Over Time

by Kyell Gold

  I’m trying to figure out how to tell Dev what I’ve decided about us, but he forestalls me with his own thoughts. We’re in sync there, too, although spurred by different experiences. Forester is where we met, and maybe for both of us, going back to the beginning of our relationship helped us more clearly see the path to the future.

  When he asks if I want to top, I have to hold back a laugh. I’m going to have to e-mail Misha later and tell him about that because it’s just too cute of Dev. I wonder if he was really thinking that for all these years I’ve wanted to push myself inside him and was too afraid of how he’d react to ask. Honestly, he never really wanted to talk much about our sex life, and after I insisted on him at least learning to give blow jobs, I was happy enough that I didn’t think we needed to. But maybe we should talk a little more than we have been, at least.

  So then he asks the very reasonable question: “I don’t know why you need so long to commit.”

  And I try to tell him.

  “You know that when I left, when I walked out, it wasn’t because I don’t love you, right?” He nods, though his ears go back. “I love you so much it scares me sometimes. But I scare myself more. Because I feel like I can’t go for more than a year or so without screwing something up. First with Brian, then my parents…”

  “Hey,” he says, and reaches across the small span of bed between us to squeeze my leg. “None of those are your fault.”

  “Not mine alone, I know.” I take a breath. “But when you’re involved in three major relationship disruptions in such a short span of time, you have to ask if it’s something to do with you. I think that’s partly why I left, because I couldn’t stand staying around with all the shit that was going on and taking the chance that you’d kick me out. Worse, that I’d ruin your chance at a championship and then you’d never forgive me. If you’d lost that game the way you did and I’d been hanging around you talking about gay rights, you’d blame me for it. Maybe not out loud, and maybe not consciously, but—”

  “No,” he says firmly, holding my eyes with his. “There’s so much that goes into a game, I know that it’s at least fifty percent luck. We could’ve won that game, and maybe if you had been there, I’d have been a little more inspired.”

  “All right.” I smile and take a moment to savor the warmth those words suffuse me with. “I have things to learn too. But the point is, I’ve been worried I’ll do or say something that will ruin things between us. And I worry about that because of what past me has done. But look, I’ve changed just in this past month, haven’t I?”

  “Maybe a little.” He pretends to examine my face. “I’ll have to do a full inspection later.”

  “I’m okay with that.” The humor relaxes me. “The point is, I didn’t believe that I can change. That I can tell you we’ll talk about things and we’ll do our best to understand each other, and we’ll still have fights, but we’ll also make up. So the question for me tonight became: Am I willing to work to make this relationship work?”

  “Just tonight?”

  “I thought about how Mother views me, refusing to move past the point in our lives when things weren’t complicated. I don’t want to stick myself in a box the way she’s doing. Only she wishes I hadn’t changed, and I wasn’t believing that I could.” Salim’s voice comes back to me. “Salim told me there are three kinds of people in the world: ones who can’t change, ones who do change, and ones who can but don’t. I don’t want to be that last kind. And I think, if I work at it, I don’t have to be.”

  He nods, his paw rubbing up and down along my leg. “So what was your answer?”

  I lean forward, bringing my nose an inch from his. “What do you think?”

  His eyes, bright gold, stare into mine. “I know what I think. I want to know what you think.”

  Laughter bubbles up from my chest, and I lean forward to kiss his answering smile. “I’m rubbing off on you.”

  “Not yet,” he rumbles, “but maybe soon, depending on your answer to that question.”

  I scoot closer. “Well, I was thinking about the last few years. Tonight especially, you know, it was nice to see all the old guys again, but in the back of my head I was thinking that as cool as all those guys are, and as much as I missed them, you know, they never really came after me when I disappeared. They let me go. The only people who have really come after me have been Father and you.”

  “Uh-huh.” He clears his throat. “Your chances of sex after this conversation go down the more you mention your father, you realize.”

  “Last time.” I hold up one paw and then rest it on his chest. “The point is…the point is that I love you. And for some fucking strange reason, you love me too. I’ve thought that I had love a lot of times in my life, and I never wanted to chase it down so badly as I do with you. And here’s the thing: no matter what happens in the future, this is special now. The things I’m worried about are things we can control, and I’m scared of what I’ll do, but you…you make me a better person. So I think you can make me the kind of fox who will be brave enough to talk to you, who will trust you and himself enough to work things out. I mean—I don’t want to put this all on you. I mean that I can make myself that kind of fox, with your help. And besides all of that…” I take a breath. He’s listening intently, not revealing anything really. “Besides all of that. This, what we have, this is worthwhile. And I was losing sight of that because of how scared I was. I’m sorry about that. However long it lasts, I want to be with you every minute of it. If we break up in a year, or five years, or ten years, then the time until then isn’t wasted. That’s a year or five or ten that we have together.”

  “Do you think we’re going to break up in a year or five or ten?” he asks.

  I start to answer, and then he says, “Honestly.”

  “Honestly? I don’t know. I don’t have a fucking clue.” I take a breath. “We’re both passionate and we sometimes fight. But if we both love each other and think that what we have together is worthwhile, then I think we’re both smart enough to figure out how to keep it working.”

  “Uh-huh.” He allows himself a smile, and the happiness behind it lights up the room, lights up me, like the sun is rising in my chest, and Jesus Fox, it’s almost too much to take. “So that means yes?”

  Just yes? It’s not enough, none of it is, to tell him how much I love him, to tell him that whatever happens with his brother, whatever happened with my parents, with Hal and Pol, that they aren’t us. That I believe in him, I trust him, and maybe more importantly, I trust myself. “That means…” I kiss his nose and before I know what I’m doing, I drop down off the bed, onto one knee. I have no idea what to say, but fortunately, a lifetime of books and movies have made the words rote. I hold his paw and look up at him. “Will you marry me?”

  29

  Into the Future (Dev)

  My brain short-circuits. I’m staring down at him and he’s staring up with eyes like a clear sky and he’s kind of smiling, but the longer I stare at him, the more he strains to hold that smile there. After a little while, he coughs and says, “Okay, you can say ‘no’ if you want. I know this is sort of a surprise.”

  “Sort of,” I choke out. “God dammit, fox, can’t we have one conversation where you don’t spring one on me?”

  He laughs and his eyes sparkle. “It was spur of the moment.” He looks down. “I’m still down here.”

  “Yeah.” I rub my whiskers. “Look, I…we haven’t even talked about marriage or anything like that.”

  “‘Spur of the moment’ sort of implies a lack of foresight.” He starts to get up. “I understand, it’s—”

  “Don’t get up.” I push his shoulders back down.

  His ears flick to the side and his smile returns. His tail swings from side to side. “Okay.”

  I take a breath. “Let me think about this for a second.” Lion Christ, this fox. What the hell am I going to do with him? And yet it’s thrilling, the edge every time something happens, the wondering wha
t he’ll do next.

  When I first met him, I didn’t think he’d be any good for me. It turned out he was maybe the best thing to happen to me in my life. No, scratch that ‘maybe.’ I’d be an idiot to let him go.

  “Hey,” he says, and I turn my attention to him. “Maybe you can talk it out with me?”

  Makes sense. I take a breath. “Marriage is a weird thing, and it’s still—I’m sorry, it’s still hooked up in my mind with a guy in a tux and a gal in a dress and a church and all that. Honestly, I don’t know if I’m ready for it yet.”

  I catch the flick of his ears even though he tries to keep them up. “That’s okay,” he says. “Honestly? I’m a little scared by it too. But I figure if we’re doing it together…it’s less scary.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “But…” I lift his paw to my muzzle and nuzzle his fingers. “It feels like something we’re jumping into.” I don’t say you’re jumping into because I’m in this with him. “Like, trying to go from our twenty yard line to midfield just because we feel like we should be there, not earning it.”

  “You think marriage is midfield? Not the end zone?” His eyes sparkle and he smiles.

  Three years ago, I don’t know if I’d have been able to think fast enough to answer. “I think the end zone is walking off into the sunset together. At the end, you know?”

  “All right.” He inclines his head to me to go on.

  “Football is what brought us together, y’know? And we’re still deep in the football life, both of us. So I think maybe an engagement ring isn’t the ring we should be thinking about right now.”

  His eyebrows go up as high as I’ve ever seen them. “If I could get you a championship ring, stud, I would. But that’s not just jumping to midfield, you know?”

  “No, no, I know.” I reach out and take one of his paws. His fingers close around mine, warm and confident. “But I feel a lot more confident in the football world with you. And I think when I have a championship ring, there’ll be a lot less pressure on football, and…”

  His eyes are serious and his gaze unflinching. “So…when you win a championship, we’ll get married? What if you never win one?”

  “You think I won’t win one?”

  “Of course you’ll win one.”

  “All right then.” I see his lips part and I move my free paw to them. “Hush, I know the odds. I know the teams that got there once and never again. So maybe if I have a little extra motivation…maybe that’ll be a bit of an edge. You know, over all those guys who don’t have a fox they need to make sure they keep around.”

  His smile grows. He licks my finger. “You don’t have to win a championship to keep me around.”

  “I know.” I squeeze his paw. “I figure waiting for the championship will keep you around for a while. After that we have to get married.”

  He laughs and rubs his head into my paw. “So we’re engaged to be engaged?”

  “Yeah. I like that.” I relax. Everything’s going to be okay. No, better than okay. “And with another one or two or three years, we’ll both be more ready for it. So are we good?”

  He nods, holding my paw. “We’re going to stay together and we’re going to work on talking and making this work. I mean…” He takes a breath. “I promise you, tiger, that I will remember that I love you. I promise I will do my best to be worthy of you.”

  Warmth closes my throat. I say, “Oh, fox. I love you. I’ll remember that, and we’ll talk about stuff and work on things and…”

  He’s up by then and in my arms, and I squeeze him tightly against me. The warm strength of his embrace, the twisting of his lithe form against mine as we roll back onto the bed, the passion with which that pointy muzzle pushes against my broad one and the shifting of his hips as his tail wags, all of these bring that warmth back to my throat and chest, and I want to hold him as tightly as I can because I don’t want him to get away. I want to be inside him because that’s as close as we can get; I want to share the buildup and release of our passion, to make him yelp and moan just as I do and then lie next to him and fall asleep in a haze of his scent and the feel of him.

  And because God is good and the universe loves me, that’s more or less how the next twenty minutes go. We both want it badly, but once our clothes have been thrown to the floor, we delay, teasing each other with fingers. “I can’t feel it like this once it’s in me,” he murmurs, rubbing a finger along my shaft.

  “Haven’t you felt it enough?” I do the same to his, finding the smooth contours and familiar knot already growing.

  “Never enough,” he says, and later, when I’m inside him and we’re both panting harshly from the release of sex and my stomach is warm and smelly from his release, I move to lift his hips off my shaft, but he settles down firmly. “A little longer,” he says, and leans down to kiss me, and I know why he wants to stay that way.

  “Engaged to be engaged,” I murmur against his tongue.

  “Words,” he says back, and licks at my whiskers, a caress that makes me shiver. “The promise is what matters, the intention.”

  “Mmmf.” My paws slide down his naked back, fingers pushing through the thick fur. “Wasn’t the promise made of words?”

  He pulls his head back slightly, one eye on mine. I nuzzle at him and try to clear up the slight confusion I see there. “I’m not being…whatever. I just want to make sure I understand what you mean.”

  “Mm.” He kisses my whiskers, my nose, the whiskers on the other side of my muzzle. “We can call it engaged to be engaged or whatever; the words just frame what we intend. Which is that we’re promising each other to try our best to understand each other and be together for the rest of our lives.” He wiggles his hips from side to side and reaches back to rub a finger up my slick shaft to the point where it enters him. “That we’re joined together more strongly than this.”

  “‘This’ is pretty strong.” I push my hips up and his down.

  His ears flick and he brushes his lips against mine. “Yep.”

  “But you’re saying…” I bring my paws up to circle his ribcage. His pulse throbs against my paws. “You’re saying that we just got married?”

  He kisses me. “More or less. Someday we’ll stand in front of a bunch of people and say lots more words. Someday we’ll have a piece of paper from some government that says we legally share our lives. But…well, I mean, do you feel that? I guess I shouldn’t assume.”

  I chuckle. “I hadn’t thought about it like that. I was just trying to make sure you don’t run away again.” I play-growl and push his hips down again. “Maybe I should just keep this in you all the time.”

  He squirms. “I think that’d make football a little more difficult. Though we’d have four arms to catch interceptions with.”

  The image makes me laugh and bounce him on my stomach, and I slip out of him without either one of us intending it. “So much for that,” I say.

  “You can always put it back in again.” He stretches out, no longer confined by our coitus, and lies half atop me on one side. “And again and again…”

  “Oh, I will.” I lick the bridge of his nose.

  “And if you really do want to put this,” he reaches down to his own dripping shaft, “in you one day, we can try it.”

  I look down my white fur at his pink length and the mess it left on my stomach stripes. “Misha spoke highly of your topping abilities.”

  He presses against me with a laugh. “Misha’s a sweetie. He’s also the only lover I’ve had who was more of a bottom than I am. I came over to his room once and he had a toy stuck up under his tail because he couldn’t wait fifteen minutes for me to get there.”

  I rub down his back, pressing into the muscle. “Do you have a toy? Do you want one?”

  “Oh, god. No, I guess…” He thinks. “I could’ve bought one when we were living apart, but I liked keeping myself for you. And back in college, I never had a problem finding someone…” He clears his throat. “I did sometimes use Misha’s toy when I was to
pping him. If you want me to top you, we can start with a small toy or something, but anyway that’s a long way away and we can do other stuff if you want to play around, too, like cuffs or blindfolds or shaving.”

  “I can’t shave,” I point out. “My teammates see me naked in the shower.”

  “Ever see any of them shaved?”

  “Uh. Okay, actually yes. But you know, I’m the gay one, so…”

  He laughs. “It’s okay. Shaving’s not one of my things.”

  “Things? You have things? What are your things?” I feel like I should know this already.

  He reaches down and cups my sac, rubbing a thumb along the still-hard base of my shaft. “These are my things,” he says, and gives them a light squeeze.

  “Oh.” I roll over onto him and pull him against me, rubbing his sticky mess into his own fur and trapping his paw between us. “Well, I only have one thing and that’s this handsome fox I happen to know.”

  “Mmmf.” He squirms, but can’t shift me. “Sounds like we’re a good match, then.”

  “Yeah.” I lower my muzzle to kiss him. “And it only took us three years to figure it out.”

  When I lift from the kiss, he says, “Actually, our three-year anniversary is in April, if you mean the night you picked me up at the Fang. We should go there for a drink. I stopped in by accident earlier tonight and it’s—”

  I silence him with another kiss, and this time when I lift my muzzle, he just looks into my eyes and hugs back tightly, and I cling to this fox who makes me crazy and content and fulfilled and terrified and I feel as happy as I can remember being ever.

  Monday morning, we wake up with fur still sticky and matted; the bed smells strongly of Lee’s musk and to some extent mine. We get out of bed to shower, but Lee flattens his ears as he leans over and sniffs the sheets. “And this hotel doesn’t surcharge for foxes,” he sighs.