'd probably manage to snap an axle in the intervening eight blocks. "Oh-kay," I said slowly, noticing Rosie very specifically not joining us. "Sounds good. Got cards? Play some poker?"

"Later." He had no problems standing, I noticed. I could never even come close to matching him drink for drink, or at the very least I could match him but I usually lived to regret it; he just fell asleep after seven or eight. "Come on."

I looked pleadingly, beseechingly at Rosie, but she just shrugged expressively. Fuck, you're on your own, she seemed to be saying with every fibre of her being.

"Okie dokie."

We went out into the little cubic living room, a handful of small comfortable chairs clumped around an enormous, saggy couch that didn't so much occupy the space as it seemed to lurk there. My dad's one concession to 'fancy living' was tucked away near the ceiling above the couch and aimed at the blank whitewashed wall opposite. "Rosie seems pretty happy," I said, fishing for something reassuring and noncommittal to say. "Though with her it's always sort of a given..."

Mostly I was buying myself time to think. Where the hell had Myles gone? The apartment was four hundred square feet, I should be able to see his tail from anywhere!

"Yeah, we're swell," he said, and he actually seemed to mean it. It was strange, hearing him talk like a regular person.

"Not getting any trouble from the locals? Her family? It was her sister that hated you, right?"

"Hates, present tense, and yeah. She still kinda does. And by kinda, I mean she slashed my tires, but Rosie promised that wasn't going to happen again."

"Yowza," I said, taking a sip. The whisky was starting to taste more and more bitter, piercing the protective barrier of Coke. That was usually the sign that I should slow down. I wasn't big on signs right now, though. I took another sip. "Well, as long as she didn't slash your-"

"Myles, hmm?"

I coughed into my tumbler. "Yeah, I know, right? All these years."

He settled his bulk into one of the beaten-up chairs. "He looks good. Glad to see he's been so successful." His face was carefully neutral, his voice the standard 'polite security guard' voice he had honed to perfection.

"Yup, who would have guessed he'd be a singer?" We were silent for a few moments. I walked around, not wanting to sit in case I had to stand up quickly again and... and I don't know what I'd have to do, but I was on edge. Tipsy and on the edge is a dangerous place to be. For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to say, "Did you ever get any mail for me, from him?"

He didn't say no. He didn't say yes. He stared at the blank wall, and from the impassive expression on his face I knew he was keeping something back. Eventually he sighed, seeming to deflate. "Yes, a couple. Over the years."

My knuckles whitened. Where the hell was Myles? "And you didn't tell me, because...?" I prompted.

"Do you really want to go over this now?" he asked quietly.

I opened my mouth to lay into him, to tell him that he hadn't the right to control my life like that, that I wasn't a child anymore, and that I was capable of making my own decisions. Really, I wanted to repeat every cheesy and overused line from every teen coming-of-age dramedy I could recall, when I remembered what Myles had told me, in his own way, so many times in the last strange and exciting few days.

"Not really," I said at length, trying to keep the surprise out of my own voice.

My dad blinked and looked at me, using the only word that seems to cover all of the pertinent bases, peculiarly. "All right."

Trying to act more relaxed than I felt, I sprawled comfortably onto the couch, relishing the familiar creak and groan of reliably cheap old-world craftsmanship. "Look, it's been a long time, and let's face it, it's been a weird couple of days. I just want to know... did you never think we'd find each other again? Talk about the old days?"

"To be honest, I tried to not think about it," he replied softly, "and when I did I just hoped that I'd done a better job raising you than your mom said I did."

There was no way I could even fake a sensible reply to that. I just nodded, downed the last of my (fourth? Fifth? Why do my nostril hairs seem tingly?) drink, and stretched. I felt a twinge in my stomach and hoped the whisky was settling the right way. Despite me and my father going at old times in a way we had never even approached before, old times being something neither of us really liked to reminisce about, the room felt hollow and empty.

"Hey, where'd he go, anyways?"

My dad patted his pockets for the card and shrugged. "He just asked if I had a guitar. Told him it was in the den." With a frontman's sense of timing and showmanship, there was a strum from down the hall. "Ah, that would be him then."

Rosie had obviously been perched around the corner, surreptitiously listening to our conversation; she practically leapt into the room, squealing with groupie glee. "Ohmigod he's going to play something!" she screeched, as though we hadn't worked that part out for ourselves.

It took a few seconds for her to realize that Myles wasn't even in there yet.

The strumming and plinking continued from down the hall, the guitar slowly being tortured into tune. Oh, gods, please don't do the hip-thrusty thing. The hesitant playing drew closer, stormy-grey tail appearing as he backed down the short hallway. The full-sized acoustic seemed unusually large on his slender frame, but he held it familiarly.

Rosie was wiggling, borderline vibrating. I sat up with interest and my dad just leaned back a little bit as though this sort of thing happened all the time. "You know, you don't need to be 'on' tonight, Myles," I said, wondering if derailing this was the best thing to do. I was wondering a lot of things. I couldn't seem to tell the good ideas from the bad. "This is just dinner and hanging out and stuff."

Still inching backwards into the room, he raised one hand to shush me, the other still manipulating the neck of the guitar, claws eliciting squeaks and thrums from the strings.

"Now now, DL, if Myles wants to play something, you should let him."

"YAY!" Rosie yelped.

"Dad," I said tiredly, but there was an answering burst of claws on coiled steel from the guitar. Myles glared at me meaningfully, and I surrendered. "Fine, whatever. Do your... do your thing."

The coyfox swivelled slowly, and I was relieved to see that the guitar, slung low on his body, managed to keep most of him covered, or at least most of the parts than I didn't want people staring at. What did that mean exactly, I wondered. Exactly why was I worried about where people were or were not staring on him? I might be a little possessive, sure, but I couldn't... I mean, Myles didn't need me protecting him. I'd seen him at the BushFur shows, he knew exactly how to work what he had been blessed with. Was I ashamed to have him working those blessings for my father and my soon-to-be step-mom?

No. That's not the right word. I was feeling something, but fucked if I knew what it was.

He flexed his fingers, strummed an open G, and cleared his throat. Other than a nervous and uniquely canine whine earlier, it was one of the few sounds he'd ever made outside of singing.

And then he winked at me.

Chapter 14 - Pretty Persuasion

Wait, honey honey Wait, honey honey

He started to strum, a simple two-chord harmony, little claws plinking delicately across the strings. His voice was high and sweet and faintly raspy; wistful, if I had to pick a word. I had never heard him sing like this before, and from the expression on my dad's face from out the corner of my eye, I don't think he ever expected to.

I will never get to sleep Rebel, rebel, no I can never get to sleep I'm a rebel, rebel, no Hold me til I get to sleep

He paused briefly while the last muted notes faded away, and then seemed to attack the song with more vigor, strumming with authority now. He was even managing to add a hollow staccato percussive counterpoint by tapping his fingers along the hollow body after each stroke. His chest swelled and when he began to sing again, the wistfulness was gone.

Oh baby bring me home to bed Rebel, rebel, no Lightening dances in my head Devil, devil, whoa-oh-oh Burning steady as a motor Not a pebble, pebble Baby, bring me home to bed I need you to press me down before my body flies away from me

Rosie's jaw dropped. I wasn't sure if it was from seeing one of her favorite singers in flesh or from the strained, haunting beauty of the song; I knew which one it was for me. I didn't recognize the song, but I knew it was going to be in my mp3 player the next day.

Your power, inside It rocks me like a lullaby Your power, inside It rocks me like a lullaby Your power, inside Oh baby, I just don't know why Your power Your power

Insi-i-i-ide

The sustained, mirror-smooth timbre of his voice raised a lump in my throat, and I managed to stop any other lumps from rising elsewhere. My fuzzy little musician was swaying to the music now, tail whisking through the air and providing a tremolo counterpoint eerily similar to a cymbal swell. His fingers moved expertly over the frets and I was reminded quite inappropriately of where those fingers had been not that many hours before.

The mood of the song changed considerably, though, raw intensity shoving it's way through the pure, clear words.

Mirror, mirror on the wall Can you see my face at all? My man likes me from behind Tell the truth I never mind

Don't act weird, I tried to tell myself at that startling line. Was this one of his songs? Was this a cover? Was it written by a female? Sure, I like him from behind, he's so cute and his tail is so cuddly and stop it! You're overthinking! It's just a song! I'm sure your dad's not thinking anything like that!

DON'T LOOK AT HIM!

But of course I glanced over, which I should have known was stupid. My dad could write books on how to be inscrutable, but no-one would be able to understand them.

Cause you bound me with life's humiliations everyday You bound me so many times I never find my way Come on and bind me Why won't you bind me? Come on and bind Go on and whoa-oh-a-

_ woah-a-oh-ooh-oh _

I had seen him perform two nights in a row, and I was still shocked and blown away by not only his range but his lung capacity. Long after the final drawn-out strum of the guitar had faded, that pained and yearning yowl still filled the room. It was a hell of a shock when, after a moment of silence and stillness, the simple tune of the song returned, and his voice became as mild and sweet as ever.

_Your power inside It rocks me like a lullaby Your power in my mind It gives me thrills I can't describe Your face in mine Oh baby, I just don't know why Your power inside

_

A brief outro, a flourish of nimble fingers, and then it was over.

Rosie was leaning back against the short wall separating the living room from the kitchen. I believe she was leaning because she seemed to have lost the ability to stand under her own power. Her legs were shaking, her hands were clutched wetly against her breasts, and she had the same rapt, glazed expression usually seen on successful drug addicts and convicts getting their first taste of post-incarceration companionship.

"Wow," I said, meaning it, if the word could be said to have any actual deep meaning. "Damn, dude, you should do that one at your shows. I've never seen a mosh pit cry before."

Myles nodded and grinned, his eyes hidden. He shrugged and seemed to gesture to someone or something behind him, shaking his head negatively, and I somehow still had enough functioning brain cells to decode that one. "What, James and Ricky don't think so?" I said, and he nodded the affirmative again. "Ah, what do they know."

I looked over at my dad and smiled self-consciously. "That's the rest of his band, I met them the other night."

"Eeeeeee," Rosie pipped.

"That was... impressive, Myles," my dad eventually said. I could have sworn he seemed to be approving. The whisky must have been affecting me. "You certainly have come a long way from the awkward little boy in my attic."

The coyfox clapped his hands together and pointed upwards earnestly. "No," my father laughed, shaking his head. "No attic. No comic books. Just a recirculating heat pump up there."

Myles snapped his fingers, the very picture of 'awww, shucks'. He swept the guitar off, twirled it once as though it were an extension of his body and placed it carefully against the couch, taking a bow, causing his tail to rise up and say hello.

"Eeee."

He straightened and waved at Rosie, but she didn't seem to be capable of focusing her eyes. He shrugged and mimed laughing, twirling once and vanishing into the kitchen.

"So... that's Myles," I said simply, shifting around on the couch.

"I gathered. He's certainly grown up."

I nodded, allowing myself to think once about which parts of him had grown up before moving onto the slightly more mature aspects of how much the person had developed, not the body. "He sure has. I didn't think it could have been him at first, because... well, it was him on a stage. Playing music. Even if he had gotten over the muteness, I wouldn't have pictured that for him."

"Sometimes people accept what life gives them," he said slowly, "and sometimes people refuse to accept what life gives them, and they go out and get what they deserve."

"I can't tell if that was deep or slightly scary."

He chuckled. "Yes?"

"Eeee."

"Rosie, sweetie, sit down before you pass out, ok?" My dad stood up and moved over to the star-struck feline. She sagged against his thick body and giggled, and when Myles came back out, ice cubes clinking in his refilled drink, she pointed to him and giggled again.

The coyfox leaned in and gave her a quick peck on the cheek, causing her to start squeeing again. "Oh, why'd you have to go and do that," Daniel said, but there was mirth in his eyes as he gently led his fiancee over to his armchair.

When I looked back at Myles to chide him, he was holding his glass up as if to say salud, while his other paw was resting very, very obviously against his overstuffed pants, one clawed finger dragging lewdly against his zipper. In a flash I recalled the weight and the heat of those heavy orbs, his heavy knee-length sheath swaying with a pink ribbon tied around it, and my entire body jerked upright. I glanced over at my dad but he was still occupied getting the limp Rosie into the chair, and then back to Myles with panic in my eyes.

He sagged impatiently, gestured to my dad, and then quickly pointed to the pair of us. That didn't need a lot of decoding. I waved his protests away carefully, trying to say Don't worry, I'll get to it eventually, but for the first time there was a hint of annoyance in his eyes.

He shook his head once, dreds falling into place and then I couldn't see his eyes at all anymore. Myles wasn't playing fair, but I guess it was his prerogative, I HAD agreed to tell my dad about... you know, us. But...

Ok, I was wussing out. Yes. Come on, I'm sure none of you out there have ever been faced with a decision or an action that you knew was not only going to be onerous and nerve-wracking but had years of baggage attached to it, and you were able to face it wide-eyed and bushy-tailed with a song in your heart and a smile on your lips. You were terrified. Some of you might have even backed down at the moment of truth. I've done that often enough.

Daniel Lewis Bender wasn't easy to talk to... at least, not for me. He seemed to be good enough with his friends, with strangers, with the douchebags he had to chase down and arrest. I've seen him carry on pleasant banter with someone in a police cruiser, and the two shook hands when he was turned over. He's friendly and likeable and even gregarious if you catch him with the right amount of alcohol in his system... but at the same time, you know for a fact that it's something he can turn on and off, and you never know if what you're seeing is genuine.

Maybe Rosie knew. I mean, one of the main reasons Mom left was she couldn't stand being married to a person who made a living gaining the upper hand in all situations. I remember more than a few screamed arguments where she accused him of treating her like any other inmate, a good word and a friendly wave when it was needed and a steel backbone and a lead foot when it suited him. I don't think it was anything he had a choice in the matter, either. I met my grandpa a few times, and although he was never anything but pleasant and doting and loving, I had seen flashes of a personality you could cut glass with.

Rosie never mentioned any of that. She'd looked at me like I'd suddenly sprouted antennae when I asked if he'd ever tried anything manipulative on her, or had ever seemed as though he were keeping something from her. She described a Daniel Bender that I have never met.

Which would I meet tonight?

"Hey, Dad," I said, standing unsteadily up. I drew upon my deepest, darkest reserves of willpower, equal parts hormones and Wiser's, "I've always... always kinda wondered something."

I didn't need ice in my drink anymore; the room had become cold enough. "Yes?"

Myles, he would 'tell' me later, was holding his breath for this part. "Well," I continued, "the last time I saw Myles, before BushFur, was... the tree fort."

"I'm not sure if it counted as a tree-fort," he said, pulling Rosie's claws out of his arm. She had gotten over her shock, and was now trying to get to first base with my dad, while he was trying to tag her out before she headed for second.

We both knew the day in question. Myles was running away, I was running with him, and that was as much forethought as either of us had put into things. We were going to be pulled apart, taken from each other, and that was not acceptable. Stealing away into the midnight hours, we'd slept fitfully in each others arms at the 'tree-fort', overslept our alarm, and just barely had time for one final hug before the crappy lean-to walls were pulled down and our respective fathers did the only thing they could do.

"Mr. Coyle was angry." That was true enough... I'd never actually seen anyone that accurately described as 'rabid' before. I honestly thought he was going to maul me. "Very... very angry." Myles nodded. "But you... you weren't angry. More than anything you looked sad."

Rosie had stopped clawing playfully at his flesh. She had stopped giggling. She might act a little bit like an airhead, but she knew that Something Was Happening, and anything with that many capital letters in the middle of a sentence was important enough to cause her to shut up. My father was looking at us both, calmly, appraisingly, as though we were just another pair of escaped convicts who may or may not have weapons. "Yes," he said.

This was going well, I decided. "I've always wondered... why? I mean, you got angry enough when we got home. I thought I was going to have permanent hearing damage. You even yelled at me while you nailed my window shut, though I only heard every other word."

Rosie chuckled at that, but covered her mouth with her hand. Myles, I have no idea what he was doing, he was standing just behind me. I couldn't hear his tail swishing, I couldn't even hear the ice cubes in his glass. The only sound was me making a colossal fool of myself.

"Yes," he said again.

There was a red throb in my chest. Don't you dare pull that impassive shit with me. Ten years of this. Ten. Damn. Years. "What did you have to be sad about? I could have understood angry. I could have understood relieved. I could have understood happiness, or confusion, or maybe even fear. But sadness?"

He blinked at me, shifted slightly as though he were about to sit, twitching as though he were about to walk towards me. He reminded me of a tree caught in a cross breeze. "I don't think this is the-"

"Oh no, Dad," I said, the red throb swelling. "I think this is the perfect time. Almost ten years exactly, did you know that? Nice, round number. Appropriate. I can't think of a better time."

My future step-mom was trying to burrow ass-first into the chair. My dad's head seemed to be deforming under the stress of keeping his face straight. "You," he said haltingly, "were... you were young. You were too young. Mr Coyle was angry, that was a fucking understatement. He wanted to press charges. Nailing your window shut was a concession that I didn't want to make."

"Too young? Too young for what? To know what friendship was?" I felt a few droplets of coke-and-whisky against my pants. Ok, calm down, DL, you're shaking.

"No, too young to know where friendship ended!" he said, raising his voice. "I wasn't angry because I was too scared shitless when I found your bed empty that morning. I wasn't angry because I was too relieved that I'd found you safe and sound in that stupid fort. I wasn't angry because I knew that you were too young to understand what was about to happen, and why it had to happen, and why I had to keep you two apart. I was sad because I knew I was about to wreck your life!"

My fists clenched, falling back on my old reflexes. I turned his words every which way, back to front, trying to find his hidden bullshit meanings. "You had to keep us apart? You had to tell me you didn't know where he lived? You had to burn his letters? Why?"

"What would you have gained?!" he roared. "What would have been the end result there? He was living with his parents, and you know how happy they were the last time you two were friends, and I... I..." His hands grasped at air, desperate to strangle something. He looked over my shoulder at Myles, and for a moment I was sympathetic. I don't think he ever expected to see the both of us again, like this. It was just a moment, though.

He exhaled, and seemed to get a grip. "I had told myself, and convinced myself, right or wrong, that it was the right thing to do. Yes, the letters started coming in after a couple years, but-"

"I would have known he was fine! I would have known he was happy! I would have known he hadn't forgotten about me!"

"And then what?!" The calmness clearly hadn't lasted. "Would you have stayed good friends? Would you have drifted apart? I'll tell you. You would have gotten older, and wiser, you would have looked back at what had happened, and you would have, the both of you, let it come between you and get the best of you and it would have destroyed your friendship."

I hadn't realized I'd taken a step towards him until two fuzzy paws gripped my wrist. I'd taken a second step, dragging Myles across the living room, before I allowed him to stop me. My dad's eyes were wide but undaunted; he hadn't so much as flinched.

I looked down at Myles, fist clenched so hard I could see the muscles of my forearm bunching and twitching. He was pulling backwards, shaking his head back and forth, eyes pleading. "What the... no? This was your idea!" I snapped.

His dark little eyes narrowed behind his dreds and he let go of my arm, but that was only so he could set his hips and land a surprisingly solid punch on my shoulder. "Ow!" I cried, taking a step away from him now. I'm doing everything right, and I'm still doing everything wrong, I thought to myself, looking back and forth between the little coyfox and my father.

Myles gestured to my dad, worked his jaw for a moment and then threw a thumbs-up with his other hand. I balked. "What, you're saying he's right?!"

He bared his teeth, not quite a smile, and shrugged helplessly, the universal gesture for 'well, kinda'.

My mind was spinning. I wanted to clobber my dad, though that wasn't really anything new. Deep down, probably as long as I've known what a punch was, I've wanted to deck him, just once.

Don't get me wrong, I love him. He was, by nearly every metric you can think, a great dad. He took me camping and fishing, bought me my first beer, loaned me the car when I wanted to take my first date to the city before I had my license, and we really did, in general, get along just fine. As a kid, when I needed a hug after falling out of a tree or waking up screaming from a nightmare or stabbing myself in the forehead with a screwdriver (it was a really unfortunate accident and a valuable lesson about applied leverage), he was always there, and I knew he'd always be there.

That didn't stop him from being an asshole, too.

My arm jerked again, and Myles hauled back harder. I tried to talk, but couldn't. The clock on the mantle ticked, and I could hear Rosie's nervous breath. My... I just wanted... why couldn't...

It was obvious that Myles could see the agony on my face. Later on, he described it as similar to one of those volcanoes that manages to avoid a major eruption only by venting off the magma into the surrounding inhabited countryside, lava flows detonating beneath kitchens and outhouses. He's always had a gift for description.

He may not have had much of a gift for timing, though, when he chose that moment to grip my lapels in both bunched fists, pulled me down (mostly by pulling himself up) and kissed me.

I won't lie right now: my first instinct was to shove him, and shove him hard. My hands came up, pressed against his bony chest and my shoulders flexed, preparing to forcibly separate us... but something stopped me. Love, maybe, or fear. Personally, I think it was anger. I was angry at myself for reacting in such a selfish, heartless manner, or at least almost reacting that way.

The anger filled me, I could feel it condensing in droplets on my skin, but then he inhaled, whiskers dancing along my cheek and he seemed to draw all of my anger out of me. I was conscious only of his hands against my chest, his muzzle against my lips, his tongue against my teeth, and then his footpaws standing on my shoes.

My dad stared. That's an educated guess, since my eyes had blissfully closed, but I could still hear and since he hadn't left the room I can naturally assume that his attention was captured by the spectacle we were making of ourselves. I could hear Rosie making a strange, strangled squawking sound, a very un-feline sound. I could hear Myles's barely audible growling as he tried to yank himself higher, and the part of my brain that spends all of it's time thinking about sex swore it could hear his corduroy pants stretching.

It's a big part of my brain, ok? Shut up.

"Hmm."

And just like that, the magic of the moment was gone. I knew it would be back; Myles seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of them. Sheepishly, grinning like a fool and licking his muzzle, he got down from his perch on my shoes, smoothed out my shirt, and nodded.

That, as they say, was that.

The old me would have been too afraid to turn and face our audience, but I don't think the old me will be coming around much anymore. Sure enough, my dad was staring at us, and testimony to the impact of our little display, his eyebrows were raised. For Daniel Bender, this was considered quite the public display of emotion.

"You know," he said at length, with mild reproach, "you could have just said you two were together."

Rosie sniffled and dabbed at her eyes with the sleeve of her tiny but stretchy shirt. "That's so sweet," she giggled, fighting the urge to cry. Why do girls do that? Girls were crying when they came out of Twilight showings at the local rep theatre, even though I know how it ended and nothing cry-worthy had happened. This was even less cry-worthy. "You two make SUCH an adorable couple!"

Myles wagged his tail, jaw open and tongue lolling, and I had to resist the urge to pet his head and call him a good boy. "I, uh... well..."

"It may not have been the right thing to do," he said, tilting his tumbler with a clink of ice cubes and searching in vain for the last few drops of cocktail, "but it was what I did, and I'm not going to apologize for it."

My fist clenched again, but my coyfox was right there to pry my fingers apart. I stared at my shoes, ran my fingers through my hair and sighed. "What's done... is done," I said, defeated. I squeezed his fuzzy little paw, and he squeezed back reassuringly.

Looking back, that might have been one of the few times I didn't reflexively check out his pants.

"Next time, though," my dad said, clinking his drink and heading for the kitchen, "a simple 'we're going out now' would suffice. Ok?"

I chuckled and watched him go, trying to find something clever and witty to say, and failing. I turned back just in time to find myself slammed up against Myles as Rosie, with surprising strength, squeezed us both together in a bear hug, leaping up and down and squealing with delight.

---

"I think that went about... as good as could be expected," I said, hiccupping once and pausing briefly to help steady a building that was leaning at a dangerous angle. When I was sure it wouldn't collapse I stood upright, Myles there to support my other arm.

It was about one in the morning. I was sure of that, since the good old Stately Wayne Funeral Home illuminated sign scrolled the time, day and temperature every few seconds. It didn't feel like thirty-five degrees, but the little cloudy puffs of breath didn't lie. Myles had his light jacket tied around his waist and was wearing only his tight short-sleeved shirt, and didn't seem to mind the temperature at all. Dang furs.

He nodded, hugging my arm and helping to steady me. "You don't need to keep pulling on my arm like that," I said, choosing my words to avoid slurring. "I didn't have THAT much to drink." In the cosmic sense, that was broadly correct. There was still enough rye left in the bottle that my dad could get a couple drinks out of it, although most of the Coke seemed to have mysteriously vanished. I blamed Rosie.

Myles bonked my arm with his head, our traditional gesture for amusement or disbelief. "What? Look at me, I'm walking perfectly fine by myself."

Then I stopped, looked around, and red the storefront signs. "We were supposed to turn left on Maple back there, weren't we?" He nodded. "Why didn't you tell me?"

He just shrugged and mimed drinking out of a large bottle. I swatted him, or at least tried; my arm somehow ended up several feet to the left of where I had intended. "Come back here, you!" I giggled, lurching after him.

Wait, scratch that. I didn't giggle. I never giggle. I am not a giggly person.

After our little coming-out party we sat around the living room for a little while, and all the tension seemed to have vanished. Myles was sitting on my lap, Rosie was sitting on my dad's; both Bender boys and our furry companions. We discussed the old days a little more fondly, my dad laughingly recounting the time he'd sprayed us with the hose while we played in the back yard and Myles's tail had become so waterlogged that he'd barely been able to walk.

A little while later Myles put on a little show for Rosie, perched on one of the single seats and strumming his way through a softly crooned version of 'Around The Fur', his rendition of 'Night Moves' that my dad grudgingly admitted was pretty good, and then brought the house down with a long and hilariously improvised cover of 'Beer Is Good'. He then signed her upper-chest area with a magic marker and helped her take pictures to post to her Spacebook page.

And then... I'm not entirely sure what happened next. We ended up back in the kitchen, and I think we played Rummoli, but for some reason no matter how much of my drink I had it never seemed to get all the way empty. I was playing footsie with Myles under the table, and I think Rosie was playing footsie with me. My dad made a big show about how late it was and how he had to work in the morning, and that was when I noticed Rosie was no longer at the table, but I could hear her saying something from the bedroom down the hall.

The next thing I knew we were outside, my face was cold, and I had just gotten lost in the town I had grown up in on the eight-block walk back to my home.

"Thanks for everything back there," I said when I finally came to grips with the fact that I wasn't going to be able to catch Myles if the world kept wobbling like a Weeble. "You've always been able to talk me down."

He reached up and brushed his fingers along the bandage over my eye and the bruise on my jaw, and kissed my neck, which was about as high as he could reach unassisted. I shivered and embraced him, hoisting him into the air with ease. "Hey, in my defence, these were your fault."

Myles leaned back, the very picture of mock affront. "Oh, don't you pull the innocent face on me! I was walking away from those bucking fastards when you broke out into 'Hey Man, Nice Shot'. What was I supposed to do?"

He seemed to consider it, then grinned and smooched me again. "But from now on, I won't fight. Deal?" He nodded, muzzle tickling my ears.

My nerves eventually managed to get some signals through the alcoholic haze and I realized that I had hoisted Myles up by gripping his rump, his overloaded lap weighing heavily against my lower belly. I tilted my head down, burying it in the inviting fluff of his neck and breathing in his scent. My body responded almost instantly, which was a small miracle considering my current inebriated state.

His chest swelled against me, and I could feel his blunted claws digging into my shoulders, his maw closing gently around my neck. I staggered but managed to keep my footing. Damn you, Myles, you know what does to me, I thought but didn't dare say, for fear he might stop.

I stroked the base of his tail fondly, enjoying the heft of his body against mine, still amazed at how light he was. He rolled his hips lewdly and I was also reminded that despite the considerable difference in weight, he was still MANY times larger than me in some other alluring ways.

"So you're saying we should get back to my place soon?" I said nonchalantly, slipping my other hand a little further down his thigh, fingertips brushing against the straining bulk of his sac. His entire body shuddered and the pressure of his teeth against my skin increased.

"Do I have to carry you?" He paused to consider it, and then nodded. He reached back with one paw and took my hand from his tail, placing it between us on the enormously stretched lap of his pants. I didn't mind the new position at all, but it seemed a little odd considering we weren't home YET... but then he inhaled sharply, clutched at me desperately and completely split the seams of his zipper. Shockingly hot flesh filled my hand and I gasped, looking down. In the dim glow from the infrequent streetlights I couldn't make out much in the way of details, but it was pretty obvious his slowly expanding sheath was not going to take no for an answer.

"Thank you for not doing this at my dad's house," I laughed, jogging unsteadily back to Maple and making the correct turn. The brisk night air and the armful of swelling coyfox was better than a pot of coffee for sobering up in short order. He nuzzled at my ear and gave me a lick, and then started to doodle on my chest. "Oh, come on, I'm drunk and carrying you through Forks, you can't expect me to decode that, too!"

He sketched slowly, though, and by the time we reached the Fas Gas parking lot I had managed to figure it out. "I'm glad we told him, too," I murmured into his hear, reluctantly moving my hand away from his burgeoning foxhood and fumbling for my keys. "I couldn't have done it without you."

Someone had moved the lock on my door, but I managed to find it by blindly fumbling around and bumping Myles repeatedly against the frame. I kicked it shut behind us, plunging us into near-darkness. It was my home, though, and I had spent enough nights wandering around with my eyes closed that I was practically Daredevil in here. Twelve steps forwards in a loose arc to avoid the coffee table, and I only misjudged enough that step number twelve banged my shins into the aluminium frame of my futon and we tumbled rather gracelessly onto the mattress.

I managed to wriggle us around so that he was on top, perched on my torso like a puppy. I reached through the metal tubing behind my head for the catch and yanked hard, dropping the vertical portion of the futon with a tooth-rattling clank and turning the serviceable couch into a serviceable queen-sized bed, and nearly taking my arm off at the elbow in the process.

I started to ask if Myles was tired when his muzzle slammed against my mouth, pinning me to the pillows and nearly suffocating me. Strong fingers gripped my sides and removed my shirt with enough speed to give me rug burn and giving me enough of a reprieve from his kiss to get my breath back. Sliding my hands up his body I discovered he'd already lost his shirt at some point.

"You don't... waste time..." I gasped, my fingers moving down his chest, questing for the button on his pants. It was surprisingly hard to reach, his still-plumping sheath pushed up far enough by the churning orbs of his sac that it was almost completely hidden. His breath left him in a great gust when I managed to pop it free, the torturous constriction of those ruined pants finally gone. All at once the scalding weight of his nethers was resting against my stomach and his scent seemed to fill the room.

He leaned forwards, seeming to balance entirely on his endowments for a moment, and when he resumed straddling my waist it was without any pants or underwear whatsoever.

"Are you sure," I started to inquire, but the jaws clamped onto my neck shut off that line of thought. Claws dug at my chest, and I realized he was sketching again.

yes yes yes yes yes yes

He inched his way backwards, kissing his way down my body and slipping between my legs. Nimble little fingers worked at my own pants and I barely had enough time to hoist my hips up before they were flung heedlessly into the darkness, leaving us both very, very naked.

"Baby," he sang, voice soft and low and coming from the general area of my thighs, "when I think about you, I think about lo-o-o-ove."

I gasped, recognizing the song. "Darling," I responded, a little off-key and scratchy, "don't live without you, and your lo-o-o-ove."

"And if I have those golden dreams, of my yesterda-a-a-ay, I would wrap you... in the heaven... 'till I'm dy-y-y-ying, on the way."

His tongue traced from the base of my arousal to the very tip and I did cry out then, shuddering at his touch. His muzzle kissed at my lower belly, slowly working his way back up my body, and soon my entire lap was smothered by the immensity of his own endowments.

"Feel like making," he purred, stretching out languidly atop me, "feel like making love... feel like making love... to... you."