Tardy
Chapter 1
Merjuh University for higher learning
19th of September, 11:31AM
* Shaun *
The white cat had always found the concept of school paralyzing, especially on a university scale. All the furs, all the noise, all the responsibility; it all screamed 'too much!' The terror was built upon by Shaun's past experiences, not a single year of school was a happy one. He'd long since forgotten about the first years of school, but he could vaguely remember a Mr. Morrigan who had taught him to hate gays. Every school day there was a speech that was all about how wrong being gay was, how gay males constantly 'molested cubs', how lesbians 'didn't contribute to society.' The horrible thing was, Shaun believed the preacher.
Ultimately that philosophy brought him a fairly bad life; he ended up having no friends in primary school, being bullied in secondary school and in College his reputation wasn't exactly the best. 'Jack', they called him and after an episode in the showers: 'White wash.' Because of that he'd learned to reign in his homophobic feelings for fear of being labelled vituperative or worse, gay himself. With the knowledge of his past mistakes, he was determined to be popular in university.
"Late already little sibling, maybe if you didn't have a white, right forepaw..." Conan, Shaun's half-brother, chuckled his snide remark and let Shaun fill in the gap. "Shut up!" Shaun scowled as he stared out of the window at the passing cars. His visage was misshapen to form a scowl, the two yellow pearls glaring at every passerby with envy. The city outside was bustling with life, Shaun could pick out the furs who were late for work and the furs who were just spending their Monday in whatever way they pleased.
"One might call us tardy!" Conan added as he continued to mock his smaller, younger, dumber brother. "I said shut up!" Shaun roared louder causing his mother, Vivyan, to snap her tongue at the two young adults. "Be quiet sweets!" She hissed louder than Shaun, "Your father is trying to sleep!" The 'sweets' ceased their ramblings and stared out of their respective windows to pass the time. "Still... Just because he's an English major he thinks he's the shit..." Shaun mumbled, loud enough for Conan to catch what had been said.
"I'm not 'the shit', but I'm certainly brighter than you. The grades can back that up!" "Oh yeah, brown fur, brown eyes. You're certainly bright!" Shaun mocked in a posh voice, rolling his shoulders back and flattening out an imaginary tie. "You forgot the monocle. All posh and important fursons have monocles. So you'll never get one!" "Go back to your parents!" Shaun venomously spat. "Shaun!" Vivyan howled, nearly crashing the small, brick colored car into a lamppost. She managed not to skid off of the road, but the sudden spasm made a few furs on the pavement jump in alarm. "What?!" Shaun howled back. His mother didn't respond, Shaun had clearly stepped on a few nerves.
"Sorry Conan." Shaun rolled his eyes. He had a penchant to quarrel with his brother, but he still enjoyed speaking with him. "I shouldn't have said that." "You're right." Conan growled sounding distant and pained. That was to be expected whenever the subject of parents were brought up. Conan had been abused as a child, all the way from birth to being rescued by social services. Blake had instantly adopted his nephew for fear that Conan was going to end up a broken child. Fortunately, Blake's trepidation had been proven wrong. "Sorry for being head strong." Conan apologized. "That wasn't really needed." Shaun said in return. "You'll still be haughty when we see each other next."
Although he was insulted, Conan smirked and managed to utter a complement. "See, you can be fairly eloquent and your sentence structure can be deviant." "I still don't know what either of those words mean. Care to tell your younger brother what language you just spoke in?" "One, there were about thirteen words in my sentence. Two, I spoke English." "Fuck you." Shaun spat as the two went back into their downwards spiral causing both of them to forget that the car was also occupied by their mother. "Language." Vivyan warned. "English." Shaun lashed back. "And this is why we never get on!" Conan moaned as all three of them began another argument. Somehow, Blake managed to stay asleep. Either that or he wanted to stay out of family argument number one thousand and something.
Half an hour later (and two arguments later) the young wolf was asleep and the two felines had fallen out of argumentation. Shaun leered at the glass (or rather what was being reflected by the glass) and two yellow crystals stared back. His eyes fascinated him, they'd been with him since birth and yet he always ended up captivated by their glow. The rounded orbs weren't too sunken into his head, giving him a lighter, younger look. Unfortunately he also looked more feminine because of them. That was something which disgusted him, males and femininity didn't mix in his mind. Both of the crystal gems were cold with years of hatred, his face looked as if it was in a constant scowl.
Slowly his gaze drifted to the rear-view mirror. In it he could see his mother's face. She looked exactly like him, white fur, feminine face, feline eyes and short hair. The only difference would have been in their eyes. Where Shaun's eyes were frosty and yellow, Vivyan's were warm and green. His mother had constantly told him that his eyes were his father's, yet she could never meet her son's eyes for more than a second.
In fact, anything to do with Shaun's father unnerved Vivyan. Something horrible had happened, but she refused to even utter a word about it. Blake knew about it as did Conan. Whenever Shaun asked they'd exchange looks and then one of them would mutter, "Not now." or "When you're older." All of their excuses were crude, never thought through and made in haste.
Shaun, being eighteen, viewed himself as an adult and (in his opinion) he'd clearly shown to his parents that he could look after himself well. But apparently that wasn't enough to get the whole story about his father. Shaun had already been told a few things, that he shared his name with his father, that his fur was exactly the same shade as his father's, that his eyes had the same determined look. But no matter what he was told, he was always reminded "You're nothing like him." What was meant by that? Shaun was clearly like his father, he assumed that him and his father were identical.
"Tell me about Dad, Mom." Shaun demanded suddenly. Vivyan almost skidded the car to a halt, but after balking for a moment she managed to get the words out of her throat. "Are you blind? He's a brown wolf, muscular, strong, tall, handsome, stout..." "Not Blake, Shaun, my real Dad." Shaun informed. "And could you stop sounding like an erotic writer?" "Sorry." Vivyan apologized with a childish giggle. Shaun sighed when he realized that Vivyan was still being cagey about everything. "Mom, he's my Dad. I deserve to know about him. I'm eighteen and I-"
"Do you remember which street I need to take now?" Vivyan asked as she took a right, bringing them onto the university's street. "Mom!" Shaun whined. "Answer me! Tell me about Dad." "Be quiet honey, you'll wake up the wolves." She took a forepaw away from the steering wheel to pat Blake on the knee. No response. "Could you at least tell me where he is? So that I can speak to him?" "Don't you ever," Vivyan paused as if she'd been punched in the gut mid sentence, "Go looking for your father." She snarled 'father' as if she'd been slapped on the muzzle.
The car screeched to a halt outside the university causing a few pedestrians to jump in fright. "We're here." Vivyan announced, despite the fact that Shaun could clearly see the gates to campus. Two doors made of iron bars were spread open like the gates of hell. At that moment, plenty of furs were leaving the gates, but not a single fur was entering. "Can you tell me before I go on in?" Shaun asked, "Not now, you're already late enough." "An address doesn't take that long to say. Tell me it" "He doesn't have an address, now go!" "So he's homeless, dead, in prison?" The last suggestion got a response, but nothing that lasted long enough for Shaun to pick up on. "Go!" Vivyan demanded as she once again ignored her son's questions.
With a disappointed groan Shaun pushed his way out of the car and went around to the boot to get his suitcases out. He heaved both of them out and slung his backpack over his shoulders, being careful not to swing it too much. He closed the boot and wheeled his two suitcases to his mother's window. "Mwah!" She noised as she leaned out to kiss her son's muzzle. "Do you remember where your dorm is? You still have your map don't you?" Shaun leaned away from his mother's questions and kisses with a smile on his face. "Yes and yes. Do you remember Shaun's address?" Vivyan rolled her eyes at the question and that was enough to tell Shaun to shut up about it.
"Give Conan and Blake a kiss goodbye for me." Shaun chirped as he walked away from the car. "Don't you want to do it, they are right here?" Shaun froze like a statue. "That's a little gay mom." Shaun scowled with anger and disgust, his light hearted attitude snapping like thin ice. "Honey, you're going to encounter a lot of different genders and a few furs won't be heterosexual. That's what happened to me." "Well then, I'd better keep my tail down." Shaun smirked, "Bye mom!" He said, waving as he pulled his suitcases up the curb and into the campus gates.
As she pulled away in the car, Vivyan mumbled: "I hope they teach you how to love your family."
Only a minute after entering campus, Shaun was lost amid a forest of furs, buildings and signs. There seemed to a sign for everything apart from dormitories, but the cafeteria, study hall, gym, the different departments, even the Dean of faculty's office had a sign. Shaun's head was in a spin and as a matter of fact, he'd forgotten the map. It had been too confusing for him anyway, he didn't even manage to figure out where the campus gates were on the thing. He'd spent what seemed like years looking down at the useless paper as if what he wanted would jump out and attack him. In a way, that happened.
"Watch it!" A vixen hissed at him as Shaun knocked his way past her, accidentally tripping over face first in the process. This managed to get a giggle out of the vixen. "I'm sorry!" She apologized between a laugh and offered a slender forepaw attached to a lithe body. Shaun pulled himself up without touching the fox. She didn't seem offended at all, instead she proceeded to pick up both of Shaun's suitcases and brush off whatever dust they had collected during their brief visit to the ground. Finally, the vulpine pulled both cases around and stood in front of a stunned Shaun. "Sorry." She said one last time.
Shaun tensed up and bit down on his tongue as he looked upon the fox. Two dark brown eyes stared into the yellow ones, both taking in the details of the other. The fox was certainly strange, her fur looked like a mixture between an arctic fox and a silver fox. It was as if she was wearing a pair of gloves on her forepaws; from her fingers tips to the end of her wrists there was fur that was somewhere between the color of ink and obsidian. Her big fluffy tail whisked around behind her, sporting a black tip of the same shade. "What are you?" Shaun rudely asked without thinking. "Err.. Shit sorry." He apologized before she could take it offensively.
"Don't worry, I get it all the time." She smiled, "I'm a marble fox. But my fur tends to get a bit orange-y in the late spring and early summer. Such are the joys of having a red fox for a Dad and a marble fox for a Mom. And you are?" "My name is Shaun." The cat held out his forepaw awkwardly. He spoke his words as if Vedish was a new language entirely too him. "No silly!" The fox laughed, regardless she shook his forepaw. "I meant what type of cat are you? You are a cat right?" "Shorthair." He answered simply. He looked at their two entwined forepaws and snapped his away when he noticed how comfortable the vixen looked. "Explains why you're so cute!" The vixen chirped. "Where are you trying to go?" She asked, bobbing up and down on her paw as if she was on a trampoline.
Shaun bit his lip and looked up to the sky as he tried to remember the numbers he'd been told, "Dorm 6..." He mumbled under his breath, unsure if it was right or not. "Dorm 6, room 7!" The vixen read his mind and grabbed him by the wrist. "This way!" She dragged him a few steps when she suddenly released him and went charging back to the suitcases she'd left behind, "Bags!" She giggled as she walked back to Shaun with both of the suitcases in tow. "I can drag them." Shaun said as he reached out to take the two handles. The vulpine, acting as if she hadn't heard Shaun's statement, continued the walk towards the east side of campus.
"Don't kid yourself short stack; those stick arms aren't dragging anything! Just let the real man here do the hard work."
* Darren *
The occupants of the limousine were as quiet as a Prius. There was the background noise of the limousine's engine and the two lion's breathing, but aside from that no fur had uttered a word for a good few hours. They didn't need words to express how they felt about each other. Darren, the smaller, younger, smarter lion hated his twin brother with a passion and Mason, the older, stronger, larger lion wanted to murder his twin brutally. Imagine putting a lion and then a spotted hyena next to one another only for the two to fight to the death. The hatred between those animals would be equal to the hatred between the Lyons twins.
The hate wasn't over something that had just happened, like a sibling who instantly claims to hate his sibling because that furson is watching TV when they want to watch TV. No, Mason abhorred Darren simply on the basis of his sexuality. In fact, Mason detested all gay furs, lesbians, bisexuals, pansexuals, transsexuals, transgenders even asexuals. In other words, any furson that wasn't a heterosexual male or a heterosexual female would receive buckets of hate from Mason. Mason's hate also extended to fem boys, cross dressers and tomboys no matter how 'straight' they were.
The hate had been concocted by eighteen years of homophobic preaching coming from his own father. He'd been taught to be aggressive, to beat the shit out of any guy who tried to touch him sexually and then of course he'd been instructed to ruin that furson's life in whatever means necessary. Mason was yet to ruin a life, but he had severely beaten at least two gay furs.
The second case was... 'understandable' as the court put it. Mason had been approached by a male whose intentions seemed to be sexual, so by nature the young lion lashed in fear in order to protect himself. In truth the other fur was asking for directions when he'd tripped and fell onto Mason who at the time had been lying down in swimming trunks. The first time was unacceptable in the court's eyes, until Mr. Lyons had offered a grand to each member of the jury.
The first incident was also the reason why Mason hated gay furs and why Darren hated Mason. As a sixteenth birthday gift to his boyfriend, a fifteen year old Darren had brought the squirrel home. One thing became another and soon the two were lying naked with Darren sitting on the squirrel's chest, there was absolutely nothing to show violent intent. Mason on the other hand, barged into the living room and tore his brother away from the teenager to beat on the helpless rodent. After that Oliver had eschewed Darren permanently.
"You really shouldn't be drinking so much wine." Darren warned his brother as he starred out of the tinted window, his elbow resting on the armrest and his chin resting on the palm of his forepaw. His paw pads didn't make for a comfortable rest, but they were soft enough to provide some support. Darren took great pride in maintaining the soft texture his paw pads had. To be truthful, Darren took pride in everything he did or was. Grooming and trimming his fur was something he did regularly and his claws were filled, clipped and polished nearly every weekend. His hair may have been a mass of black curly wires that closely resembled tentacles, but it was intended to be that way. His mane was non-existent.
The muscular lion pushed a forepaw through his thick mane (which doubled as his hair) and gave his lithe brother an answer "Would you prefer me to drink some beer? Maybe we can stop off at a corner store." His forepaw dropped off of the end of the mane. In looks, the two brother's were similar. Both had hazel eyes and their hair was colored more or less the same. Darren's blonde hair closely resembled the tips of Mason's mane, but Mason had a few more colors mixed in: the blonde became apricot and when it reached his face the apricot became the color of dark orange squash. Finally, towards the top of Mason's mane, there was a tiger orange.
"No don't drink alcohol at all. It's bad for your liver and you're about to go to university. Showing up drunk isn't a good idea." "I'm not going to be drunk. This is my second glass! Besides, Dad made sure that all of the strong wine in the limousine was emptied." Mason held up an empty wine bottle and waved it at Darren. "Still..." Darren pushed his glasses further up his muzzle. Mason's response was crueler than it needed to be, "I see. The little faggot is still thinking about his boyfriend. Might as well give up trying to find him, besides, I crushed the fairy's balls good and proper." Mason laughed, making a fist and waving it in front of Darren's face.
"No you didn't. What you did was beat up a helpless boy who was being friendly." "Last time I checked, raping wasn't friendly." "He didn't rape me!" Darren cried. "I was on top! I made the move! I knew what was going to happen and I knew what I wanted." "And that bastard wanted to sleep with you. He wanted the family's money and he wanted sex, that's all." Mason exclaimed. "You don't know anything about him. You should be locked up in prison for assault and what could have been murder." Darren pointed a finger at his brother and scowled viciously.
Mason wasn't exactly happy about the charges that had been put against him. "Look. I came home to find my brother naked with another guy who I didn't recognize. What else was I going to do? Go upstairs and act like I hadn't seen anything?" "Yes! That's exactly what you should have done. But, no! You have to go charging in before he could explain. It's always fists first for you, isn't it?" "That was one time! And the situation called for violence, what if I he'd tried to take photos of you?" "Then I'd deal with it, without punching in his teeth. And don't say that it was once, you did it on the beach as well. A guy who was clearly gay fell on you and you instantly thought that they were a rapist. But no that wasn't really the cause was it? You're just always looking for an excuse to punch gay people because you hate us."
That was how a full blown fight would erupt between them, but before Mason could launch himself onto his brother, the side door opened. "Masters, we are here." Their driver announced in posh voice that no normal fur would have naturally. "Thank you." Darren scowled at his brother. When he turned to face the wolf, he put on a false smile and handed him a small £50 bill. The driver also faked a smile, £50 wasn't really a good tip in his eyes.
Followed by Mason, Darren went around the back of the limousine to be handed his three suitcases. "Would you like me to take them to your room?" The second wolf asked. The second wolf was smaller and less composed than the first. He was tense around Darren and almost broke out into a sweat when Mason stood in front of him. "No thanks." Darren smiled warmly and leaned forwards to kiss the wolf on the side of his muzzle. Under his fur, the young wolf blushed and shied away from Mason's hostile glare. Mason stepped forwards as if he was about to strangle the wolf for accepting a kiss from Darren.
"Mason, don't you dare lay a finger on him; He's done nothing wrong." Darren warned, "Now tip the man. It's wrong not to give tips." Mason fumbled around in his back pocket. He pulled out £5 in coins and chucked them at the wolf's feet. Darren was down on the pavement without a second though, he picked up the coins quickly and pocketed them. "Sorry about him." Darren apologized and handed a second £50 note to the confused wolf. The wolf's eyes lit up when the money was thrust into his forepaw, "T-thank you." He stammered. Darren smiled once more before turning a full 180 degrees and walking after his brother towards the campus gates.
When the Lyons twins were out of sight, the first wolf smacked the second around the back of the head and scowled. The younger canine whimpered and covered the back of his head in submission. Before he could ask what his mistake had been, the older wolf hissed:
"Don't you ever go kissing a boy again!"
I'm happy with the outcome of this one for once. :) Please do tell me if you've spotted any mistakes.