Time and Distance
"Ever-newer waters flow on those who step into the same rivers."
"Time and Distance"
by K.M. Hirosaki (kmhirosaki@hotmail.com)
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story is copyright © 2019 K.M. Hirosaki.
The lights were so bright, so many different colors, all constantly changing, filtered through some kind of artificial smoke. It smelled fake, whatever it was, but fake in a pleasant way, a good way. I'd never been to a real nightclub before in my life, so it was all kinds of overwhelming, the sights and the smells and oh, of course, the sounds, that wonderful mix of thumping music and garbled conversation, all of it so full of energy and full of life.
"Heh, look. Otter's got stars in his eyes." It was my buddy Andi, a tallish leopard whogave me a handjob once the very first time I met him, about four months back.
His bigger-boned bunny boyfriend, Llewelyn--Lu for short--giggled as he looked backover at me. "He's right, you know," he said, poking me in the side, just under where myskimpy vest cut off. He'd encouraged me to buy it the week before when I'd honestly only been trying it on as a joke. "I haven't seen your face lit up like this since they brought you that whole tureen of crawfish bisque at the Copperhead."
I could only assume the myriad flashing lights hid my deep, deep blush at that--I can'treally say that the dinner in question had been a 'romantic' affair exactly since the othertwo were a couple and I'd just been along as their friend, but Andi was totally encouraging me and Lu's flirting and wining and dining and he was cool with Lu dragging me off back home to fuck me afterwards.
Yeah, that's a scenario that I'd replayed through my thoughts over and over a whole,whole lot in the last couple months, if it wasn't obvious.
"Let me get you a drink, hon," Andi said to me before I had to stammer my way througha bashful and blushing response. "Anything in particular you want?"
"I'll have one of whatever you're getting," I replied with a big and probably awkward smile. I hadn't been of legal drinking age for even a year yet, and Andi's tastes were so much more refined and sophisticated than mine that it just felt safer to defer to him. Plus, I knew the leopard liked to expose people to new experiences. Even if a repeat handjobapparently wasn't one of them.
"And just get me a diet whatever," Lu chimed in. He was driving tonight, but surely a big guy like him--and who drank pretty socially most of the time--could handle a drinkor two, given how long we'd be here, I figured.
"How come you're not having anything, like, more exciting?" I asked, sidling in closer to the rabbit now that his boyfriend had flittered off toward the bar. Even as I did it, Itried to lie to myself that it wasn't on purpose.
"Just a little rule I have," Lu replied. His tall, white ears appeared to sway side to side in time with the music. I smiled, even as he went on to explain, "I'd rather just not risk it." All right, I'd clearly missed some words under the thumping beats, which might have been louder now, but I got the gist of it, and I knew Lu'd still be having a good time tonight from the look in his eyes. My gaze locked harder with his, my hearting pounding more in time with the music as well as I--
A pair of firm paws clamped down onto my hips as a warm and sturdy weight pressed against me from behind. The pervasive club scents of booze as well as dozens of males of all sorts of species left my nose pretty much blind, but I felt a smooth, leather-covered bulge press in against the thick base of my tail, followed by a warm and husky breath washing over one of my round little ears. "Heyyy Luuu," trilled the muzzle that was nowpoking over my shoulder. "This seat isn't taken, is it?" That package rolled against my buttonce again.
"Oh, no, not at all," said the rabbit with a big smile to the fellow who'd nestled in againstmy back. His eyes then turned to mine, and he held up one of his paws in a shooing motion."Go on, sweetie. Have fun. I'll hold onto your drink for you after Andi gets back."
The lights are so much different now. Back in the day they were something akin to adazzling rainbow. Now they're just a mix of future laser blue and future laser green. The look isn't terrible, I guess, but it somehow makes the place look even more dated than the first time I'd come here almost twenty years earlier. Few things make old things look even older than trying to look like the future. And more to the point, what was wrong with rainbow colors in a gay club, anyway?
I take it all back. The look kind of is terrible.
Not that the lights hold my attention for long. I'm a little stoned from an edible I had several hours earlier, but only a little, and it doesn't take too much concentration to pullmy focus away from the bullshit, two-toned and fucking bullshit hypnotic blinky-blink orb-thing and back to the matter at hand: figuring out where the hell any of these lines for the bar start.
I use the word 'lines' very, very loosely; it's more of a morass that has a fewprotrusions that line up with where the bartending stations are. Even back in the day, trying to get a place at the bar was a chaotic clusterfuck, but I swear it's worsenowadays somehow. People are meaner and shit about how they muscle their way in.And okay, I'm not the slinky, slender little otter I used to be anymore, either. Shit, I'mdrinking less these days simply because a lot of the time it's too much of a pain in the assto actually get served.
"Let me grab you something," says my buddy Lito as he claps a paw on my shoulder. The wolf's been real nice to me lately. We've been friends for years and he's always beennice to me and all but lately he's been, like, nice-nice. I think it's because he knows I've been cheering up and stuff lately and he's trying to be encouraging. And it's working, and not just because he's sorta cute.
"Sure. Like just a cider or whatever is fine," I tell him, the smile coming to my face without my having to force it. It feels good, being able to do that again. "I'll probably just be hanging around here." I gesture vaguely to the area around the black pillar, where the folks we've come in with have gravitated around. Lito nods and grins back at me.
I stretch and gaze out over the crowd. Everyone seems so goddamn young. I don'tremember feeling anywhere close to so young at that age. I only briefly feel like a pervert for appreciating the eye-candy, before I remind myself that, hell, I'm technically noteven twice their age. Yet. Shit, at least everyone in here's old enough to drink.
I spy with my little eye a short, twinky red fox over by the far end of the bar, hisleather vest skimpy and his leather shorts even skimpier. From this distance, I can't tell
whether he's got leather cuffs on his black-socked paws as well, but I bet he probably does. No collar, though. That much I can see.
He's hot. And fuck, I want to bend him over the same way I used to like getting bentover.
Lu's friend (or "friend?") turned out to be a tall, rugged and handsome grey fox whowas dressed somewhere between "cowboy" and "far too unironic gay stereotype," his tall ears poking up through the holes in his hat. I hadn't gotten his name yet, but I had gottenhim to drag me off to a darkened corner on the club's outdoor back patio.
As for the fox, he'd gotten my belt undone and my shorts off. That was a score I wasokay with.
"Mmm. So Lu told me all 'bout this cute little otter-boy he'd met a little while back," hebreathed into my ear as his long-fingered paws smoothed their way over my bared hipsand backside, claws teasing through my fur. "Says you're a real keeper."
The biggest shit-eating grin split my muzzle, and I arched back against my new friend'spaws before hiking myself up onto my tiptoes. "Oh yeah?" I squeaked, faux-demurely, turning my head just enough to flash him a look out of the corner of my eye. "Did he tell you I'm a slippery and stretchy little otter?"
A low and rhythmic growl rumbled against the side of my skull, and the fox bit down onto my ear hard enough to make me tense up and gasp. "Fuck, that is music to my ears, kid." He huffed some more, then started fidgeting with the front of his leather pants.
I kept myself propped up against the wall, my rudder helpfully giving the occasional alluring swish as I waited for the fox to get his dick out. I'd never worn a pair of leather pants in my life, so I sure as shit wasn't about to try to help someone else out of theirswhen I could barely see straight for how goddamn horny I was.
I don't know how long it took him. I was just lost in the thumping of the music, the pace of my own excited breathing, and my heart pounding like it was going to explode. Then, after some stretch of time where I was lost in all of that, I was suddenly yanked out of my trance as I felt a long, thick, hard and drizzly cock start to ride up and down through the cleft of my rump.
It took some effort, trying not to think of how many people I'd had sex with in the veryshort time since losing my virginity, but the fox soon distracted me from those thoughts as well.
I haven't fucked anyone--like actually, properly fucked someone--in something likefour or five years. Frankly, it's been so long that I stopped caring a while back and losttrack. This red fox by the bar, though, is threatening to break that streak of mine, and Ihaven't even said hello yet.
Ugh. That makes me sound like a huge pervert, I realize, but context is king: you don'tcome to a gay club wearing fuck-me shorts if you aren't looking to get fucked. And if by some chance I'm wrong about that, well, I probably wasn't going to seal the deal,anyway.
No. No, I can't let myself think like that. I'm here tonight because I'm finally in a placewhere I can look for a little bit of fun without getting overwhelmed by the prospect, disappointed by the results, or any of the other thousand little things that have kept me from trying to get laid for the past four or five aforementioned years.
The fox's tail swishes. My eyes are locked onto it, following it as it moves, the whitetip tinged blue and green and blue again by the shifting club lighting. I scope out his butt, the tight leather encasing it leaving only the very best bits to the imagination. And oh, do I imagine.
I turn around and start scanning the crowd near the bar for any sign of Lito. He's not back with my drink yet, but maybe the line's taking a long time, or maybe he got waylaidby someone else he knows. Either way, I know my wolf-friend is going to find me eventually, and maybe if he sees me chatting up some cute little fox in leather, he'll stepin and be my wingman.
Fuck it. I don't have the booze to cut the edge off, but I'm still at least a little high, so that'll have to do. I steel what passes for my courage these days, take a deep breath offake-smelling smoke that's diluted by all the ambient vape juice in the club, and start to approach.
At first, I'm coming up on him directly from behind, but before I'm too close, I quickly shift my angle and instead come at him from the side. "Hey, fox," I say, waiting for him to look my way before I flash a grin. "I really like your outfit."
For such a simple and on-the-surface compliment, he beams pretty brightly at me."Oh, thanks!" he chirps. "This is actually only my first time wearing it out in public." Hisbushy tail sways behind him, and he lifts up his cocktail and sticks the tiny red straw into his muzzle.
"It looks great on you," I tell him, and then immediately stop myself before I can add some cheesy remark about where else it might look even better. "You're really cute, youknow," I say instead, and the honesty of my words catches me off my guard.
"Thanks!" he repeats with a perky chirp similar to before. The fox takes a moment tocheck me out, and he does so in a way that he makes sure I notice. Again, he smiles."You're looking pretty good, yourself."
"Ah, fuck, you look so good like that," snarled the grey fox right up against my ear. By'like that,' I was guessing he meant 'pinned to the wall with his dick buried under my tail.'I appreciated the respite for what it was, catching my breath as best I could before hestarted thrusting again. He was nice and thick, as I'd already discovered on his way in, buthe knew how to put his size to use, his hips rocking at a pace that was only just the tiniest
bit faster than I was comfortable with. But I soon grew comfortable with it. Then the fox began thrusting faster still. My own dick was leaking all over itself, the occasional forceful thrust making my shaft
jump and bob and sprinkle my drizzle all over the wall the fox had me pressed against.Almost certainly it wasn't the first time this particular patch of wall had been baptized thus, though considering the early hour (relatively speaking), I was probably at least thefirst person to make a mess of it today. The thrusting off the grey fox's hips and theflopping of my own erection were an agonizing half-second off from the thumping of the music still assaulting my ears, leaving me just on the edge of having any control, my dick painting abstract patterns of clearish, liquid droplets on the bricks in front of me.
The fox shifted his weight and grabbed me by the hips, helping to hoist me higher up before bottoming out into my rump again. Now he was pinning me against the wall more precariously, giving me even less in the way of leverage or balance, forcing me to rely on him for both. I tucked my elbows in closer to my torso and allowed my webbed paws to slide along the gritty surface of the wall, finding purchase where I could in order to better
let myself focus on the matter at hand: getting done up the ass by this handsome cowboy- fox.
Letting this bigger male take control of me was a liberating rush, and my mind spun and swam faster than anything as the thick girth pounding me beneath my tail kept nudging my prostate and sending jolts of both nerve- and hormone-driven pleasure through my body, rendering me into more and more of a helpless mess. The fox was on his game, though, picking up the slack and getting all the more assertive for it.
See, this was a guy who knew what he was doing. This was how you fucked someone you wanted to fuck.
The short red fox brushes his fingers along the inside of my forearm as he sidles incloser to me, and I suppress the shiver that courses through me; it's one of my moreexposed erogenous zones, but somehow it's one not a lot of people wind up discovering. This here fox is definitely trying to be sweet on me, I can tell, but I don't think he knewquite what his touch would do to me.
I can't complain, though.
His name is Kody ("With a 'K,'" as he confirmed for my ear earlier). He likes dancing,sweet drinks where you can't really taste the booze, and--unless I'm completely missingmy mark--otters. I smile at the way his white-tipped tail bounces behind him, which sometimes moves in time with the music for a few seconds at a time, clearly unconsciously. My webbed fingers curl in against his wrist, a single blunt claw teasingthrough the short fur there. Kody's eyes flutter.
When it comes time for me to say something, I falter. What do I ask? "Would you liketo dance?" isn't a question someone asks--not in real life, certainly not in a club like this. At the same time, I also feel like just going with "Hey, mind if I grind against your butt awkwardly to a terrible song neither of us actually knows?" wouldn't do me favors, either. And thinking about it in those particular terms makes it sound a lot less fun, besides.
That doesn't mean that I don't want to grind against his butt, though.
"Ah, here you are!" It's Lito, grinning as he steps over to me with a glass in each paw.He hands one of them to me, the sweet aroma hitting my nose before I've even taken a sip. "I hope pear cider's okay; it's all they had," the wolf says. Then he takes notice of Kody, and the fact that the fox and I are casually fondling one another's forearms. "Don't think I know this one." His broad muzzle splits into a friendly grin.
Lito and Kody introduce themselves to each other, and then the wolf turns to me withanother of his handsome smiles. "Anyway, I'll let you guys get back to it," he tells us. "Ineed to go track down my tiger." Lito isn't dating anyone right now, least of all not a tiger, but he's apparently got something lined up for his evening. I hope for his sake that it's fun.
And just like that, Kody and I are alone again, and when the little fox smiles back atme, I can tell from the little sparkle in his eye that he wasn't just being polite with meearlier.
"Do you mind if I have a sip of that?" he asks, gesturing with his snout at my cider.
I shake my head and hand it over, and as I watch him drink from it, rather than lewd thoughts stemming from my staring at his mouth, I instead simply think about how cute he looks as he brings the broad-rimmed glass to his delicate vulpine muzzle.
The grey fox stopped short of knotting me, which allowed us to avoid having to stay nestled in the shadows longer than necessary, as well as allowing his huge load to slowly dribble its way out from inside me. I could feel the stickiness turning into a more unpleasant, watery trickle as things cooled down, matting the fur between my cheeks and along the backs of my balls. The scent was enough to blot out the reek of cigarettes and dozens of other males getting up close and personal with each other. It was also enough to make my spent shaft a bit hard all over again. Fuck, I was gonna be smelling fox on me all night, whether real or imagined.
He'd said something about going to look for Lu, or maybe Andi--I'd been fucked realsilly by that point and so my hearing was a bit lacking (and my ability to care was even less). And so now I was propped up, on my own, still catching my breath and reveling in the pounding my rudder had just taken while staring bleary-eyed at my own wad of jizz and the way it was sliding down the coarse, filth-ridden wall in front of me. I was definitely going to need another minute or two to catch my breath and recompose my thoroughly buggered self.
When I'd first moved to the big city, I'd had fantasies of getting to come to a club exactlylike this where I could be my faggoty little otter self, shake my rudder at someone, and get nailed by a handsome guy of some larger species--and now here I was, having literally lived almost exactly that scenario, except for the part where I hadn't even needed to shake my rudder at the fox to get his attention.
There was a dull, throbbing tingle under my tail, familiar, but somehow so different forthe circumstances that had let to my soreness. The usual quiet afterglow spent in a friend's bed (or even sprawled out on a friend's couch) was replaced by the ceaseless club music, like the steady heartbeat of some greater organism that was alive, and that us tiny dancing critters were just a smaller part of.
I hadn't even gotten drunk yet; I'd just been fucked so silly that it had been a borderlinespiritual experience.
Eventually, I got my shorts cinched back up and stepped out of the shadows, stretching my arms up high above my head, a big smile coming to my face. My heart was pounding in my chest. Most of these people had no idea that the giddy little otter standing among them had just gotten fucked by a near-stranger. That was hot to think about. A handful of them had probably noticed, or else had noses keen enough to tell them the truth. That was even hotter to think about.
I wove my way through the crowd, back toward the heart of the club proper, with no real destination in particular. I was here. A year ago, this had been nothing more than a whimsical dream to this little small-town otter. Now, it was real, and I was finally where I belonged.
"Thanks for agreeing to come along, by the way," I tell Kody as the fox and I findourselves a two-seater table at the coffee shop a few blocks down from the club."Honestly that kind of place really isn't my scene."
Kody smiles. He starts to pick up his mocha, his chocolately paws looking comically small as they grip either side of the wide, pistachio-green mug, but it's apparently still too hot, and he immediately sets it back down. "You looked like you were having a good enough time to me," he says.
"Yeah, but that's because I had a really cute fox to flirt with," I reply, and Kody triesto hide the blush that comes to his ears, but I catch it, and it makes my heart flutter,
knowing I can still make a cute boy flush up like that. "It's just a lot easier to talk and get to know someone one-on-one when there isn't loud music blasting in your ears. Especially when you're a geezer like me and not a keen-eared young canid."
"Oh, stop," Kody pouts, swatting at my forearm with one of his paws. "You're not ageezer and you know it." Tiny fangs flash in his grin, and his eyes flick up and downover me. "Besides, you pull off the low-key daddy look really well. Even if loud nightclubsaren't your scene."
Despite the fact that we're both still in our club gear, the other patrons around us payus little heed. It's a gay neighborhood, after all, in a coffee shop, sometime just after oneo'clock in the morning. Anyone here at this hour has seen far weirder that two men who have been out having a good time together. Hell, I can see from where I'm sitting thatwe're not even the only two clubgoers in this place.
"I am not a daddy," I reply with a coy grin. "I'm simply an otter on the cusp of forty who hasn't been watching his figure so well for the last decade or so."
"Uh-huh. With sexy greyish fur--" "Silver fur." "Sexy silver fur in just the right places. I bet you'd look even cuter in glasses." "For now I'm just glad I've still got good eyesight." The heat wafting up from our mugs of coffee tickles the underside of my muzzle, and
only then do I realize how far we've both leaned over the table toward one another. "When we're done here did you want to come on back to my place?" Kody offers in a
soft and lovely whisper. I don't know that I'd call this a date, per se, but this is definitely the first time I've had
someone invite me home before they've even taken the first sip of their coffee.
I stuffed the last bite of sugary-glazed donut into my muzzle, chewed greedily, and thenswallowed, washing it down with a big swig of coffee. "I don't know how you can drinkthat at this hour," said Lu, over in the driver's seat next to me.
It was half-past two in the morning, and the only reason I was sitting up front wasbecause Andi had hooked up with the same grey fox who'd nailed my ass to the wall earlier.His name was Slade, as I'd learned after the fact, and he and Andi were apparentlyfrequent play-partners or whatever (Lu did a lot of obvious verbal skating around using any specific term when he talked about the other guys his boyfriend slept with).
"Trust me, by the time we get home, I'll be able to pass out no problem," I said, turning to give the big rabbit a smile. "If I'm too awake I'll just sit up in the living room playing video games until I get tired. It's not like I have work in the morning."
"You've got enough boundless energy as-is, otter," Lu chided, and then he let out a quiet sigh, his eyes fixed on the dimly lit road ahead. "Not that I don't envy you that, at my age." "Oh, you're not old," I told him, taking another sip of my coffee. Sure, Lu was morethan a decade older than me, but he was handsome, especially for a big guy. And he'dshown on more than one occasion that he had plenty of energy too, when he needed it.Which gave me an idea. A grin came to my face. "Or if you'd rather, if I'm too bouncy when
I get home, you could help tire me out." One of Lu's broad buck teeth glinted into view as his muzzle curled back in a grin. I
could see his eyes twinkle as he thought about how his boyfriend was out for the night, how he and I could fuck and also cuddle up next to each other and it wouldn't be weird.
I'd already been fucked silly once tonight, but as the rabbit himself had said, I was an otterwith boundless energy.
"Let's see how I feel when we get home," he said, but from the way he said, and from the way he took one paw off the steering wheel to briefly adjust the front of his pants, I had a pretty good idea how the big bunny was gonna be feeling before too long.
I turned and looked out the window as Lu sped us down the highway, back to his place. For a simple, small-town otter, I sure had found a pretty great and special thing for myself,even if it was something I'd never expected.
The moment we stumble in through the apartment's front door, I get the answer toone of the most pressing questions on my mind: whether or not Kody's a kisser.
This answer comes by way of him grabbing me by the collar of my shirt and using his body weight to make me collapse forward so that his back pushes the door open. I barely manage to close the door behind us with one of my feet as the fox very nearly climbs me like a tree, only one foot on the floor as he brings his long, slender muzzle to mine. I lean down to meet it, and I snarl hungrily as his whimpers drown out the sound of my own pulse in my ears.
With a series of clumsy steps and raspy, stolen breaths, we stagger and tumble over to the living room couch. Kody pulls me again so that he falls onto the cushions and I collapse atop him, catching one of my paws against the back of the couch before I outright squash him. He giggles as he peppers my whiskery snout with some more kisses, one of his paws sliding along my belly, his fingers splaying and coming back together.
Before long he's groping at my package and I'm doing the same, and there's a twisted mass of arms and legs intertwining and interlocking and some grunting and huffingand fumbling and when I hear the first belt buckle come undone, I'm honestly not surewhose it is. It winds up being immaterial a few moments later, the two of us naked from the waist-down, making out on the couch. The fox beneath me wraps his fingers around my cock, and I get tunnel vision for a few seconds at the first warm touch of someoneelse's paw on me in literally years.
He shifts down along cushions so that his head is set against the armrest, his eyes catching the dim light from the tiny apartment kitchen, his face radiating excitement. I grab his cock, in turn, and the two of us take a while to lazily stroke each other off while humming, nuzzling, and occasionally kissing some more here and there.
Our mutual eagerness quickly spirals out of control. Without getting up from the couch, Kody sneaks an arm out to pat and search along the living room floor, grabbing his discarded shorts and pulling a tiny bottle of lube out from one of the pockets. He says nothing, but he does look at me and touch noses as he first begins to use the contents of that bottle to get himself nice and slick under the tail.
After that, his damp and slippery paw wraps back around my shaft, already leaky inits own right, but I definitely don't drizzle as much as I did back when I was around Kody's age. I don't usually jerk off with lube myself, so feeling someone else spreading itonto me with their paw feels kind of amazing in its own right.
It's been way too long since I've done this, though, so I can't relish the sensation toolong. I open my mouth to tell Kody this, but the look of beautiful surrender on his face stops me; this is a fox who wants me to take him, and I feel my pulse surge all the harder as I give into the urge to do exactly that.
His legs are up over my shoulders in a flash, the fox yipping in playful excitement as I lean over him, growling assertively as I nudge my erection against his pretty little butt. Lip-covered teeth nip and pinch at one of his ears as I line myself up with his slicked-up entrance, and then I turn my muzzle and smooch him right on his fuzzy cheek as I begin to push into him.
He's warm and yielding, but also small and tight, and all it takes is that single "Oh, that's it, otter" that he breathes against the side of my face to reignite a spark inside me that I've thought for so long had been dead.
But it's not. Right now, it's alive--I'm alive--as I make love to Kody the red fox on his couch, his yips and squeaks and the scent of his excitement letting me feel how alive he is, too. He's cute and sweet and funny and warm and willing and maybe this is a one-night stand or maybe we're gonna be fuck-buddies or maybe we'll end up dating butnone of that matters right now because all that matters right now is that we're here, we found each other, and for the next few minutes even if never again, we are each other's.
Things go as you might expect, my age and subconscious anxiety all that keep me from blowing my load inside of the first thirty seconds. I was never a marathon runnerin that sense even when I was a younger otter, though, but thankfully Kody doesn't havea long fuse either. My paw helps bring him close, but I let him take over, watching and still thrusting as he shoots his seed all over himself--and then I realize that I'm not sure I've ever had someone I was topping get off before me. It looks amazing, this fox writhing beneath me, face and muzzle twisted up with pleasure, and for the briefest of moments I see my younger self, the otter who loved to let older and bigger guys fuck me just like this.
I erupt under Kody's tail, my arms snatching the fox up and clutching him close as Igasp and shudder. He clings to me, the lukewarm mess in his fur mashing against myfront, and I don't give even a single shit, my mind thinking of little else beyond howblissful it is to have this little vulpine shivering in my arms as I wait to drop down from climax to join him in afterglow.
We lie in a warm pile on the couch for several long minutes, basking in our release as well as our state of stickiness. When Kody asks me if I want to move to the bedroom andstay the night, the pang of nervousness I was expecting doesn't come. The urge to boltout the front door and head home like this never happened doesn't hit me. I smile, kissthe fox on the side of the muzzle, and help him to his feet so he can lead me to the bedroom.
Tomorrow morning, perhaps, I'll suggest we go grab breakfast, assuming he has thetime. I still don't know a lot about him, but there's still time to learn. And hey, he'salready taught me a lot about myself--things I'd forgotten, things inside me I hadn'trealized have changed--and there was still time to learn more about that, as well.
The next morning, I woke up in Lu's bed, the familiar scent of his room telling me where I was before I'd even opened my eyes. I let out a happy, contented hum andsnuggled up to the rabbit next to me, who was still snoring. When Andi stayed out with someone on a weekend, he usually went and got breakfast or brunch with them thefollowing morning, and then he'd still need to make his way back from the city, so Lu andI likely had the house to ourselves until mid-afternoon.
I rolled over and checked the alarm clock. In a little while, I'd get up and make coffeefor me and Lu, same as he'd done for me most times I spent the night in his bed, but it
was still early for now, so I had time to relax and enjoy the moment. The idea of getting to surprise my rabbit lover like that was a very exciting one, though.
My life really was so much different from how it had been just one year before. It wasalmost hard to believe, seeing how much I'd changed since then. But then, that was what growing up was all about, wasn't it?
A year ago, I'd still been a child. Now, I'd gotten out and seen a taste of the world, andfinally, at long last, I had become the otter I was always meant to be.