Winning the big prize
{I never got around to finish this story but perhaps I should share it anyway. Maybe I will get around to write a story one day... one of these days. Opinions would be appreciated. Thanks for reading, and thanks to the people who double checked the grammar, and also thanks to Tiptoe for letting me use his character in a story even if I didn't finish it.}
People had come a long way to see the final. It was still worth the trip to South Africa, as nobody wanted to miss that game. Spain had made it to the final for the first time in history and they were really promising quite a show. Tickets were expensive, even for people lucky enough to buy them when they were released. They were selling for many times their value now.
Johannesburg was also known as the golden city. It was hard to believe that a continent so familiar with poverty could still have cities like those. In the centre of the city, people gathered to take a seat in the grades at Ellis Park. It was originally built as an American football stadium, then it had been demolished and rebuilt for soccer games exclusively. The event was going to be a huge one, packed with over sixty thousand people from all around the world, of every race and dozens of species.
The rat hadn't really known what he was getting into. He had been expecting a short, easy stroll to the stadium. Instead, it was at the very end of one of the southerly commuter rail lines, followed by a bus ride. He didn't have time to grab chow before he was dragged out the door, and he would have been lost and scrabbling for some Burger King in the south suburbs if he had been left on his own. Fortunately, Carl didn't let go of his arm for even a single second. Carl would have bet that his friend had been starving for months to save up for this day if the tickets were not something they'd got for free. If it weren't for the free tickets, he wouldn't have come; He wasn't very keen on watching twenty guys chasing after a ball.
He was just the typical rat, he didn't really stand out much. The long days he spent fixing things at his little repair shop kept his body toned and muscular, but it also gave his claws a permanent coat of grime, that never seemed to wash all the way off. His brown fur and plain clothing made him blend into any crowd he was in, and he liked it that way.
Both rat and possum looked at each other without much of a word as they waited outside the stadium. It would have been impossible to have a conversation anyway. Too many people talking and worst of all; plenty of vuvuzuelas sounding. A large lion happened to be selling them right next to the queue too, and everyone seemed to insist upon trying them out after the purchase. Some big, tubby reptile had quite the lungs for it and the sound was so loud that even the lion, who probably was used to it, had to put his hands on his ears. Tiptoe folded his ears too and tried to ignore all the commotion, waiting impatiently in line to actually enter the immense building.
They had pretty decent seats, but neither of them were really the best advertisment for them. The possum's clothes had probably seen better days; they were somewhat old and torn. His grey fur puffed out from the top and his right sleeve had a hole near the forearm. The nicest thing that could be said about his short jeans was that they wouldn't look so ridiculous if he were in the southern of the USA, living in a hut like a stereotypical hick. On the positive side, he was bearing the scorching temperatures well in them.
The heat started to get to the rat. He flicked open the buttons on his shirt until it hung open. "I should probably take this off," he thought, but decided against it. He had never liked to show too much fur in public. As the players took the field, the drone of the vuvezal's came became a roar as nasal and whiny as it was deafening. Tip smiled in spite of that. He didn't know much about the game of soccer, but having good seats at such a big event as the World Cup Final was a once-in-a life time opportunity, too good to miss out on.
The first few minutes of the match were hesitant and clumsy, trying to get the measure of each other. A goal seemed unlikely, and the heat had started to wear on the rat even more.Now seemed as good a time as any to make a snack run. Eager to get some relief, he turned to Carl and leaned close to his ear so that he could be heard. "I'm going to go get something to drink and some air. You want anything?"
Carl shook his head and made a shooing gesture, waving him away. The rat smiled as he stepped into the shade benath the stands. The heat was getting to many of the other species as well, and it was a golden opportunity for people watching. The rat was pretty low key about the fact that he was gay. To say the least, it was not accepted in most of the places that he worked and played. Still, he felt safer to relax his guard a little. "There's no harm in looking," he thought out loud, taking a quick glance here and there with speed born from much discrete practice. With lots of open shirts and exposed fur, the eye candy was very good at the moment.
As he left the grades and headed downstairs to the public bathrooms, but the place was crowded too and he bumped against someone larger than him near the door. They didn't exchange any apology, he glanced over his shoulder. However, there were so many people going in and out that he had no idea who was the person he hit shoulders with. Ignoring the brief disturbance, he headed inside the bathroom and stepped up to the sinks, holding his furless hands under the water flow to wash his face and soak his shirt some. Refreshed, he walked back out to the grades.
He didn't inmediately head off to where Carl was sitting, he couldn't even see him anymore. Too many heads of all shapes blocking his view. Most of the eye candy were distracting him too. And the heat was so intense, he really needed to do something else other than washing his fur.
Tiptoe found a spot in front of him to keep watching the game. He wasn't very interested but he was handling the weather, the excessive crowd and the noises for the final like everyone else, right? So he stepped up to the rail, putting his arms down and kept an eye on the field for a few moments.
Spain had the ball in its possesion, a ball which was just kicked around, from one player to another. Maybe some pressure from the rival team would help getting it back but like in the last game with Germany, the spaniards were moving fast to the goal point. As soon as they arrived however, they lost the possession before being able to kick. The ball went to the side of the field, and they were tossed a new ball from a beagle standing there behind a banner. If the dog's job was really just that, it was one of the easiest jobs he had ever seen.
Before he could watch much more, he noticed his shadow slowly being swallowed on a bigger one. The rat turned his head, looking just in case. And he better had. His dark brown eyes met with this big, sturdy crocodile that stood behind him. That red and yellow shirt was the first hint that the tall male cheered for Spain to win the Finals, and there was the flag like cape too; red lines on each end and a bigger yellow line in the middle. A smirk of amusement spread across his face. It was both odd and funny to see people so devoted to their countries, or to the team they liked. Hard to tell if the crocodile behind him was actually from Spain or not.
"Oye, oye. Ese es mi sitio." After getting no answer right away, he flared his nostrils and added. "Move it."
It occured to him briefly that the crocodile said something along the lines of 'You are taking my place' even though he didn't really know spanish. That was the only right thing to guess when the reptile put a hand on his shoulder, pushing him aside. Tiptoe was then squeezing in between him and some dingo standing nearby, though not for long. He could barely handle the heat and he didn't want to be sandwiched in such a manner. There was just enough room to back up, and Tiptoe was glad - he wasn't quite ready to fight off him a few people, at least not yet.
Unseen to the rat that was standing behind the two males watching the game, one of the players in the field kicked another. The public were shouting at the referee, words he had never heard before; it wasn't any mexican term he was slightly familiar with like 'mamón' or 'huevón'. They were saying things like 'Cabronazo' and 'zancudo de mierda' instead to the flamingo. When he heard the crocodile shouting out his lungs too, he realized that Holland made the offence. He found himself staring at the big male, that ample back, the thick tail... Almost every guy he met was the stout type. He liked them that way. Without much of a second thought he put his slim tail on top of the other male's own.
The reaction was all he had hoped for. The crocodile's tail flicked a bit afterwards as if it was trying to scare away a mosquito, then he turned and quirked an eyeridge. A broad grin showed more than his buck teeth to the male and his long tail slowly moved away, stroking the dile's ankle.
"The fuck are ye doing?"
Shame. The other didn't really seem to be very interested on him yet.
With a shrug, Tiptoe was unsure of what to do, so in a moment of minor panic he spotted a parking stub on the floor and bent down to pick it up. It would be the perfect excuse. "Just wanted to get this, that's all." He was good at pretending, then after getting back up he grabbed the side of his shirt and fanned himself with it. The sad fact was that all the men were there to watch the game, all but probably him, so the reptile ignored his subtle hints and turned back to attend the field. Then he got another idea. Squeezing back in between the crocodile and the dingo, he leant slightly more against the former and looked down at the game.
For about ten minutes he was casually watching the game, ears folding and unfolding each time the crocodile blowed the vuvuzuela to cheer for Spain. Though like him, there were about sixty thousand people cheering for their respective team. During one of the changes of one player for another, he noticed the crocodile was calm and reached up a hand to rub his digits lightly over the reptile's neck.
The crocodile was ignoring the touch. He was more interested on the game anyway. It felt nice, alright. However, he wasn't there to get laid, he would have gone to a bar or something. And yet, the rat was able to touch a spot that made his body shiver - maybe a nervous vein or something.
While doing this, Tiptoe slowly stood on his toes and moved closer. When he was tilting his muzzle up, he let his whiskers brush gently against the crocodile's shoulder and then whispered softly to him. "If you want... I know how to make the halftime worth it." But the big reptile was still ignoring him. Or it looked that way.
There was something else that occupied his attention at that moment. Two players of the Spain team had broken in past the rivals and were rushing toward the goal point in nearly the fourty minute. One of them tricked the opposite defenders and left the ball behind but quickly turned to get it back, then kicked a superb long pass which dropped perfectly towards the man nearly standing alone in the goal area. The wolf controlled the ball, moved effortlessly inside his marker and stabbed the ball into the net to which the goalkeeper couldn't even see. Half of the people in the stadium inmediately stood up, shouting euphoric, celebrating the goal like they knew; waving their flags around and blowing their vuvuzuelas loud and long enough to go deaf.
Tiptoe watched the crocodile turn to suddenly hug him. He wasn't expecting that, though if he were to look around he could notice that other people were doing the same thing. The rat returned the gesture the best he could, though nowhere near as strongly as the reptile. And a few moments later he was surprised to be in the reptile's arms still. He debated in his head about how strong was his desire to actually have something with the man then... Oh! The rat actually got an idea. As everyone - or at least the Spain followers - celebrated the goal, he reached up his hand to rub that spot on the crocodile's neck again and using their intimate position, he whispered in the male's ear over the crowd's roar.
"Don't open your eyes."
It was strange, the crocodile was having so little trouble to actually follow that command. His eyes were still closed as he hugged the rat, though his muscles relaxed and his embrace lost its firmness. And that hand rubbing his neck simply felt wonderful, still rubbing that weird spot gently, making each of the muscles on his neck relax almost like magic. The football game at first had gotten him quite tense, that's why he ignored the touch on his neck earlier.
"Just, keep picturing that goal, big guy. Just keep seeing it... keep seeing it happen in your head. The game is over. Spain won. Now there's nobody here but you, man. Nobody to boo, nobody to throw you around. Just the victory over that other stupid team..."
The voice was so nice to listen to... almost like a lullaby, gently coaxing him from a fitful wake into a calm sleep. He leaned in closer to the rat, slowly putting him down, eyes kept shut as he was relaxing more and more... for a moment, he was fighting to keep balance on his feet, but he managed. Then the body supporting him shifted, causing the croc to gently teeter forwards, his arms falling away from the furred form. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder as the rat moved behind him, then urged him forward. All the crowd had disappeard in his mind, nothing existed other than the rat's voice. That soothing, calming, trustworthy voice... His mind repeated it over and over. It would repeat long enough for the crocodile to stay in such a state.
"You will open your eyes only when I tell you; you will awaken only when I say so. For now, just follow me...it's time for our own game of ball..."
Supreme control, mind control - the fact of forcing someone to act according to his wishes, was something the rat never had the chance to try out since he read about it. For some average guy like him that was truly something he had been wanted to do; controling a bigger creature. Though few reptiles actually let him lay a finger on them. It was easier to hypnotize reptiles, according to that book, since they had several spots under their skin that relaxed them. Similar to a belly scratching for dogs, though that stimulated other senses, hence why they kicked their leg constantly.
Nobody semeed to have paid them any notice. Soon the crowd calmed down, the game on the field started again but the rat had another game in mind. He stopped, the crocodile did too, and he looked down, paying particular attention to something. "Oh no. You are not going to keep this. It has annoyed me enough already." His left paw grabbed the vuvuzuela from the reptile's own hand and tossed it back. "No more ear-rape from you, big boy! The only horn you're blowing's just getting warmed up."