Isolation Play (Dev and Lee) (14 page)

When I smell fox in the elevator of my building, I know this time it’s not just my imagination. He won’t surprise me like he did the day before the press conference. He has a key now, so instead of sitting in the hallway outside my door, he’s sitting on my couch, playing UFL Football 2009. And of course, he’s not wearing anything but a wide smile.

He pauses the game to get up. You know, I keep hearing from my teammates how their friends are all starting to put on weight. Lee works out a few times a week, and it shows. He’s maybe a little more filled out than he was in college, but he doesn’t have a gut. He watches me, tail swishing, and waits for me to say something, angling his hips to show off the line of his body, the curve of white against red around his chest, down his side, to his thick sheath and the sac hanging below it.

It’s so funny. I’ve just come from seeing half a dozen other naked guys, and none of them made my breath short, or my heart race, or my groin tingle and heat up. I strip my shirt off and walk toward him. “Who’s winning?” I nod at the TV.

He grins. “Dragons.” His tall ears cup forward toward me.

I reach out and pull his body against me. The curve of his spine and the softness of his fur are the only things that feel better in my paws than a football during a game. His sharp musk in my nose, the arch of his tail as my fingers slide down to his rear, the sound of his breathing, with the slight whistle through his long muzzle, and his slender fingers holding me firmly, all those are a bubble in which I’m safe from the rest of the world.

I nuzzle between his ears. “How was the game?”

He pushes his nose into my chest fur. “Good footwork. And good paw work.” He slides his fingers inside my pants.

I wriggle my rear. “Paw work?”

“
Getting in the face of that boar. How’s Fisher?”

I tickle a finger under his tail. “He’s in the hospital. You really want to talk about him now?”

His nose pokes into my right biceps. “Mmf.”

I flex, pulling his hips hard against me. I can feel his length at my thigh, just as he rubs his stomach into mine. “I thought you’d tell me not to let them get to me.”

“
He attacked a teammate. Going after him after that was about the best thing you could do. It’ll be harder for them to hate you now.”

“
I don’t know about that. Without Fisher...” Colin and Zillo still look the same, and I think about Pike’s expression outside the stadium, when I was getting rid of the leopard and fox.

Lee exhales into my arm fur, making me shiver. “So you have to stand up for yourself.”

“
I’ve been doing that. Fisher’s a vet, they respect him.”

“
They’re gonna respect you more now.”

I squeeze his rear. He tightens it and huffs a chuckle. “I’m serious,” he says. “It makes a difference. When they think about you, they’ll think about that instead of this.”

‘
This’ is his fingers gliding around my hips, following my stripes until his claws just brush the base of my sheath. I suck in a breath through my teeth. His smile melts my tension as if it were ice under the Chevali sun. I reach around to tease his erection with a fingertip, and then lower my paws, cupping his rear. He knows what’s coming and tenses for it, keeping his paw against me as I lift him and carry him to the bedroom.

For now, everything else is gone. I’m not worried about the team, about my parents, about the fine I’m sure to get from the league. His weight in my arms, his musk in my nose, the urgency in my groin, the warmth in my heart, those are my world.

I drop him to the bed. He leans back on his elbows, showing himself off. I smile at him as I strip my pants off, and pounce atop him wearing only boxers. And soon enough, not even that.

We’re about a half hour from my parents’ place in Lake Handerson. Lee’s driving, and I’m wedged into the passenger seat of his Civique. He asked what to expect in the town, and I didn’t really know what to tell him. It’s got a mall, a hospital, two movie theaters, and a library. There’s a public pool for the otter and beaver community, but we preferred the lake. It’s not Lake Handerson; that’s the name of the town. There used to be a Lake Handerson, but it dried up, and now ‘the lake’ is Lake Farrow, an hour away. I used to fish there, and skinny-dipped once or twice in high school.

“
See, you were gay even back then,” Lee says when I tell him this.

“
It wasn’t even about that,” I say. “We just didn’t want to get our clothes wet, and when you go drinking beer by the lake, you don’t bring swimsuits.”

“
Not if you want to see each other naked, you don’t.”

I lean against the passenger door and look at him, half-grinning. He’s watching the road but his ears are swiveled my way. “It’s just sheaths. We see them all the time in the locker room.”

His grin stretches slightly wider. “You’re telling me you never popped a boner swimming around naked in the lake?”

“
I was a teenager! Nobody could see anything anyway.” Though I have a clear memory of one of our receivers, an otter—fast enough for high school, not for college—floating on his back with his erection just lying on his stomach, dark against the moonlit white fur. “I’m only gay for you, fox.”

“
Aw. That’s probably for the best, with the locker room showers and all.” His words are jokey, but his tone is soft and his smile is, too.

We’re quiet, as I remember my high school and he watches the highway. We pass a sign for Cross’s Coffee, and his eyes follow it. “At least it’ll be too remote for Starbucks,” he says.

“
Mom said they’re putting one in at the mall,” I tell him with some satisfaction. “I really want to see it.”

He sighs exaggeratedly. “You can go do that on your own. I’ll stay and bond with your parents. I’ll teach them to hate corporate coffee.”

I recline. “Dad already hates it.”

“
See? We’ll bond like Krazy and Glue.”

Which is which, I wonder? I point to a sign at the exit we’re passing. “He likes Dunkin Donuts coffee, though.”

Lee sticks out his tongue. “I can choke that down, if they make some.”

My phone buzzes in my pocket. Ogleby’s been calling for a while, but I’ve been ignoring him. He’ll leave voicemails, and I’ll deal with them after this trip. My parents are going to be stressful enough without me worrying about endorsements and commercials and whatever else. I stick a paw in my pocket and thumb the ‘ignore’ button, looking at the signs on the highway flying by.

I haven’t been this way in years. When I was at Forester I covered it once a month, until senior year. Until I met Lee. I remember that faded billboard for Steve Johnson’s Trout Shack. Nobody else bought the space, going on ten years now. Even the names on the exit signs are a familiar litany: Goddlefield, High Water, Meckonion.

We have to pass High Water before we see our first sign for Lake Handerson: 35 mi. “Half an hour,” Lee says, glancing at his speedometer.

“
Yep.” I fold my paws over my stomach, rearrange my feet, shift my weight in the seat. Lee isn’t as visibly nervous, but his tail is twitching in the rear footwell, back where he thinks I can’t see it. “Be there in time for dinner.”

“
There’s no freaky Lake Handerson delicacies I need to prepare my stomach for, are there? Like spider pie or snake kebabs?”

“
Sometimes when the field rats get all into things, Mom makes a stew,” I say.

He raises an eyebrow. “Oh, sure, I had rat stew all the time growing up. I bet she doesn’t make it like my mom did, though.”

“
Did your mom make it with the bones?” I grin, waiting for his comeback, but he doesn’t answer, looking as though he’s remembering something. After a moment, I cough and get serious again. “I think she said she’s making a steak dinner. It’s my dad’s favorite.”

“
I can manage steak,” he says. “Maybe it’ll put your dad in a better mood.”

“
Steak does that. Beer works, too. And a good poker game. And Mom’s pumpkin pie, but she only makes that at Thanksgiving.” Or I could go back in time and untell him that I’m gay.

“
How traditional.”

“
You have no idea. Mom goes all out. Turkey and stuffing, of course. Some years she makes regular stuffing, sometimes cornbread. She always asks us which one we want, and we always say, ‘both.’ She never does both, though. Sweet potato casserole, cranberry relish—”

“
Out of a can?”

I frown. “Does it come in a jar?”

He laughs. “Go on.”

“
Pumpkin pie, green beans and fried onions. And lots of family, of course. Asking what I’m going to do when I’m done ‘this football thing.’”

“
You’ll have an answer, this year.”

“
Yeah.” I grin, thinking of Uncle Roger’s refrain:
but it’s not a career
. Even when I was on special teams as a backup corner last year, they didn’t really get how special that really was.
Special teams is not about skill
, Dad said.
Anyone can block kicks, cover punts.
I made some good tackles, but I wasn’t starting at corner, which was my college position, and so I still hadn’t “made it,” then.

I tell Lee about some of my relatives, about the traditional pick-up football game, about how good it feels to sit around the house digesting the huge meal. I leave room for him to tell me his favorite things about Thanksgiving. I know it’s hard for him, but there’s got to be something he liked about his family holidays. I wait, and wait some more. He keeps his eyes fixed on the road, his muzzle shut.

I sit in silence until I spot another landmark. “There’s the drive-in.”

Lee’s eyes slide over to the huge screen half-hidden behind bright red and yellow clouds of leaves. “Skinny-dipping, turkey and pumpkin pie, drive-in...did you go to high school in the nineteen-sixties?”

I grin. “Felt like it, once I got to Forester.”

“
Did you make out with your first girlfriend at the drive-in, too?”

I rest a paw on his knee. “Don’t be jealous.”

“
Oh my God, you did.” We’re well past the drive-in now, but he looks to the side of the highway. “What movie was it?”

“
Who remembers? Some James Bond thing, I think.”

“
Who was she?”

“
Doesn’t matter. You know, doc, once I got to Forester I stopped thinking about high school.”

“
You don’t remember your first kiss?”

I squeeze his thigh. “Who said that was my first kiss? That was Marcia Long. She was a cougar.”

He exhales. I can see him getting tense again, even without looking at his tail. The sign for Lake Handerson says ‘11 miles.’ I start to wonder if this was all a mistake. What if my parents hate him? I mean, I don’t think they could, but what if they do? My claws flex, not enough to touch his pants, but enough that I feel it. I pull them back in.

“
Did your parents like her?” It’s like he’s reading my thoughts. He’s quiet, nervous.

“
Yeah, right. Mom said her dress was ugly. Made her cry.”

He turns his head quickly, during a flat stretch of highway. “I promise I won’t cry if your mom doesn’t like my dress.”

“
That’s great,” I say. “Make a couple jokes like that in front of my parents, it’ll relax ’em right off.”

“
You told me to be myself, stud.”

He is being himself, as sharp and quick as I know him. All I am is a blunt instrument. “I love you.”

“
Love you too.”

I let my claws extend, just enough that he can feel them through his pants. “I mean...you matter. I want you with me.”

He tilts his head. “I figured if you didn’t, you’d have gotten out at the rest stop back there and hitched a ride with that cute cougar trucker.”

I press harder, through his jeans and against the skin. He yelps theatrically and lays his ears back. “My family’s going to love you,” I say, “because I do, and they’ll see that.”

He doesn’t say anything. But a moment later, his paw wanders over to mine, and holds it. I squeeze back with as much confidence as I can muster.

The silence is much nicer for the last fifteen minutes of the drive. I guide him around landmarks, places where my childhood was shaped in torn fur and twisted ankles, endless games of hoops and sandlot football and tag and baseball, and teachers and classes. There are too many memories to share them all at once; I point out the school where I spent four years, the football field where I got my first touchdown, the movie theater where I worked for a summer, and my dad’s auto shop. Lee doesn’t say anything, just takes it all in, nodding. He spends a little more time looking at the auto shop, but just when I think he’s going to make a remark, he speeds up and turns the corner.