Over Time

by Kyell Gold

  “Hey, this ain’t so bad a life. Get to see all kinds of different places. I been up to Pelagia, out in the mountains around Highbourne, seen the Great Lakes and the Grand Canyon. But the mountains don’t look so pretty when they slow you down, and you just drive the fastest roads over and over so they get real familiar.”

  “And boring.”

  “Kinda.”

  The fox turned to the window on his side and watched the landscape roll by. “You a football fan?”

  “Nah. Guess there was some kind of big game this weekend, though. Couple of the guys were talking about it. You a fan?”

  “Sort of. More a fan of the players.”

  “Heh heh. Any of them…y’know, like us?”

  Argonne flicked an ear and turned back to the wolf. “You don’t know about Miski?”

  The wolf squinted, thinking. “Name sorta rings a bell.”

  “Plays for Chevali. Came out as gay a couple months ago, first player to do that. Then the second one came out just this weekend at the championship game.”

  “We-ell.” Scruffy chuckled. “Maybe I should start watchin’ football, eh?”

  “There are lots of tight asses on display.” Argonne called up his phone. “If you want to see some of their cocks, I have a few pics of those too.”

  “Maybe when we stop.” But the wolf’s tail flicked back and forth. “You hook up with that Miski guy? What is he, anyway?”

  “Tiger. Gorgeous body. Yeah, I didn’t get a pic of him, though. Just a quick blow job to loosen him up before the game.”

  “Wow. What a life.” Scruffy shook his head. “So you go ’round servicing athletes before games and you get…photos?”

  “Photos and stories. And I get…” He curled his tail back and forth. “It’s hard to say, but I get to know something about ’em. Like I get to be a part of a secret in their lives.”

  “Guess I can see that.” Scruffy turned briefly to him with a smile. “That why you blow your way ’cross the country, too?”

  “Nah.” Argonne grinned back. “You’re not famous. I told you, it’s cheaper than paying.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What, you got a line of cute guys waiting to give you blow jobs?”

  The red wolf perked his ears, his smile growing. “Think a lot of y’self, don’t ya?”

  “I’ve seen the competition. And,” he said, stretching his arms over his head and sucking in his stomach, “you didn’t contradict me.”

  “No, I didn’t.” Scruffy reached down to his groin and adjusted himself. “But we got a good four hours to Cactus Point. So why’ntcha tell me a couple of these stories you got?”

  Argonne stretched his legs out. “Well,” he said, “the first time was when the shelter got tickets for a bunch of us to the football game. I slipped away from the rest of the kids and ran into a groupie named Carmen putting on scent. I figured out what she was up to, and asked her if I could tag along…”

  By the dashboard clock, it was 2:13 am when Scruffy pulled the truck off the highway into the rest stop. Argonne, leaning against his passenger door, perked his ears.

  “A’right.” Scruffy reached for his pants. “Ready to take care of business?”

  Argonne glanced out the window. Under a shelter, three vending machines glowed. “Mind if I grab a water from the machine there?”

  “Grab me a Coke while you’re at it. You need cash?” Scruffy held out a pair of ones.

  “Thanks.” Argonne took them and hurried out.

  Minutes later, his muzzle cool and clear, he knelt over the red wolf’s lap in the sleeper behind the seats of the closed truck cab. Scruffy had pushed his pants down and stroked his erection to fullness while Argonne was getting the drinks, and now he lay back on the bunk with his Coke in one paw.

  On his way back to the truck, Argonne had wondered whether Scruffy would let him off without the blow job. They’d exchanged stories and actually had a fun time talking during the four hour ride. Scruffy hadn’t had the experience Argonne had, despite being seven or eight years older; he’d realized he was gay at fifteen but had stayed in New Kestle through high school, then taken the truck driving job where he got about one rider every six months.

  So probably this was his twice-yearly blow job, and he wasn’t going to miss it just ’cause he felt sorry for some kid. And he probably didn’t feel sorry for Argonne anyway; the fox had painted his life in pretty glowing colors. He wasn’t tied down, he got to meet famous athletes, had a lot of sex (careful, he was sure to add), and still had time to figure out what to do with his life.

  And yeah, the guy didn’t have that musky athlete smell. He had more of an “I haven’t taken a bath in a week” smell, which for a canid wasn’t too bad normally, but he also had an “I’ve been eating shitty food for a while and I have bad gas” smell hanging around his fur.

  Argonne had blown guys with worse smells, and that wasn’t going to bother him. Once he got his mouth on a nice warm cock, he was focused on making the guy attached to it buck and arch, to getting that climax in his muzzle. Having someone squirm and make those satisfied noises made it all worthwhile, even if he wasn’t ever going to see the guy again.

  Scruffy was pretty eager, too. Argonne had barely gotten the red wolf’s cock into his mouth, sliding his tongue along its hardness, before a paw clutched at his shoulder and Scruffy let out a long, low moan. “You ain’t jokin’ about bein’ good, son,” he said.

  “Uh-uh,” Argonne replied around the wolf’s length, slipping one paw down to caress the sac that rested on the truck seat.

  The smells vanished, the sounds vanished, and time stood still. All that mattered was getting that affirmation. He tried a few tricks with his tongue and found the one that got Scruffy to gasp; from there it was an easy road to more gasps, to moans, to a tighter clutch of the paw, tension and trembling in the legs, and then, finally, the warmth spattering the back of Argonne’s throat and tongue.

  He gulped, licked a few more times, then slid his muzzle free. Scruffy’s head lay back against the headrest, his tongue lolling out. “Damn, son,” he said. “You c’n ride with me whenever you damn well want.”

  “Need a tissue?” Argonne reached into the pocket of his jacket, opening his water bottle with the other paw. He looked around the small sleeper area out of the cab out of reflex, at the little things that made up Scruffy’s life. No photos of home, like some truckers had. Lots of pictures of places he’d been, some thriller books and newsy magazines, some empty Coke cans, and a suitcase.

  “Thanks.” Scruffy took it and cleaned himself up, then pulled his pants up and swung his legs off the bunk. “Give me a minute. Okay. Right. Cactus Point coming up.”

  They rolled on down the highway another twenty minutes to a truck stop, lit up with green and red signs and a dozen fuel stations stretching behind. Scruffy pulled into one and reached out a paw as Argonne opened his door. “Pleasure riding with you,” he said. “If I’m passin’ through Chevali, I’ll look you up.”

  “Likewise.” Argonne shook the wolf’s paw. Neither of them had asked for phone numbers.

  He used the restroom and then walked out into the chilly desert night. The moon high above in the clear sky gave plenty of light for him to see the gentle hills and scrub all around, the same he’d seen four hours ago, the same he would see three hours down the road until the glow of Chevali stained the horizon.

  When Scruffy had taken that truck job, he hadn’t been much older than the young red fox who’d met a groupie named Carmen, who’d been taken into a hotel room and been presented with a professional football player’s cock for the first time. Now it was almost ten years later for the red wolf, and he was still driving around the country looking for something or running away from something. Maybe he couldn’t see that that was what he was doing, but it was plain to a clever young fox.

  And for the first time in two years, that fox was discovering with some surprise a sense of relief that the football season was over. Not three nigh
ts ago he’d been smiling at Closet Smith’s orgasm, proud that he could still get that fox to come so easily, waiting for the customary gruff dismissal.

  But that goddamn tiger had soured everything, finished Argonne’s season on an incomplete note. He’d even texted Smith a couple nights later to see if he needed him one more time. No answer.

  So here he was in a truck stop in Cactus Point with the off-season stretching out ahead of him. Oh, there were training camps and mini-camps and workouts; it would only be a few months before his phone was buzzing again. The last two Januarys, he’d viewed these months as a chance to improve his wardrobe, make new connections, get back to the football players with even more to offer.

  Now he wondered: In exchange for what? A few photos, a few stories? How many dick pics would be enough? Was he waiting to get a superstar in his mouth? And what then?

  Scruffy had filled up his truck and used the restroom, and raised a paw toward Argonne as he walked back out to his truck. The fox waved back and smiled as the red wolf adjusted his pants. It did make him feel good to leave guys with pleasant memories of him.

  They didn’t have to be football players, though, did they? It might’ve been the challenge that made it better, but that was gone. Closet Smith had been the first one to ask for a phone number, to text him and ask to meet up, and that had been thrilling at first too. Now the prospect of jumping up to answer one of his texts like a tame bird filled Argonne with distaste.

  Fuck him, and fuck Miski, and fuck that whole team. He was glad they’d lost. Bunch of assholes.

  Well, he had a few months to figure out what to do next. There had to be something better out there, and if he found it by June, he could tell Closet Smith to go suck his own cock. If not…he’d see how he felt when the message came.

  That resolution felt good. He smiled up at the stars and breathed in the diesel fumes in the chilly night. Sunrise was getting closer every minute, and he had to get home. So the fox adjusted his scarf and pride necklace and settled back against the wall, swishing his tail, waiting to see who’d come out of the truck stop next.

  Part II

  Part 1

  2

  Repair (Dev)

  Hal needs to fix the cracks in his office ceiling. I lie staring up at them and then the inside of a chocolate-brown ear blocks them from my view, followed by russet red fur and then a pair of blue eyes. I squint and re-focus, meeting the eyes as I run my paws down the naked body of their owner, feeling the warm and sleek muscled curves. His weight on me is a good pressure, like the weight of my own muscles following a workout or a football game, and the blue of his eyes is the color of a cloudless sky in summer stretching from one horizon to the other.

  I stare up and feel like time has stopped. The concept doesn’t bother me. If there’s been any point in my life where I’d happily just hover forever, it’s here, coming down from some pretty amazing make-up sex, with the fox I love on top of me. I don’t have to think about what happened yesterday or two weeks ago, or what might happen tomorrow or even in five or ten minutes. I’m here in this moment, my heart full of love and peace.

  The blue eyes blink. “Time to talk now?” Lee murmurs, his voice vibrating against my chest.

  Time starts again. His breath ruffles my whiskers, and I snap back to reality, to the fox’s face above mine, all the details of his red and white fur, his long whiskers, and the slit pupils in his blue eyes. I’ve seen him so much in my imagination since we fought, but nothing, nothing replaces the solid reality of him, the creases in the fur around his eyes where he smiles at me, the sharp strong scent of him in my nostrils.

  I’m lazy from post-sex haze, warm down in my sheath, and the memory of our lovemaking insists that I keep this conversation at a distance. I don’t want to rip the scabs off of our relationship just yet, and yet I want to have this talk with him. Sex is only half of what I’ve missed while we’ve been apart. The ache for someone to talk to, to share the highs and lows of life with, is almost as strong as my pent up physical urges. My arms lie tight across his back, holding him to me as though he might float away up through one of the cracks in the ceiling. “I think we need to fuck again,” I say. “I don’t have two weeks of frustration out of me yet.”

  He laughs and kisses my nose with a soft brush of his tongue. “My, my.”

  “I’m serious,” I say, and the words spill out of me, giving voice to that ache in my chest. “You know how much stress I’ve been under? Not just the championship game, but losing it in the last minute, and defending Strike to the team and going on a double date with him…”

  “Wait, what?” His eyes focus in on me now. “Okay, tell me about this double date.”

  So I keep my paws on his hips, take a breath, and tell him how Lightning Strike, our egocentric star wide receiver, went out with the actress from the beer commercial I did with him, “and you know he had all that tantric bullshit about not having sex during the season, but he had his paws all over her tits and he went back to her place,” and how she brought a gay snowshoe hare friend who I shared a milkshake with after the fancy dinner at the exclusive Crystal City restaurant.

  Lee narrows his eyes. “Is that a euphemistic milkshake?”

  I don’t think he’s really pissed at me. “Probably. I think it said that on the menu.”

  The corners of his mouth twitch. “I mean—”

  “I know what you mean, doc.” I squeeze him. “No, it was a real milkshake, and he gave me his phone number, but only in case I wanted to talk about…gay problems with him. He has an on-again, off-again boyfriend and I think he wanted to be able to tell him he went on a date with a football player.”

  He relaxes, but this is close enough to the thing I do have to tell him that I better do it now. I get the words out fast. “But I did have another guy’s paws on my cock.”

  The smile freezes and fades, and he swallows, and then nods. “I guess you had the right to,” he says, but his voice is dull. “Was he good?”

  “His muzzle, too,” I say, “but I didn’t come. I stopped.”

  He doesn’t say anything, so I go on, aware of his sheath pressed against my stomach, mine against his thigh. “It was Argonne, the groupie who reminds me of you.”

  “Was it because he reminds you of me?”

  “Yeah.” I bite my lip.

  He drops his muzzle into the crook of my neck and exhales. “Why did you stop?”

  “Uh. Because he’d just blown someone else on the team and I smelled it on his breath.”

  That brings his head up again and his voice regains some passion. “Who was it? Could you tell?”

  “Yeah.” I probably shouldn’t tell him, but I think, selfishly, that he’ll be excited and I can win points with him if I do. “It was Colin. Can you believe that?”

  He blinks and then nods slowly. “It’s kind of stereotypical, right? The homophobe is the one getting the secret blow jobs?”

  “Yeah. I just wish he wasn’t a fox. I think…” I rub my paws down Lee’s fur and rest them on his rear again. “Well, I yelled at him in the locker room.”

  “The locker room.” He raises his eyebrows.

  “The shower, actually.”

  “I see.”

  “We weren’t naked. Anyway, he doesn’t view it as cheating on his wife because he thinks it’s not real sex. So I threaten him because I treat what we do as real.”

  Lee’s paws find my sides and hold me, but he doesn’t say anything. I rub at the small of his back. “You’re not mad at me? For letting Argonne—”

  He brings one paw to my lips. “I’m not that mad,” he says. “But you don’t need to keep talking about it. If I’m around, do you want to see him again?”

  “No. Even if you’re not.” I pause. “Are you going to be around?”

  His paws slide down my sides, gentle, conscious of my rib injury, which to be honest isn’t all that bad, not now, not with him here. “I think that’s one of the things we should talk about,” he says. “I want
to be,” he hurries to add. “But I want to make sure we can be together without…you know, without betraying who we are.”

  “I’m pretty sure we can do that.”

  “Yeah, well,” he nuzzles me. “I just watched my parents end a twenty-five year marriage, so forgive me for being a little skittish about things.”

  “Did you hear from your mother?” The words are out before I can stop them, and then I laugh and rub his rear. “Sorry. You don’t have to answer that until we get clothes back on.”

  “Yeah.” He nips at my neck, and reaches back with one paw to drag claws up my sheath, which makes me shiver. “I think most of the stuff I need to tell you is better done with clothes on.”

  “Sorry about saying my stuff,” I say, only I’m not really, and he’s getting me hard again.

  His paw rubs more firmly into my hardness. “I’m not. I mean, I’m just going to make damn sure you remember how much better I am than any other fox, or any hare, or Strike’s big-chested girlfriend…”

  I squirm and press a finger down his rear through the lube-slickened fur until I find his entrance, which is still slick enough for that finger to slide into easily. “I think it’s time to stop talking and fuck again,” I say.

  He pants, and thrusts his cock into my stomach fur. “I think you’re right, stud,” he says.

  This time, I kneel and he sits in my lap. With some adjustments, he wraps both legs around me, and I thrust up and into him. Just like twenty minutes ago, I want to crush him against me and never let go.

  He moves up and down, slender muscled body against my chest, warm rear around my cock. I reach between us and wrap my paw around his sticky shaft, finding it as ready as I was. My other arm holds him against me by his back, and both his arms lock around my neck. I’m amazed all over again at how light he feels against me, how natural, like a part of me that had been missing for two weeks.

  In this position, he’s very slightly taller than me and gets to look down, which I think he’s enjoying. Above and beyond the tiger cock in his rear and the paw on his shaft, that is. Because we both just came recently, the buildup to orgasm is slow and languid, until we reach the tipping point, and then I squeeze him and rasp harshly into his shoulder, pulling him tight against me and shoving my hips hard up against him, my shaft all the way inside as I shudder and come again. Once I’ve finished, I stroke him until he twists against me and clings to my neck and cries out, adding another spurt of stickiness to my paw and his sheath.