Over Time

by Kyell Gold

  Arch kept his smile on. “You can keep your pants on. I promise I won’t molest you.”

  “What about your roommate? The wolverine?” In Ty’s imagination, he was a seven-foot tall hulking monster in rainbow suspenders. Suspenders?

  “Justin’s cool. He’s found me in bed with guys before. He’ll just assume we hooked up.”

  “But we didn’t. We won’t.”

  Arch shook his head. “This might shock you, but I don’t just fuck any guy I meet, even if he is gay and wants to. Sometimes I just want to be friends. Sometimes I want to make sure the guy isn’t crazy.”

  “Oh, shit.” Ty dropped his muzzle into his paws. “I’m acting crazy, aren’t I?”

  “No, you’re high is all.” Arch put a paw on Ty’s shoulder, and the fox looked up. “What time do you need to be up in the morning?”

  “Uh. We’re supposed to leave the hotel at nine-thirty.” That, at least, he remembered.

  Arch went back to his laptop. “Okay. I’ll set an alarm for eight. That’ll give you plenty of time.”

  “You sure?” Relief overwhelmed him. Arch was a great guy.

  “It’s fine. But I am going to take off my pants. You don’t have to, but it’s my bed, and I don’t sleep in jeans.”

  “Okay.” Ty just sat and waited, calmer now that the situation was handled. He hadn’t gotten high since the week before the draft, because even though he was a great believer in the general benevolence of the universe, he was also a great believer in not tempting fate, and besides, he wasn’t even allowed to drink legally then. Months into the UFL routine, with his twenty-first birthday safely in the books, he had felt more confident that one night would not result in his expulsion from the league (mainly because three of his teammates had offered him pot)—until he’d actually taken the drug.

  Now, his memories of how to handle it came back. He still felt the paranoia, but he was able to distance himself from it. It helped that Arch knew he was high and that he’d already been lying on the bed; it was strange but not too strange. He turned himself around and reclined on the bed on the side against the wall.

  Arch walked back to the bed. Ty followed his movements with his ears, heard the steps on the carpet and then the scrape of claws against the fasteners on his pants. The jeans slid down, making a shushing against the leg fur, and then he stepped out of them. Then the bed creaked and the wolf’s weight settled onto it.

  Ty braced himself so he wouldn’t roll toward the weight and rested his head back. Arch pulled the covers over himself, but Ty stayed on top of them. He had his pants on, and even though he was shirtless, winter in Yerba wasn’t so cold that a thick-furred red fox would so much as shiver in this apartment. He was aware of the weight of the wolf next to him, but he was unworried by it. Arch was cool. And Ty was cool, too.

  He came awake in a dim room, disoriented. Wolf smell filled his nostrils and the air on his nose was cool. He turned his head and saw the sleeping wolf next to him. Arch’s muzzle was peaceful in rest, smiling and handsome actually. Ty thought about waking up next to some of his college buddies on road trips, but this wasn’t exactly like that. Dev was used to waking up next to a guy, but this wasn’t like that either. It was feeling comfortable with someone, comfortable enough to share drugs and a bed with on a second meeting, but not wanting to have sex with.

  Although he did have a pretty good morning wood going on. He reached down and rubbed it through his jeans, and then imagined Arch reaching over to rub it. The idea was…interesting. In the sleepy haze of morning, when he didn’t want to reject the idea just because he was straight, it didn’t disturb him so much. He touched his own junk all the time.

  So maybe not have sex with, but play around a bit. He’d had friends in high school who told him about skinny-dipping parties in the ocean, and one had admitted that after drinking, when there were eight guys and only three girls, some of the guys jerked each other off. Wasn’t a thing, didn’t mean anything.

  Ty hadn’t had time to do that, with football and studying, even if his parents would’ve let him go out to the ocean late. But he’d gotten erections imagining it.

  Yes, but he’d also dated girls and gotten erections from that too. And gotten erections from thinking about breasts and looking at naked vixens.

  So…what? He reached out a paw experimentally and rested it on Arch’s hip. The wolf stirred but didn’t wake. His body felt warm and solid beneath Ty’s fingers. It felt…nice. If Arch had been a girl, that touch would’ve been a prelude to morning sex, but here it just felt friendly.

  And then, with a shrill ring, the alarm went off.

  Ty yanked his paw back and sat up, and a moment later Arch did the same, rubbing his eyes. “Hey,” the wolf said.

  “Hey.” Ty scooted down and off the bed without climbing over Arch. He found his shirt on the floor. “Thanks for letting me crash.”

  “No problem. You want to grab coffee on your way over?”

  “Uh.” Ty pulled his shirt on. “You have coffee here?”

  “There’s a coffee shop on the corner, open at 5. Pretty good. It’ll probably take fifteen minutes for the cab to get here anyway.”

  Coffee would probably help him wake up. And fifteen minutes for the cab, and the ride to Korsat had been only fifteen…he had plenty of time. “Sure.”

  So Arch swung his legs out of bed and stood, and Ty saw clearly what he hadn’t seen the previous night, which was that the wolf was wearing tight briefs, and also that his own morning wood was at least as prominent as Ty’s, and more noticeable as it was only concealed by a thin, stretchy layer of fabric, and…

  And the very tip of it was poking out of the top of his waistband. Ty was standing here looking at the tip of another guy’s cock. And Arch saw him looking and didn’t seem to care, nor did he smirk or offer to show Ty more, or anything like that. He just yawned and stretched—maaaaybe showing off a little, but hell, who wouldn’t if he had the body to?—and walked over to pull on his pants.

  They got coffee, which was as good as promised, and while they were waiting for the cab, Ty said, “Hey, so thanks again. It was a fun night. Next time I’m in town, we should do it again.”

  “The pot and the overnight stay?” Arch smiled.

  “Sure.” Ty laughed. “I mean, if I freak out about being high.”

  “You didn’t mind sleeping in bed next to a gay guy?”

  Ty shook his head. “You didn’t, like, fuck me in my sleep or anything, did you?”

  Arch snorted. “Even if that were really possible, I don’t just paw or blow or fuck any old guy, I told you that.”

  “Yeah,” Ty said, “I know. But would you do me?”

  He’d meant it as playful, kind of the football player with an ego needing to be stroked. But it didn’t quite come out as playful, and Arch gave him a sidelong look. “You asking seriously?”

  “Just hypothetically. Anyway, I thought you didn’t need things to be serious.”

  The wolf breathed in his coffee steam and then sipped from the cup. “I don’t,” he said after a moment. “But I’m also not interested in being some straight guy’s experiment, y’know?”

  “No, no.” Ty sipped his own coffee, confused now, aware that he’d made he situation awkward without meaning to. “Look, I was just messing around. I had a good time—I had fun.”

  “It’s cool. Sorry, I just had…you know, in high school there’d be guys who were like, ‘hey, you like cock, wanna blow me?’ and a couple times I did. I was a cub, I thought they’d like me after, y’know? But they just…they treated me worse than the girls. So I’m done with that.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “No, I know you didn’t. You’re a good guy. Here’s your cab.” The green car was coming around the corner.

  “Thanks.” Ty held out his paw, and Arch took it, then pulled the fox into a hug. Which also felt good, again in a non-sexual kind of way.

  And as he got into the cab, Arch held the door for a second and said,
“Hypothetically? Maybe.” And then he shut the door and stood there grinning at Ty as the cab pulled away.