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THE INCENTIVE DEPARTMENT

Chapter Two

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Tammy and Kelly are new coworkers and discover a mutual interest that the rest of their office doesn't share. A budding relationship and friendship are explored, complete with each telling stories about previous experiences as they get to know each other better.

By StripedKittyScribe

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Tammy was a little shocked that the formal interview had been scheduled so quickly. Leah had gotten back with her within a half hour of her resignation from her old company, and pulled a couple of strings, getting her in mid afternoon. Good thing that Tammy was already dressed professionally! She went to lunch, and then showed up at CORE headquarters a half hour early.

When they said 'formal interview', what she'd expected was to be asked to invert a binary tree or some other weird technical problem that showed that she could solve problems that wouldn't ever come up in practical programming. What it had really been, was a chance for Leah to introduce her to some of the other people she'd be working around, and a general 'is this woman even going to fit in here' sense.

She wasn't sure that she liked all of them, but that was okay. They'd been professional and courteous, and she'd gotten the sense from all of them that there wasn't going to be any kind of stepping-of-toes when she started. That was the other thing that shocked her. It really was 'when you start', not 'if you're hired'. The first half hour had been getting to know each other a little better.

Linus, Leah's supervisor, was the one that Tammy would probably have the hardest time getting along with. He was every last bit the activist, and stuffed his schedule full of marches, fundraising, work, and his partner and their rotating-door-house of adopted and foster children. He was a big, gregarious bear, obviously starting to show his age. By all rights, he should have retired years ago, but he was having too much fun at this job and even if he didn't need the money, he wouldn't turn it down. His list of professional accomplishments was, in a word, intimidating. He'd apparently been at the board level on a few companies, complete with stock options.

Mitchell, the lead of their computer programming department was also intimidating, but he was intimidating because he was former military. If he hadn't been the one to start talking about scope creep and use cases, she would have pegged him as a bodyguard for Linus. But no, the body-building hulk of a stag who looked like he should be on WorldWideWrestleTainment knew his way around a keyboard. She couldn't get the image out of her head of him standing with some drill instructor hat roaring at new people to start typing until his fingers got tired. It was totally imagined, according to Leah. That didn't change how vivid an image it was.

The last person in the room was the one that Tammy would probably get along with the best. Maybe it was the punky hair. Maybe it was the fact that she showed up a few minutes late and no one seemed to mind. Maybe it was the wild anime shirt. The ocelot girl was a total nerd, and it showed. Tammy wouldn't be shocked if Kelly had a whole desk full of figures. They may have to compare collections at some point.

Tammy got a tour of the office, and she could already tell the difference in culture here. She remembered a really discordant song that she and Leah had been asked to dance to at a corporate gig, and it had been extremely weird. "Happy Workers" who were working hard while the bosses lived the good lives, very industrial metal-striking-metal beat line. She wasn't sure if it had been intended as ironic or what, but it had been borderline creepy for the both of them.

This was nothing like that. No one was smiling like they were drugged, but the few smiles she saw when someone wasn't concentrating were genuine. She was walking down the hallway and saw people answering questions, dealing with reports, but they were actually collaborating about things. This was HR so doubtless some of the things were at least somewhere on the sensitive or serious scale, but there wasn't a sense of dread about the place either.

She couldn't sign the papers fast enough.

*

A week later and she was actually starting WORK. They'd pushed her into the corporate in-doc class that was going on, and told her that she'd have a bit longer of a work day today getting all of her paperwork signed and turned in, but that she wouldn't work longer than a 50 hour week ever, and if they needed to cut her out early on Friday, they'd do it. Apparently by their standards, she'd started work the instant that she walked in the door for her interview.

She was still waiting for the other shoe to drop. It wasn't quite 'perfect', but this was so far ahead of the company that she'd just left, that she couldn't quite get a real sense of scale. Was CORE just better than everyone else, or was her old company worse, or what? She'd already turned down rehire pleas from her old boss, and she didn't doubt that his department would suddenly be in extremely bad shape.

Tough.

She'd decided to work from home for the first little while, partially because she wanted to make sure that she had a lot of privacy while she was doing the planning, and partially so that she wouldn't impose a sudden requirement for office space on Leah. Maybe that was something that could be worked out quickly, but Tammy knew that there was a lot going on and didn't want to bother her friend. Especially after that bitchy comment at breakfast.

She still felt bad about that. Maybe she shouldn't, Leah had forgiven her and hadn't been treating her distantly, but Tammy still felt bad about it. Regardless, she'd gone through the process of getting her work laptop during the in-doc class, and she'd gotten it integrated into her home network, and she was ready to get started.

The initial flood of 'welcome' emails was a little overwhelming, because so many of them were obviously not just form letters. Sir Harold had even sent one. Short, but not a form letter either. The real shock, though, was that she wasn't asked to start attending meetings. All of her 'required courses' had been taken care of with the in-doc, and she was just left to work on her project.

"Alright, first milestone," she said to herself as she sipped coffee. End of the week, she needed to present a rough knock up of the various use cases of the system. That shouldn't be too hard. There wasn't really a lot that needed to happen that was truly odd, at least in programming terms. It was a database, mostly accessed by HR (approvals and financials), supervisors (reporting good deeds) and employees (updating their profiles). The real trick would be doing the cross-referencing at a later point.

She blinked when a window flashed up in the corner of her screen. "You've been working for six hours without a noted break. Please save your work and log out of the system for at least an hour," it said to her. She blinked. "Holy fuck, they really do push the not-overworking thing." She finished up the section that she'd been diagraming and then logged out of the system.

A salad for lunch, and then a session on the treadmill and a shower, and she was back to work. The instant that she logged back in, she got an instant message on the company server.

K.Morganson: You just cost me $5, new girl! =P

K.Morganson: Leah told me that you'd trigger the 6 hour warning, but I didn't think you'd do it on your first day!

T.Rinaldo: lol

T.Rinaldo: Kelly, I'm guessing? Sorry about the cash thing. I got a little hooked.

K.Morganson: Eh, it's $5. I'll live. Yeah, we had to put that in there cause we had a lot of people going all day without breaks. Not cool.

T.Rinaldo: Well I'm already through with the basic use cases. There really aren't that many. It's just adding in the details of all the black boxes now.

K.Morganson: Nice! So would now be a good time to do a quick video conference? Go over our DB schema, all that?

Tammy looked at her desk and squirmed a bit. She wasn't really prepared to 'present' anything just yet, and she still had her lunch bowl and other things sitting out.

T.Rinaldo: Yeah just give me a second to throw a few things in the sink and then I'll be available.

K.Morganson: Sure thing! Just ping me when you're ready. I'm basically on server monitoring duty right now so whenever you're good to go is gold with me.

Tammy did a quick cleaning of her lunch dishes, and then threw a different top on. She knew that working from home meant a much looser dress code, but she didn't want to look like she was abusing company standards. Not that she changed out of her sweatpants. She made sure that her hair was out of her eyes, and then clicked the 'Call' button.

Within a few seconds Kelly had accepted the call, and the feline's smiling face was filling her chat window. "Hey, girl, good job if you've got OMIGOD IS THAT SEMI-KUN?!" She was pointing at her own camera, through to Tammy's office. An office which had a back shelf lined with anime figures. "How'd you end up getting one of those? I heard they only did a run of like 1000!"

Tammy laughed, and scratched at the back of her head. "I... uhh... I actually have a friend who got an internship over at SushiRoll and they hate Don't Notice Me, Semi!, but they let me use their employee access for just the one time."

Kelly gaped, "Wait, who the hell has the bad taste to not adore Don't Notice Me, Semi!? It's peak parody! It's freakin' brilliant!"

The call was, nominally, supposed to be the two of them going over database schema. It lasted for approximately an hour. Only ten minutes was spent talking about database schema. The rest was going over which episode was the funniest, each declaring the other to be an absolute simpleton for not agreeing with their own choice.

Kelly propped her chin in her palm. "So I know that we just met, but like, I have a premium subscription to all of the streaming services, and there's a new season of Chiyo-Hime dropping this Friday. You want to come over and watch together? We'll do the whole trashy otaku thing. I know this great little Nikkonese place that we can get okonomiyaki and takoyaki from."

Tammy squirmed a bit. On the one hand, she really did like Kelly and this seemed like it would be fun. On the other hand, she'd never seen Chiyo-Hime, and from what she'd heard it was just barely scraping by the censors. "I dunno."

Kelly gave her the largest sad kitty eyes that Tammy had ever seen. "Please? It'll totally be cozy and fun! You have no idea how little I get to do this with someone who actually appreciates it."

Tammy sighed. "Alright, fine. But only if I get everything actually done. I don't want to start my career with CORE off with you getting the impression that I don't do work and I'm just here for a paycheck."

Kelly made a 'pft' sound. "Leah wouldn't have brought you on board if you weren't good people. Besides, you'll be locked out of your computer by," she drew the last word out and held her hands to her head in a mock mystical pose, "early Friday afternoon."

Tammy blushed a bit. "And what makes you say that?"

Kelly grinned. "Because you've already pegged one 'take a break' alert and it's your first day. I bet you hit 43 hours before the end of Thursday."

*

Tammy triggered the last slide on her presentation to the same group that had interviewed her. "I don't want to start revising the schedule just yet, I still want some slop in there for the inevitable 'didn't see that coming'. On the other hand, I've already got the test server populated with data as of yesterday, and I hadn't planned on that happening for another week."

Linus was beaming happily. Tammy was starting to wonder if he ever didn't smile. "Great, absolutely great, Tammy," he said, rapping his knuckles against the table. "I don't think we'll be revising schedules just yet, you know how people get when they have their expectations whiplashed when something goes wrong. But if we do release ahead of schedule, I won't complain."

Mitchell had neither smiled, nor frowned, the entire presentation. He'd simply taken notes, and let her speak, only asking an occasional question for clarification when she paused. "Not the best practice for project planning, but it's also not unusual for people who come here from the outside." He looked up from his paper. "Don't get me wrong, this isn't a scolding. You probably ran your numbers based on your efficiency at your previous company, and counted on having to deal with reports and meetings and everything else."

Tammy wasn't sure how to take that. It's true that she'd built in a lot more actual time in order to account for the endless stream of requests for help and for updates and for people who really didn't need to know wanting to 'show involvement'. There'd been none of that. Leah and Mitchel hadn't done anything more than a quick conversation at the start of the day asking if Tammy needed access to anything or further support. "I did," she admitted.

Mitchell leaned back in his chair, and shrugged. "We try to keep everyone in their lanes here. A lot of that goes with hiring people who aren't overly nosy. Or micromanagers."

That made Leah give a brittle smile. "Still teasing me about that ferret from last year?"

Linus boomed a laugh. "He wanted to help, he really did. It was just a bit much and he couldn't stay focused on his actual work. If that's the worst hire you're involved in, I'll be a happy bear."

Mitchell knocked on the table with his own knuckles, drawing people back to the point at hand. "Anyway. We'll let you keep going with the schedule unchanged for the time being. Good work. I won't start pushing you for tighter schedules just yet, but unlike some other project managers, I understand that if you're doing your schedules right, half of your work will be over budget, and half of your work will be over schedule. Nature of averages."

Tammy was still not sure if she was being scolded or praised. The stag was almost impossible to read, and he hadn't been diving into her schedule or workload like she'd expected from a project manager. Every other PM she'd been under had been almost constantly asking for updates or reports or meetings. She'd just proposed her project timeline, and after a bit of discussion and negotiation, it was approved. She was meeting her milestones, and thus more attention didn't seem to be required.

She was left alone to just do her job. It was liberating in a way that she couldn't really define. "Well, that's about all I have for you."

Linus leaned back in his chair, making it protest under his bulk. "Sounds good to me. Just one thing from us for you and then we'll call it a day."

Kelly giggled, and then said, "Go ahead and pull your cable, I'll plug in here and take over." After Tammy closed down her laptop, Kelly's screen popped up and was already filled with a bunch of data and graphs.

Tammy needed a moment to take it all in before she realized what she was looking at. She blushed.

Linus turned to her, and patted the air, "Easy, girl, easy. I'm not about to start screaming. It's your first week. Everything's weird here, I know, and everyone needs a couple of weeks to learn where everything is and who to ask questions to. Doubtless you want to impress us all and feel like you're earning that fat paycheck." He folded his hands in his lap, still leaning back in the chair. "You are. And you're impressing Mitchell, even if he doesn't know how to say it because the military surgically removed his sense of humor."

Tammy couldn't help but give a nervous laugh as she looked toward Mitchell out of the corner of her eye.

He grunted.

Linus continued, "And I also don't want to get into managing you all that much more than we need to. You're a talented young lady and you've got this. Sometimes you'll need to pull more hours because something's being particularly uncooperative. We get that. But we don't want you to burn yourself out either. If you want to make it a habit to get to 44 hours before the end of Thrusday however, we want you to know that we don't expect that. And we will be enforcing the 50 hour lockout regardless. There are times that can be overridden, but it requires approval by me, and it also requires what amounts to light duties for the next week until your average comes back down."

Tammy shifted on her feet, nervously. "Yes, sir."

No one spoke for several minutes, until Mitchell said, "I won't even get upset about the 'sir' thing, instead of 'gunnery sergeant'."

*

Tammy knocked at Kelly's door. She'd changed into jeans and a tee shirt with Semi-Kun barreling down the street on it, windshield transformed into cartoon eyes while bearing down on a cartoonishly flailing teenager.

Kelly pulled the door open, "Hey! Come in, come in, just put the order for food in on GrubDash an it'll be here in a little while. I'll give you the nickel tour." She showed Tammy around the modest house, only skipping her roommates' door. "I live with a couple that's doing research out of the country right now," she explained. "They're gone more than they're here, honestly."

Tammy decided not to pry, and they ended up on the couch in front of the TV. Within a few minutes, the new OP for Chiyo-Hime was going, and the conversation was already in full swing. This was a very good OP, but the original music was better even if the animation sequence wasn't as good. They started making predictions about the new season's plot based off of the characters and actions shown.

Just like Tammy predicted, it was just shy of being lewd. There was no way that a priestess' robe would be anywhere near that short. There were panty shots galore. Booba wobbled and noses bled. Impractically large and phallic swords were produced from sheaths that couldn't contain them.

In spite of herself and her earlier reservations, Tammy was having a really good time. The food arrived after it was supposed to, the driver pleading that the restaurant was backed up. Kelly assured him that it was fine, and tipped him generously. Once takeout containers were distributed onto the table, Kelly settled next to Tammy to share the okonomiyaki.

Kelly convinced Tammy to watch another anime, and without any complaint from either, they ended up tucked in against each other. Cuddling, while the pair enjoyed a slice of life school romance. What shocked Tammy wasn't that someone's hand slipped up to gently play higher on a waist. It was that it was her thumb that was brushing against the lower swell of Kelly's chest.

Tammy's head was laying on Kelly's shoulder, and had tucked her feet up under her legs. No one would ever consider her a prude, but this was a bit fast, even for her, even for someone that she liked. "Sorry. That was a bit much," she pulled back to the other side of the couch.

Kelly smiled, and waved it off. "You're cute, and I'm attracted, but I also know what you mean. I'm not really ready to just dive into bed either. Though maybe don't just stammer and scurry off, either," she reached out to pat Tammy on the thigh. "Let's start with the basics. Obviously, you're at least a little attracted to me. I'm at least a little attracted to you. You're intelligent. You have good taste."

Tammy snorted a laugh. "I've had worse approaches."

Kelly giggled. "I bet you have. Leah didn't really go into details, but I put together a few things based off tiny bits of information. All she said is that she went to college with you as a roommate, and that she worked with you during college, and that she was an exotic dancer in college. All at different times. Not exactly a full confession but the conclusion is reasonable and implied. So the idea that a former stripper has heard worse lines than 'you're cute and not stupid' is not shocking."

Tammy squirmed a bit. She wasn't exactly ashamed of the fact that she'd been a dancer. On the other hand, she wasn't used to it being sprung on her like this. "Yeah, I heard more than a few weird and creepy lines."

Kelly reached for the remote and then clicked the show mute. "Tell you what. I wasn't ever a dancer. And I do want to get to know you better. So here's my proposal. I tell you a story about me working a convention, you tell me a story about dancing. We go back and forth until one of us decides that it's time to go to bed. You can stay here. Either in my guest room, or if we figure we'd like to cuddle or more, in my room. Sound safe enough for exploration?

Tammy thought about it for a second, and then nodded. "Alright. You start."

*

"So this guy is getting shoved into the car after leading the cops on a literal floor-by-floor foot chase, and he screams, "CYBERHACK CREW FOREVER," Kelly said, arms gesticulating the whole time that she talked about an attendee who'd taken far too many party drugs for anyone's safety. The story was the kind of lunacy that only happened at fan conventions, and if the people who generally attended weren't so 'harmless' it would have posed a real problem.

Tammy was laughing so hard that she had fallen off the couch. Kelly had apparently worked in just about every role possible short of being a board member at a half dozen fan cons on this coast; first responder, 'security', panels, dealers den/artist alley, operations, logistics, panels, even theming and decoration. And like anyone who worked behind the scenes, she'd 'seen it all'.

Kelly had met famous voice actors, been sexually harassed by one of them, cleared an overpacked room for a fire marshall, and as stated, helped to close off escape routes for someone who was tripping on everything except for his own feet. "That's not the end," she said, patting the air down. "The cops all freeze, and look over at us, and they've got this look on their face. This look that says 'have we just captured a domestic terrorist?' We're all just giggling hysterically, and the first responder lead just says, 'It's a cartoon show.' The cops just stare at us, and you can tell that none of them are buying it."

Tammy was wheezing as she tried to recover her breath. She pawed her way up onto the couch, and sucked some deep lungfuls of breath in as she calmed down. This was the fourth round of stories between the two young women. Each one had, at the least, given the other a fit of giggling. But now it was her turn again. "Okay. You've worked with Leah and now you know me a bit more. We're doing this bachelor party. Nothing weird about that, right? Wrong. This bachelor party is for some scion of one of the richest families in the country. Like, the kind that could blow a few million on a party and the cost gets lost and not even noticed."

Kelly nodded. There had been a couple of bachelor party stories but this was the first where "real money" had been involved.

Tammy took a drink of her ramune before she continued. "So it's not just me and Leah. They rented the whole damn club for the whole damn night. There's like 30 dancers there, and we're just going all out. Normally we weren't supposed to do anything even close to a lap dance on the club floor, but since this was a private event, no holds bared, so to speak. They still couldn't get too handsy, and the bouncers were all keyed up.

"There's this new dancer there, big chip on her shoulder. She thinks she's the absolute hottest thing ever, and she's not going to be shown up by anyone. She was pretty hot, but also lost a lot of points due to her personality. Like. A LOT of points. No one really wanted this nice pair of tits in their face when the body they were attached to was just an absolute bitch.

"The other thing that was a little weird about this was while they all showed up in their luxury sedans and exotics and limos, they were actually pretty chill. I think that they were just so used to the idea of pretty girls throwing themselves at them for the hint of money that the honesty of strippers was relaxing. Totally well behaved, didn't have a single drunk and disorderly or molestation. Absolutely not what we expected.

"Anyway, Leah's up on stage, DJ's playing her set. I'm working one of the guys over, and he's trying to tease me about how I don't know how to call a method, while I'm doing the bump and grind thing. Party's going strong. And there's this one guy who's just there. He's been sipping this drink, maybe going through a glass every hour and a half. And he's gorgeous. I mean. GORGEOUS. Sure, a lot of that is the money and the charisma and the presence and the clothes and the fact that he had the time to really work out, but damn. Looked like he should have been the lead in a N-Pop band. Delicate features, that really great mix of masculine without being super-butch."

Kelly nodded, "Hiroki Tanaka?"

Tammy waggled her hand. "More Totoroshi Tutseku. But white wolf."

Kelly 'ooooooooheed', and fanned herself.

"So you know how Leah can just read people, right? She tells me right at the start, 'Just don't bother with that guy,' and I take her word for it. So Mr. Wolf-san is standing there at the bar, and he's got this king of the world, absolute bemused disinterest thing going on. And l'il miss thang sees her target, and she's gonna snare this guy. So she starts a table dance, right in front of him. And she's working it, HARD. All kinds of moves, hip drops and rolls, slides, she's pulling out all the stops."

Kelly's grin was ear to ear. "He didn't care."

Tammy threw her hands up in a dramatic negation, "Not even a single bit. He's standing there in his thousand dollar jacket, solid long necktie, no ring on his finger, and he just watches right through her. Every now and then he takes a sip, and scans the room. Says something to the bartender. Sips his drink. And stands there. By this point, l'il miss thang is drawing a crowd, cause like I said, she was hot. Only she's ignoring them."

Kelly took a drink from her own bottle after wincing at the 'bad form' being described.

Tammy set her bottle down on the table, empty now, and turned more to face her host. "So these guys are trying to tip her, and she's getting more and more annoyed that she's being ignored. But she also knows that she needs to do the job, so she finishes up, and does the whole tip in the garter thing. Then brushes a few requests off from them, saying she'll see them in a little while but she has something she needs to go take care of. Saunters right up to Mr. Wolf-san and starts trying to draw him to a chair for a lap dance. 'No, thank you.' And she won't take 'no' for an answer, starts trying to bait him. Tempt him."

Kelly kicked her feet a bit in anticipation. "He's gay, isn't' he."

Tammy threw the pillow she was leaning back on, "You're skipping! And no, he's not gay. So after he turns her down, she starts trying to ask what's wrong, is he into prey girls, is she too short, too tall, what's wrong with her? Oh, and she's not asking. She's screaming. Everyone in the club is looking at her and Mr. Wolf-san. And he's not even fazed in the slightest. He just says, 'Not interested in anything tonight, I'm here to run the party'."

"By this point, one of the other dancers comes over, and she's this sweet little thing. REALLY good dancer but she's built super lean, even more than me, so she never really got a lot of the boisterous attention, if you know what I mean. Kinda new, and l'il miss thang has been a total cunt to her. Bully, body shame, all that stuff. So this little slip of a chinchilla girl stalks right up. And she's already doing the dancing high step. Which is when we realize that the music has changed. No more club beats, this is something Latin.

"Now, she's got on this little leather bikini top, choker, and a microskirt on, coupled with the stripperheels. It looked great, and she all of a sudden, could really SELL it. Like I said, she was super sweet and friendly, the kind who apologizes to the bug for the trouble after putting it outside. She reaches out, grabs Mr. Wolf-san by his tie, and hauls him in. He's got like, 60 pounds on her, easily, but he snaps forward, their foreheads just barely touching, staring into each other's eyes. You ever seen a tango? Like, a REAL tango, where the camera doesn't pull away to focus you somewhere?

"She starts a tango like that with him. They're weaving their steps between each other's legs, she's 'dragging' him all over the floor by that tie, and he's holding onto her like she's the hottest thing on the planet. And the moves on this guy." Tammy fanned herself, blushing a bit at the memory. "She looked like she was going to eat him alive. Just throw him over something convenient, ravish him, leave him drooling, and saunter off. He looked like he was about to pin her to the wall and fuck her so hard that she'd need to be mopped off the floor. Back and forth. And then all of a sudden, her skirt just goes flying away, he unwrapped it during a twirl, and they just keep going. He unties her top, flicks it to the side. And this is barely like, a minute and a half in.

"He's dancing with her, she's dancing with him, and here's how hot this was; the bouncers didn't even try to step in. This was a violation of like, a dozen different rules, the fact that he was dancing, let alone touching her and pulling her clothes off and running his hands over her chest and shoulders and hips and thighs. The only reason they didn't look like they were actually fucking right in front of everyone, was that he was still totally clothed.

"So during the second half of the dance, she really takes the lead further, and works his tie off, snaps it like a fucking bullwhip, and then starts looping it around his wrists and arms and shoulders and neck, transferring each wrap and hold to pull his hands around. She's not just dancing with this guy, she's wearing him like an accessory. An accessory that happens to be nearly twice her size, but who's counting?"

Kelly grinned, "Oh please tell me that he took her into the back in front of l'il miss thang."

"No! No, and that's the punchline! So she wraps the tie around his neck and uses that as a grip for her final perch on his leg while he strikes the final pose, and there's absolute silence, and then EVERYONE is on their feet. I mean, everyone. The other dancers were cheering. The bartender was cheering. One of the bouncers looked like he wanted to ask Mr. Wolf-san for his autograph.

"And l'il miss thang loses her shit. Because Mr. Wolf-san collects his tie from the chinchilla, kisses the back of her hand, and that's it. He strolls right back to the bar, picks his drink up and finishes it off.

"L'il miss thang starts screaming that she's so much hotter, how dare he ignore her like that? And at this point, Mr. Wolf-san turns to her and says, 'Because I couldn't care less how large your tits are. You have an ugly soul, unlike her.' He points toward the chinchilla girl, who's having to laugh and tell people that she can't dance like that with just anyone.

"The other dancer is telling people that she would need years of rehearsal in order to dance with someone like that. How did she do it with Mr. Wolf-san? He was her ballroom partner for years, and picked this club to give her and her friends some extra business.

"L'il miss thang loses her shit even more, and says that she could fuck him harder and better than the mouse ever could, and Mr. Wolf-san says, 'Probably not. I don't have sex with anyone. I just know how to put on a show'."

Kelly's jaw fell open, "Wait, he was ACE?!"

Tammy nodded, grinning. "Broke several hearts when he said that. I won't lie, mine was right up there. Anyway. Mr. Wolf-san motions toward the manager, who had come out to intervene but also looked like he wasn't all that sure about what he should do. Mr. Wolf-san apparently told the manager that l'il miss thang was no longer welcome. She got quietly taken back to the office, cashed out, and sent home, with a general 'you probably shouldn't come back' because we didn't ever see her at the club again."

Kelly giggled. "You know, I think that I remember a story about a group of gamers that hired a stripper to do a cosplay dance for them up in one of the rooms, and her getting thrown out for not getting enough tips and being pissy. But I don't remember any other details." She stretched on the couch, arms over her head, legs sticking out in front of her, quivering a little as she really tensed her muscles. "God, this was so much fun," she said.

Tammy looked down, but was smiling. "I admit that I enjoyed it. More than I thought that I would."

Kelly held her arms wide, and flipped her hands a few times inward, beckoning. "C'mere. I wanna hug."

Tammy smirked, and moved in. "You want more than a hug." She settled her hips down between the ocelot's spread thighs, facing the same direction, and leaned her head back against Kelly's shoulder. Taking the lead, she drew Kelly's arms around her belly, and relaxed into the other woman's embrace.

They sat there for nearly a half hour, just sharing warmth. Neither of them were particularly disposed to 'companionable silences', but they had just shared stories with each other for nearly three hours. Kelly's fingers were slowly brushing along Tammy's belly, under the hem of the shirt. "I don't get to be the big spoon very much," Kelly finally said. "I kinda like it."

Tammy giggled a bit, and reached a hand back to rub the feline's ears. "You just like that you get to hold a pretty rodent. Naughty kitty."

Kelly snorted a laugh, then made a 'rar' sound and closed her mouth over Tammy's shoulder. They both dissolved into giggles. "I don't really get to cuddle with people any more. A lot of the people who run the local animation con aren't the kind of people I want to be around. The person in charge is a real piece of work. Super manipulative."

Tammy 'mm'd. "Yeah, I kinda got that impression. I only went to the local con once, and it wasn't a lot of fun for me."

Kelly grumbled a bit, and then shook her head. "Nope. Nope, not gonna get into that drama. I'm not ruining this." She pressed a firm kiss into Tammy's shoulder, then her neck. "You're smart. And you're funny. And you're kind. And you're pretty. I like you."

Tammy would normally have been suspicious of someone who led with 'smart' and ended with 'pretty'. ... No, that wasn't accurate. She would have been suspicious of anyone who complimented her at all. It came with the years of exotic dancing. Everything that she'd seen from Kelly was that the ocelot was 'good', though. For whatever value of 'good' one wanted to put in there. "Same," she said, trailing her fingers along the other woman's arm.

They slipped back into silence with each other, and this time, it was Kelly who started to turn the attention intimate. The touch was light. Exploratory. Just a hand that played a little higher on Tammy's waist, over her shirt. She was purring softly, and while it wasn't the first time that Tammy had ever been pressed against a purring feline, it was the first time she hadn't been 'working'.

Neither of them would really be able to say who started the kissing. Or when Tammy turned to make it possible. Or who's hand slipped under clothing first. Or how long it really took for them to end up in their bras and jeans. All they really could or would say was that by the time Kelly withdrew, they had mutually decided that Tammy would be spending the night.

They both stood off of the couch and padded through the house barefoot. Tammy had never lost her trim figure from her teenage years. Kelly had a few more pounds on her than most doctors would like. Then again, Kelly thought that most doctors wanted people to be rail thin, so she didn't put as much stock in that. She was happy with herself, and that was what mattered to her.

When they both slid into Kelly's bed, they started to kiss again. This time, Tammy's hands were around the feline's waist, drawing them closer together. For all of the intimacy of it, and the pleasure, there was little urgency. Neither felt the need to 'fuck' the other.

Legs parted just enough for them to end up pressed against the other's thigh. Slow rolling and rocking made for gentle caresses, pushing erogenous zones against their new friend's body. Kelly's bust filled her bra out more than Tammy, and the way that they pressed into the rat woman's frame was more comforting than purely erotic.

Neither of them really thought it was particularly amusing. Neither was being tickled. But they giggled into the kisses while they rubbed themselves against the other.

"I like how you're so happy," Tammy said. "It's... not something I'm used to seeing. Or being."

Kelly caressed Tammy's cheek. "I like how driven you are. I think that it shows how much you care, even if it's not how most people care."

Neither of them had an orgasm. Both of them were satisfied with that.

Tammy remembered something that Leah said about how sex wasn't just about the pleasure and the release, not all the time. It was the intimacy. And so when they drifted off to sleep in each other's arms, Kelly still purring and smiling, it was more than enough reason for both to wake up happy.

Of course, the sybian they shared in the morning gave them both different reasons to smile.

---

This story is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to any characters, living, dead or imaginary is purely a coincidence. All characters are a product of the author's imagination and copyright to them, unless noted guest appearances of other copyrighted characters are listed in this notice. Comments may be left (and are encouraged!) on the author's FurAffinity page. If you liked this story, and wish to support the author, please visit their Patreon.

This story is a work of fiction. Any immoral acts included in this story are a fantasy and should not be taken as encouragement to perform or endorsement of these acts by the author. Specifically, because apparently it needs to be said; anything other than expressed consent for any sexual encounter by a legal unimpaired sentient adult is wrong, immoral, and evil. Unwilling subjugation of sentients who have committed no crime is wrong, immoral, and evil.