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After Hours

Inspired by Flare Starfire Thank you, noble Shire-Ram

Jamey contemplated the glass tumbler in front of him, not entirely sober, not entirely drunk, hammered more by depression than by the depressant. The dingo's white-furred paw held the glass loosely, not having raised it to his lips since the last of the bourbon had been finished. What was left now was nearly entirely the remains of the ice cubes that had helped to tame the fire slightly as it wet his lips and warmed his gullet. That was more than an hour ago, and he hadn't moved since. The others in the pub had moved, however, and closing time at the Bow and Feather had long been called.

It had been another pointless night for the young dingo. He'd been coming to this bar even more frequently of late, as if desperation were forcing him to chance his paw more often. He had memorized something he had read once, from some graphic story about S&M, and tried to corner the biggest, baddest, leather-clad patron he could find, finally stammering out, "Would Sir care to try this one for company tonight? This one has few limits." After providing an amused smile that wasn't entirely without some sympathy, the powerful white-tailed buck told the pup to move along. He didn't know what he'd done wrong; he had approached submissively, looking down, avoiding direct eye contact with the Master... had he said it wrong? He didn't know exactly what he was saying, so maybe that was the problem. He was dressed well enough - chinos, a clean and pressed button-down Oxford shirt, perfectly groomed and clean tawny fur and white paws, what else could a Master want?

He wasn't really sure that he wanted to find out.

"Jamey?"

The dingo looked up to the bar to see the familiar site of Yaron, who at the moment was carefully and rather pointedly wiping the bare bar with a cloth. It was only then that Jamey realized that the entire pub was empty save for himself and the venerable mountain lion landlord. He'd been "in his cups" even more than he'd imagined. He rose, brought his glass to the bar and shyly handed it to the big cat.

"I'm sorry. I should have--"

"You could have come to talk to me," the publican interrupted gently. He took the glass from the dingo's paw, emptied it, and put it through the necessary soap and water baths. The pup gently took the cloth from the bar and walked back to his table. "Why didn't you, Jamey?"

"You were busy." Jamey wiped his table down, more than a swipe, less than trying to avoid the conversation. He made sure his chair was upended onto the table, as he saw other chairs at other tables, finally bringing the cloth back to the bar.

"Not busy now," the mountain lion observed. "Just a sweep and a mop, and I'll be all done. So what can I do for you, amid the usual cleaning up?"

The dingo hesitated, looking at the powerful feline with more candor than he had intended. Great... enough lonesome to show it, not enough booze to blame it on. Yaron simply waited patiently, his handsome muzzle soft, an expression neither judging nor inviting. How often Jamey had looked at that face, the trio of silver rings marching in precise order down the right ear to the temple, the arrangement of a feathered talisman dangling from the left, the symbols of a Cheyenne would-be Shaman who now tended firewater and sympathy to a flock of strangers. How often Jamey had wondered, never letting himself ask the question, because why would a publican be fair game to his patrons? Seemed almost like a conflict of interest or something.

"I should be getting home."

"The word 'should' sounds like the word 'shit' for a reason." The mountain lion leaned his muscular forearms on the bar, his eyes one shade more friendly, his posture three ergs more relaxed, the possibility of a smile speculating to itself on his muzzle. "The last place you want to go right now is home."

Jamie felt frozen to the spot. It was if the information had been tattooed to his forehead, and the landlord had just read it like that evening's headlines.

"Not a trick," the big cat did finally smile, benignly, almost affectionately. "I do have my magical abilities - I was raised by the Shaman of my tribe, after all - but I hardly need them in your case. You've been here so often lately, Jamey, and you always leave by yourself, wrapped up in your aloneness like a tattered cloak. Not for want of trying. What were you thinking with that 'no limits' line? You could've gotten yourself hurt. Or worse."

The dingo felt his large ears splay and his tail droop, and the burning on his cheeks that was the warning that tears might yet fall to fight those fires, or perhaps make them worse. He found himself struggling with something to say, but no matter how much his heart prodded him, he couldn't make himself speak with any sense. "I just wanted... I thought..."

"Pup, you didn't think at all." The voice was soft, but it was unchallengeable. "The reason you're standing here today, and not face down in a hospital bed with your nether end bandaged and being treated for rectal hemorrhagy, prolapse, and worse is that the Master you approached knew who you were, and he's a friend of mine who knew better than to take advantage of you like that. 'Few limits...' Jamey, we're going to have to start policing what sort of stories you're reading online!" He smiled gently, jutting his jaw at one of the barstools. "Sit down there and tell me."

The words were not to be disobeyed, and Jamey sat on the stool, his muzzle close enough to the muscular cougar to catch the whiffs of a long evening's bartending on his fur - various alcohols, the light musk of honest sweat, the scent of soap from the cloth and the dishwater, something faintly like cloves and evergreen, but not like cologne or fur conditioners. "What am I supposed to tell?"

"Bartender's like a shrink, just with more questionable medicines, and sometimes better instincts. As an added bonus, I'm full to the eyeballs with mystical Injun bunkum, so tell me why you don't want to go home."

"How did you get a name like Yaron?" the dingo sidestepped nimbly.

"It's Hebrew," the publican said without missing a beat. "A very kind teacher - a rabbi, in the proper sense of the word - worked at our tribal school. He knew better than to proselytize, but he did find it hard to call me by my given name. Hotuaekhaashtait."

Jamey blinked. "What?"

Yaron's whiskers went up with his grin. "I love springing that on customers who've had one too many. It's a Cheyenne name meaning 'spirit who sings.' The rabbi gave me Yaron because it means 'to sing' or 'to shout' in Hebrew. He tried to keep the meaning, which I and my Shaman appreciated." He leaned forward again. "Tell me what you want."

"You."

The dingo caught his breath, his muzzle slightly open, trembling. He hadn't meant to...

Surprisingly, the bartender only nodded a little. "Better. Try again."

"I..." He hesitated and plunged ahead. "I want you."

"That's very sweet, Jamey. And for what it's worth, I think you're quite the handsome pup who, I strongly suspect, would be a wonderful lover. Don't think for a minute that I might not take you up on that offer one fine night, but that's not what you want. Not tonight."

"How the hell would you know?" The dingo stunned himself with his sudden outburst. Something in him had shattered, and there was no stopping the hurt. "How would you know what I want? You never in a million years could understand. You've never had to wish that you were good enough for someone to want, even just to be a night's playtoy. You've never had to beg for someone to_see_ you, much less _want_you. You've never had to go home alone."

"Neither have you."

"I always go home alone!" Jamey felt his jaw twitching, fighting back anger, tears, need, resignation. "No one wants to be with me, not even you!"

"So I was the court of last resort?"

Jamey stared at the mountain lion again, shocked almost out of his fur. "Yaron, I'm sorry, I didn't mean..."

The feline put a large, tender paw on the dingo's shoulder. "I know you didn't. I know when fear is trying to use your maw as a megaphone. And you've finally been able to say what it is that you want. So I can help you now."

"What do you mean?"

"You want not to go home alone. And I can help you with that."

"You said you wouldn't--"

"Because you don't want me tonight. You want not to go home alone. That's different." The mountain lion jutted his chin downward toward the bar. "And that's the proof."

Reluctantly tearing his eyes from the publican's calm golden gaze, Jamey looked to the bar to find an oddly shaped bottle of depression-era cobalt blue, its cap simple yet clearly made of silver instead of some cheap metal to be tossed into the bin when the bottle's work was done. What stuck in the dingo's mind was the odd notion that this bottle's work was never done. That the bottle hadn't been there a moment ago. That Yaron hadn't fetched it. It was just...

"What is that?"

"It's what you need. If you're willing to take it." The landlord shook his head. "It's not booze, not drugs, nothing that will hurt you. It's what you need."

Jamey was about to reply when he glanced back at the bottle to see that the cap had been removed and sat next to a small shot glass, empty, clean, patient. The dingo looked back to the unmoving mountain lion, tried to make his muzzle work. No words could describe his emotions, so they hung back, digging lettery toes in the light dust of his memories, ruefully rubbing the backs of their estranged meanings with the loose fabric of the odd descriptive noun, trying not to pay attention. The emotions that tumbled through the pup's heart had no labels to describe them, so none could advise him, not in the conventional ways, now that "thinking" and "deciding" and other words had fled their duties to him.

"I don't understand," he whimpered softly.

"It's not about understanding," the feline shaman purred. "It's about what you need."

The shot glass now contained a few drams of something that both was and was not liquid. As Jamey watched, the sunrise yellow of the contents misted and danced, sometimes so clear as to be merely an anticipation, sometimes so dense as to obliterate the space it only occasionally occupied. The pup's white-furred forepaw reached, not entirely of its own volition, to take the glass. The vessel was solid enough, and real, even though what was in it - or perhaps not in it...

"Do you trust me, Jamey?" The mountain lion looked at him steadily. "You were ready to invite me into your bed, perhaps even into your heart. Would you trust me this much further?"

The edge of the glass was near to his muzzle. Something tickled at his nose, something like effervescence and evanescence, like summer memories and winter frost, golden and silver apples picked fresh from mythical fields, the thundering hurricane of a butterfly's wingbeats a thousand miles away and weeks ago, only now delivering their effect. Words did not come to his rescue, feelings were experienced but not labeled for catalog or display. He felt his jaw drop slightly, felt his lips purse against the glass, and felt the single impulse that, when words cooperated, would be called_need._

The ghost of a flavor, the ephemeral presence of swallowing what could not exist. He lowered his arm, breathed slowly through his nose. Yaron took the shot glass from him, washed, rinsed, set to dry. The bottle, silver cap and all, was gone.

"Now you can go home."

One word left; it spoke its terrible name. "Alone."

"Not alone. Believe me." The publican leaned over the bar and kissed the dingo on his cheek, chastely, tenderly. "You'll never go home alone again."

Jamey did not feel drunk, nor depressed, nor much of anything at all as the tall, powerful mountain lion gently escorted him to the door and, with one more chaste kiss to the pup's cheek, retreated silently back inside. The dingo leaned against the closed door for a moment, looking at the deserted street and trying to understand. He still felt needy, or thought he did, or... Words still refused the call to muster. He set his hind paws to moving, one after t'other, in the general direction of home.

The evening breeze was cool, teasing his short tawny headfur softly, bringing with it something sweeter than was usually found in the town's dull atmosphere. The streets, empty and quiet at this hour, lay undisturbed by fur, feather, scale, or ghost. He felt something on his shoulders, weightless, clear. Looking back and upward, he saw the moon, silvery full, gazing down at him, turning his light bronze fur into something almost silvery. The wordless emotions stirred, and something began to form, not merely words, but an old poem - a song - came to his mind, and so through his emotions appearing, came out through his muzzle in soft, dulcet tones.

I went out to the hazelwood, because a fire was in my head; Cut and peeled a hazel wand, and hooked a berry to a thread... And when white moths were on the wing, and moth-like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream, and caught a little silver trout.

Jamey remembered the song of long ago. He'd never sung it for anyone before, although he'd wished... it was foolish to think like that, because it's not like he had a really wonderful voice or anything, but he'd always fantasized of singing the old Yeats poem to a lover, a lullaby after an evening of sweet lovemaking. Just a gift, something special to someone just as special, shared emotions after emotions had been shared. No one had ever stayed long enough for it to happen. An evening's amusement, an afternoon's pastime, nothing that ever warranted someone who would stay, just stay long enough for him to sing, tenderly, to someone who would hear him.

As he continued, he found himself moving more rhythmically, swaying as he walked, not as a drunken dog, but as a dancer, a gentle movement that, if one were kind, could even be said to have some small measure of grace.

When I had laid it on the floor I went to blow the fire aflame, But something rustled on the floor, and someone called me by my name: It had become a glimmering girl with apple blossom in her hair Who called me by my name and ran and faded through the brightening air.

Below him, he saw his shadow dancing with him, courting attendance in perfect time. The brilliant moon forged the chiaroscuro with care, listening to the song in respectful silence.

Though I am old with wandering through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, and kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, and pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun...

Jamey was surprised to find that he'd gotten home already. Even before he was fully aware of it, his shadow touched his front door gently, and the moon showed him where to fit the key for the lock. He saluted the moon to thank it for listening so politely, and bowed to his shadow, who likewise bowed and welcomed him home. "Thank you," he said. "Thank you for seeing me home."

"Thank you for singing to me."

The dingo fell against the door, startled. Before him stood wolf, tall, well-formed, fur silvery white as midnight snow. He was garbed in pieces of tanned, soft leather woven together with leather laces to form pants and vest. His eyes, dark and deep, welcomed and calmed, as the smile on his muzzle played gently in the sweet light.

"Hotuaekhaashtait suggested that it might not be fair of me to walk you home and simply leave you at the door."

The stranger stepped closer, and Jamey's nose found the scent of evergreen and cloves, as familiar as the publican's own scent.

"I am Taa'é-eše'he. You can call me Mayar."

"How... who...?"

The wolf put a tender forepaw on the young dingo's shoulder. "Because you sang to me. I can be drawn down by some few, but I can only be seduced by song. Yaron would never lie to you, sweet pup. He knows what you need."

Bowing down slowly, the white wolf kissed the dingo for a long moment. He tasted of apples, his touch the warm embers in a cold winter, his fur the comfort and promise of a child's beloved coverlet. Words again failed, but the maelstrom of emotion no longer needed them. This was what he needed.

Inside, he opened the curtains to let the moon glow into his home.