by Kyell Gold
He shows no signs of getting up, though he does stir when I brush his morning erection. I decide to let him sleep. It’s been a long two weeks and a difficult, exhausting couple of days. But we got through it.
The sparkle of glass in the morning light catches my eye. I slip out of bed and pad over—carefully—to clean up the picture and the shattered glass. I get as many shards as I can and pad out to the kitchen to dump them in the trash. Probably should’ve put on clothes or at least an apron before I did this, but oh well. It’s done now, and I don’t have cuts on my pads or any other sensitive exposed areas.
The sensitive area is actually a little less exposed now. Cleaning up glass is not very sexy, so my erection has retreated into my sheath to await a call to action. Meanwhile, the picture frame is intact, so I take it into the kitchen, make sure I have all the glass out of it, then replace it on the dresser. The fox in the picture, lying on the cushion with his erection playfully displayed in a paw, smiles back at me. Looking at him, it’s hard not to believe that everything will be okay.
Of course, the fox in that picture was looking forward to moving in with his boyfriend, never believing that he’d run out in three months. If you’d told that fox that his boyfriend would be in the championship and he’d be watching it on TV, he’d be incredulous.
Then he’d ask what he’d done to fuck it up.
I look away from the photo and back to the real tiger, here and now. Short term, I need to work through the things he told me. It bothers me more than I wanted to let on that he slept with someone else—yeah, he didn’t come in the guy’s mouth, but when his cock was all the way in there, does it make a difference whether he finished?
Of course it does, I tell myself. He stopped it partway through, realized it was wrong. (Not because of you, though, I argue back.) I can flagellate myself for walking out; if I’d been there in Crystal City then he wouldn’t have been tempted to fuck some other fox. But if I’d been there in Crystal City, I know we’d have been arguing, and that would’ve been just as bad, or worse. We have to figure out a way to keep our passions under control, or at least not turn them against each other.
And Dev’s going to be on the road, and I’m going to be working for another football team. There’ll be more star-fuckers looking to hook up, probably a lot of them foxes since everyone knows he likes foxes (one fox, I remind myself with a little bit of preening). I’ve just told him that I wasn’t that upset that he almost cheated on me; of course, we were “on a break.” But how’s that going to make him feel the next time? Maybe the draft’s coming up and I’m stuck in the Yerba offices and he goes out to the clubs…or I’m away at the combine and he’s bored and he and his teammates are hanging out….
I stare down at him on the bed and picture another fox lying in the space beside him. Cold fingers grip my heart and I shake the image away. No. I have to trust him.
So I occupy the space beside him and drive away my imaginings. I rest my paw on his shoulder and kiss his neck, and that makes me feel better. But only a little. Because the problem doesn’t come when I’m here, when I’m loving him and being a good boyfriend. The problem comes when I’m an asshole, when I walk out on him, when I leave him alone. If I could be that fox lounging in the glassless frame all the time…but below the sexy and attractive surface of the picture there is a lot of ugliness: vanity, mistrust, insecurity.
Dev snorts sleepily and turns, but doesn’t wake. I’m still too awake to just lie here next to him, and the specter of the other fox is gone for now, so I put coffee on and then curl up on the couch. I plan to call Hal, but there’s a voicemail on my phone that must have come in sometime yesterday.
“Hi, Mister Farrel,” a young male voice says. There’s a whistle in his voice, so maybe a rabbit or squirrel? “My name is Elmsley Chatten, and I’m with the Chevali Firebirds…”
Another job offer? Did they hear I was hired by Yerba?
“I’m sorry to have been so late getting in touch with you, but I’m brand new here, just taking over from Lake. Did you ever talk to Lake? Anyway, you weren’t on the list of player wives but I’ve read about you, and Vince had your number, so I wanted to call you and introduce myself. Which, ah, I did. So I’m Elmsley and this is my number. If you have any problems with…with Devlin, or, you know, with any of the team, please call me first and we’ll try to work it out. Okay? Call me if you have any questions.”
O-kay. That was a little weird, but I guess not completely so. At least he explained where he’d gotten my number from. I wondered if this was something that was brand new, or if the previous person—Lake, was it?—just hadn’t ever contacted me because I’m not female.
Well, I don’t need to call Elmsley just yet. So I go ahead with my original plan and call Hal.
“By the state of my shower,” he says when he picks up, “and the smell in the office, I’m gonna say your date went better’n mine.”
“Did yours not go well?” I ask quietly.
“It went okay, but I didn’t stay the night.” He chuckles dryly. “What d’you think? Things going to work?”
“They worked pretty well.” I grin, resting a paw on my tail. “We tested them a few times.”
“What’d I tell you about details?”
I lean against the sofa back and laugh, rubbing the arm where weeks ago, an age ago, Dev pushed me back and jerked me off. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. No hurry on returning those sheets, either.”
“I’ll wash ’em today. But I mean it. Thank you, not just for last night, but for—y’know, for letting me stay with you and for not letting me give up on us.”
He coughs, or scoffs. “Ah, you wouldn’ta given up. Not in your nature. As for the rest of it, well, you got me into the championship game party at Yerba and I made a couple connections there and had a great time. So let’s say we call it even.”
“It’s hardly even. I owe you…” I can’t even think of what to say.
“How about we call it even and say that in the future we do what friends do when other friends need something from them?”
“All right,” I say. “So things with Pol are good?”
“We got another date.” He sounds pleased. “At this stage, I just want every date to end with ‘see you next time.’”
“Glad to hear it,” I say. “Hope there keeps being a next time.”
“Hey.” He taps his phone with his claws. “Come to think of it, there is something you might be able to do. I don’t wanna get you in trouble or nothing, but I know you were talkin’ to Kingston’s wife about visiting them soon. If you could scope out whether Kingston would be willing to talk for the story I’m doing…that’d really give it a boost.”
I drop my tail and go a little cold. “Fisher? Uh, well…”
“I know you’re friends,” he says. “I don’t wanna mess with that. But maybe if the Firebirds cut him, if he can’t catch on anywhere else next year, maybe he’ll want to talk about it.”
“Free agency is a month away.”
“I can wait a month.”
I take a breath. “Okay. I’ll see what I can do. But I think even if the Firebirds release him, even if nobody picks him up, he might want to wait and see if anyone needs him in pre-season. Guys get injured, you know? Teams might want a veteran.”
“Lee.” Hal’s patient. “Don’t screw up your friendship, and don’t press him if he doesn’t want to. But can you figure out if he might?”
“Yeah, sure.” I relax.
“Honest, the story’s going to work either way. But with a player just coming off the championship game—a game where he got injured—it’d grab a lot more eyeballs.” He clears his throat. “A lot more.”
“Those contacts in Yerba, do they know what kind of story you’re writing?”
“Believe it or not, some of the guys running teams want this stuff out there. The owners, the suits up top, they want it to go away. They want to expand the league in a year or two, and they think if the pub
lic’s worried about long-term injuries to players, they’ll lose some of the millions and billions they stand to make. But the guys running the teams, the ones who see firsthand what this does to players, they think the sooner it gets talked about, the sooner we make the game safer.”
“Huh. Well, I’m all for that.” I think about Dev in the next room, wondering what damage might already be done below that tough exterior.
“You should be.”
My tail curls around me, and my gaze stays on the door of the bedroom. “Dev’s never had a concussion. He plays smart, with his head up.”
“One of the things the docs are telling me in this article,” Hal says slowly, “is that with the head, it ain’t just the big hits. It’s all the little ones, some that might not even register. They accumulate over time. The one that causes the concussion might not even be that bad.”
That fits with what happened to Fisher, but I don’t say anything about that, wary of even the slightest mention of his situation until I get permission. The other thing complicating Fisher’s situation is his use of illegal substances to speed his recovery. In my mind, I roll around a question about whether steroids could make a guy more likely to suffer a concussion, but Hal’s a sharp fox and he would understand what that meant immediately.
So I just say again that I’ll ask Fisher. Hal thanks me and then says, “Good luck with Dev. I think you guys got a real shot.”
“Thanks.” I smile. “We just have to figure out how we deal with life, you know? I don’t think it’s likely to throw a shitstorm at us like it did this year, but we can’t just ignore how we responded to that.”
“The more you stay together, the better you can deal with it.”
I think of him and his ex-wife, divorced after about ten years; about my parents, divorced after twenty-five. My tail uncurls to hang down to the floor. “Maybe.”
“Definitely.” That dry chuckle again. “Just the shitstorms get bigger. You think a little argument about whether to film some gay rights spot is bad? Try arguing over cubs.”
“I know, I know,” I say, “though I have to add in his brother and my mother and Vince King and…yeah, I know, compared to the issue of having a family, it’s different.”
“At least you don’t have to worry too much about that yet. He’s got football, and if you want a cub, I’m sure he’d support you, but you’ve got football too.”
I hear rustling from the other room. “We have years to talk about it,” I say. “Hey, speaking of which, sort of, I got a weird call yesterday…” I tell him about the call from Elmsley. “You know this guy? Or Lake?”
Hal clears his throat. “Don’t know any Elmsley. But Lake…I think he was the lion worked with Vince the media guy behind the scenes. He’d try to smooth things over with the wives when they caught their guy cheating or something. So maybe this guy is the new Lake.”
“What happened to Lake?”
“No idea,” Hal drawls. “But if you’re on that list, that legitimizes you, don’t it?”
“I guess so. I’m glad they reached out, but I’m also wondering why now.”
“New guy, new philosophy. Maybe Lake wasn’t so keen on your relationship. Or maybe he was leavin’ his job and didn’t feel like reaching out to someone new. Dev didn’t say anything?”
“No.” I glance toward the bedroom and rest my free paw over my sheath. “But I should get back to him.”
“What,” Hal says, “you’re not in bed right now?”
“Would I do that to you?” I ask innocently. “Again, I mean?”
He snorts, tells me to arrange a time for us to have lunch or dinner, and hangs up.
Carrying my phone, I slip off the couch and pad back to the bedroom. Dev is in the same position I left him, but his gold eyes shine up at me in the darkened room.
“Who were you talking to without any clothes on?” he rumbles.
I set the phone by the naked picture of myself. “Hal.”
“Again?” He shifts and reaches out a paw. “Would’ve come out if I’d known.”
And just like that, my nakedness is sexy again. I step into his paw and he pulls me to the bed, and his fingers trace my body through the fur and he kisses me, and the conversation with Hal goes to where all the other nonessential thoughts go.
Later, as we’re washing each other off in the shower, those thoughts filter back through the pleasant ritual. “Hey, Gena asked if I’d call when we got back,” I say, scrubbing shampoo into Dev’s back while he leans against the wall.
“Mm.” He half-turns. “I haven’t checked up on Fish. Probably should.”
“Also,” I say, “Hal asked me to feel out Fisher to see if he’d want to be interviewed for that story he’s writing.”
He tenses under my paws and then relaxes. “You’re not going to demand that he talk or anything.” It’s not a question, nor is it a command. He’s talking out his reaction. His tail lashes against my legs, and I keep my paws on his back. “You’re just going to see if he’s open to it.”
“Uh-huh.” I resume scrubbing, and slide up a little closer behind him. “Hal understands that we’re friends first and he says that while it would help his story a lot—and help the league, ultimately, because it would draw attention to a problem—he doesn’t want to insist. But he’s a journalist. He can’t leave an opportunity like that unexplored.”
“Mmm.” He stretches as I scrub down to his rear and legs. “All right. Leave me out of it, though.”
The words hang there, and then he turns and looks down at me. “I should say: do you need my help? Do you want to do this together?”
I reach up and give his sheath an affectionate squeeze. “Thanks, tiger. No, I think it’s best if you stay out of it. If Fisher wants to talk to you about it, just be honest. This isn’t my crusade and I’d rather keep our friendship than steal information to report to Hal.”
“Fair enough.” He takes the shampoo as I stand and applies it to my fur, strong fingers pressing through my winter coat to my muscles. “And Gerrard wants to hold workouts after a week or so.”
“A week?” I stretch and close my eyes to focus on his paws.
“Maybe two.”
When my wet tail wags, that’s a workout, dragging all that water around. “Want to come to Yerba with me and look for a place to live?”
Now his paws still, right there on my sides above my hips, holding on to me. “You got the official word?”
“Well, no. But Peter said if I didn’t hear today, to give him a call. It’s pretty much done.”
His fingers squeeze. “I just got used to you living here.”
I reach down to cover one of his paws in mine. “I know. But I can’t commute from Chevali. I mean, I guess I could, if you want to pay my plane fare and get up with me at five a.m. to catch the flights…”
“No, I know.” He goes back to soaping. “At least we’ll get a little time together.”
“We’ll have more than a little. We’ve gotten through two and a half years living separate, and Yerba’s closer than Hilltown.”
His paws regain some of their life as they move down my legs. “That’s true. Hey, Polecki said he and his boyfriend fool around during halftime of their games.”
I turn and grin down at him as he finishes with my feet. “You want me to come down during halftime next time you play Yerba?”
“Maybe.” He flashes a grin up. “Doesn’t seem to’ve hurt Polecki.”
We rinse, and Dev says, “Oh,” as I’m wringing out my tail. I look at him and his ears are down. “There’s another thing.”
“About Polecki?” I rinse my paws and shut off the water.
“No.” He leans against the wall of the shower. “The job you were offered with the Firebirds.”
“What, the one you asked them to offer me?”
He looks startled. “Who told you?”
I reach out my arms and hug him. “You did, just now. But I guessed. I mean, why else would they call me out of the blue? Th
e Firebirds barely know I exist. They only got around to having their player relations liaison person or whatever call me yesterday.” He doesn’t know what to say, so I poke my nose at his chest. “Plus, when I told you I wasn’t taking it, you looked like I’d returned a Christmas present you got me.”
“Yeah, uh…” He hugs back and presses his nose between my ears. “I thought it was a good solution and I was being sneaky. Like you.”
“Yes, that’s kind of what I figured.” I smile and step back. “I mean, I wish you’d told me, and I was upset at first that you were going behind my back.”
“If I’d told you, you would’ve thought that I was doing it just to get you out of my fur, or like, implying you couldn’t get a job yourself, or something.”
“Well?” I flick my ears, spraying his muzzle with drops of water.
He shakes his head, his whiskers still dripping. “Yeah,” he admits. “Some of that, I guess. But I just wanted you to be happy and you were driving me crazy.”
My smile falters, because now I’m going around from “he did a dumb thing” to “I drove him to do a dumb thing,” and it’s back to being my fault. But I keep my ears up and say, “I know. I’m sorry. It’s cool.”
“Really?”
I slide the shower door open behind me and step out. “Yeah. A lot of stuff happened in the last month and we’re still sort of processing it. Compared to almost sleeping with someone else…” His ears flatten. “Or, y’know, walking out on you…that’s pretty minor. I think.”
“All right.” His ears come back up. “What’s this player liaison guy thing?”
I hold his towel out to him. “I guess the phone was off. He left a message.” I tell him about Elmsley, and what Hal said about Lake.
“Huh,” he says, rubbing his head dry. “If you need to call him, go ahead and do that.”
“I’ll tell you first.” I hold a paw over my chest, fingers flat against the damp fur. “Promise.”
“Speaking of family drama…” He rubs his head dry and meets my eyes. “I’m going to call Gregory.”
