A Chance of Showers - Part Two
#2 of Showers
Part two in the series. Thanks for reading!
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Whirling, the Alpha dog snarled a signal to his pack, who boiled around him like Satan's angels to either attack or witness the humiliating beating that was in store for the helpless fox. Either way it was going to be good entertainment for them, a belly laugh at the expense of someone weaker than them, and the best way to finish off an aggressive workout.
Kip's hand shot down to cover his crotch, not only to hide his nudity but to protect his testicles from the coming kicks. As if in anticipation, the Alpha dog's hand shot out to block his reach, pushing him back to the ground and keeping the little fox unprotected and vulnerable. Kip had other defensive weapons, and he moved to bite his attacker's forearm. Before he could even bare his sharp teeth, though, he saw the huge fist raised to knock out his teeth. Kip recoiled instinctively, and a hollow sound like a melon dropped on the ground was the last thing he remembered hearing before the blackness claimed him.
:
"You're a puss, Jake!" Rob grinned as he insulted his best friend, the morph leading their laughing
pack to the showers. Even by morph standards, Jake was oversized. His genetics gave him the build
of a bull, and even if he hadn't been fond of working out, he still would have been imposingly huge.
His love for the gym had helped him realize his genetic potential, building the kind of body that
was in many people's dreams - or nightmares.
Jake smiled and turned around to fire back retort of his own. The group was tight, like a band of
brothers in the truest sense, and he felt fortunate to have them in his life. A man couldn't ask for a better bunch of guys to hang out with, and he truly enjoyed their company. "Yeah, right," the huge morph shot back, his voice a bass rumble as deep as distant thunder, "but I'm the puss that out-lifted you two to one today, huh?" He hadn't even turned around yet when something slammed into him - hard - from behind. It didn't hurt him, but then, very little could. In fact, even though the hit was impressive enough to make him grunt at the impact, he was still smiling when he turned to find out what had happened. Had he run into something?
For an instant Jake was perplexed, because nothing was standing in front of him. Then he looked down and laughed at himself for being so foolish. He'd seen the fox coming out of the shower with more speed than normal, but it never crossed his mind that he might be the one who slammed into him with such force. And the poor guy seemed to have lost his towel, too. Was he injured?
"Hey, guys, hold up," Jake called over his shoulder. Of course they didn't listen, crowding around him to see what had happened. In his haste to kneel down next to the fox, Jake forgot that he'd been pounding out thousand pound squats all afternoon long, and his legs were barely able to support his weight, much less kneel down gracefully. He grunted in discomfort as most of his weight came down on one knee, and put his hand out to brace himself against the fox's chest to keep himself from falling on top of the poor guy. Crushing someone to death in the middle of helping them up wasn't good form.
Jake smiled what he hoped was an apology and moved to put a hand under the fox's head and help him up. He was shocked when the guy seemed to have some sort of spasm, cracking his head viciously against the hard tile floor before Jake's beefy hand could cushion the blow. He watched helplessly as the fox's body went limp, his eyes rolling up in his head, out like the proverbial light.
"Oh, Jeez," Dave said, turning and running to get the owner of the gym. "I'll find Carl!"
Rob cocked a thumb at the retreating back of his friend, "Should somebody tell him he's running naked through the gym?"
"I think he'll figure it out on his own," Sam said, calmly moving to the other side of the unconscious fox. Sam was a paramedic by trade, and was probably the smartest, most disciplined member of their group. Always cool in a crisis, he did a quick examination. Indicating the hand Jake had put underneath the fox's head, he said, "I know you're just trying to help here, but keep your hand still. If he's got a neck injury and you move it around, you might make things worse. Keep his head from moving sideways." He grimaced in sympathy, "Damn, he hit the ground hard. What made him come running around the corner like that?"
Gently squeezing and prodding, Sam gently searched the unconscious fox for broken bones and obvious trauma. "Quinn? Ralph?" Two of the smaller morphs peeked around Jake's broad shoulders. They weren't the biggest or smartest of their group, but they were unfailingly loyal and would do whatever anyone asked of them. "Why don't you go into the shower and see if there's trouble in there? Something must have made him come shooting out like that."
"Sure, boss," Qunn said, slapping Ralph on the shoulder. "Let's go, buddy."
Sam turned his attention to the lumbering Clydesdale hybrid who was the only one of them left without a mission. "Dunn, go find this guy's towel please. And then go find him a dry one. A couple of them, if you can."
Dunny looked around the corner and picked up the towel he found laying there. He was dismayed to find that it had landed in a puddle and was dripping wet. Wadding it into a ball, he tossed it into the linen hamper from 20 feet away, and removed his own towel from around his waist. He folded it in half and carefully laid it over the fox's exposed groin, giving him some modesty in exchange for his own.
Dunny's towel had been made for someone of equine proportions, and when Jake saw how the fox looked even smaller and more vulnerable underneath it, his heart went out. They'd all seen him around the gym over the past... How long had he been going there? Must have been a couple of years, at least. The quiet little fox was just part of the background in the gym, much like a piece of equipment that was rarely, if ever, used. Always there, but never calling attention to himself.
Jake felt a little bit guilty about that, now that he thought about it. He didn't even remember exactly when this guy first started showing up, but he did remember first seeing him around the beginning of the season, right when everyone and their cat decides to get in shape. Almost all of them quit after a few weeks, after they realize that there's a damned good reason why the first four letters of the word "workout" is WORK. It ain't easy. But to his credit, this guy hadn't given up. Jake realized that quite the opposite was true - he'd become one of the most faithful guys in the gym, turning his dumpy little body into something he should be proud of.
And nobody noticed. That might be the most remarkable thing right there, Jake thought. Even with nobody standing by him and encouraging him on, this guy had the balls to keep pushing through the inevitable pain and he'd kept going. And he was a fox, too! Dogs and bulls and horses were supposed to be thick and muscular - foxes were born to be slender creatures. And yet this particular fox had surpassed his own genetic predisposition to become... Jake realized with no small amount of discomfort that the fox whose head he was holding gently in the palm of his hand just happened to have a smoking hot body! Now was definitely not the time to think about things like that.
Sam gently lifted the fox's head out of Jake's thick paw and ran his own hand over the back of the skull. He whistled softly. "He's going to have one hell of a goose egg back here," he remarked. Gently, he eased the unconscious fox's head back down onto Jake's protective hand.
Sam finished his cursory examination just as Carl, the middle-aged gorilla morph who owned the gym, rounded the corner of the locker room. "What the fuck happened?" He was alone, so he'd apparently left Dave up front to watch the front desk. Was Dave still naked, sitting at the front desk? Jake hoped not.
"I'm not quite sure," Jake said, "He came running out of the showers like someone lit his tail on fire. He ran into me, fell down and cracked his head on the floor. He's been out for about a minute, maybe."
Carl used to be the strength coach for a major league inter-species football team, and he'd seen enough guys get their bells rung that he wasn't ready to panic just yet. "What's he look like, Sam? Is he in one piece?"
"Everything's where it belongs, but he hit his head pretty hard. When he wakes up, we should get him to the Wal-Med to have him scanned."
"Shit, I ain't doing that to him," Carl said in disgust. "You ever been to one of those things?" As a matter of fact, Sam had, a number of times. It was the cheapest way to get scanned. But while you were there, you had to endure the noise and rush of thousands of stupid people pushing shopping carts full of cheap bananas and motor oil. For a man with a concussion, it would be the furthest possible thing from a pleasant experience.
"I'm gonna call my buddies at the stadium," Carl grumbled, "They owe me plenty of favors. They'll scan him for free, and do a hell of a lot better job of it than any Wal-fucking-Med ever could." He gave one final grunt and stalked out of the room, headed back to his office.
Pat had enough presence of mind to yell at Carl's retreating back, "Hey Coach, what's this guy's name, anyway?"
"Kip!" roared the empty doorway. And then, surprisingly, the doorway wasn't empty anymore as Carl stuck his head back into the room. "What the fuck? This guy's been here almost every day for three years and you assholes don't even bother to learn his name?" He shook his head in parental disgust.
"Why is he always in such a horrible mood?" Rob asked, his own tone light and carefree. That was one of the many things Jake loved about his friend, how he could lighten the mood of a room just by walking in the door. He could make Jake smile even when there was a half-dead fur laying on the ground at his feet.
"Help me out here," Sam asked Jake, "Help me dry him off a bit." Dunny had come back with an armload of towels, one of which Jake had rolled into an impromptu pillow to keep the Fox's - Kip's, he corrected himself, head off the ground. Dunny and Ralph pitched in to help, and the four men were making quick work of massaging the water out of Kip's fur.
"So what was in there?" Jake asked Ralph. "What spooked him so bad?"
"I have no idea," the other morph said, "The only thing we found in there was the key to his locker, sitting in the soap dish where he left it." He shrugged as he used one of the towels to gently massage the water out of the fur on Kip's footpaws. "Whatever scared him, it's not there now. The way he tore out of there, I thought there sure must be some scary-assed shit in there. Maybe an alligator coming up out of the drain, or something." He moved up to Kip's calves, and whistled appreciatively. "This dude's got some pretty good legs going on here. The fur hides 'em, but they're probably better than Quinn's." "But," he amended with a devilish grin directed towards his friend, "that doesn't take much, does it?"
"Fuck you, retard," Quinn retorted, stung a bit by the comment. Sure, he didn't have the greatest looking legs in the world, but they were strong, damn it! And looking down, he had to admit that the fox did do a good job on his calves. "Gotta give him props, though, he's done good work."
"Why don't you guys go take your showers now," Jake suggested to Ralph, Quinn and Dunny, "I think we've got things covered here for now, and we'll need someone to watch Kip while we get cleaned up."
"Shouldn't we call an ambulance?" Quinn asked,
Jake raised an eyebrow at Sam that relayed the question. "We're doing everything I would if I were suited up and had an EMT unit sitting outside. He doesn't have any undue swelling or broken bones, no apparent internal injuries, and knowing how backed up the emergency rooms are these days, a trip to the stadium's medical center would be a heck of a lot faster.." He shrugged. "My professional opinion? He's getting better care this way."
"That settles it then," Jake said, "Hit the showers, guys, and make it quick."