by Kyell Gold
“That supposes I’ll be living here for a while.”
“I have confidence in you.” He sips the coffee. “I don’t see why you don’t like this.”
I stick my tongue out. “I could always rent for the first year and then buy.”
“What did your dad tell you?”
“He wants me to buy, but he also wanted me to graduate college. Some things aren’t realistic.”
A smile creases his striped muzzle. “I like that I’m the one with a college degree.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll go back and finish it sometime. When Professor Shithead dies.”
He snorts and takes another drink of coffee. “I liked the second apartment. It had a nice big patio.”
“The first one was closer to the downtown.”
“And how often are you going to be home and able to walk down there?”
“I walked lots of places from your apartment in Chevali.”
It had all been very comforting, this talk of me being busy with a job and Dev visiting, and then I had to go and bring up the time I walked out on him. My good mood fades and I bury my nose in my tea.
“Well,” he says after an awkward pause, “the third one was cheap and functional.”
“Hey,” I say, “while we’re thinking about how busy I’m going to be all the time, what do you want to do tonight?”
“Dinner?”
“And after?”
He leans forward and makes a low purr in his throat. I shift in my seat. “Okay, and before that?”
“Does there have to be something between bed and dinner?” He waggles his eyebrows.
As tempting as it is to think about rolling around with him in bed, I kind of want to unwind a little and I feel like going out with him. “How about some dancing?”
“You mean going back to Korsat Street?” He frowns. “Isn’t that sort of out of the way?”
“Yeah.” I lean back in my chair and uncurl my tail, swishing it to fluff it out. “I could use a little unwinding after this week.”
“But dancing?”
“Sure.” I lean forward and widen my smile so my cheeks fluff up. “I want to go out with you and I don’t feel like finding a new place to go where we can dance together.”
“Aw. Yeah, okay.” His smile gets pretty wide and he taps a rhythm out on the table, matching the music that’s going throughout the shop. “I’m still not that good a dancer, though.”
“Hey, neither am I. We’ll just have to watch the people who are good. Can’t you take lessons from Ty or something?”
“There’s not a lot of time during football season. Mostly our lessons are focused on, you know, winning games.” He finishes his coffee. “So where’s dinner?”
Dinner is a really nice Sonoran place, which I pick even though we have a lot of them in Chevali. It’s a fusion kind of place, so the food might not be authentic, but it’s really good, blue corn tortillas and octopus ceviche and lamb shank marinated in Muscat wine wrapped in banana leaves and carnitas, which I know is traditional but this one has a different kind of salsa with it than what we get at the taquerias in Chevali.
Dev is wary at first, but he trusts me and soon enough is devouring everything and ordering seconds. We’re pretty stuffed by the time we stagger out to the car. “You sure you want to go dancing still?” Dev asks.
“We’ve got to work out that meal somehow.” I elbow him. “Since you don’t have workouts anymore. Come on, I’ll drive.”
And actually, as it takes us half an hour to get up to Korsat Street and about twenty minutes to find a place to park, we’re feeling more able to dance by the time we roll up to The Floor, the club we went to last time. Because it’s Friday night, there’s a bunch of people waiting to get in. “Can’t we just walk in?” Dev asks, following me to the back of the line.
“It moves fast, and I’m not trying to impress your friends this time.” I tug him back into line. “Besides, this way we attract less attention.”
“I guess that’s a good thing.” He still fidgets as we shuffle our way forward.
It takes us only about fifteen minutes to get to the door. The bouncer is a big polar bear, and I think it’s the same one we had last time. Sure enough, when Dev gets up to him, he says, “Wait. Miski? You know you can just come right to the door, right? Owner’s orders.”
“Didn’t want to presume.” Dev glares at me.
“You should be grateful,” I say after we thank the bouncer and walk in. “Now you look like a nice guy.”
Dev’s reply is lost in the rapid percussion and shouted conversations of The Floor. It takes me a moment to adjust to the rainbow strobes and fog of noise, but the gyration of bodies is familiar, and as soon as I see it, I get excited.
It’s not that I’m a great dancer. I danced a bit in college, then gave it up when I started dating Dev, mostly because I didn’t have anyone to go with anymore. When I went with the football team a few months ago, I had a lot of fun, although I lost sight of that in the enjoyment of setting up Vonni to get a blow job from a star-struck leopard femme. Well, I meant it for Ty; how was I to know the married guy would swoop in?
Anyway, it’s a part of gay culture I hadn’t lived in for a while and it was fun, so I was excited to come back with Dev when I could just enjoy it. There weren’t too many moments like that with the playoff pressure and then our problems, and maybe I originally thought that coming back here would, like, reconnect us or something. But now it seems like a great ending to a great evening, another way to clear away the stress of the last few days, to give us a glimpse of a more or less normal life together. Once I’m living here, maybe we can come here regularly.
We both dance stiffly at first, trying to loosen up. It takes him about twenty minutes and most of a beer before his smile becomes genuine and his movement gets more of that fluid grace he has on the football field. I match his energy, glad he’s enjoying himself.
A couple guys dance up near us and one puts his paw on my tail. Dev scares him away pretty quick with a glare that melts into a smile once the guy’s gone. Then he takes my paws and spins me around, and we keep on dancing.
“All right,” he says when we take a break. “This was a good idea. I’m having fun. The music is pretty good, and I’m not worried about how my teammates are going to react.”
I laugh and lean back against the bar, my muzzle right up against his shoulder so we can hear each other. “It’s really nice to have time with you away from your team. Although here, there’s a lot of big guys around. Check out that horse. He’s not much smaller than Charm.”
He shakes his head. “No way. Charm’s got better shoulders and his mane’s different. Now, let’s see…oh, that fox over there could be on our team. He reminds me of Ty. His ears have those narrower points and he kinda moves like…”
He trails off. I follow his gaze and see a tall fox tearing it up with a shorter wolf. They’re part of the thickest crowd, over by the DJ, and the only reason they stand out is because the fox is so tall. He shakes his head back and forth, and then a bright yellow light catches him as he turns in profile.
Dev makes a noise, and when I turn to look at him, he’s just staring. “It’s not Ty, is it? Dev?”
“I…I’m not sure...” He frowns.
“He does know the club, and maybe he’s in Yerba to talk to the team or something? Does he live around here?” I watch the fox. I don’t know Ty as well as Dev does, so I have no idea if this tall fox is him or not. He’s got on a silk shirt that gleams under the lights, and a low-collar tank top underneath it. The wolf has on a similar shirt but a darker t-shirt under it, and something that glitters around his neck.
“I don’t think so. He’s from around Pelagia.” He keeps staring. “Wait, it’s not him. No, it is. It definitely is.”
“We should go say hi.” I start to walk toward the fox, until Dev grabs my shoulder and pulls me back.
“No. If he doesn’t want people to know he’s here, then I don’t want to go over.”
&n
bsp; I fall back into my spot right next to him. “He doesn’t know you’re here. Okay, fine, wait until he sees you then.”
So we stand by the bar and watch Ty, or the fox who looks a lot like him, as he and the wolf dance through that song, their shirts flowing around them the way their tails do (at least when I get a glimpse of them through the crowd). At the end of a song, they walk toward the bar, and I’m waiting for them to look our way, but they’re deep in conversation, laughing and bumping each other back and forth, and then the fox grabs the wolf and kisses him on the lips.
“I guess it’s not him,” I say to a staring, silent Dev.
And then the fox looks up from the kiss and sees Dev. He freezes on the dance floor, and even a wily fox can’t hide the shock of recognition. The wolf says something to him, then looks ahead, and recognition dawns there, too, if a little slower.
“What the fuck is going on?” Dev growls beside me.
We find a corner that is marginally less loud than the rest of the club. Ty and the wolf, who introduces himself as Arch, get beers while Dev and I point out where we’ll be.
“If he was fucking gay this whole time and didn’t say anything, if he let me take all of that and all this time he could’ve…”
“Maybe he just hooked up when we went to the club? Or just came back and…” I struggle.
“He asked me if I was on top!”
I fold my ears down. “What?”
“Ty! He was the one—one of the ones—who said ‘you’re the guy, right?’ He was all worried about who was doing the fucking.” He growls. “I’m pretty sure it was him…I guess it might’ve been Vonni.”
“Okay, look.” I put a paw on his arm. “Let him talk. Don’t get all worked up like this. It’s probably really hard for him.” I’m thinking of the other teammate of Dev’s that I know is gay, the bear Kodi. If this is how Dev reacts to Ty, I can’t imagine how he’d have reacted if Kodi had told him, which I’m assuming Kodi hasn’t, because Dev hasn’t said anything to me about it.
“He’s probably ducking out the back.” Dev stares in the direction of the bar. “He’s probably not even going to come over.”
But Ty does come over, with Arch trailing behind him, and they set down their beers. There’s a moment of silence, or at least of uninterrupted club noise, and then Ty takes a breath. “Hey, Dev. Didn’t know you were in town.”
“Lee got a job here with the Whalers. I was looking at apartments with him.” Dev’s voice is low and hard to hear over the music. “I didn’t know you were here, either.”
“Right.” Ty looks down. “You won’t tell anyone else on the team, will you?”
Dev’s ears don’t come up and his brow stays lowered. “I’m not here with anyone else on the team.” He realizes that doesn’t really answer the question and catches himself. “I won’t tell them.”
“Thanks.” The other breathes out and grins, and his eyes flick over to the wolf. “So, uh, this. I met Arch when we came here in December. We talked—just talked—and after the game I hung out with him a bit more. And we just kept texting, and look, it was because I knew you that I thought hey, what’s the harm in trying?”
“Trying? What are you trying?” Dev leans forward. “Trying being gay?”
I catch Arch’s eye. He’s relaxed, doesn’t seem offended. So it’s not serious between them. Ty confirms that a second later.
“I’m not gay.” The wolf stays quiet, but Ty’s ears and eyes flick toward him. He clears his throat. “Maybe a little bi. I like girls, but it turns out I don’t mind doing stuff with the right guy either. Arch is pretty cool, but I haven’t been, like, checking out other guys or anything here.”
“Oh, my fluttering heart,” the wolf says.
“So this has been going on since December?” Dev’s still worked up, trying to figure out how mad he should be with Ty.
“Oh, hell no.” Ty grins back at the wolf. “I mean, he flirted with me over text…”
“Me?” Arch shoves the fox’s shoulder. “You’re the one who asked if I’d blow you.”
Ty’s ears go flat and he looks guiltily at Dev, but he’s still got a wide fox grin on his muzzle. “How else was I supposed to find out?”
“Fuck,” Dev says. “I can’t believe you didn’t come talk to me.”
“Really?” Ty says, nodding his head toward me. “‘Cause I figured Lee wouldn’t be too happy if I asked you to blow me.”
Dev just stares at him while I break into giggles and then clamp a paw over my muzzle. Ty leans across the table, more serious now. “It’s a joke. Hey, seriously, look, I’m sorry, but you were—we were all just up to our fuckin’ ears in the playoff shit and I figured I’d sort it out myself and then I promise I was gonna come talk to you about it.” He turns his head slightly to the wolf and his ears splay a bit. “I mean, I can’t really talk to the other guys about this nice piece of ass I found if there’s a cock on the other side of it, right?”
“Oh, is that how it is?” Arch folds his arms. “Maybe I’ll just go back to my place tonight.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Ty says cheerfully. “Until I remind you about the fluffy robes and the bread pudding and the view at the hotel.”
“God dammit.” The wolf shakes his head and meets my eye. “Rich guys, what the fuck are you gonna do?”
I clear my throat. “Hey, you wanna leave these two to chat a bit?”
“You don’t have to go,” Dev growls.
“It’s okay.” I raise a paw. “We’ll just hit the, uh, bathroom or something.”
Arch gets up to join me, and we walk along the wall toward the bathrooms. “Hey,” he says, “I figure you’re not going to the bathrooms for a quickie, so…I don’t do anything stronger than weed anymore, and I don’t do other people’s weed.”
I shake my head. “No, I really meant to just let them talk a bit. I don’t even do weed anymore.”
“Really?” We find a little alcove and stand there talking. I expect it looks like we’re getting ready to make out or something, from the outside. “Why’d you stop?”
I shrug. “I never really started. I tried it a couple times in college, then I drifted away from my group of friends and didn’t have any way to get it. Never missed it.”
“Each his own.” He swigs his beer, looks back toward Ty and Dev. I follow his gaze.
“So is this serious? I know, I know, it’s only been a couple months, but sometimes you know.”
“Honey.” The wolf pats my arm. “He’s a football player. I don’t expect this to last beyond—well, honestly, I’m ready every night for him to say, ‘That’s it, I’m going back to the girls.’”
“Don’t you want anything more?”
“Oh, sure. That’s why I’m not worrying about him.”
I glance at the other fox, leaning in, talking earnestly with Dev. My tiger looks a little more relaxed now. “He’s not a bad guy.”
“He’s a great guy. But he’s a football player. It’ll never work.” He sees my expression. “You hit the lottery. Don’t ever let that one go. But if he packs up tomorrow and I never see him again, I’ve still enjoyed the few nights I got. And not just physically. He’s a sweet guy and a hell of a dancer. Now, I will say that whenever I do have a permanent partner…” He looks over at Ty, and there’s hunger in his eyes, but I think there’s affection, too. “He’s going on the list. He would totally do a three-way.”
“Ty?”
He laughs. “That fox is a freak. Not just athletic, either.” His smile widens. “Look, I appreciate the concern, but I’m okay. And hey, I get to say I got laid by a guy who caught a winning touchdown in the championship.”
“Semifinal,” I correct. “He didn’t catch a touchdown in the championship.”
He waves a paw. “Whatever. Point is, he’s famous, at least in some circles. But,” he holds up a finger, “he’s not a complete asshole about it. He’s still surprised when people recognize him.”
“Yeah, I don’t know him that well, but m
ost of Dev’s friends on the team are pretty good guys.” I survey the club, now half-expecting to see Pike or Vonni. “At least, the ones I brought to this club that night.”
“Oh, you brought him? I don’t know if he told me that. Well, thank you. I’m getting a nice break from the scene. And some good sex thrown in too.”
“The ‘scene’?”
He leans forward on the table and his ears flick around. “You know. No? Well, around here, it’s kind of a big community and everyone sorta kinda knows each other. So you might go on a date with Jack, and then find out the next day that he dated Jorge, the rat you went out with last year. And then if you don’t get naked with Jack, the next date you go on with Zach might start with him saying, ‘I hear you don’t put out.’ And we’re all the same here, twenty-something or thirty-something, or fifty-something, spinning the wheel every night to look for a place to stick your cock, or a cock to stick in your places. Some of us don’t want more than that. Some of us want to meet the guy of our dreams and settle down. Some of us want to be part of the scene forever.”
“Wow,” I say. “How old are you? Because you sound about fifty.”
Arch laughs. “I’m twenty-six. But I’ve been living up here since I was nineteen. It gets old, you know?”
“I don’t.” I take a drink of my own beer. “I did the gay activism thing in college and then met Dev…and he wanted to keep it secret, so I did. Never really found a ‘scene.’ And my best friend from college has spent the last six months trying to break us up.”
“Huh.” Arch flicks his ears. “What do your enemies do?”
“Break my thumb,” I say flippantly, and then dismiss the question. “It’s complicated.”
“The tiger’s worth it, though, huh?”
“Yeah.” My smile curves up. “And then some.”
Arch gestures around the club. “It’s not all bad around here. The community is awesome. Found me a job, found me a place to live, found me a roommate. I just like a little change once in a while.”
“And The Floor is great.”
“We like it.” He smiles.
“So…” I hesitate. “You don’t have to answer, I guess, but…he’s not just doing the ‘gay tourist’ thing?”