by Kyell Gold
The wolf’s eyes drift over to Ty, and his smile fades. “I don’t think so. But maybe. He says he’s not, but when we first met, wow, I can’t remember the number of times he told me he was straight.”
“Protesteth too much?”
He focuses back on me. “I didn’t go to college.”
“They teach Shakespeare in high schools, too. Anyway, sorry.”
“Whatever.” He waves a paw at me. “But I guess it was the night after the game here, he spent the night—long story,” he interrupts himself at my expression, “he was kind of, uh, drunk and didn’t think he should go back to the hotel. But we didn’t do anything then.”
I can’t help myself. “So he slept on the floor?”
The wolf’s tail wags. “No. But we kept some clothes on. We texted after that, on and off. I started watching his games, he told me when he got laid, I told him when I did, and he invited me down for the championship game and got me a hotel room. We danced the night before, and then the night after, I guess he didn’t want to be around any of his teammates, so he came over and I,” he pauses for effect, “helped him take his mind off it.”
“Seems his mind is still off it.”
He chuckles. “Aw, yeah, it’s fun, I’m not gonna be a dick about it. It’s kinda like when I was seventeen again and just finding out all the things you can do with other guys, y’know? I’d forgotten how much fun that was, but for him it’s all new.”
“Does he like it better than straight sex?” I chuckle and hold up my paw. “You don’t have to answer that. Not relevant.”
“No, no.” He takes the question seriously. “I asked him that. He just says it’s different. He’s a boobs guy and there are things he misses, but he also likes the, I guess, casualness of it? He says he’s always worried when he’s with a girl that she’ll want it to be more serious and then he feels like a dick when he tells her it’s not. I told him I know plenty of straight femmes who just want a fuck every now and then and aren’t husband-crazy, but it sounds like his folks are working overtime to set him up with a wife.”
After all his talk about the scene, I’m glad he’s not one of the girl-hating gays I met back in college. “Athletes have that problem. I guess anyone with money does.”
“I sure don’t!” He tips back another drink of beer with a short laugh that makes me think there’s a story there. I’m about to ask about his family when he cuts things short. “You think they’re done hashing it out yet? My feet are itching to get back out there.”
I turn and look. Dev’s fur has settled down some, and even though he’s not smiling, he does have his beer in one paw and he looks more relaxed. “Yeah,” I say. “I think we can head back over.”
“Oh, hey,” he says, and stops me as I turn to go. “Is there anything I should know about football players? I mean, like, that I don’t already.”
I shake my head. “Well…I mean, you’re not angling for anything long-term. So just appreciate the amazing body and take some pictures.”
Arch drapes an arm over my shoulder. “Oh, I took care of that already. He let me take a pic of me sucking him off. Something for my scrapbook.”
“Anything you can share?” I give him a conspiratorial grin.
He grins back. “Mmmm, maybe. Depends on what you got to trade.”
“I don’t have pictures. I took one of me, but Dev’s kind of paranoid about that. How about as a thank-you for bringing him to the club in the first place? I made this all possible, y’know.”
He rolls his eyes. “Foxes. I’ll think about it, hon.”
“Would you believe I’ve never been with another fox? Well, another red, anyway. I dated an arctic fox for a while, but…”
“They’re about as far from foxes as I am,” he says.
“Thank you.” I exaggerate my reaction, sweeping my paws out. “I have a swift fox friend who keeps giving me a hard time about being a red.”
“Oh, hon, red is the only way to go. Although I would totally do an arctic sometime. All that fluff.”
“It’s nice in the winter, but they get really fussy when they’re shedding.”
We’ve gotten close to the table now, and Ty’s ears flick back as we approach. Dev’s already looking up at me. “What was that about an arctic?” the fox asks, turning.
“Nothing.” Arch looks down and holds out his paw. “Wanna dance?”
“Yeah. I told these guys we’d have coffee with them after.” He takes Arch’s paw. “But it’s not ‘after’ yet.”
They wave and disappear into the crowd, leaving their beer bottles behind. I stand up next to Dev. “You okay?”
11
Surprise (Dev)
It’s not that it’s Ty, specifically. I mean, I remember him being all worried about whether I was on top or not (yeah, I’m 90% sure it was him), and I went to a strip club with him, and now that I think about it I remember him talking to a wolf at the bar when we were here last time…but really the thing is just finding someone I know here in the club kissing another guy. All of the relief I felt at not being the only one when I talked to Polecki gets turned on its head, upside down and inside out.
Of course I knew that there were other guys playing who were gay, and I couldn’t really fault them for not coming out. Everyone has to make his own decision, all that. But that Ty didn’t even come talk to me about it has my claws out and my ears flat. It must be really obvious, because he starts out all apologetic when my fox takes his wolf away from where we’re talking.
“I promise I would’ve come to talk to you,” he repeats. “I was actually just thinking that when I get through with all the shit happening with the folks that I should look you up in Chevali. This all happened kinda fast.”
“Over months,” I can’t help saying through gritted teeth.
“Yeah, but…” he grins, making it hard for me to stay mad. “Well, at first it was just teasing around. I hung out with him, he was cool, and I said, ‘so would you do me?’ And he was all coy about it. He’s not really impressed with football at all. So I kept texting, and he texted back, and it was fun, like this little secret life. And then after that game, that fucking game, I didn’t want to be around anyone from the team.”
“Being around the team helped me, sort of.” Except when they were all being shitty about Strike. “I mean, everyone felt the same way.”
“That’s what Rodo said. But you know, none of them had the ball on the last play.”
“I kinda fucked up toward the end, too.”
“Ah.” He waves a paw. “You did what the coaches told you to. You did good.”
“You were fine on the plane home.”
“Yeah.” He ducks his head. “Kinda wish I’d talked to you then. But…” He glances at Arch. “Thing is, y’know, I know this can’t be serious. I can’t be gay like you can.”
I clap a paw on his wrist. “Sure you can,” I say. “I’d like to have another friend who’s out.”
“No, I mean—” He sighs, and the grinning, relaxed fox is gone. “I ever tell you about my folks?”
I shake my head. He searches his memory, eyes drifting up to the ceiling as he scans back through time. “Traditional Yamatase family even though Mom was born here and Dad came over when he was five. But that’s why I started in football, because it kept me after school, kept me away from home. I mean, I love them. But they have this idea of life with lots of patterns and places for me and football kinda screwed up some of them. I liked being able to do that.”
I squint. “They’re okay with the money, though, right?”
“Heh. Yeah. We’re starting a charitable foundation in my name that will at least let my mom say, ‘Yes, he plays sports, but look what he’s doing for the community.’ And they’re lining up a parade of Yamatese foxes for me to interview for potential wives.”
“You get more than one?”
“Oh, God. No, but I had dinner with like four this week already and I had to get away and come down here and, uh, I didn’t sl
eep with any of them, so I was sort of worked up, and…”
I hold up a paw. “I get it. So…” I look over at the wolf, in animated conversation with my fox. “He’s just a…a pressure release valve?”
Ty follows my gaze, and his whiskers flare up and then settle down. “He knows it’s not serious. Anyway, I just thought, you know, I’ll come down to Yerba and I’ll dance and I’ll hang out with Arch and…y’know.”
“Seriously? It was that easy? You went from straight to bi in, what, two months?”
He grins again, a long red fox smile that reminds me of Lee when he’s just pulled one over on me. “Honestly? It was more like two weeks. I was taking a shower, I looked around at the guys, and I thought, these are some good-looking guys. And I don’t want to get on my knees or anything, I don’t want them to jerk me off, nothing like that. I just didn’t feel that at all. But when I thought about Arch, I’d get…you know, I’d be more interested.”
“Huh.” I know what he means; it’s like me with Lee. “Why, you think?”
“Damned if I know.”
Oh well, it was worth a try. Ty goes on: “Maybe that he can dance, or that he’s interested in me and I know I can do stuff with him. I mean, at first I was like, it’s not right, it’s not the way I am, but then I thought, well, hell, Dev seems to manage okay. And who the fuck cares if I am into him? Arch, I mean, not you. It’s not going to hurt anyone.” He takes a drink of his beer. “Except my parents. It would kill them.”
“Heh. I know what you mean.”
“No, I mean, like, literally. My dad would have a heart attack and my mom would probably stick her head in the oven like she always says she will.”
I stare, but he looks dead serious. “Wait, really?”
“Ah, I’m sure it’s just an expression. I don’t think she’d ever do it. I was a good cub, growing up, and my sisters were too, but she’d still threaten us with it. After a while, you just get numb.” He rubs his whiskers and takes another drink. “Though she did have a screaming fit when my younger sister brought home that kinkajou.”
“Anyway,” I say, because we can talk about Ty’s family later, “you just said, ‘who the fuck cares’ and then it was over?”
“More or less. I mean, it was this whole series of little events that led me to the edge and I looked down and it wasn’t as scary as I thought. Like you know, the high dive looks way more scary from the bottom than the top.” He leans forward. “How bad was it for you?”
“Lion Christ,” I say, “It wasn’t a high dive, it was a base jump from the Sentra Tower. I spent a whole goddamn summer freaking out about Lee and what it meant that I fucked a guy, and worse, that I wanted to go back and do it again. I thought I might not be able to play football anymore, I thought I might get kicked out of my house, I thought I might get some stupid disease but I was too scared to go get tested for anything…God, that whole summer was a nightmare.”
“Wow. Sorry.” Ty folds his ears down. “If it makes you feel better, though, I mean, like I said, part of the reason it wasn’t so hard for me was because I knew you.”
“I wish you’d just fucking talked to me.”
“After you said you wished you’d never come out?”
That kind of stops me cold. “I did say that, didn’t I?” Ty nods. “Fuck. I apologized for it, too.”
“I heard that. It just didn’t feel like the right time to have the conversation. But I swear I would’ve come to you. Especially after this week.”
I look past him to where Arch and Lee are talking. “Really? You’re into him?”
“Not like you and Lee. It’s…it’s fun, you know? We hang out, we dance, I tell him about sports, he tells me about clothes and tech companies, and then we go back to my hotel and…”
“So,” I say, raising my eyebrows, “you’re on top, right?”
“Hell yeah.” He frowns at me.
Now I’m in the lame position of having to explain a joke. “It’s just…you asked me that when I came out. I was just…” I wave my paws, trying to show the whole turnaround is fair play thing.
“Oh.” He snaps his fingers. “I did, right? Well, you know, to be honest, I’m wondering about that a bit. He gets so fuckin’ into it, I’m starting to wonder. You, uh…you ever?”
“I told you, no.” It’s not even a joke anymore.
“I know you said that in the locker room, but I mean, I get it now, it’s not…it’s not a big thing.” He squirms though, so I know this is more something Arch has told him than something he one hundred percent believes right now.
“Look,” I say. “For the first year we were dating, I wasn’t even sure how to do things with a guy. He had to teach me how to give a blow job. And then we only saw each other every week or two, with his schedule and mine, so we…y’know, stuck to what works.”
“Makes sense.” He clears his throat and lowers his voice. “You do suck him off, though?”
“Uh. Yeah.” I duck my head and rub at my cheek ruff.
“That was weirder than fucking him, for me. I mean, I put my own in my mouth when I was growing up, but someone else’s? That’s weird.”
“It is. I mean, it was. It’s totally natural now.”
“Cool.”
We stare at each other across the table and I realize that my upended, wrong-side up relief is reversing, slowly. I give it a nudge, force a wider smile, and reach around to slap him on the side of the shoulder. “You guys want to get coffee or something later?”
“Sure.” His smile broadens. “We cool, then?”
“Yeah, sorry. It was just…I wasn’t expecting it.”
He nods and pulls at one of the lapels on his shirt. “Sorry. I know you were going through a lot of shit. I wish I’d been able to help more. Better late than never, though, right?”
I can feel how sincere he is, and it’s nice seeing this side of him, too. So I push aside the weak impulse to be snarky, and say, “On the bright side, I never had a teammate I could talk to about blow jobs before.”
He laughs. “Really? Charm didn’t want to hear about them?”
“He didn’t want to hear about giving them. You remember him in the club.”
Ty leans back easily and laughs, his tail swishing. “Yeah. That guy. You know he wanted both waitresses?”
“Doesn’t surprise me.” I gulp down the beer, which is getting warm fast in this overheated club, and I remember wondering whether Zillo cheated on his girlfriend. “Wait, so did you end up with the other one or did Zillo?”
He snorts, but right about then is when Arch and Lee come back, and Arch is saying something about doing arctic foxes that distracts us all. Then they’re gone, and it’s just me and my fox again, and he asks me if I’m okay.
“I’m good,” I say. “Got over that first reaction.”
“Good.” He slides an arm around my side, and it’s nice that we can stand like this, arms around each other in public, and nobody really cares. “When is Polecki coming into town? Was that Saturday? You think Ty might want to hang out with him too?”
“Er…he didn’t seem all that anxious to be out. Like, he didn’t want me to tell anyone on the team and he was really afraid of what might happen if his parents found out.”
“Maybe not, then.” He leans his head against me. “I’m glad he’s willing to come out and have coffee with us. Hope he stays on the Firebirds.”
“Hope I do, too,” I say, and then, because he reacts right away, I put my arm down and hold his shoulder. “I haven’t heard anything from Damian. Just thinking.”
“Okay.” He relaxes again. “So, ready for more dancing?”
There’s not much else to do in The Floor, so we head back out to the dance floor. It’s easier this time to slip into the rhythm of the music, and I feel more comfortable. When we first arrived, I was pretty self-conscious, remembering how all the other guys there danced, and this time I’d be coming in without fellow terrible dancers Pike and Vonni. But I guess I was only remembering the
good ones, because I don’t think I’m that much worse than about a third of the guys on the floor. I’m never going to be like Ty and Arch, the kind of dancer people make room for so they can watch them, but at least nobody laughed openly at me and Lee.
And Lee’s not much better than me, but he really enjoys himself, and that’s fun for me to watch. I like playing off his movements, and he notices and plays back off mine, and there’s music and light and maybe it has something to do with the beers, but I forget about Ty and his wolf and just enjoy the beat.
Until Lee grabs me and says he needs another break and a drink. “Maybe I should dance with Ty,” I say. “He wouldn’t need to take a break every fifteen minutes.”
He sticks his tongue out at me. “I have a desk job.”
“You don’t have any job right now. You can’t spend a couple hours at the gym?”
“Hey.” He grumbles at me. “I’ve been sick. And broken-hearted.”
“That was your own fault.”
And for the second time in an hour, a joke I try to make falls flat. He flips his ears back and says, “Yeah,” and I curse myself.
“It wasn’t all your fault. I was pretty single-minded about the football.”
“Nah, you had to be. You have to be.” He pokes my chest. “But if you promise to come out dancing more often, I’ll make sure to hit the gym. I’m sure the Whalers have a good facility. Maybe I can train with Polecki’s boyfriend.”
He’s shaking it off, but the reminder of what we’re supposed to be thinking about this month stays with me.
We dance for another fifteen minutes and then go for coffee. Ty and Arch aren’t ready to leave, so Lee tells them where we’ll be and we walk off through the refreshingly cool night. My fur clumps a bit from the close humidity of the club and the night air, not nearly as dry as I’ve gotten used to, but it’s also not the humidity of Hilltown. There’s a salty tang to it, a reminder that the ocean isn’t too far off, and there’s another tang to it as well, although maybe I’m just imagining that as we pass two shadowy alleys where guys are making out.