Suicide Mission (M/M)
Suicide Mission
"Troooooops READY!"
I jumped to alertness, quickly straightening, saluting, and only glanced to the left, to the right, with just my eyes, because I was well disciplined enough (and different enough) that I knew that I was being used as an example for the other soldiers in my unit. I did fold down both my ears though, so I wouldn't hurt them from all the yelling.
The Captain, a bushy browed bear with a bit of a belly, was frowning down at us new recruits.
We were standing in a long row in the bunker for morning muster already, but had been there for a while, and started slouching a bit. Kind of a natural response to an unnatural situation. But that's what we were here for.
To my left, Eddie was shivering like a leaf in a gale force wind. Eddie would probably end up getting me killed, but I wouldn't hold it against him. He was that kind of high strung, but friendly guy, a really twitchy ferret. If you like 'em, you like 'em is what my father used to say. This one summer when I was only two feet t----
"EDWARD ARE YOU HERE AND NOW OR BACK OF YOUR HEAD DAYDREAMING AGAIN, TIIIIGER!" The bear had somehow gotten in front of me without noticing and I snapped back to attention.
"SIR, YES SIR!" I yelled brightly, puffing out my chest inside the gray uniform.
He wrinkled his brow and leaned in closer. I could see my black and yellow stripes reflected in his black beady eyes. I felt a little lightheaded, and the surly bear frowned at me menacingly.
"PUT MORE GRR IN IT!" he yelled suddenly, and I felt proud that I didn't wince. Much.
I blinked.
"SIR!"
The Captain looked like he was about to yell again, and I jumped at the chance to avoid another unpleasant experience.
"GRRRR, YES SIRRRRRRRRRGH!" I growled loudly, tossing my small mane a bit as I grinned, baring my fangs fiercely!
"THATS A SOLDIER!"[2](%5C)
He turned away from me and started further down the line, and I would have breathed out a sigh of relief except for being completely out of breath.
For whatever reason, looking into his eyes made me feel a little dizzy.
No, it was nothing like that; I don't have anything against that kind of feeling. I had had some before myself, for my best friend Tim.
We'd met as kids and grown up together on the outside edge of the inner city, where the factory buildings just started to thin out and you could sometimes see the sun moving across the sky on a windy afternoon. If the weather were right.
And we were as close as brothers, or closer, because we didn't have to share the same meat unless we wanted to.
He had this busy kind of demeanour, where he was always up to this or that, something or something else. And a charming, toothy smile. I remembered this one time when we were each about sixteen and had been arguing about how kisses were supposed to work. Tim said they were very nice, but I was doubtful.
"Maybe it's something you just gotta try to understand how it works." He'd said after a moment, rolling his eyes.
"I'm asking you how does it work?"
"It's not that easy to explain!"
"Well, if you can't tell me, then we should do it?"
"Me kiss you? You must be kidding! I'm sure you've got fish breath!" Tim laughed.
I couldn't take this lying down!
"Fish breath!? If I have fish breath then you have Dog breath!"
He tackled me at this grave insult and we wrestled for a while on the lawn behind his house, play clawing and batting at each other like usual which was always something that we liked to do, but this time something about the sunny spring afternoon, or maybe the way his dog breath smelt as we butted heads made it different; the way his claws dragged through my fur as he started shredding my shirt felt amazing, and I clawed back, and soon we were both there with our clothes torn and ripped, and were both panting hard when he finally got me in a pin and perched there on my lap, swaying back and forth in triumph like an autistic, which I didn't hesitate to point out.
"Oh yeah? RrrrrrrRRrrrr!" Tim snarled, his ears folding to either side a bit as he pulled up his lower lip in a pout, the snow tiger still rocking a bit as he tried to keep his balance, crossing his arms in front of his chest, then unfolding them as he shot back a rejoinder.
"Well... you look like an ... an elephoozle!"
I blinked. "An elephoozle? What does that even mean?"
He leaned down closer to me, paws landing either side of my shoulders, and stared into my eyes, opening his muzzle slightly to lick his lips. But then, he didn't say anything at all, and just looked at me, nose almost touching mine, and I felt butterflies in my chest, and, staring at the reflections of his stripes in my eyes, I felt myself blushing slightly. He was blushing too, and seemed to stay there for a long while. Then he whispered something I didn't catch and turned his head slightly, pursing his wide white-furred lips and leaning down even nearer.[4](%5C)
I leaned upwards at the same time, to meet his lips as they approached, and for a moment we did learn what a kiss was like, until, both as eager as if we were on our first hunt, we both tried to move closer, and our teeth struck each other's with a loud -tok!- and groans of pain from both of us.
He sat back up, and the moment was gone, but my heart still pounded.
"...Ow..." he groaned, and I clutched my muzzle too. Then, I started laughing. And he did too, and---
"AND WHAT ARE YOU GRINNING ABOUT, SOLDIER!? CITY RECLAMATION IS NO LAUGHING MATTER!" The Captain yelled from the other end of the line.
I must have started daydreaming again. I snapped to attention!
"SIR, NOTHING, SIR!" I shouted.
"I WASN'T TALKING TO YOU, EDWARD, BUT I SURE AS HELL AM TALKING TO YOU NOW!"
"SIR, YES, SIR!"
The rest of the afternoon went by in a blur. We skipped our usual footraces around the quad (though it was raining, anyway) and instead went to equipment issue, then were divided into groups and loaded onto APCs.
Finally, a real mission! Finally, something to do besides endless drills.
We were all in the armored personnel carrier, bumping and sliding through the streets towards who-knows-where for who-knows-what, rain tapping on the ceiling like the skeleton fingers of God, and just when I got used to the butterfly feeling of unknowing and anticipation, Eddie, next to me, tapped on my arm, the ferret's long fingers brushing the yellow-white fur near my elbow. I glanced over at the ferret, and he took this as a signal to speak.
"Pssst! Hey!" He looked worried and alarmed, something which I could sympathize with. Really being the strongest and the best is more of a burden than a blessing; everyone expects you to be an invincible war-machine, when really your own feelings are probably just the same as everyone else's. Burden of the best, I guess.
"What is it?" I whispered back out of the side of my mouth, keeping my eyes front and center and slightly above the head of the bulky looking rhinocerous sitting across from me. Private Svengali, that was his name. I tried hard to remember everyone's name from my unit without looking at their nametags, because in an emergency situation looking around for something to read was the last thing I wanted to waste time doing.
"Do you know where we're going?" Eddie hissed loudly.
"No. We've been sitting next to each other the entire time we haven't been standing next to each other, Eddie. I don't know anything more than you do." I said patiently, almost rolling my eyes, but managing to resist the temptation. Barely. The APC shook a little and rocked from side to side as it entered a curve. Except for the roof, the vehicle was so well armored that you could barely tell you were moving at over a hundred kilometers an hour. Smooth as silk.
"But--" Eddie persisted. "You always know wh--"
"That's only because I'm looking and listening while you're busy panicking, Eddie. Tigers don't get a special radio earpiece that gives them inside information. It's part of being a hunter, not a fisher," I hissed back.
"But--" Eddie jumped as a huge paw SLAMMED down on his shoulder.
Sarge!
"THATS ENOUGH OF THAT, SOLDIER," the slightly younger bear blared. I always wondered how all the Bears ended up as officers, but he went on.
"THE MISSION TONIGHT IS A SIMPLE CONTAINMENT. ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS GET TO YOUR POINT AND HOLD YOUR LINE."
"SIR!" Svengali's arm shot up like a bolt.
"SOLDIER?" The bear yelled at the sitting rhino.
"WILL THIS BE LIVE FIRE? SIR!"
"HELL YEAH, SOLDIER! KNOCK 'EM DEAD!"
"SIR! YES, SIR!"
The APC's engine began to rev and slow, and it shook a bit. It must have been transferring off of one of the megahighways to a local exit, I figured.
"APPROACHING TARGET!" Yelled the sarge as if we just scored a goal in football. At least he was cheery about it.
I thought back to the day I'd decided to sign up. It was a rainy one too. And cheerful.
It wasn't that long ago, really.
I'd seen all the ads, watched all the videos.
It was actually Tim's idea to join, really.
We'd been going to the theater for a while when he first suggested it.
We had to start meeting up there when things got too awkward at home; Tim's older brother Levi had walked in on us "practicing;" after the first time we hadn't talked for an entire week, but then I'd been reminded about a sleep-over we'd already arranged, because his folks were going on vacation, and I'd been invited, so of course I had to go.
Arriving there that night was one of the most awkward moments of my life. After I got shuffled in by his parents and two siblings, they sent me right up to Tim's room, where "he was waiting for me." I remember my cheeks burning when I walked in.
"Hey."
"Hey."
That's all we said for almost twenty minutes.
We were just sitting there, on opposite sides of the room, me half-leaning against the edge of his dresser, and him perched on the corner of his bed, just awkwardly not looking at each other and listening to the hustle and bustle going on downstairs. I felt the same unnerving quiver inside my chest, like a hummingbird trying to find a place to alight above my heart, which was pounding as if I'd run a race, not just stood there like a fool in his room, holding my backpack in one paw, striped tail curled crookedly around one ankle. I tried to breathe regularly, but I couldn't.
We both were completely silent, with my eyes drifting from Tim's neatly arranged desk to his poster of Mick Jaguar crotch grabbing at the lens. Then there were the yells goodbye, the sound of his front door clicking closed.
And I turned, to say something, anything to my buddy, and Tim turned too.
And our eyes met.
And I rose, stepped closer.
And so did he.
And our paws touched, and
A moment later, our muzzles.
It was heaven.
I'm not sure how long we stood there, my paw squeezing his, his mine, and our heads both slowly tilting to the side as my eyes slowly closed, the touch of his fur, the feel of his breath on my cheek, my shoulder pressing against his, our knees interlacing as he stumbled backwards and fell onto his back on the bed.
"Ufff," he huffed into my cheek as I tried to get purchase on his puffy bed, but his bucking and squirming underneath me didn't make it easy. I felt his claws dig into my back and then everything got really fuzzy, but really pleasant.
Afterwards, we couldn't get enough of each other. If I wasn't over at Tim's house, he was at mine. Or if neither of us were at home, we were in the lockers at school, or squeezed up between the wall and the hedge outside the library, "exploring" as we used to tell our friends and folks when they missed us. All the places we found together which no one else had, we "explored" quite a lot that Spring.
And Summer.
And the Fall afterwards.
That's when things got awkward, I suppose. We'd both had our scary moments, of course. At my birthday party, when Tim had dragged me into a game of "hide and seek," but instead introduced me to something much better than kissing mouth to mouth, and we'd almost gotten caught by one of my football mates before Tim realized what was going on and quickly zipped me up.
Or when I'd been over for Tim's and we both slipped into the attic just before the cake was out to try this "docking" thing I'd read about on the E-Boards. We'd only just had time to get semi-formal before half his family and a lot of friends came upstairs to see where we'd gotten off to.
Tim was a lot faster than me. "Have you heard of Elephoozies? Edward here claimed they're real, so we went up here to check the old Encyclopaedia."
He'd probably had that one ready before I'd even come over.
I think he spent the whole cake slicing waiting for a chance to "accidentally" spill a glass of water into his own lap to hide how excited I'd got him.
Thinking about it always made me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
But then came when Levi burst in on me down on my knees between Tim's, and it really changed everything for us. I only knew what was happening when Tim suddenly got soft under my tongue and he yipped in panic, pawing my head not down, but away.
He jumped up while I was still trying to get my bearings.
"Not what it looks like, Levi! I had-- and he was just looki--"
"HE'S STILL DROOLING, TIMOTHY! And I can see it! On your..." His brother seemed to spit the last word, his voice cracking in a squeak as if he'd just turned fourteen, not twenty four. "Cock!"
Levi was having a full on panic attack.
"Levi! Levi!" Tim shot me a pained glance, and then ran out of the room after his older sibling.
I just sat there in his room with my stomach in my throat, gulping down bile that tasted just like my best friend, for what seemed like hours.
Eventually, Tim came back, still half-naked. "We can't .." he said sorrowfully, tears streaming down his face as he walked through the doorway. "We can't d--"
I grabbed him around the legs and wouldn't let go.
And he tried to hold me, and we ended up back on his bed, where it all started, and he was in my mouth, and I had that bitter sweet taste of bliss one last time before darkness enveloped us both and we woke clinging to each other, the sky dark outside, the door open, and no idea if anyone else had got home or walked by and seen us that way.
So after that, we decided that we couldn't meet any more. Not at his house, not at mine.
So we both started going to the movies after school every day. There was a little theater down the street from school, in a seedy block off Broadway, where the lights were always dim, and the projector was old, and a lot of the arms were missing from a lot of the seats in the back of the balcony.
After a while, we even started watching the movies, afterwards, though a lot of them didn't make much sense without the first forty minutes.
And finally, the time came that we both got there early, and there was some trouble with the projector or something. I'll never forget the feel of the cool dark floor against my back that night, of staring up into Tim's eyes, my heels hooked over his shoulders, his silver lips as he hunched, close, and they brushed mine, tongues tasting each other hesitantly, and the sudden burst of light and gunfire that scared both of us across our climaxes.
I remember gasping and panting as I painted my chest and Tim's with together with musk, both of us gasping, Tim grabbing me tight and holding me still and safe.
Then the military theme of Civil Defense began to play, and we both realized that we hadn't been killed. It was just a leader ad for the theater that we had never seen before.[5](%5C)
"Be someone! Do something for your land, and your people. CIVIL DEFENSE." A brave looking bear stared out of the screen at us warmly, as if he were watching us, watching over us, as a flag rippled behind him.
Tim looked back at me, the fear fading from his eyes and his claws retracting out of my back as he calmed down.
"Hey Ed, maybe you should think about signing up." Tim winked, and I had felt him flex a little inside me as he slowly softened.
"Maybe you should, elephoo." I'd stuck out my tongue, then looked down in dismay at our fur matted and stuck together. "Maybe we need a bath."
"A tongue bath, maybe," Tim giggled, and pushed me back down under him.
I'm not even sure what movie we would have seen that night, had we not spent it in each others arms, in the cold, loud, theater. Together.
Together.
Suddenly, there was a screech and a loud rattling noise as the driver threw the compartment door open.
"CONTACT!" He was yelling, and I looked up and forwards. So did everyone else in the APC, and through the wildly swishing wipers we could make out a strange cloaked figure, standing in the middle of the road, both arms raised to the sky.
I blinked and tried to focus through the pounding rain. He seemed to have a head shaped like a dish pan. Or was that a hat? And he just stood there, looking at us.
Folded wings?
A dragon?
Then something went terribly wrong.
The way the APC was tilting had never happened before, and even through the soundproofing the scream of the tires losing traction and the wild vibration of the antilock system failing as the carrier started twisting and turning, flipping over and over from side to side.
For a moment I wondered who the cloaked figure was, and the spinning made me think back, about when I first met Tim. We were next to each other on the tilt-a-whirl at the winter carnival. A little white snowtiger had walked up to me.
"Would you be my friend?" He asked. "My name's Tim!"
"Sure! Nice to meet you! I'm Ed!"
That night Tim suggested signing up was the last night I saw him alive. He was shot and killed by an illegal looking for money after he left the theater to walk home, while I was still cleaning myself up, mussing my fur so it wouldn't look like it'd been washed by tongue.
The APC smashed headlong into the side of the road with a sickening crunch! and everything went dark in a fountain of light.
And I was all alone. I couldn't feel anything without Tim there, waiting for me, even in the rain.
And the dark slowly became a dim twilight, and I thought I could hear footsteps coming closer.
I'd promised Tim that I'd do something to avenge his death. The next day I was at the Recruiter's office getting my tests.
I couldn't open my eyes, but I could still see the faint outline of a tiger approaching through the half-light.
They signed me up instantly, of course. It's not too often that someone volunteers for Civil Duty, at least in my neighborhood.
"Tim? Is that you?"
"Don't worry, my little elephoozie. Everything's going to be all right."
He stretched his paw out towards me, and I would have reached back, but I couldn't move.
"Tim," I thought to myself, "I would've been there for you, but I failed."
"You never failed, Ed."
"But I can't move," I thought in desperation. "I can't move!"
"Don't worry. I'm here now. And I'll never let you go."
And he took my paw, and leaned down to
touch my lips with his, and
suddenly I knew that
everything was
gonna be
all
FIN (12-2-2010 to 12-3-2010 / 3689 words, 19773 characters)
We would like to acknowledge Sclariqrevk, for help with editing this story and also giving suggestions on improving the pacing.
This story was written for the second Dragons Lair Writing Contest with the Waltz Into The Moonlight Theme, available licensed under Creative Commons online at: http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/26747
[2](%5C) The way that he was yelling the "That's" didn't look right if I included the apostrophe. My apologies for any confusion caused as a result.
[4](%5C) So here, I put a lot of commas in the sentence because Edward is pretty much out of breath from the wrestling; his heart is racing and he's got the butterflies. So it's like the sentence is panting too.
[5](%5C) I heard about this phenomenon from Matoc, the artist, who wrote about it on one of his pictures. I highly recommended his work; there aren't very many artists who also like to tell short stories at the same time as they draw. Holllllaaaaa!!!