{"sf1_id":1722862,"sf2_id":"dmW0qMnb","title":"(i need a breath)","author":"Rob MacWolf","words":990,"posted_at":"2021-05-28T07:00:00.000Z","tags":["CYOA","Fanfiction","Gay","M/M","Otter","Wolf","chase","echo","fanfic","leo"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1722862-i-need-a-breath","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/dmW0qMnb","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/34/b1/34b1c878-10c0-4df5-b4c5-3aafa7673168","description":"#7 of El Primero de los Misterios Dolorosos\n\nSOMETHING LIGHT? - https://www.sofurry.com/view/1722864\nSOMETHING... SPICY - https://www.sofurry.com/view/1722874\nMY HEAD... - https://www.sofurry.com/view/1722880\nI THINK I'VE HAD ENOUGH FOR NOW - https://www.sofurry.com/view/1722884","content":"[I NEED A BREATH]\n\nMy head is reeling. I don't feel drunk. But I also don't feel sober.\n\nMy head is swimming. Chase's expression is flickering, like the shadows cast by a campfire, between enigmatic and angry and frightened and just... blank.\n\nSometimes I'd swear I'm just looking at an old-fashioned photograph of him.\n\nI need to take a breath.\n\nNeed to calm down.\n\nNeed to remember that this is a dream.\n\nIt's a dream, Leo!\n\nCh: It's a dream, Leo.\n\nCh: Do you need to take a breath?\n\nI nod, swallow hard.\n\nLeo: Is there a bathroom?\n\nCh: Well, yeah, technically, but it's real bad. Honestly you're probably better off just ducking out behind the building.\n\nHe points at a door marked EMERGENCY EXIT, over by the jukebox. I don't recall seeing it there when I walked in.\n\nAs I step toward it I get the weirdest sensation that if I turned around, he wouldn't be behind the bar anymore. There wouldn't be anyone else in the room. But that's nonsense, and I'm not gonna look that dumb in front of him. Even if it's only a dream version of him.\n\nThe back door opens right into the desert. A couple scrub oaks, some nopales, some yuccas, then nothing but sagebrush and rocks. There's not even a light.\n\nI take a few deep breaths of cool night air. I feel calmer.\n\nI do also kinda have to piss, as long as I'm out here.\n\nI'm halfway through when I suddenly feel like I'm being watched.\n\nI can't see anything, of course, but I could have sworn I heard steps. Gravel shifting.\n\nSomething's out here.\n\nFists up. Eyes open. Ears alert.\n\nI've put up with enough people trying to jump me out of the darkness to know when I'm not alone.\n\nJust gonna head calmly back toward the door. Back inside.\n\nThe emergency exit doesn't open from outside.\n\nShit.\n\nI've just barely stepped away when something BIG hits the door. Right where I was standing a second ago.\n\nIt's too dark to see anything but a shape, but it's definitely big.\n\nI sprint around the building.\n\nI hear it right behind me.\n\nIt's too close to risk looking back.\n\nBut it sounds bigger than a truck.\n\nI can tell because I hear the truck rock on ancient suspension when it passes.\n\nI burst back through through the door, inches ahead of whatever it is, fall on my ass, sure it's about to drag me out, but I'm gonna go down fighting. Maybe give Chase time to get away...\n\nBut it's just hanging back at the door. Is it too big to fit? Or can it not come in?\n\nI get my first good look at tit and wish I hadn't. It's ugly, it stinks, and it's dead. Mostly bones, but with folds of withered tissue hanging from them, like curtains. It's got horns, but beyond that I've got guess at the species. Where it should have a face there's just this jack-o-lantern nothing of a grin.\n\nChase: Ah shit.\n\nHe doesn't sound scared...\n\nI glance over in time to see Chase reach for one of the beer taps from the top of the bar. Pull it out, and walk over with it. What is he-?\n\nAs he steps out from behind the bar, it's not a beer tap anymore.\n\nIt's a pickaxe.\n\nHe saunters over, stands between me and the door. The... skeleton zombie giant, whatever the fuck it is, starts shrinking away.\n\nChase: How many times do I have to tell your scrotum of a face it's not welcome here?!\n\nI've never heard him sound like this before!\n\nHe gestures with the pickaxe like it's a baton.\n\nChase: We reserve the right to refuse entry here, dickless! So don't fuckin' let me see you again!\n\nThe thing's making a sound like a frightened animal. Chase hasn't hit it, hasn't even swung yet, but there's a dark sticky fluid dripping from the pickaxe's tip all the same.\n\nHe stares it down.\n\nIt whimpers and runs. Disappears into the night.\n\nPuchica.\n\nChase: You ok?\n\nLeo: What the fuck, Chase? What was that?\n\nHe shrugs on his way back to the bar.\n\nChase: Some real assholes had the run of the place, before I got this job. Had to run them off.\n\nChase: You know how it is. You let one asshole bring his asshole friends, soon enough you're the asshole bar. Sometimes they try to bully their way back in. Gotta keep em out.\n\nChase: Not everyone who shows up here is one of mine.\n\nI've never heard him talk like this. But there's something familiar about the way he says it. With some sort of furious serene... nothing. Like he's blank. Like he used to sometimes get, when he'd decided dealing with something wasn't worth being here for, so all of a sudden he just... wasn't here.\n\nI used to be a little worried and frustrated by it.\n\nBut if this is what he was like, inside his head, when he was doing that?\n\nThen I guess I'm a little worried and impressed by it.\n\nI pull myself to my feet.\n\nLeo: Maybe I should have just used the bathroom after all.\n\nThe blank looks vanishes, as if it was never there. He's just smiling now.\n\nChase: Oh, I dunno dude. You haven't seen the bathroom. Might still be the worse option.\n\nHe puts the pickaxe down on the bar, and the second he lets go it's a beer tap again. Hooked up and everything.\n\nHe pulls it, fills a shot glass. With...\n\nWell, it looks like the same dark sticky fluid that was on the pickaxe.\n\nChase: Well, cheers.\n\nHe knocks it back, makes a disgusted face.\n\nChase: Ugh!\n\nChase: Has a kick, this stuff.\n\nChase: Maybe don't order that one.\n\nIf you say so, Otter.\n\n[SOMETHING LIGHT?]\n\n[SOMETHING... SPICY]\n\n[MY HEAD...]\n\n[I THINK I'VE HAD ENOUGH FOR NOW]\n\n  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"El Primero de los Misterios Dolorosos","previous":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1722853-something-bitter.json","next":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1722864-something-light.json"}}