Divisions (Dev and Lee) (25 page)

That’s a week away, though, and even the prospect of losing to a terrible team doesn’t dampen our excitement at our performance and at having Strike on the team. My ribs ache again and my toe is bothering me, but we’re all at about eighty percent by this point in the season. If you’re healthy enough to walk out of the game with only five or ten minutes in the trainers’ room, you count yourself lucky and you get ready for the next game.

Lee’s worried about my injuries, when I get home, but I tell him I’m fine after this game. “Fine,” in this case, meaning that my ribs only hurt if I try to lift something heavy (like a fox), and my toe doesn’t hurt if I walk on my heel, and my legs will be okay after a day off. He gives me a little shit about that one play we screwed up, and I tell him Gerrard and I both screwed it up. He says that’s true, but Gerrard is his wife’s responsibility, and I think about the coyote girl in Yerba and I don’t say anything.

We talk a bit during dinner about Strike and other news around the league, but he doesn’t really talk to me about his day until we’re on the couch after dinner. The night game wraps up and I pull up UFL 2009 because I’ve already seen today’s highlights about ten times, in the clubhouse and again during the game we just watched. We pick teams, and he’s quiet while that happens and the game starts. Then he says he talked to Brian again.

I feel the annoyance register on my muzzle, and I’m sure he sees it, because he holds his paws up. “Just on the phone. They thought of a way they could film some spots on your day off. Monday, after a win.”

“Tomorrow?” I growl. I run a play and his defense stuffs it. I already know how this argument ends: with me giving in to whatever he wants. I don’t want to film a commercial, parade around like,
hey, it’s okay to be gay!
Get the locker room snickering, get Gerrard telling me I obviously have better things to worry about than football. The guys are cool with me being gay because I don’t try to make a big deal or set myself apart. Look at Strike: he does everything he can to be different, and half the team hates him. But Lee wants me to do this, and historically that means it’s going to happen, and I’m already resenting him for it.

“Next week. Dev, this could really help a lot of people. Guys who maybe felt like you did in college. Scared, alone…”

“I was never scared,” I growl. “And I was never alone. I had you.”

“Not everyone can have a fox.” He has to get that little bit of preening in. And of course, on the next play his defense stops me again.

“If I didn’t have you,” I point out, “I wouldn’t have been scared or confused or anything. Not that I was.”

He sighs. “There are some guys who realize what they are and don’t have anyone to turn to.”

“Like that Vince King, that bear.”

He watches me as though I’m defusing a bomb. Or as though he is. “Yeah.”

“Why does he mean that much to you?” He’s quiet, and I realize right away how that sounded. “I don’t mean he shouldn’t, I mean, I really don’t understand. Guys kill themselves all the time. I know, he wrote a letter, but it’s not your fault, not at all. Is it the thing with your mom?”

His ears flatten. “Maybe it is. I don’t know. I just feel…don’t you feel like you coulda been him? I mean…” He chooses his defense. We run the play and watch as I get a first down. “What if you’d fucked me and then couldn’t find me again? Or if you’d come by and I told you to get lost or I’d call the police? What if you ended up going around with this thing inside you, that you’d fucked a guy and liked it, and you didn’t have anyone to talk to? What if we hadn’t fallen in love?”

“Is that it?” I search his eyes. “Is it because you’re feeling guilty about what you did to me all those years ago? You think I might’ve ended up like Vince King if you weren’t careful?”

He slumps back. “No,” he says. “But…I used to help people. Now I just help…”

“Me. And the Dragons, and, soon, the Whalers.”

“You barely need my help any more. The Dragons, the Whalers, they can hire whoever they want.” He opens his mouth to say something else, looks at me, and then closes it again.

“I’m okay with you doing all this stuff,” I say, choosing my next play. He’s already got his defense set. “But I really need to focus on football.”

He looks annoyed, but those were his words, so he can’t be that angry at me. “This is just one day.”

I see the slight flick of his ears when he says that. I know my fox. “Just one day…during the week before the biggest game of the year.”

“It’d be a day off anyway.”

“You know Gerrard. You think we won’t be practicing on Monday?”

“Right,” he says. “I guess that is more important than the lives of a few gay kids. Who probably wouldn’t even make it as football players.”

The game beeps for a delay of game penalty because I didn’t pick a play in time. I drop the controller. “God dammit, doc, you know I want to help those kids, I do. Why the fuck does it have to be next week?”

He curls his tail around himself. “Because interest in football drops. If you don’t win the championship, and more, if you don’t distinguish yourself so much that you’re a national celebrity—”

“I thought I was. First gay player, hello.”

“First one out.” He looks steadily at me. “And yeah, you are. But already people are forgetting about that story. That’s good!” He lifts a paw. “Really good. But the impact is just better while everyone’s excited about football.”

“Is that what Brian says?” I stare at the screen, where it takes me a moment to register that Lee has put the game on pause. “What if I’m so distracted by doing all this activist stuff that I don’t excel, that I ruin my career?”

“Is that what you’re worried about? Or are you just being stubborn because it’s Brian?”

I cross my arms. “After that Ultimate Fit commercial, I almost fucked up my toe.”

“Equality Now isn’t going to make you run across an asphalt parking lot.” He puts down his controller. “Look, if you don’t want to do it, then…”

“I didn’t say I don’t
want
to. I just don’t want to fuck up the team. Hell, that asshole cheetah is already doing a bang-up job of that. Gerrard would skin me if I made anything worse. And…” I hesitate. I didn’t really tell him about the blow-up over the nightclub, because there wasn’t time and he was all caught up with his family issue that, to be fair, was a little more serious. But now it feels harder to mention. And Colin hating me isn’t a big division in the team. Just him and a couple other religious guys.

“If you think it’ll fuck up the team,” he says, “then just forget it.”

“I just don’t want to take the chance.” I’m not quite sure what’s happened. Did I win this argument? Is he backing down?

“If you think it’ll fuck up the team, then it will.” He shrugs. “Let’s finish the game.”

We finish the game. I win by two touchdowns, which makes me think he’s stopped trying, or else he’s thinking about something else and not focusing on the game.
See?
I want to say.
See what happens when you’re distracted?

“Good game,” he says, and we turn the console off and get ready for bed. I’m trying to figure out some way I can take his mind off the Equality Now thing, not only now, but for the next month or so, but I have no good ideas.

Well, at least for tonight, I have one, but when I slide in next to him, and he gives me a kiss, he doesn’t push for more. Hesitant, I don’t either. Does he not want to have sex? I’m tired and actually not all that upset by the prospect.

When I don’t make a move either, he turns over so he can press his back and rear against me. The annoyance of the PSA discussion fades, and as I drape an arm over his chest, part of me does wake up, wanting to thrust up against him and start something. But I am tired, and he’ll still be there in the morning.

Monday dawns with a cloudy sky and threats of drizzles, so there’s no real hurry to get out of bed. Overnight, my brain has come up with a possible solution to this PSA thing, so I feel better, and he doesn’t object when I roll him on his stomach and work myself under his tail.

“Good morning to you, too,” he pants as we both squirm and thrust against each other, but I’m close already, too far gone to answer. Soon enough, he’s made a mess of the sheets, and then I’ve got my arms wrapped around him and my muzzle pressed against his neck, feeling his warmth and inhaling his scent. Beneath me, his warm, taut body relaxes, his tail twitching up between my stomach and his back. I’m reminded of how fragile he is, and yet how strong; he doesn’t complain at my two hundred pounds flattening him against the mattress.

We shower, a habit that is becoming nicely routine, and then he takes the sheets down to the basement to wash them. I take the opportunity to call up Vince, the press liaison for the Firebirds.

“I’m kinda glad I don’t have more to do with you now,” is the first thing he says.

“Huh?”

“Mostly because that fucking cheetah has me runnin’ around eight ways from Tuesday. But also because it means that it ain’t a big deal.” He’s kind of like Ogleby, but coherent. Weasel, not ferret.

“I’m not a big deal?”

“You were a big deal. It blew over. People are used to it. Gay player, whatever.”

I scratch the side of my muzzle. “So why hasn’t someone else come out?”

“Someone will. Give it time.” He pauses. “Hope to God it ain’t another Firebird.”

That’d be kind of cool, actually. But I feel enough support from the team that I’m not aching for it the way I used to. And this is the perfect opening for my idea, anyway. “Just in case…I was wondering, do we have a specific guy who’s supposed to go out and build up support for the team in the gay community?”

“Community liaison? We’ve got Chuck, but…” Vince snorts. “Yeah, he’s not gonna help with the gays. Why, you think he should?” His voice gets a little higher. “I can’t do it, I’m workin’ fourteen hours a day just keepin’ a rein on that fucking cheetah.”

“No, no. I have a friend…” I pause, then just go on. “A friend who’s interested in doing that. Maybe.”

“I don’t think Corky’s hiring. He just spent an assload of money.”

“On the fucking cheetah.”

“You know he had a reality show call and ask if he wanted them to follow the team around during the playoffs? We ain’t even made the goddamn playoffs yet.” He coughs. “Sorry, I’m sure he’s a great guy and all, and man, he looked good yesterday, but he’s a fucking pain in the ass. Anyway, I dunno, it’s an idea, but look, level with me. Is your ‘friend’ really interested in doin’ this? Or are you just trying to land him a job?”

“No, no, he’s really interested! Just for, like, the rest of the season and playoffs.”

“Okay. I’ll talk to Corky, see if maybe we can take someone on for a couple months. Trial basis, see how it goes.”

“Cool. He’s done that before.”

“Oh? Where?”

I’m not sure how much I should tell him, now, but I’ve gone too far to not tell him the whole truth, so I just let it out. “He used to work as a scout for the Dragons, but they started him as a free intern.”

Vince doesn’t respond right away. Then he says, “Oh, it’s Lee?”

It’s my turn to be silent, as shock paralyzes my brain. Finally, I scrape words together. “You—you know Lee?”

“Well, I know of him.” He laughs. “Miski, I read every fuckin’ word written about our team. Have to. It’s my job. If they fuck somethin’ up I gotta go back and deal with it. Yeah, so, your boyfriend. You sure this isn’t just to get him a job?”

“Well…”

“Because that’s cool. Just not real possible right now.”

I hear the creak of the elevator. “He’s trying to work with some local group, Equality Now—”

“Jesus.”

“They want me to do a commercial, but they want it during the season—”

“Yeah, I know, they started buggin’ me Friday. Also your agent did. So what, you want to get him a job doing that with the team?”

I shift the phone. The elevator stopped, but Lee’s taking a long time. He should be up any minute now. “Yeah, but I don’t want him to know it came from me. I figure if he’s working with the team, he’ll have to do what you guys say and you guys won’t let me get too distracted from football.”

“Got it. Okay.” After a pause, there’s a beep. “Set myself a reminder. I’ll call Corky today, see what we can put together. I’ll keep your name out of it.”

“Thanks, Vince. I appreciate it.”

“Yeah, no problem. Good game yesterday.”

That’s what we hang up on. Lee walks back in a few minutes later and I manage to look as innocent as he does when he’s just pulled some tricky thing. We go to a movie that day and I feel rather proud of myself. Maybe the fox is rubbing off on me.

In other ways, I mean. Maybe if we live together, I’ll have to be more like him. I kind of hope that means he might be more like me, too.

I volunteer to do laundry as a way to get a little time to myself, collect my thoughts. Dev’s not going to do the commercial. On some level, I always knew that. I can keep after him to try, we can try different approaches, but I would have to be at my most persuasive to get him to do it, and I’m not.

In fact, I didn’t even try that hard. I didn’t go all out, like Hal told me to. I saw the determination behind his golden eyes and I thought, if I take it to that extreme, then there’s only two places it can go: he’ll say no and I’ll be crushed, or he’ll say yes and he’ll resent me. So I backed down.

Now I need to think of what to tell Brian, as I take our mingled clothes and toss them into the washer in the basement. He’s invested in this campaign as much as I am, and having gotten him on my side, I can’t just let him go.

But if I can get some info on Families United, maybe go back to them with a definite connection to the suicide…that could be something that could get out to the news. It might not help college students feel better about themselves (I feel a pang at that), but at least it could hamper some people from making them feel worse.

There are probably a lot of other places I could go to get that information. But there’s only one person who has the answers to that question, plus a bunch of other ones I have. So I call Mother.

This time, she answers. And when I say hello, she says, “Wiley, I’m trying to get the house ready for Christmas. I am not in the mood to have this conversation.”

“What conversation?” I ask.

“About Families.” Edgy anxiety pervades her tone.

“What about just one family?”

Anxiety gives way to resignation. “Of course you can ask me questions if you’re confused about the divorce. Have you talked to your father?”

“Yes. But I want to understand it from your side.”

“Well, I appreciate that.” She takes a breath. “After you left for college, I realized that I had created a lot of my life around being a mother, and that was no longer…my primary role in life. Your father has his work, and he…he had a closer relationship with you. So I went looking for myself somewhere else.”

She waits for me to talk, but I don’t. “And I found a friend of my own. She…she really helped me. You’re probably too young to know what it’s like to meet someone who really listens to you, who shows you your life in a different way.”

“No, I’m not,” I say.

“Well,” she says, and then stops as she gets what I mean. “I am sorry that path took me away from your father, but he had followed his own path, and our paths didn’t go the same direction.” She coughs. “That’s not very eloquent.”

“I get what you mean,” I say. “I guess me being gay kind of influenced where your path went, and the people you met.”

“
You
wouldn’t listen to my concerns,” she says, sharper. “Celia does.”

“I’m sure she tells you just what you want to hear.” I lean on the washer, which is vibrating with the wash cycle.

“You could stand to listen a little better, Wiley. All I wanted was to help you.”

“By changing me into what you wanted me to be.”

“By making you happier!”

I curl my tail around my legs. “I
was
happy. You’re the one who wasn’t.”

“Is this why you called?”

“No,” I say, because I can’t say that I don’t know. “I called to find out if you’re going to be sending anyone over to talk to me.”

“Sending…who?”

“I don’t know. Don’t your friends have a kind of ‘gay hit squad’ they send to troubled families to tell the poor gay cubs how worthless they are?”

Shit. That’s not how I’d intended to ask that question. She takes it predictably badly. “As long as you keep viewing us as enemies, you’ll never get better.”

“I am getting better!” I yell just as an old possum comes into the room with her laundry basket and heads for one of the other machines. She frowns at me. I resist the urge to give her the finger.

“You are just getting more lost,” Mother says.

“Only to you,” I say coldly, and snap the phone shut.

Jesus Fox. That probably could have gone worse, but I can’t quite imagine how. I stalk out of the laundry room under the old possum’s sour gaze and glare at the elevator as though it’s the one responsible for my mood. I’d better take the stairs.

I stomp up the first two flights before I settle down. That attitude, that there’s something wrong with me, something that needs fixing, that’s what I can’t stand. That’s what I want to fight against, eradicate wherever I can. Finding it this close, inside my family, is like finding a nest of bees in your bedroom wall.

My fist smacks the big number 4 in the stairwell. I’m shaking when I stop. I knew it was there, of course, but I’d never faced it head on. I knew I’d neglected the relationship with Mother, and I knew her views on me being gay, but it was all abstract. We’d been silent toward each other, and she’d never outright told me she thought I was going to Hell, or needed to be fixed somehow.

Mentioning Christmas just made it worse. I can’t help but picture the Christmas decorations in the house, and it makes me want to decorate Dev’s apartment. Then I picture that and I don’t want to decorate the apartment at all, because I don’t want to admit that I miss it. I’ll probably end up doing nothing, because that’s easiest.

The crazy part is that I don’t really want to go home. I haven’t in a long time. I just always thought I
could
.

As I walk past the fifth floor, I try my best to put it all out of my head, because I’m starting to feel hemmed in. Dev won’t let me take away from his football time, not that I want to. Mother’s actively working against me. Brian’s great to talk to—about one subject. I have to watch what I say otherwise, with him. I only really have Father and Hal to talk to, and both of them have their own lives and problems. Maybe Father will want to come down for Christmas.

I turn that thought over in my head. Do I want his company, or do I just want to show Mother that I win, that Father gets the bigger half of the wishbone in this break? No, I think, I really would like Father to be here. Plus, I’m worried about him. I’m not sure he has as much in his life as Mother thinks. Unless she was talking about him having me.

At the sixth floor, I take a breath before I open the door. I can’t let this mess up my day with Dev. It’s his reward for winning, this day off. I’m going to make sure he enjoys it.

***

We go out to a nice lunch, wander through an upscale shopping mall where I try to get him some nice clothes but end up finding more things for myself, and avoid the Christmas decorations. Dev doesn’t say anything about them either; I remember that last year he was on the road for Christmas, so I guess he didn’t see the point in decorating his place. Also he didn’t have anyone to spend it with. I saw him the following weekend, and we had our Christmas sex then.

Late afternoon, with a couple hours to kill until dinner, he wants to see the latest big-budget explosions movie. We sit there and hold paws in the dark, and that plus the explosions works wonders to completely distract me from the morning’s conversation, so much so that on our way out of the movie, I talk about the two leads, a wolf couple who rediscover their dissolving romance when horrible furless aliens attack the world. “I’d do Brian Barker,” I say. “Like whoa.”

“I liked them both,” Dev says.

I grin and elbow him. “You don’t have to say you liked either of ‘em.”

“I did, though.” He shrugs. “I’d do either one.”

“I guess the girl, whatever her name was, she was pretty cute too. I could see that.” I flick my ears.

He grins and lowers his voice. “I don’t think she has as nice a cock as the guy. Probably not your type.”

“Oh, like she’s yours,” I shoot back, and he laughs. We walk on a little more, and I rub at my whiskers. “Do you miss it?”

“The movie? Not really. It was a little long.”

“No, I mean…girls.”

He wraps an arm around me in an affectionate bro-hug, okay in public. “Aw, if I do, I can just get you to put on a dress.” We’re passing a Mary Taylor store, and he points in the window. “You’d look good in that slinky black thing.”

I snort and push him away, with about as much success as I’d have pushing away a brick wall. “I’m serious. Do you miss girls?”

“Nah. You know, it wasn’t ever about the body with me. It was more the whole package. I mean, the body’s important, but…” He thinks as we walk on, past a family of skunks trying to calm their baby in a stroller. “It’s more like, y’know, it’s gotta be someone I’m in love with.”

“That’s sweet.” I know he’s said that before, but I still like to hear it. “So you really think I’d look good in that dress?”

He looks at it again. “Ah, I was just pointing at it. You’d look good in anything though, so yeah.”

“I’d have to have it trimmed to fit my chest. I can’t even push it out as much as that mannequin is.” The plastic generically feline mannequin has breasts the size of grapefruit, to be fair, and makes Dev squint at it.

“I don’t think I’d like you with boobs,” he says.

“Thanks,” I say. “I’ve been working on keeping my chest down.” But it’s kinda nice to hear that he doesn’t covet a big chest. I can give him a slim body and I can dress up in a dress, but I draw the line at estrogen injections.

He pokes my side and grins. “I like you in shirts or dresses, and out of ‘em, too.”

“Same here.” I lead us on, out of the mall. “For the record, I’m not interested in getting that for my birthday.”

“That’s months away,” he says. “I’d forget.”

“Yeah, but you’d be running frantically through the mall looking for something to get me and you’d see the dress and then you’d remember. So don’t get it.” I pause. “Unless you really think I would look good in it.”

“Come on,” he says, laughing, and we head back to the truck.

The evening is good, with a couple UFL 2009 games and some pizza, and we’re relaxing in front of the TV. It’s easy for him to relax, just stretch out and have nothing to do, but I’m a little twitchy still. The talk with Mother makes me restless, makes my paws curl and twist on empty air, makes me keep shifting in frustration, until Dev clamps an arm around me and tells me to hold still. “I’ll fidget if I want,” I say, but I limit the fidgeting to my tail.

“If I have to pin you down,” he says, and just then my phone rings. I jump, tail bristled out, and grab it. It’s Brian, of course, and I still have nothing to tell him. I stand up anyway.

“This’ll just take a minute,” I tell Dev, and pick up the phone. “What?”

“Goodness, Tip, no need to snap. I’m just calling to see if we have a day for lunch.”

“Thursday,” I say.

“Yes, I can do Thursday,” he says. “I’ll see if Paula can make it. Normally she’s pretty busy, but she’s interested in this campaign too.”

“I’d prefer not.”

“Really? Why?”

I eye Dev, who’s pretending to ignore me even though his ears are pointed squarely at me. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Huh.” His voice goes smoother. “Oh, right. It was Miski’s day off. Are you guys fucking yet?”

“Keep it classy.”

“Ha.” He breathes into the phone. “Not yet, I guess. You wouldn’t have picked up the phone for me in mid-fuck, would you? But maybe some clothes are off.”

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Will do. Give him a suck for me.”

I hang up. Dev relaxes as I sit down beside him again. His arm tightens around my chest and his paw rubs slowly over my shirt. “Didn’t sound like you were talking to Hal.”

I shake my head. I don’t want to ruin the mood, but I promised to be honest with him. “Brian,” I say. “About the Equality Now stuff.”

He tenses, and his voice gets cold. “That skunk,” he says.

“He seems sincere,” I say. “I mean, he’s really into the activist stuff again.” Thanks to me. Really?

“Is he still acting?”

“Yes. Playing in Romeo and Juliet. Mercutio.”

“Which one is that?” Dev’s words inch closer to my ear, a bass rumble that gives me shivers down my back.

“He’s Romeo’s best friend. You know the line, ‘He jests at scars that never felt a wound’?”

“No.”

“Romeo says that when Mercutio makes fun of him for being in love.”

Dev nuzzles my ear, which flicks back reflexively. “So are you Romeo?”

“Only if you’re Juliet.”

“Doesn’t that end with both of them dead?”

“Well, yeah.” I squirm back against him. “But they kill themselves for each other.”

“I’d rather be, um.”

I toss the phone across the couch and slide my paw up his thigh. “How about we just be Dev and Lee?”

His tongue washes up the side of my ear, then slips inside it. “That works,” he says softly.

That warm touch sends a shiver through me. My paw moves farther up, finding the warmth at his groin and rubbing it to hardness, which doesn’t take long. “Should we move to the bedroom?”

His paw finds the bottom of my t-shirt and slips under it, pressing against my stomach. Fingertips slide through the fur and barely extended claws brush my skin. “Oh, we’ve done it in the bedroom a lot,” he murmurs, warm breath against the soft fur of my ear. “And the couch is pretty comfortable.”

I get his pants open just as his paw pushes down inside mine. “It is,” I breathe. I’m kind of wondering what’s got him so urgently horny, and so aggressive. Is he trying to distract me from Brian’s call, or did something I said on the call bother him? Then his paw closes around my hard shaft and I shelve the worry for later.

“Maybe we should keep lube by the couch, too,” I murmur.

He laughs. “Go get it,” he says, but his paw doesn’t leave my cock, stroking warmly up and down, so I don’t move. “Go on,” he says, still stroking. “You want it, don’t you?”

“Urrrh.” I free his erection and slide my paw over it, too. “As much as I think you do.”

He presses his nose closer. “So go.” His paw squeezes.

I’m tempted to just stay here and see if he really will jerk me off all the way if I don’t go get lube. But the downside of that is that if I do stay, I don’t get him inside me. Of course, then he doesn’t get to be inside me, either. I trail my paw up and down his shaft. He’s sticky at the tip, aroused. “In a minute,” I pant, squirming as he keeps stroking, faster and firmer now.