Hot Cocoa
#3 of Ball-Shaped Objects
Hinrich's back to work, and can't really stop thinking about what happened at the gay bar the previous weekend...how can he face his co-worker, knowing that the tiger too holds a secret...hmmmm....
This wonderfully expressionate cover fan art is by the talented
Hello, folks!
This is the third part of a four-part miniseries! *chuckle* I had a marathon writing session over the weekend, and as a result I'm proud to present the first chapter of this story, now finished and just waiting to be published for your reading pleasure in four tantalizing segments!
This story has a three-part purpose - it is an original work by me, written because it's been too long since I wrote something like this, and it is also both a commission and a gift to
Hope you enjoy the read, and I am looking forward to your feedback! I'm doing something rare and actually using the "Humor" tag with this one, something I rarely dare to do.
*
Hinrich had only been working under Professor Glaube for a few weeks, but he had already come to the conclusion that Herr Professor Glaube was a real slave driver. His to-do list was ballooning at an alarming rate, faster than phylogenic family trees grew new branches, it seemed, as he stared at his computer screen, only at the page of 47 on a PDF than ran all the way to 768 pages. The charts and tables formed only a token part of it, too, he noticed, being thus reduced to reading very long lists of UPGMA clusters and dissimilarity matrixes.
"Djust vrite a Five-Page Outline of ze Text unt haben that für meh by ze ent of ze Veek," the email on his inbox had said when he'd dragged his ass to work on this Monday morning, and that'd be on top of everything he'd been given to do earlier...and he was supposed to be composing data for his own thesis proposal too...
"Verdammt," Hinrich declared to himself softly, sweeping the floor with his tailtip while he stretched up his paws a little and tried to get a kink away from his spine. It popped satisfyingly, even going as far as to make his ears flick.
"Perhapsh ein Moment für restingk meine Eyes," Hinrich mused, as he closed his lids and let the screen fade away, immersed in gentle darkness where all he experienced was the false leather of the seat and the gently lingering smell of coffee in his Jurassic Mug, superimposed on the general musk of old paper and bones.
His eyes might've been resting, but his nerves did not. Ohhh, no, not such a chance for the poor red panda, toiling away to make his gentle little cut in the rockface of science. Truth be told, his mind was nowhere near heroic discoveries of missing links in ze Grosse Chain of Life itself. No...there might be some chains involved, perhaps, and at least there was last night when his paws got the best of him and things became greased-up in his bedroom, but the basic idea was clear to him.
He worked with a sex fiend.
His tail bristled even thinking about it, the sight of the massive, angry-looking tiger having fun with that goddamned badger in that club...what was that new word for it...Tverkink? Kinky alright, whatever 'tverk' meant, he wasn't sure, but it looked fun...hell, it'd likely give him a barb rash or something, but....
Hinrich had taken the scenic route in the morning, walking through as many nearby corridors as possible while pretending to be looking for the electric distribution cabinet (his cover story he picked up from Matula) and had scanned every door for anyone called Warrick...not to mention sniffing the air by each door in case he'd smell a very big tiger indeed...he'd picked up warthogs, wolves, canines of unidentified persuasion, a swan and even a kangaroo, but there were no tigers...let alone Warricks. It made him feel even more nervous, as he approached his own branch of the corridor and made himself home by his desk. It meant that the tiger was stalking the corridors of this department, and wherever he went, there was always the chance that he'd be running into the big, menacing beast...what could a little guy like him do? Pretend that he hadn't seen the tiger in the gay club - feign ignorance of the topic, and maybe deny that he was there...though Hinrich was completely sure that the tiger's dirty leer had been a sign of recognition, nothing more, nothing less...he knew that there was no way he could wriggle out of that trouble...and whether the tiger would like to use that knowledge, somehow, he just wouldn't know...surely he'd have decency...though Hinrich wasn't sure how things worked in America. Here he wouldn't be walking around with a rainbow flag sticking out of his Arsch...that might be a bit too much for some...like, say, Frau Voss two doors down, the truly nosy fox who seemed to have nothing good to say about anyone, whom gossiped as much as she smoked, which was a lot, and who had a printed picture of Dieter Bohlen taped onto her door. It was more than enough to make sure Hinrich kept his tail well tucked down.
Though maybe it'd be nice, he thought, someone else in the department who appreciated the full delights of full masculine sex...much to Hinrich's chagrin, it seemed that this Warrick Kat also seemed to have a much better luck in acquiring such experiences. Maybe it helped being built like that...smelling like that, and carrying himself like that...aggressively...sexily...with surely a big, heavy rock hammer in his pants...
Knock-knock.
His ears jumped briefly at the sound that seemed to echo through the tiny, tightly packed office, soon to be followed by another series of knocks.
"Ze Door ist open!" he called out, surely he hadn't locked it.
The door was pulled open with a hearty tug, leading into a strong musk and a veritable cloud of something else to enter the room, and prompting Hinrich to rotate in his chair to face the door...and freeze, with his stretching paws still held above his head.
"Copy machine guy!" the tiger was standing in the doorway, leering broadly with two steaming mugs in one paw, grinning and smiling and with his tail batting each side of the doorframe while he stood there, big and imposing and...
"Vat?" Hinrich groaned. "Ach, I mean...what?"
The tiger tramped into the room, pulled the door shut while brandishing the two mugs in his other paw, and marched over to put them onto Hinrich's desk, on top of some printouts and right next to Jurassic Mug. The red panda risked a peek down and observed the murky liquid in them, the scent, too, becoming more clear at the moment, mingling with the scent of the tiger hovering above him now.
"Cocoa!" the tiger said, as if he'd been saying something like 'GET YOUR PAWS UP AND GIVE ME YOUR WALLET!', rather more like.
The tiger's nosepad wrinkled and his whiskers wobbled with a sharp intake of breath, and a thumb poke against Jurassic Mug.
"So much better than this stuff!" the tiger declared.
Hinrich simply stared...mugs, tiger, mugs, tiger, tiger, tiger, tiger...feeling his tail tuck itself under the chair as he dared to look up to the tiger, standing there and filling the room with his scent and his presence. He smelled like he hadn't showered in a day or so...though his furs were smooth and shiny, and obviously kept and groomed...it wasn't that he wasn't hygienic, he was simply...strong and musky, Hinrich had to concur.
"What is this for?" he mumbled, simply unable to make any particular connection between the grouchy tiger and the milky beverage now resting on his desk.
The tiger slammed a paw onto his desk and stayed there, somewhat hunched over, head snapped into an angle that provided Hinrich with a clear view of his teeth whenever he breathed...his lips curled up like that, causing the poor red panda's belly to clench rhythmically.
"It's better for you than that piss you've got in that mug," the tiger grumbled, nudging a thumb against the nearby Jurassic Mug.
"It's warm milk..." Hinrich muttered.
"It's cocoa!" the tiger continued, his voice almost rising into a snarl. "I brought it for you! You should be pleased!"
Hinrich's cheeks burned when he hurried to nod.
"Well, thank you...Warrick..." he made sure to try to pronounce the tiger's name correctly, he remembered how he'd been threatened with ire should he do any mistakes in that respect.
"I got that thing printed out," the tiger spoke, all too casually, Hinrich thought, considering the way how the tiger's eyes seemed to be lingering on the red panda's collar. He was only wearing his trilobite T-shirt today, a funky black and white thing he'd picked up at a conference once...the tiger could see his chest through the loose opening, surely. "Wanted to thank you!"
"Uh...well, that's...that's great," Hinrich managed, "thank you!"
The tiger chortled and shook his head a little before picking up one of the mugs and taking a big, long sip that left his lips coloured with a shade of brown, briefly, before he took his time licking them. Hinrich felt his pants swell uncomfortably, watching that aggressive pink organ move over the tiger's black lips like that. He didn't dare to touch his own mug yet...he suspected he might spill it all over himself, and that would be...rather unfortunate.
"Hmmmmm...milk..." the tiger rumbled.
"So I...take you like chocolate?" Hinrich desperately grasped at the first opportunity for small talk, which was much better than staring at the tiger's armpit, which was about the place where his eyes were aligned to for the moment.
"Only when it's hot," the tiger replied.
"I...see..." he rumbled.
The tiger chuckled, deep and dark, and with chocolate-flavoured air flowing against Hinrich's blazing muzzle. It made him feel thirsty...and wanting a box of Mozartkugeln and...
"I love you German boys," the tiger grumbled, now looking at him with eyes that could only be described by the red panda as beastly, "acting like you're embarrassed of the attention..."
Hinrich couldn't deny that he was feeling attended to alright...his skin was crawling, like it did before, back in the club with the tiger staring at him...and now there was less than a metre between their faces and that same feeling persisted, and made it somewhat difficult to breathe steadily.
"Uh..."
"Bad boy Hinrich, though..." the tiger mused, as one huge paw loomed towards the red panda. Hinrich almost lurched backwards, he could have given the chair a kick and gone crashing against the filing cabinets, but he...he was nailed to the spot.
"Ehhh..."
The tiger pressed his thumb against Hinrich's muzzle and let it be there, the pad the size of a two-Euro coin, the panda thought hysterically, while his pulse seemed to race even higher.
"Hush," he spoke, sounding almost patronizing, Hinrich's ears flapping down.
"Hmhmmh," he breathed.
"Now..." the tiger smirked, "I'm a bit disappointed with you, Hinrich..."
The red panda couldn't imagine why...but some reason, hearing the hunky tiger say that made his balls almost implode. He was pretty sure that should the tiger say that the only way to get over that disappointment would be for him to surrender his body to him, he'd be unbuckling his pants in about fifteen seconds or so and bending over that very desk.
"...I wanted to come and talk to you at the fairy bar..." the tiger continued in his deep, rumbling voice that caressed Hinrich's ears like chocolaty velvet, "but you were nowhere to be seen after the dancing stopped...I wanted for you to come out of the bathroom or something for almost half an hour before I finally let that badger to suck me off..."
Hinrich's eyes widened softly as he listened to the tiger's story...had he actually missed out on some kind of an opportunity to exercise his naughty bone with the tiger, by storming out in his nervous shock over seeing the tiger there in the first place...let alone his envy for the badger, whom had actually bagged the tiger for the night...to a degree at least, hearing about it now from the man himself. Hinrich wasn't sure whether he should feel flattered over such attention, or simply stalked...and he couldn't really decide which option he liked better, or less. Sitting there, pinned down by the tiger's thumb pressing against his lips like a leathery phallus was...something new alright.
"...and guess what? It was alright...a maw's a maw..." the tiger continued, causing Hinrich to feel almost shocked over how easily the cat shrugged off the fact that he'd actually gotten man-sex so easily, and seemingly got enough of it that he could even afford to be picky, "...but I suppose his heart just wasn't into it..."
My heart is into it!
Hinrich's mind screamed, but he still felt he wasn't allowed to talk yet.
"I'd really liked to come to talk to you...we could have had a couple of drinks...you could've told me about how things work here...it's all new to me, you know..."
"Hmphp!"
"Heheh", the tiger chuckled roughly, "You're damn cute, you know..."
He stroked his thumb over Hinrich's tingling lips before he withdrew his paw and just stood there, watching the red panda with big, curious eyes. Hinrich took a deep, gulping breath and inhaled out through his nostrils, quickly, surely catching the tiger with the quick flow of air, too. The tiger let out a deep rumble.
"Cat got your tongue?"
Hinrich couldn't help but snort, almost moaning.
"You didn't just say that!" he yelped.
"Oh I did," the tiger smiled, "Feline prerogative."
"Well..."
The tiger clicked his tongue and smiled still, brooding over the red panda.
"The badger was too pretty, anyway," the tiger harrumphed, obviously enjoying seeing Hinrich squirm on his seat, "I like you..."
"You..." Hinrich whispered, "You don't even know me..."
"I don't even know that badger's name!" the tiger chuckled, a sound that wasn't unlike a bark, Hinrich thought, "I know your name...Hinrich...Baikal..."
Hinrich was surprised that the tiger could make it sound...like...like that...
"You're not too pretty," the tiger said, "and I can see you like what you see..."
"Euhmm..."
"I haven't figured out all of you yet...but I have a...hunch..."
"Hunch?" Hinrich tried the slightly awkward word on his tongue.
The tiger flashed his teeth, briefly.
"I think so," he said, "that's why you're coming over to my place tonight to help me unpack my stuff."
"I...what?" the red panda exclaimed.
The tiger grabbed his mug of cocoa again and leaned against the steel-framed shelf, took a sip and let his tail explore the room again while he looked at the puzzled red panda on his high-backed chair.
"I've only been here for a couple of weeks, I haven't had the time to unpack," he said, "you look like you could be handy in that."
The tiger sipped from his mug and looked around the room, completely aloof for a while, during which Hinrich simply stared, really unable to comprehend just whether the tiger was playing some kind of mind games with him, or whether this was the weirdest, worst, or possible the best pickup line he had ever been subjected to.
"Uhhh..."
"Or I could just go to the Powderraum..." the tiger said.
Well he wasn't making anything unclear here, Hinrich thought, brushing his paws nervously over his chest.
"Well...what do you have in mind?" Hinrich asked.
The tiger smirked.
"Wouldn't you like to know?"
"Yes!" the red panda said.
"Well I ain't telling you," the tiger replied. "Unless you come to my place at seven tonight."
What could he say?
"Okay," Hinrich said, hoping not to sound as meek as it sounded to his own ears.
"Wunderful!" the tiger replied.
"So you do speak German then?" Hinrich's ears bobbed.
"Du kann give meh Lessons if du like," the tiger continued nonchalantly. "Now, without me embarrassing myself speaking this strange language of yours, why don't you be useful now and tell me what the hell you do here besides fix copy machines, eh? Don't disappoint me, Baikal!"
Hinrich couldn't do anything but swallow a gulp and roll himself quickly towards his desk to avoid the tiger from seeing his persistent and very, very firm erection that was threatening to fly-burst from his pants.
"Naturally," he said.
*
Thank you for reading my story! I hope you had fun, and I look forward to seeing your feedback!
Tune in tomorrow for the final installment...which will run a whopping 10,000 words! :P