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"Like the time I landed to the ER because of my ex Ismail," I rumbled.

Well, saying that really got his attention. Rory's ears jumped and he got that look that on other furs meant that they'd just opened a gallon of milk and found a dead mouse inside, but on the lion it meant that the shit just hit the fan. His paw on my arm squeezed one me a bit, too, as if by a reflex.

Didn't mind that. Was a bit gentler show of affection than Cobb's constant brotherly hugs that threatened my ribs whenever they happened.

"What happened?" Rory's voice sounded constrained and low. As if he was swallowing part of his voice down before letting it come.

I rubbed my belly.

"I didn't tell you much about Ismail, did I?" I asked.

Rory shook his head and his tail, too.

"I think it was Cobb who mentioned him for by name," he said. "But he called him Isaac, I think."

I snuffled.

"He does that on purpose, I think," I replied. "Tries to sully the memory or something, I guess. I'm not sure."

Rory nodded a little.

"Sounds like it," he mused. "From what I know."

Heh. He sure did know a lot...much more than most of the furs who had ever gotten to interact with me, let alone with my brother, especially in the capacity of Victor's butt buddy, to use one of Cobb's favorite epithets.

"Yeah," I nodded. "So that's Isaac."

"I know you used to go out at some time," Rory continued.

"We did. For much of 2009."

Was it already almost two years ago? Hard to believe time went so past.

Hard to believe how little happened in between.

"Okay," Rory said.

Well...here we go then.

I got extra comfy on the sofa and went on.

"I had worked for United Stationery for only about a month when I met him. Ismail..."

His damn scent was enough to give me a boner four cubicles away.

_ _

Rory kept watching me.

"So, yeah. He worked for the company. Not officially on the payroll, but he did work for us and got paid for it. Kind of a private subcontractor. Did some of the actual selling of office supplies to places like small businesses. Often on the move. Going along the coast and to Chicago and stuff. That's how we met for the first time. And second time, too."

Chatting idly at the water cooler on that day when the air conditioning wouldn't work and I was sweating so damn much he was bound to smell me.

_ _

Rory nodded.

"And you hit it off?"

"Yeah," I nodded, too. "Didn't take long before we were hanging out a lot. Doing some stuff, you know, regular dating stuff when he was in town. Mostly on the weekends. Sometimes during the weeks, too, when he was in town. Sometimes I went to Buffalo to see him. Lived there at the time."

And I've no idea where he lives now.

_ _

I wondered whether Rory felt weird, hearing everything about me and Ismail. I watched him carefully as I talked and made sure that he didn't start to look unhappy again. Didn't want to add that strain to this stupid situation.

"So it went like that. It was alright. Casual, but it was still ok. It's more than most had, anyway."

"True," Rory muttered.

I scratched behind my non-mauled ear and took a deep breath before it was time to make things a bit more complicated.

"Well, it went on for some time and then I thought, well, maybe it could be more, too, in time...and...well, I took us on a weekend trip. All expenses paid. To Chicago."

Sure didn't manage to make it sound like a romantic getaway now.

_ _

"Oh?"

"Yeah," I said. "And we met Cobb."

Rory's eyes went big, as I expected. I decided to carry on quickly.

"I arranged it," I said. "I thought it was an okay idea. Ismail didn't mind and I thought it might be fun to...you know, Cobb might like it. Seeing his brother with a proper man."

I could see the "Oh fuck" expression pass over Rory's features, and knew that he had a fairly good idea about how it all had went.

"How was it?" he asked, trying to sound polite.

I grumbled.

"As you might think," I said. "At least it was a public place so he didn't manage to totally fuck things up, but he was very much like Cobb."

Poor lion.

"I see," he said.

I patted the paw still resting on my arm and rumbled.

"No, it wasn't meeting Cobb that broke it all up," I said dryly, to lighten things up a bit.

Rory's ears jumped, and I knew that I had gotten him off-guard. It was fine. We both smiled.

"So what happened?" he asked then, finally.

Well...this was it. Might as well tell him why.

"It'd been about a week since I last saw him," I started. "Ismail was in Milwaukee. Some sort of a fair I think. Hadn't seen him for a while and I was kinda missing him."

Again I wondered whether all of this made much sense, but it had to be told. No need to keep Rory in the dark when I'd already started to explain this all to him. Might make things a bit easier to comprehend.

"Well, then I started to feel a bit odd when going to the bathroom," I said. "Pissing started to feel weird, and I had to go often."

Rory frowned. I thought it better to hurry.

"I thought it could be something, and I definitely didn't want anything down there that I could pass on," I said, citing my naïve thinking in going to see the doctor. "So I went to the ER and....and..."

Shit it felt bad, even after two years.

At least Rory didn't say anything. I wondered if he could already guess where this was heading, though.

"Well, they poked me everywhere with cotton swabs and made a lot of personal questions and then told me afterwards that I've got Chlamydia."

Now it was my turn to make a face, and Rory followed suite. I wasn't so surprised by that. Even my sheath was twitching empathically at the horror of the memory.

"Shit," Rory breathed out.

"Big time," I nodded. "I didn't know what to think, or what to do..."

"But they got it treated alright, didn't they?" Rory asked me quickly, and for a moment I even wondered, judging by his uneasy face, that maybe he even thought that he might have been under some risk, too.

"Yeah, sure," I said. "One pill and I was good, but there was the huge, ugly matter of Ismail."

Rory nodded after the pause in my words seemed to stretch a bit.

"I couldn't believe it at first," I said. "We always played safe and I sure as hell hadn't screwed around...so for a little while, I wondered if it could have been that one time much longer time ago..."

Rory looked at me expectantly, and I snuffled.

"But even that seemed like a stretch. And it didn't matter so much. I had to tell Ismail anyway, because he needed to get checked out, too. So, the next time we met, I told him right away."

I stopped again and stared at the wall of the small apartment, hoping that this explanation would be over soon.

"Yeah?"

I had to bite my teeth down before I spoke so as not to grumble. The memory hurt so bad. I even wondered whether I could tell it to Rory without feeling too uncomfortable about it afterwards.

"I'll never forget what he said to me," I rumbled.

It still almost made my eyes sting.

"He said...'I've had worse'"," I grunted.

And tried to grab my dick as if to show that he wasn't afraid of a bit of Chlamydia.

_ _

Rory's paw on my arm was trembling. I placed mine over it and gave it a little squeeze.

"That was my cue," I said. "I never got an answer on just how much did he sleep around, or had slept around, before me, and then went on doing it with me without taking care of being tested. I don't know. But I know that he didn't take it seriously at all, and that was it. I couldn't handle that kind of a thing. That kind of a lack of trust and respect. For my body and...uh...me."

Felt funny to talk body and soul, like that, but I was sure that Rory understood what I meant. I was looking carefully at him now, too, now that the ugly truth had been spilled, and it was time to hear what he thought about it. On another aspect of me revealed, quite painfully, for him to know.

Then he swallowed, and spoke.

"Well I can see why Cobb was angry...still is," he said.

I snorted.

"I never told him the STD part," I explained. "Only that Ismail wasn't serious about it after all and that it wasn't going to last any longer."

"And Cobb didn't take it easily I presume..." Rory rumbled after a moment.

"Never has stopped telling me that he thinks that it's impossible for gay guys to form monogamous relationships," I added.

I could see the life draining away from his face upon those words, and knew they'd hit a nerve again. The big one, too. The stupid thing that'd been eating on us for the past weeks.

Seeing him like this, I knew it'd done its deed on him, too. That face wasn't the product of just being holed up in his home or being unable to walk or suffering from pain. I'd done all those and would've probably handled it all much better if it wasn't for the fucking thing gnawing in my mind all the time. Thinking that just when everything was going towards putting everything to the next level...with Cobb going home and giving us the space we'd need, we could've really started to see where this all was going. Whether we were good together. Fit together. What we could be. What we could become.

I admit that I'd been thinking about that a lot. I didn't want another Ismail. I knew Rory wasn't one. He'd had his own rough times with men, too, so he sure as hell knew where I was coming from. That's why I hoped that by taking slowly, we could do everything right, and be sure about things before doing more than what we already did. Easy chats and a few shared interests and the knowledge that neither of us was too much entangled in the complexities of the small underground gay life of Kirk City. Easier to keep things simple. Let them proceed slowly and naturally. Let us enjoy each other when that happened.

Been wanting that a lot, too. Sex might be easy to come by if you went to places of the sort and didn't discriminate, but sex of the kind with Rory wasn't that common. Sure, we could do it all night. Had done on a couple of occasions. But the times afterwards were fun too. Just the way I liked them. That didn't happen so often.

It all summed up to why I wanted to keep this going. Even if it meant a bit of a shit storm at the moment. All that crap.

Rory frowned again and I knew how he'd interpreted my words, telling about Cobb. How it had sounded like an accusation.

Hell, I can't say with a clear conscience that it wasn't just a little bit like that. Cobb sure had made me think about the possibility, during the past few days.

And then had made me think some more, too. And then some.

I wondered whether Rory had thought, too.

The paw was still there, and so was mine. Over his, bigger, and heavier, too. It looked protective there, dark fur over the yellow, warm shade that was Rory's. And he was looking at me, too.

"Sorry," I rumbled.

Rory let out a deep breath.

"I'm more sorry."

He sure looked like it.

"It's not a competition," I tried. "Both guilty as charged."

He shook his head and avoided my eyes afterwards.

"If only I'd known better," he muttered.

If only I'd been a better listener when it was needed the most.

"Yeah," I rumbled.

Rory sucked in a breath that sounded almost painful.

"I hate what happened," he said, turning passionate eyes towards me now, looking into my eyes directly, "I just can't..."

Damn it.

Had to stop the tirade from coming again. And I only knew one way to.

I didn't mind the twinge in my ribs when I grabbed that round chin and made sure it wasn't going anywhere while my muzzle did the rest, over his, over his lips.

*