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Hehhey, and welcome to the Hockey Hunk!

It's Friday, and that means a new chapter, and am I glad to back! Season 5's gotten a good start, I think, and I'm very happy that so many of you have come along for the new season, and helped me to get along! Cheers, folks - so how about...*drumroll*

ANOTHER LURKER CHALLENGE!

Oh, that's right, IF I GET 50 DIFFERENT COMMENTATORS ON THIS CHAPTER, I solemnly swear that THERE WILL BE A WEDNESDAY CHAPTER NEXT WEEK AS A GIFT TO EVERYONE WHO COMMENTED! Oh yes, in the past I have ruled that people who haven't commented in the previous two chapters count as lurkers, but I think that this time I'll just put up a limit there, and see where that takes us - so, dig out those opinions and shout out! You are being missed!

I shall be looking forward to your comments once more - and remember, all votes, faves and watches will help others to find these stories to enjoy as well!

Have an interesting read!

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[Experiment IV by Kate Bush: http://youtu.be/NTUcoR8_pyE ]

We were working secretly

for the military

Our experiment in sound

Was nearly ready to begin

Beep-beep-beep.

The sound of the timer going off caused a near-Pavlovian response in me, I suppose. It always kind of made me jump nowadays, created a whirlpool of tension in my body, especially in my belly, as if my body could physically feel the chemicals seeping in my blood losing their effect, slowly, until the incessant beep-beep-beep gave me an assurance that it was time for a top-off.

We only know in theory

What we are doing

Music made for pleasure

Music made to thrill

It was music we were making here until

If it wasn't for the timer, I probably wouldn't have gotten up from the couch in the first place. Feeling like I was, just lying there while the waves of music entered through my ears seemed the best bet. It was music made for forgetting, songs from another world that did not exist, music to...to disappear into.

I hauled myself onto my paws and moved towards the kitchen.

They told us

All they wanted

Was a sound that could kill someone

From a distance

So we go ahead

And the meters are over in the red

It's a mistake in the making

Gee, you don't say?

I reset the timer first, then grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and washed my paws before I took the medicine box out of the drawer. I was going to handle something that was going in my mouth, after all, so it was best to be clean. The box with its clear compartments rattled with the weight of the pills inside. I gently slid the cover for "Saturday" open and dropped the pills onto my palm.

From the painful cry of mothers

To the terrifying scream

We recorded it and put it into our machine

I swallowed Prograf capsules first. I took a small sip of water to wash them down and then popped the CellCepts in. Those took a bit more work to swallow, and I almost coughed with the capsules going through my gullet. I drank a bit more water, took a deep breath, and snorted.

They told us

All they wanted

Was a sound that could kill someone

From a distance

So we go ahead

And the meters are over in the red

It's a mistake in the making

Calcineurin inhibitors. Interleukin 2 modifiers. Selective immunosuppressants. Cortisone. The words that meant nothing to a normal person and why would they, the words that were like a magical incantation for me, whose life depended on the very fact that those mystical words continued to hold their effect. Like a little lucky charm.

It could feel like falling in love

It could feel so bad

But it could feel so good

It could sing you to sleep

As I was putting away my bottle of water, I noticed the open flavored water bottle I'd already brought in from the living room but had placed onto the counter and forgotten there. Seeing it made my furs bristle, my tail moving sharply behind me now.

But that dream is your enemy.

Shit...

"Right..."

I grabbed the kitchen gloves and quickly slipped my paws into them before I took the bottle, empted it into the sink and then tossed the bottle into the recycling bin in the cabinet under the sink.

We won't be there to be blamed

We won't be there to snitch

I just pray that someone else

Can hit the switch.

Hell with it.

I grunted as I gently pulled the gloves off and hung them up to dry over the sink. I moved my paws quickly away so that water wouldn't drip onto them. I'd managed to dry them before, I didn't want to go through washing up again.

They told us

All they wanted

Was a sound that could kill someone

From a distance

So we go ahead

And the meters are over in the red

It's a mistake in the making

Oh, did I really need another reminder, Kate, darling?

And the public are warned to stay off.

I growled to myself as I walked back to the living room and crashed onto the couch. I gathered my various limbs and my tail close to my body as I tried to assume a comfortable position on the couch. The stereo did a random shuffling of my MP3 list and put the next song on.

The drums.

[Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush: http://youtu.be/wp43OdtAAkM ]

It doesn't hurt me.

Do you want to feel how it feels?

Do you want to know, know that it doesn't hurt me?

Stupid. Felt like someone was deliberately choosing these songs to reflect what was going on in my mind. Stupid, stupid, stupid. My tail slapped against the armrest of the couch on the other end, near where my footpaws resided.

Do you want to hear about the deal I'm making?

You, it's you and me.

I hugged my arms around my body and let out a deep breath.

And if I could

I'd make a deal with God

And I'd get him to swap our places

Be running up that road

Be running up that hill

Be running up that building.

Say, if I only could...

Who'd change places with me? A miserable excuse of a man...a sick, tired, tired man.

You don't want to hurt me

But see how deep the bullet lies

Unaware, I'm tearing you asunder.

Oooooh there's a thunder in our hearts.

I could feel my heart beating alright, thumping at its usual pace against my palm pressed against my chest. Each compression of that torn muscle pushing more of the toxic blood through my body, through my vital organs, through that little bean-shaped pouch of flesh in my belly that filtered the poison out.

If only it could.

Is there so much hate for the ones we love?

Tell me we both matter don't we?

What did matter anymore, anyway?

You,

it's you and me

It's you and me who won't be unhappy

Goddamn it. Goddamn all this fucking shit I had to put up with. Sadness I could take. Loneliness, I could take. The not wanting to get up from the bed in the morning...to a fashion. This damn unhappiness with myself?

And if I could

I'd make a deal with God

And I'd get him to swap our places

Be running up that road

Be running up that hill

Be running up that building.

Say, if I only could...

There was nobody I could bargain with. There was nobody up there listening, anyway. If there was, I'd surely used up all my cat lives already. Borrowed time...borrowed happiness...all too tangible misery.

Come on baby

Come on darling

Let me steal this moment from you now

Oh come on angel, come on come on darling

Let's exchange the experience ooooooooooooooooooooooh...

Angel...even if there was no God, perhaps angels existed, still. George probably qualified for that. He never hurt anyone in his life, that sweet thing. Maybe he could be an angel. Were you supposed to be created as one, or did dead furs become angels? Could they be made into angels? Kind of a honorary promotion, thanks to their pure souls? Hmm. Or a saint? Didn't the Catholics pray for their most venerable souls for assistance in their troubles? Did they have a saint for lost cougars? I had been raised too Lutheran to know.

Be running up that road

Be running up that hill

With no problems

For a long time, you could tell yourself that at least you were alive. Then you realized that you had to make some kind of a purpose for it, for that borrowed time. Not just to pass the days, but to make this existence mean something. George was my purpose...nothing could ever replace that. Nothing. Not Rory, not...not Nicholas...no work, or love, or religion, or...hope.

Damn I missed that feeling, of being needed.

Rory didn't really need me anymore. He'd grown up, I suppose. If he'd get past some of those anal complexes he had in his brain, maybe he'd be alright. Maybe this thing with that Victor would do him some good. Maybe that Jacob could scare sense into his jumpy little brain. Maybe he'd learn to show all that love in healthy ways, and he'd be happy. Maybe he'd have some to spare for me, too. I'm sure he did. We were meant to be...not as lovers, but as something...endgame...until one of us was gonna put the other into a box and say a few meaningful prayers. The odds were kinda against me in that regard, but perhaps I'd surprise. Maybe he'd live to be 99 and I'd live to be 100, with some kind of a robot kidney. Maybe I'd surprise everyone. Maybe.

Goddamn lions. I snorted and shook my head, even to myself, as I laid there, and the stereo was singing about how Peter Pan steals the children from Kensington Park.

My Lionheart.

Now that was just preposterous. I wanted to turn the music off, shouldn't have put it on in the first place, or at least listen to something less soul-breaking than that mad English woman. Maybe some other kind of music would make me feel a bit better.

What the hell was I thinking, using Nicholas' easy-going attitude against him to go and fuck him? It's not like I even really liked him...well, he was a lion but...oh fuck...

I scratched over my chest, as if that could wash the feeling away, in and out, from my crawling furs to my itching skin to the painful waves of nausea threatening to break through. Considering the circumstances, it probably wasn't the drugs for once.

It was awful sex, too. I suppose the old "wham bam" technique wasn't about to produce perfect nirvana, but still...goddamn...I might've as well screwed a pillow covered in fake fur. Not that it really was Nicholas' fault, though. He seemed more than eager to get frisky, so it was more than like that it was just me who failed to provide for the occasion.

Weird. There used to be a time when there was no thing as bad sex. There used to be a time when an erection was a cause of celebration and rejoice, and now I had misused mine by sinking it into Nicholas' flat posterior.

Yeah, used.

What a way to kindle old relationships...lackluster sex and terrible attempts at coming onto him, followed by that sex that barely got me off...I think he didn't even get off...at least I wasn't doing anything to ensure that...well, at least he had the good grace to submit to scrubbing himself with disinfectant soap beforehand...at least he was that understanding...but what for? He couldn't have been quite that desperate, unless he really wanted to do it...and I'd let him down in more ways than one...

Shitting bricks...

"...the more you think about sex the better it gets..."

Oh really, Kate? Had I not thought about it enough? Guess not, if my performance was so inadequate and mechanical when it actually came to mount a sprawled lion on my bed and do abominable things to Nicholas' butt. I don't think I physically hurt him but...not that it mattered. It was consensual sex between us, but I don't think neither of us was really into it...whatever thrust us to do it in the first place.

Beep-beep-beep.

I barely heard the noise through the music, but it made my ears perk a little. It took me a couple of seconds to figure out the sound, too. It wasn't the drug timer, the one sound that caused a visceral reaction in me. No, it was something else...a more rare, a less regular noise...

The doorbell...

Strange, I thought, it wasn't time for my groceries delivery...and the neighbors never visited the strange cat man...I got up from the couch, nonetheless, muted the music with a quick detour to the stereo, and then walked over to the door intercom and hit the lit button after another series of beeps.

"Yeah?"

"Are you Peter Sinclair?" an unknown voice questioned.

Strange.

"Yes, that's me, what is it?"

"I'm Preston O'Brien from the Kirk City Police Department, I've got a Nicholas Faye here who says that you're a friend of his and he really needs to be with a friend now, and he has lost his phone and has nowhere else to go."

What?

"Excuse me?"

"I'm here with Mister Faye, and we would like to come up. Can you open door please, sir?"

What the hell.

"Can you tell me what's going on, uhm...officer?"

The intercom crackled

"Sinclair?" a more familiar voice spoke now, filtered through the intercom. "Sinclair, it's...it's Nicholas...can I come up? Something awful happened to me and I can't...I can't really be alone now...I...I would've called you but they broke my phone..."

They?

What the fuck...

"Alright, sure," I said, not knowing what else to say, as my tail twitched behind me, "Opening the door now."

"Thank you, sir," the official voice grunted.

I released the talk button and leaned against the wall, letting out a deep breath. What the hell had Nicholas gotten up to now? Who were this 'they' he talked about? Why was there a cop with him? Had he gotten into some trouble, and a panicky urge had driven him to come back to the only fur he thought he knew in this town, only an hour and a half after our most unsatisfying tryst? I supposed I was going to learn that very soon.

It only took a couple of minutes before the actual doorbell rang, and I moved on to action, to open the door and to step away so that I wasn't going to get any draft onto me. The first fur I noticed was a remarkably sized black sheep in a police uniform, baton, taser, gun, cuffs, mace, everything neat only on his bulging belt line and a radio strapped to his collar, and next to him stood a remarkably small-looking Nicholas. The lion looked like he had shrunk since the last time I saw him, and his usually bouffant mane looked flat and non shiny around his neck. The usual smile was gone, too.

"Peter Sinclair?" the sheep said.

"That's me," I said, gently folding my arms over my chest. "How can I help?"

"Sinclair..." Nicholas gasped.

"Preston O'Brien, Kirk City Police Department," the sheep barked out, showing a kind of a badge, quickly, before he stuffed it into his pocket. "Mister Faye was just attacked on the street a couple of blocks away from here, and he says he doesn't want to be alone and he asked us to take him here. Can you take responsibility of him?"

I looked at the shaky lion and realized that this was no joke.

"Are you alright?" I asked, directing my words to Nicholas.

The lion gave me a jerky nod, his paws clenched into fists on his sides, kind of like a seizure, it looked to me. His tail dragged on the floor. That was gonna be a pain to clean up...

"I'm alright, I just...I..." he muttered.

"Can you take responsibility of Mister Faye for the moment, sir?" the police sheep asked me, "I don't think he ought to be alone at this time. We can't take him to the hospital because there's nothing physically wrong and we don't want to take him to the station unnecessarily since we already took his statement."

"So what did happen?" I groaned. "Who did this? What did they do?"

"Young men..." Nicholas said, "...high school...youth, I think..."

He didn't sound good at all.

"...grabbed...grabbed me...threw my phone to the ground...grabbed my clothes..."

He rubbed his arm, and I could see that the sleeve of his shirt was torn, showing a hint of golden furs below.

"...I managed to get away and I ran into a convenience store..." he continued in a flat tone, "then I asked the clerk to phone the police..."

I looked at the sheep, my teeth clenching.

"Did you catch them?"

"We're sweeping the streets based on the descriptions given by Mister Faye, and we're doing out best to get them off the streets, "the sheep said. "Can you give me your phone number in case we need to contact you based on this?"

"They broke my phone, Sinclair" Nicholas mumbled, "I...I don't have a number they can call...not now..."

"Sure," I said mechanically, "can you write it down?"

The sheep soon had a notebook open and ready. I quickly recited me number and he read it back to me.

"That's it," I said.

"Thank you, Mister Sinclair," the sheep said, "I presume everything will be in order here?"

"Yes," I said, tensely.

"Our LGBT community worker will be in touch to you, Mister Faye," the sheep spoke firmly but gently to the lion standing by him, and then he even managed a smile, "We'll catch those furs."

"Thank you," Nicholas mumbled.

"You should contact the police department if you have anything you want to add to your statement, Mister Faye," the sheep said as he stepped backwards to give Nicholas some room to enter, "We'll call you if anything new comes up on our end."

"Thank you, officer," the lion uttered.

"Just call 9-1-1 if there's any further problems," the sheep said, "good day to you, Mister Faye, Mister Sinclair."

"Good day," I rumbled.

"Thank you, sir," Nicholas muttered.

"Take care!" the sheep waved a big hoofed paw before he closed the door.

Then it was just me, Nicholas, and the lingering scent of the sheep that assaulted my nose in the usually scentless hall. I could smell Nicholas, too, but he mostly smelled of my soap still, and...coffee...and what I presumed was the smell of a police car which surely was still parked outside my building to the delight of all the neighbors who would've seen the burly sheep walk the shaky lion up into the building.

Nicholas just stood there on the doorway, his tail umoving, his paws pressed to his sides. He looked quite pitiful, but I did not feel pity. I just felt sad that something like this could happen two blocks away from where I lived. I suppose it was up to me now.

"Come on," I rumbled, "let's get you sorted out, Faye."

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Thank you for reading! I hope you had a good time, and I look forward to your comments! As always, remember that all votes, faves and watches will help others to find these stories to enjoy as well!

See you on Monday - and hopefully on Wednesday! :P