by Kyell Gold
Dylan dropped his head. “No,” he said.
Tobias waited for more, but the panther stayed silent. “Because, I mean, you haven’t touched me in like, ages.”
“I know.”
The silence between them took an effort to break, like getting up out of a warm, comfortable bed. “So what happened?”
“I’m sorry,” Dylan said, slumped over in his chair.
I should never have started this, Tobias thought. I should’ve just told Marty I’d already talked it over. Wouldn’t everyone be happier that way? I could be lying in bed with him right now, spent, his come all over my paws, maybe in my mouth, and mine on him. Or I could be walking home with the memory of him. Why am I dragging poor Dylan through all this? He started to turn away, and then remembered Marty’s injunction. One last try, Tobias thought. “I just want to know if it’s something I did,” he said.
That didn’t come out quite as he’d intended, but it did at least provoke a response. Dylan shook his head. “It’s not you. It’s me.”
Tobias had seen enough TV to be wary of that one. “What do you mean, it’s you?”
“It’s just me, okay? It’s my problem.”
“Are you breaking up with me?”
Now Dylan lifted his head. “No! Wh—do you want to break up?”
He was staring, close to tears now. Tobias felt answering tears in his throat. “No. I mean, not if you don’t want to.”
Dylan shook his head, lowering it again. “You seemed so understanding about it... I thought you’d have said something. I could tell you weren’t doing anything on your own.”
Not here, at least. Tobias looked away from Dylan, to the curtains drawn over the window. He thought about Marty again, about the fox’s tongue dancing with his own, the warm heat of his erection. He shifted his weight on the cushion. “If I were doing something...somewhere else? Would you want to know?”
This silence wasn’t a comfortable chair. This was the mother of all awkward silences. Dylan cleared his throat and started to talk, then stopped again. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Would you care?”
“Sure.” He replied quickly that time, making Tobias perk his ears up. Dylan looked at him. “I mean, I want you to be happy.”
Tobias leaned back into the loveseat, exhaling. He let the silence wash over them, and then stood. “Okay,” he said. “Look, if you want to come to bed, we don’t have to do anything. Maybe just curl up together?”
Dylan nodded. “Let me just shut this down.”
In bed, the panther comfortably next to him, Tobias relaxed and looked up at the ceiling. His tail rested over Dylan’s stomach, their paws just touching. And he didn’t have to worry about what Dylan wanted, and he didn’t have to worry about when and where he was going to get off. His cock was full of warm arousal, but it wasn’t Dylan’s unavailable paw he needed.
He saw Dylan’s nose twitch. The panther took a breath. “If you’re doing...something...somewhere else.”
Tobias waited. Dylan’s tail brushed his. “God,” Dylan said, “this is so stupid. I wish...” He stopped again.
There was nothing Tobias could say that would help. He stayed quiet, letting Dylan work it out in his head. “If you’re happy,” he said, “with me...”
Tobias held his breath. Dylan exhaled. “If you’re gonna stay here...with me...then I don’t wanna know what else you have to do to be happy.”
Staring at the ceiling, Tobias breathed out slowly. He nodded, and squeezed his boyfriend’s paw, and then he closed his eyes.
How to Get Through the Day
“Bridges” started as a conversation about three-ways. It made me wonder what kind of person would get into a three-way, and then imagine someone who made it a habit. It led to a five-part story that was published in 2010 as part of a new imprint I developed with a couple friends, and it won the Ursa Major award for Best Short Fiction.
I had made a promise to fans, that if we sold enough upon its release so that the publisher had to re-order before the next convention, that I would write a follow-up story, and I let the fans vote on what pairing they wanted to see more of. Overwhelmingly, they wanted to see more of the first couple shown in the story, Fin and Amir, who were set up on a date by the main character of the story, Hayward. So here is the extra story from Bridges, which was included in the electronic edition when it was released in 2011.
[return to TOC]
How to get through the day:
Pills.
Set goals.
Keep your mind busy with something you enjoy.
When people ask how you are, say “Good” rather than “Okay.” Even if you don't feel it.
Do not talk about how you really feel.
Resist the urge to isolate yourself.
Do something good for someone else.
Exercise.
Commend yourself for something you did well today.
Tomorrow will be a good day.
9. Commend yourself for something you did well today.
Fin hung up his vest and touched the sticker on the inside of his closet, reading the words as he did every night. Something you did well today. The swift fox unbuttoned his shirt. It hadn't been a bad day, but it hadn't been a particularly good one. Work was work, a dreary monotony of forms and reports and meetings. There'd been no theater rehearsal. He'd resisted the tempting chocolate chip cookies at lunch. There was that.
He tossed his shirt into the hamper and slid a paw down his side. He could afford a few more cookies, to be honest. The memory of his 220-pound self might be persistent, but it was only a memory. Still, indulgence led to habit, as his counselor used to tell him.
There was the call with Amir, setting up another Hay date for tomorrow. That was an indulgence, but it hadn't yet become a habit. He let his mind linger on the memory of the last one, leaning back in the corner of his couch getting sucked off while watching Amir's muzzle contort as he fucked the slender red fox. Hayward was good with his tongue, and it was fun watching the little fennec top him, too. Fin had made sure to lay down towels on the couch this time, so he didn't have to throw the cushion cover in the laundry after.
When Amir'd gone to clean up, Hayward had asked how much Fin had seen of the fennec, and had chided him gently when Fin said 'a couple times for coffee.' Really, though Fin appreciated the Hay dates, of course, what business was it of his? But the post-orgasmic warmth kept Fin from voicing those thoughts; he merely said things were moving at their own pace, and that he didn't see Hayward complaining about having a regular setup.
Fin slid his pants off and threw them into the hamper as well. He brushed a finger along the outline of his sheath, through his boxers. Neither the memory of last week's Hay date nor the anticipation of tomorrow was stirring it much.
He walked over to his bed. Something you did well today. He wasn't allowed to lie down until he'd come up with something. No cheating.
He'd made a good breakfast. He remembered that now. He'd bought fresh onions yesterday on the way home, had grated fresh cheese, and the omelette had been pretty good. Better than good; he hadn't burned it or made much of a mess. He'd thought that if he didn't do anything else well today, he could count that. In retrospect, it seemed like the most tangible success. Good breakfast, he told himself, and lay down.
10. Tomorrow will be a good day.
Maybe he would try cooking dinner tomorrow, he thought. Hay always wanted to go out to dinner, but Fin could probably talk him and Amir into a home-cooked meal. He could pick up some more fresh vegetables on the way home, maybe a roasted chicken, and he could make a casserole. He hadn't made one of those in a while, just because it was hard to make one small enough for one, and he never finished leftovers.
That sounded good. They'd been out enough times that it would be nice to have a quiet evening at home instead of going out. And he could pick up a pie on the way home. Apple maybe. He didn't know what Hay liked. Although he remembered Amir liked cherries. Cherry pie, then.
Hay probably wouldn't stay for dessert anyway. Fin imagined Hay saying, it depends on what you call 'dessert,' honey. He chuckled and closed his eyes.
1. Pills.
Two small blue pills, a glass of juice. A bowl of cold cereal. Fin was out of eggs, but that was okay. He didn’t have to make an omelet every morning. He sat down at the dining room table, feeling darkly unsettled as he always did until the pills kicked in. It wasn’t a physical sensation, rather a sort of desperation, as though every action he took was a struggle against an enormous pressure to lie down on the floor. He always took the pills first, finding a symbolic comfort in them even before the weight lifted, which usually happened before he finished eating.
The action of dropping the pills on his tongue and picking up his orange juice had taken on the familiarity of a ritual. He swallowed, facing the window. The reflection of his collared shirt and brown vest showed ghostlike over the creeping progress of the sun above the roofs of the buildings across the street. The chill tang of the orange juice faded slowly from his tongue. He picked up his spoon and dipped it into the cereal.
When he was done eating, he sat back in his chair. His tail twitched, then began to swish back and forth.
2. Set goals.
Today he was going to go to the market and get the ingredients for the casserole, but first he was going to have to call Hay and talk the fox into eating a home-cooked meal for once. He had two reports to look over at work, too, but those were routine. Cooking a casserole would be challenging. Talking Hayward into a change in his routine would be, probably, impossible. But then again, you never knew, with Hay. He flitted from one engagement to another with mercurial abandon. If Fin could be persuasive, and not just obdurate, then Hay would be more likely to listen. Fin could do it. He would do it.
3. Keep your mind busy with something you enjoy.
Fin's job as a compliance consultant (more precisely, as a junior member of the four-person compliance consulting company) was not exactly what he would call 'fun.' When he'd started, he had worked with a lot of financial organizations, reading balance sheets and profit/loss statements and forms with identifiers like international phone numbers. Now he was working with hospitals and HMOs, matching their records and procedures against the laws passed in the last year and identifying problem areas.
At least he didn't have to talk to the customers, usually. He was happy enough to stand in the background at presentations and let his boss, a compact arctic fox, handle the client relations. Her name was Chantara, and she was really good at it.
They worked in an open office. The conference room was the only room with a door, and they only met in there when clients visited the office. This morning, when Fin walked in, Chantara lifted her head and shook it so that the four hoops in her ear jingled together.
“Morning, sunshine,” she said, and laughed. “How we coming on the Sacred Heart 1421-790Ks?”
“Should have the eval done today.” Fin was the new guy, the one Chantara and Jake had brought on two years ago when the workload had gotten big enough to warrant it. They appreciated Fin’s reliability and didn’t mind that he was quiet; Fin liked he could work without constant distractions without having to be alone in an office. Sometimes they all went out to lunch, and sometimes they all worked through lunch, and sometimes he and the other junior consultant Eileen went out, and sometimes he went by himself. They never forced him to be social, and as a result he was social more often.
He settled in to his desk to review the 1421-790K, the hospital's form for a doctor to request an exception to the usual process. They had to provide a reason, which could be anything from a patient allergy, to a shortage of the usual drug, to mysterious “singular circumstances.” The compliance officer at Sacred Heart had explained wearily that this last bucket had expanded in the last two years to appear on nearly all of the forms filed, and that many doctors kept stacks of the exception form already filled out with “the doctor feels that singular circumstances require a variance to the usual procedure” as the explanation, to save time. This was causing the hospital a good deal of trouble with the insurance companies, and their client had requested specific attention to this form.
It was not fun, but it was engaging. Today, though, Fin kept finding his thoughts straying from the rows of text to the little laugh Amir gave when Fin joked about something. He wondered if Amir had read Picnic, as he'd said he would. Fin had downloaded an e-book on city planning, which was Amir's graduate program. The swift fox had found himself enjoying the history of it and was looking forward to talking to Amir and getting more detail on what he wanted to do with his degree.
4. When people ask how you are, say “Good” rather than “Okay.” Even if you don't feel it.
He was deep into his analysis when Eileen walked in, humming. “How you doing, Fin?” she asked as she sat down at her desk.
“Good, good,” he said. “You?”
“Dandy.” She sat at her desk, started the computer, and then immediately got up for tea. Fin bent back to his work and never saw her come back.
It took him only a couple hours to finish the part of his work that required him to concentrate, and after that he was just typing up bland descriptions while his mind wandered. Whenever he found idiocies in a company's protocols, he always looked forward to sharing them with his theater buddies. Today, though, he found himself wondering if Amir would enjoy hearing some of them as well.
Sheesh, why was he thinking about the little fennec so much? He knew Hay wanted the two of them to hook up, and Amir doubtless knew it too. But Amir didn't seem to be in any more of a hurry than Fin was. He had his graduate courses to worry about, and Fin had his theater. They'd had coffee a couple times, and the conversation had come haltingly at first, but more easily the longer they talked. Now they had a standing once-a-week coffee break, on Thursdays when Amir's classes got out early.
But before Thursday of this week, there was the Hay date tonight. Fin waited until noon, when Hay would be on his lunch break, and excused himself to the conference room to make the call.
5. Do not talk about how you really feel.
“Darling,” Hay said when Fin called him. “I was hoping you'd call.”
“Oh?” Fin shifted the phone, looking out the window at the park. Snow covered the skeletons of the trees, covered the grass except along the paths where people hurried back and forth.
“Yes, I have sadly had something else come up. I hate to leave you at the last minute, but—”
Fin felt a stir of irritation. “Something else or someone else?”
“Fin.” Hay's voice held a note of reproach. “If you want details, you know you have only to ask.”
“All right. I'll call Amir.”
“Already done, sweetie. He's meeting you tonight at The Gilded Leaf. Seven-thirty, don't be late.”
Fin sighed and didn't say anything. He knew Hay was doing this on purpose to get him and Amir together. He stared at the park, where a lynx was struggling through the snow to get to her car. Hay said, “You're not mad at me, are you?”
“No.” Fin closed his eyes. “It's fine. I'll call Amir.”
“I told you, he's going to meet you.”
“I know, I just want to confirm.”
“You're not going to cancel.” Hay's voice was firm.
“No,” Fin said again. He opened his eyes. The lynx was brushing snow off her car, leaning desperately across the windshield. “I just want to confirm it's okay.”
“All right. I'll catch up with you some other night, okay? Don't be mad at me, Fin dear.”
“I'm not.” The lynx slipped and fell into a snowdrift. She got up, struggling, and brushed snow from her coat. “I'll see you, Hay.”
Fin put down the phone as the lynx finally got into her car. He waited to see if it would start. When the taillights blinked on, he dialed Amir.
“Hi,” the fennec's high voice said. “Hay just called me. If you don't want to do The Gilded Leaf, that's okay.”
&
nbsp; Two wolves were hopping through the park now. The lynx's car drove away. Fin watched the wolves, a young couple who kept wagging their tails and playing in the snow. “I was actually thinking,” he said. “You want to just wait 'til Hay's free?”
Amir didn't answer right away. Fin thought that perhaps he was trying not to be too relieved that Fin had suggested postponing. “No,” Amir said. “I don't.”
“You don't?”
“Let me put it this way.” The fennec sounded more resolute, more serious than Fin had ever heard him. “If you don't want to get together tonight...just with me...then let's just cancel dinners.”
6. Resist the urge to isolate yourself.
Cancel? Fin didn't have to think about it to know how he felt. But how would he say it? Could he bring himself to just blurt it out? How would he do it without sounding stupid?
“Fin?”
“Dinner, you mean? Just this dinner?” Fin said, scrabbling for something to say.
Amir's voice was a little quieter. “What do you think? Still want to get together?”
He could feel the fennec slipping away. If he thought of himself as a character in one of his plays, it was easier for him to say emotional things. “Yes,” the character Fin blurted out. “I do. But...”
“But what?” Amir said, after a moment.
“Would you want to come over and have me cook you dinner?”
When Amir replied, his voice was light again. “I'd like that. I'd like that a lot.”
Fin looked out into the park again. His tail was wagging. “Okay. Seven-thirty?”
“Perfect.”
That single word echoed in Fin’s head, warming him after the phone was hung up. He sat in the chair, tail wagging, and watched people walk through the park and play in the snow.
“You done in here?” Chantara said, knocking as she opened the door. “I need to call Sacred Heart. You can listen if you want. I'm just setting up our meeting for Friday.”