4. VALENCE

after it happened

Recommended Listening:https://youtu.be/SM76jYlrXsQ?si=POz4l2Gt0tte6OSw

While the Dealer's dick hung out of the bathroom stall hole, Anton Carpenter checked the time on his phone with his free hand. He had almost fifteen minutes until he had to be out and ready to perform, which meant that he had to be backstage in ten. The Keyboardist would be fucking mad if he was late again, he knew, but he'd tuned his guitar a little earlier that day and Nine Lives never really needed a full sound check. His head was pounding and he wasn't going to be any good if he didn't get the ache fixed, plus he couldn't afford to fuck up their chances with another venue.

"Why do we have to use the glory hole? I know it's you." The flesh in front of the Brittany's face twitched and pushed forward. Anton ignored it for a moment until it twitched again, and a frustrated huff from behind the stall wall accompanied a small, milky droplet of excitement falling onto his phone screen. He shot an irritated look up to where he saw the tips of the Dealer's horns as though the bovine could see his expression. 'Fucker. Buy a fleshlight,' he thought, and observed the place he knelt in. The bathroom wall was a mural fading into two-point perspective, floating out infinitely above him in a deluge of obscenities and nearly-forgotten catcalls.

'FAG COUNTRY,' one piece of graffiti read in red permanent marker that had since faded to the color of bricks. Surrounding it, a clumsy road sign stuck its posts into two cartoon hillocks. Beneath, an add-on by a green marker some time later that read 'POPULATION: YOU' before the 'YOU' was eventually struck and replaced with '69.' Elsewhere, a melange of names that had long lost their edge - VICTOR IS A SLUT, cooper sells poppers cheap, no I don't, Copfukkers Unitted, GO FUCK URSELF. A tiny drawing of a tree branch with a bird on it. A disembodied penis. A cluster of eyes staring in different directions with someone's band name or artist collective or whatever in the middle.

Nine Lives wasn't the most beautiful club, but there was something about it that Anton liked. The floor was sticky under his jeans and the loose strings from the rips along his calves and thighs plastered to the tile like a cat's stray hairs licked flat. The City was always cold - when sugar hit the floor, it dried into a sticky mess nearly instantly. The tile was always cool to the touch like an unlit fireplace. The windows made a halo of fog around his pads when he touched a car window. This was the City's gift - veins full of nothing.

"Shut up," the hound muttered back, clicking the touch screen off. His phone became a dim mirror when it lost its light, showing his face from below at an unflattering and severe angle. His long neck, the dog tags hanging from it, the glint of earrings set against the lighter scar tissue of rejected piercings. From this angle, he thought, his ears almost looked symmetrical again; if he turned his head properly, they tipped roughly the same, obscuring the damage done by all the cartilage and rejected steel and gold. He avoided the dark ice of his stare in that mirror, looking back to the bull's insatiable cock and the task it represented.

"You shut up. Do you want your blow or not?" Anton's eyes narrowed at the response. A hateful word bubbled up in the back of his throat, quelled before it ever reached his lips. "You're lucky I think you're so goddamn pretty. It's not like you suck me off worth a whole fucking eight otherwise." He stayed quiet for a moment, but it was enough to tire the bull out. He muttered something to himself and pulled back, but Anton squeezed around his dick before it left. The pull gradually stopped, pausing fully when Anton adjusted his grip to cradle it from the underside, stroking slow enough to register the slight ribbing of the bull's erect phallus, the way the dark gray skin bounced and strained against his grip.

"Hold on, hold on. Jesus, dude." Anton's phone buzzed. He didn't look at the text.

"Yeah? What is it? Don't waste my time if you're not gonna-"

Anton pulled the dick down, pressing it against the duct tape-wrapped edge. The veins stood out for a moment while the Dealer grunted, and Anton doubled down by leaning in, tongue flat, and dragging it up the length of the bovine's shaft, head to base. A hearty throb flexed it partway through, and a warm splatter hit Anton's forearm and hand. Some even got onto his phone, but he wiped it off on his jeans, shoving it back into his pocket. He adjusted himself where he knelt on the bathroom floor, working his fingers along the rim to flatten the tape. He began to move his wrist, stroking the thickness and pressing along the bulging urethra at the base with his thumb. It earned a soft grunt of satisfaction from behind, which in turn made him smile too.

"There we go..." The bathroom stall wall was as good as transparent to both of them.

Anton rested his cheek against the bathroom stall, letting his eyes drift shut. He didn't want to get a mess on his clothes when he had to be out on stage so quickly after, but he didn't really have a choice with this, either. That thought made him sigh softly in relief, warm air rushing across the shaft. A glistening layer of sweat mingled with precum shone across the entirety of the uncut beast, making wet noises that Anton could hear as he leaned in closer, close enough to faintly press his lips to the side, the top.

"That's a good boy," his Dealer groaned, his voice tinny and echoing from the cramped bathroom. Outside, the club's music faded into an ever-present bass heartbeat, sometimes faster, sometimes slower. Right now it was excited, bumping and pounding the floor with frantic arrhythmia. Anton opened his mouth, taking the time to breathe out again and watch the humidity gather as a nearly-invisible sheen behind the bull's crown, and then unfurl his tongue inch after inch until it dangled to drool a smooth, hot line of saliva. "Come on," the man grunted. "Lick it again like before."

It pooled a clear circle on the tile underneath him, and Anton mashed his thumb into the underside of the man's cock and began to stroke a little faster, angling his head over his manhood to purse his lips along the rim of the Dealer's glans, applying soft suction and moving his muzzle first to the side, and then to the oozing cumslit. The licking resumed, and every soft slip of his tongue out was another firm drag, focusing around the head at first but gradually working their way down with longer and longer slurps. All the while, his hand kept up the motion from before, sometimes letting go to adjust and make sure the natural lubrication glistened all over.

"Fuck," the bull groaned. Anton pursed his lips together for a moment and swiped his tongue across them to gather the taste of another man's passion spread along his senses. His eyes closed and he angled his neck down, one hand dropping between his thighs to start stroking at the bulge in his own jeans before he set to work in earnest. The low light of the Nine Lives bathroom glinted off of the steel stud in the middle of his tongue, which Anton flexed with a dexterous curl. It pushed first against the bull's slit before angling down, punctuating the wet pressure that his tongue maintained. The Dealer groaned something that sounded like 'you're good with that thing,' but the pounding bass of the previous act washed it out to nothing. The taste of him bloomed in the Brittany's mouth, pungent and masculine. Anton's nostrils flared and he allowed himself the full bouquet of scents - at least, as many of them as he could get through the muffling layer of duct tape and the powdered steel wall between the two. His precum was salty with a heady edge to it that made Anton long for more - it clung with body to the back of his throat and tongue, left him feeling like he might be swallowing away the taste of it all night. Each inch pushed past the facile resistance of his lips with vigor.

This pressure had become commonplace, but it didn't make it any less difficult - or any less satisfying, either. His muzzle stretched, his cheeks too. The pressure at the back of his neck always made him feel like gagging, no matter how much he was put into this position. He forced his breath to stop, imagined plugging his nose just by clenching, and demanded his jaw relax. Slowly, the wet intruder managed to slide its way in deeper. Anton fought the urge to retch by not thinking about gagging- instead he flared his nostrils, forced himself not to breathe, and focused on other things instead. His pale blues opened up and the watched his Dealer shove his dick through the gloryhole, watched it disappear down the bridge of his muzzle.

A particularly hard thrust made his jaw hurt when it angled down too much. Anton lowered himself to create a better angle, ignoring the burn that grew in the back of his throat. It matched the one echoing behind his temples, the beating of his heart. His fingers curled and he grew angry at the feeling of water running down his face - he knew that his eyes were weeping, that moisture was coming down them, but they didn't burn as badly as his throat. They were soothing in some way, even as a wet, snuffling inhalation further muddled his senses.

Just in time for his Dealer to push forward again, catching him off guard. The burning tightness that came with the gag reflex was enough to make him pull off. Anton breathed hard through his nose while holding the bull's dickhead between his lips, trying to steal some oxygen back. Another push like that and he'd throw up, he was sure, so instead he held the thing in his mouth, kissed at it, flexed his tongue beneath and squeezed his fingers into a circle around the middle so that when he moved his muzzle forward, it felt like a longer, fuller thrust. It definitely seemed to do the trick, with how the Dealer groaned. A heavy thump shook the stall and it tilted slightly towards Anton.

'He's going to cave the whole place in on me,' he marveled, noticing how the bull's fingers curled over the top of the stall for a better grip. Anton's phone vibrated again, but he ignored it. The pain in his jaw was beginning to fade. It was kind of hot, actually, he thought, and redoubled. The erection in his jeans helped with that. The other man's wet thrusting and low, baritone grunts grew louder by the moment, and Anton's eyes went blurry. The bass outside had grown louder when he wasn't paying attention, and the dingy light of the bathroom reflected off of the transparent line of a swinging glob of drool hanging from his lips. It splattered wet against his chin the next time that he thrusted, and before he knew what he was doing, he reached up to hold his muzzle shut, tightening the blowjob while his fingers cradled his cheek and brushed his throat. There was a thickness, a motion under his skin that felt addictive as it stretched him out: Anton tried his best to flex his throat to suck harder, tighter. The salty taste of pre gave way to pungent bursts of the bull's sweat and something a little more bitter, the preview to orgasm.

'Are you close,' the Brittany wanted to pull back and ask, but he didn't even have time to say a word.

"Fuck!" The bull's swollen glans felt as big as a clenched fist between his lips, and Anton's tongue tensed underneath. Each thrust rubbed against the ridges of his soft palate, greedy for more stimulation. Every ache was gone, just replaced with raw physical impulse, electric and masculine. 'I bet I can swallow it,' he thought, and shivered at the idea's presence. "I'm--!"

The bolts holding the stall together rattled and his nuts tensed. Veins stood out on his dick, and Anton could hear the bull's hand slam into the wall. Somehow, he always expected there to be a more tactile sensation from the cumshot, the feeling of each shot hitting him in the back of the throat. Instead, it was just his Dealer throbbing, filling his mouth, the hazy understanding of something wet mixing with his drool. No doubt the bull's hands would have been clamped around his head if he had the opportunity to.

Anton tried to inhale, found that he couldn't save for a wet, rasping gurgle. His eyes watered at the inner corners and started to leak. He squeezed them shut, finally, clenching his hands for a fraction of a moment before opening them again and cupping them below his muzzle to try and catch any mess, which proved a good instinct when successive small thrusts left cloudy, slimy spunk bubbling out from the corners of his mouth and leaking off of his chin. He caught what he could, cupping it in his hands until the other was done. Breath slowed, and he resisted the impulse to reach down between his legs to take a moment of pleasure in the situation while a surprisingly lucid thought pierced through the haze.

'What the hell do I do with this?'

He pulled back all the way and heard his lips slide off, looked at the watery mass of saliva and semen soaked together in his hands, then eyed the toilet. 'Will it be a turn-off if he hears me dump this?' Anton wondered, and tried his best to cover up the sound of him shaking his hands off into the toilet bowl with a wet, throat-clearing cough. Moments later, a hard knock rattled the bathroom door. Anton briefly considered leaving it closed, but his phone buzzed again. Fuck. Late.

The Brittany unlocked the door, tried not to make eye contact with the black-furred bull standing impatiently on the other side, and squirmed past him to the bathroom sink to turn the hot water on and check his face.

"Hey," the steer grunted. Anton looked at him through the mirror. The bull held up a small plastic baggie of white, dangling it in the air before tossing it onto the bathroom counter. He tried to make eye contact, but a cloud of filth on the glass just made the bull's face a smoky patch. He looked away by reflex, jerking his head back to stare at the sink.

"What?" He wanted to sound cold. He sounded hoarse.

"Use cold water. It's better for jizz." A pause, then he rapped on the paper towel dispenser. "And make sure you wipe the counter down before you take a hit. You'll waste it if it's wet."

Anton Carpenter looked at the baggie and then looked down at his phone. Two minutes until lights and a missed call from the Keyboardist. The bathroom door closed. He stared into his own eyes in the mirror, wiped his muzzle, and spit into the sink before opening the bag.

"If I'm late, better make it worth it."

-

He sings in the City far away, beautiful under PAR lights. Others watching forget to blink. I do not.

-

It was the moments after a set that he loved more than anything. Sweaty and exhausted from his art, Anton let the wave of noise break against his back. The mass's voices pooled around his legs and his paws as they called for him, amoeboid under the solvent of their own joy. Distinction faded each voice from its other as they called for an encore. He knew he would go back out to give them one more song like he always did, but there was no harm in letting them call for him, beg for him to come back out. It felt good to be wanted. He exhaled, looked to the others, and then spun around to walk back on stage. The curtain billowed around his shoulders like a cape, its arms dragging across his collarbone like a lover's clinging grasp.

"One more?!" He called. Nine Lives moved and swayed under his storm. Each voice calling for something was overpowered by a second calling for the same, said just differently enough that they blended into static. All that it meant, that screaming, was that they agreed with whatever he said.

"You want me?" Sound. Yes.

His stage waited. On it, a wooden chair alone in a circle of light, a luminous moon-spot on a sandy beach bordering the endless sea of faces, a hungry ocean of desire. He took his seat, put one paw over the other. In their shimmering faces, he imagined a version of himself singing. All around him, the darkened windows that gazed into the night air outside cast myriad reflections of that self superimposed over the canvas outside, thinned-out acrylic and oil, and then he became it. He plucked his guitar, strummed, stuck the strings and let them hum, bound at head and feet.

They cried under his claws. He sung atop them, voice worn and familiar like old jeans.

"In not so long, so long, so long..."

He heard the Drummer come in right when he was supposed to with a steady, quiet rhythm. To his left, the Keyboardist humming soundlessly into her microphone, fingers dancing on her keyboard. Their faces were drowned out in the stage lights. When he sung, he often tried to close his eyes - it helped with that feeling, dimmed everything into comfortable obscurity. They never went all the way closed, though. The imaginary view through his lashes still told him of the people in front staring up like victims of an eclipse's beauty, no eyes, just face. That's how he wanted it to be, anyway - it was easier than staring them straight on and seeing.

"...watch 'em falling, falling in a row..."

Back stage, his phone rang.

-

Myth Building: Deconstructing Construction's Success

Some bill Construction as a band that's rooted in the past, a group that sells the crooning pain of Ian Curtis for a new day, re-imagined and re-packaged.1Others say that front man Anton Carpenter is a visionary, both fingers on the pulse of music's newest trends and riding the wave before it even arrives.2But both of these views undersell his talents - he's a sophisticated composer, especially in the more restricted and ambitious pieces on their eponymous EP, and his talent for solo work shines on the group's first full-length album Forecasts. So why, I ask, can't critics decide on what Construction is doing? Are they old or new, meteoric or burning out, growing or lost in the past?

I think the answer is somewhere in Carpenter's live work. It takes one song to notice the difference between the acts that predate him and Construction's core technique. While Joy Division sways and twitches in its highs and even newer talent like Billy Corgan snarls and digs deep into the microphone while the audience reacts, Carpenter strives for something else. Something celestial, if you'll let me wax poetic (I know, I know, I'm never going to live my Cocteau Twins review down).3There's an almost church-like reverence in how his fans look at him that couldn't be captured in a photograph even if Construction _did_advertise like they should (we'll get onto the topic of their abysmal marketing later), and yet front man Carpenter curiously doesn't move all that much on stage.

He tends towards seated performances that normally would bottleneck the energy of a crowd, yet he becomes a rock that they throw themselves against like ships. Cosmopolitan once described him as looking 'helpless,'4though the adjective isn't the one I would choose for what I believe is an intentional vulnerability in his persona. The helplessness certainly doesn't come out in his writing, nor does it translate into meek behavior. Whoever said that domestic breeds couldn't command a crowd (looking at you, Cooper) ought to reconsider.5There's something raw, too, and something sad in how Carpenter sings. It's difficult to put it into words - there's just something faceless lying underneath his voice even when he's at his least abstract and crooning about sunflower fields and old beer bottles.

Famously bristly about giving interviews, he's never confirmed whether or not the album's autobiographical, just like he's never told where it is he's from,6but here at _Falling Stone_we can spot an artist from a mile away. Opinions may be divided, but I think that's a good sign. There's rarely a more reliable way of finding a truly interesting act than split reviews... which, of course, brings me to my next point. Let's talk about his photo policy...

-

One evening, Anton opened his eyes in a stranger's room to a shaft of light from the door cutting across his face. It reflected off the bottles by an unfamiliar bedside, casting icy light across the inside of his skull. His chest hurt and the room swam. As he sat up, coughed, and cleared his throat he fumbled under the covers and around his naked body for his cigarettes. Barring that, he looked for his pants, and couldn't find those either. His memory of the night was hazy. He felt his back to make sure his kidneys weren't stolen, and then his balls.

"Fuck," he thought he said, but his throat was dry.

"Maybe when you're feeling better," came the smug response from the door, where a beautiful tiger stood, bare-chested with a tattoo of a praying Mary hugging one side of his stomach. He had a face, and it was beautiful enough to make Anton breathe again. His eyes were two different colors, both equally dull, and he had a gold eye tooth.

That was Bryan's introduction. Bryan said that there was another one that happened on the dance floor, all wide pupils and earnest laughter, wobbling footsteps and sloppy kissing that led upstairs. A spilled drink in the stairwell, his jacket peeled off his shoulders. Anton didn't remember that one. All he remembered was that he accepted the tiger's kisses then without a word, put his arms around his neck, and they laid together and made shapes in the fabric. Bryan came in with flowers and a greasy bag of McDonald's breakfast at two in the morning. That's what Anton remembered.

-

(...) The question is whether or not Construction will manage the universal struggle that slows the progress of nearly every fledgling band: the sophomore album. Carpenter's live shows continue to draw crowds, but a strong contingent of loyal fans isn't enough to succeed in the fast-paced world of music. With not even a single released for the past two years, the band seems poised for nothing at all - what's holding them back?

-

Bryan kissed him while a Nirvana wanna-be crooned on stage. He put a hand on Anton's lower back while he did it, like he was preparing to lift something heavy in the grocery store: a bag of rice, a box of sweet cherry soda.

"I like your eyes," the tiger said.

Anton forced a smile through the persistent pounding behind his eye. He put his hand on Bryan's chest, slid the other around his waist, and leaned in close to push his cheek against his solar plexus. That's about as high as Anton could make it, and it made him feel like he was hiding in a big wooden horse. Some part of him hoped that the cat hadn't come tonight, took Anton's missed messages as a sign that he should stay home.

"I like it when you don't say things like that," he whispered back.

The tiger grew quiet and stared down at the top of Anton's head. 'I bet he's looking at my ears,' the Brittany mused, still drifting side to side with the music. He tilted his head when the man touched the side of his face, thumbed along the edge of his ear - 'I knew it.' -- and carefully touched at the curls of scar tissue and knots. Soon, Anton figured, the hand would drift to hold his head like a child's.

"Why? Why can't I compliment you?" Anton smiled again, and ran his hand down the side of the tiger' s thigh. 'God, I hate you,' he thought, sighing softly.'_I hate that you said that instead of just grabbing me by the hips and dancing. I hate you for that look you're giving me that I can't see, the way that you're rubbing my face. Can't you see I'm angry with you?'_He swallowed the words. His throat felt wet and hoarse, suddenly itching for a smoke the longer he inhaled Bryan's scent, warm and mellow from his culinary classes at the College.

"Can we just focus on dancing?" He asked, then pushed himself away and palmed his rear pockets looking for his cigarettes. He withdrew the pack, waved it side to side in front of Bryan's face for explanation, and took a step back. "Actually, no, you keep going," he corrected.

"What? No, I'm sorry if--"

"I want to have a smoke. I'll catch you after," Anton interrupted, lifting his hand with palm out.'Poor guy,'_he thought as he turned and stalked across the dance floor, finding his way to the shoreline and following it around toward the exit.'He's nice.'_While a bid from stage called for the sound team to turn the music up and the rhythm clawed the windows seeking escape, Anton wondered if Bryan's claws would feel any different in a month. He wondered if his pink, rough tongue would taste different in his muzzle or scratch the same sliding up the back of his leg. He slammed open the back door to Nine Lives, and the cold night air slammed him back.

"Holy fuck," he gasped, his tail jerking to the side and shoulders immediately tucking in, seeking refuge from the chill beneath leather that didn't try to stop it. Fumbling around his pockets, Anton snapped his thumb a few times on the edge of his lighter, shooting sparks from the end that didn't catch while he fished a cigarette out from the crumpled pack of Coyote Spirits. Winter air bit at this paws and shoulders, and an involuntary tremor shook his body while it shook the trees around him.

"Goddamn thing," he mumbled, and like it heard him, the lighter acquiesced when he struck it hard enough, a sputtering flame drinking up the last of the fuel in the blue Bic. He pursed his lips around his cig and sucked a few times, lifting his hand to shield it from the wind until it finally caught. Anton took a long drag, looking out over the back parking lot. Nine Lives lived in an excess of neon that painted the scenery around in deliciously artificial shades of blue, pink, and green; the City around them was equally vibrant. The only spots of dark were in the alleyways between security lights, clots of ink that he never looked at too long.

Anton settled down onto the back steps, three stooped things carpeted with cigarette butts, dead leaves, and old receipts. The cold was getting more bearable the longer he remained outside, and he leaned back to exhale a cloud of smoke up and watch it spin into the air. His ears tipped back and a small chill touched the fully exposed undersides.'I wish I could sleep here,' he thought, tracing lines between the dots of light as his shivers slowed.

"Anton?" The door opened behind him. Bryan's voice. Shit.

"Go back inside," he muttered, waving the hand with the cigarette a couple times before tapping the ash off into the damp leaves.

"You come back inside. It's freezing out here," the tiger growled, taking a couple steps forward and sitting down beside him on the stairs. Anton looked over without moving his head, finding Bryan was looking right into his eyes. "What the fuck's your problem? You seemed totally fine and then..." The tiger waved his hand, reaching into his pocket for a cigarette of his own. Marlboro, Anton noticed, and didn't offer to light it.

"'And then' what, Bryan? I wasn't "fine" any more? I said I wanted to have a smoke so I came out here." He pursed his lips. "Are you deaf?" 'That was harsh,' he thought, holding back a grimace.

"No," the tiger corrected, producing a matchbook from the same pocket. He was obviously bothered - his ears were flat to the sides. He ripped out one of the cardboard matches, folded it back, and struck fire across the logo on the back: one of the casinos in the City. "You got weird with me after I tried to hit on you tonight." He waved out the flame. "I'm just checking on you."

"You were hitting on me before that and I was fine."

"You've been acting weird all night. Are you high? Didn't you _just_perform?" A car shot by on a distant street, far too fast for the hour.

"No," Anton snapped. "No, I'm not high. Yes, I just performed. Jesus Christ, Bryan - you aren't my boyfriend, and if you want any more of this, you need to just fucking..." He swiped his hand again like he was brushing away cobwebs. Bryan flinched.

"Just what?" 'Walk it back. Don't say it.'_He exhaled the smoke out hard this time. '_Like a dragon,' Anton thought.

"You need to just fucking back off if you want any more," Anton finished, tapping off ash again. The club somehow seemed quieter than ever, no sound offered to fill the silent void that swelled between. Bryan inhaled sharply, and he didn't even bother doing it with the cigarette he'd just lit. Anton pretended that he didn't see the look that the tiger was giving him, drilling his eyes forward into the place where the chain link fence that surrounded the lot blended into the asphalt, the thin shadows that the metal cast.

"'Want any more?' Any more what? Want any more tail? Want any more of your_exquisite presence_?"

"You know what I'm talking about."

"No, I don't. Explain it to me," he said, and his voice was lower than it was moments before. 'Apologize. You sound like a motherfucker,' Anton thought to himself, but the words didn't come.

"I.." Anton hesitated. His ears laid back and he could feel his tail twitch, trying to tuck underneath his thighs and aching near the base. "I mean... I mean _be_with me." Bryan had anticipated it. Anton could tell. There was a bitter resignation in how his gaze changed, in the soft half-laugh that bounced his chest once. He still hadn't taken a drag of his cigarette, but after that, he did. He looked frustrated while he did it, like he was upset with the smoke.

"Sure. Don't get so close to me if you want to get close to me. Like that makes any fucking sense, Anton." He flung the mostly untouched cig down beside the Brittany's leg, where he watched it smolder on the damp asphalt. "You're afraid of letting me get close to you. It's obvious, and I wish you wouldn't do it. I just want..." He trailed off.

"What? To take care of me? There's nothing to take care of, Bryan. There's nothing for you to do. Can't you fucking understand that?" Bile welled again in the back of his throat, demanding another drag. Interrupting the feeling, his phone lit up in his pocket, vibrating with plain machine urgency. He ignored it, but its very presence irritated him, like a someone pulling on his sleeve while he was busy with something else.

"Can't I understand what, Anton? That you've got some baggage that you've never let me help you with?"

"You can't-"

"How do you know? How the fuck do you know? You've shut down every time I've tried to listen to you about it, and now you're just..." Bryan huffed out through his teeth, his chest humming with the barest remnant of a growl. "Now you're just letting whatever it was take over your life." His phone stopped. The call timed out.

"Letting it take over my life? Don't make me fucking laugh, Bryan - it's not like I can just meditate it away or something, like..." His phone started to vibrate again, steadily. His ring tone, bursts of three. "Like..."

"You need to take that? I don't want to interrupt something," the cat said, stretching each word out.

"No," Anton growled. "And I hate it when you do that. I know what you're doing."

"What? Asking you to pay attention instead of fucking talking to your dealer or whatever?"

"Fuck you."

"I think I'd actually prefer that to this, thanks. You brooded less." His phone stopped and Anton laughed a short and unamused bark. His hand, reaching for his pocket, stopped. Caller must have given up. "I've tried to be understanding. I've tried to listen to you. You're not letting me help. You won't even tell me about it."

"You wouldn't understand it."

"Try me."

"It's not a fucking romance movie," Anton sneered. "I don't want to get into it. I don't want to do this, okay? Just-" His phone started to buzz again. "Just-- hold on," he growled, lifting his hips so he could shove his hand into his jeans and fish it out. The screen lit with an incoming call - he didn't recognize the number, but its area code - 620 - made him freeze. Kansas.

-

He is small, dressed in neon. An eternity passes as he pretends not to listen.

-

Bryan had asked him if he was going to take the call but he wasn't really listening. He didn't really hear it. With trembling thumb he swiped at the top of the screen, expecting a couple more missed calls and instead finding six, all different numbers with the same area code. His ears rang.

1. 620. 620.

His heart hammered in his chest with arresting tightness. Anton's free hand flung its cigarette to the side so he could squeeze his phone, keep it steady with both hands free. He swiped each missed call away, eyes widening when a fresh alert vibrated in his palm: new voicemails.

"No," he said to nobody. "No."

"What?" Bryan's presence made him even angrier, then. He could feel it festering in his chest, angry at the intrusion.

"Fuck off. Leave me alone. I need to deal with this," Anton muttered, waving his dark phone back and forth.

"Deal with what? What the fuck are you talking about?" The cat's voice rose in pitch and he reached out to touch the hound's shoulder. Immediately, Anton hit him on the arm, striking away his hand hard enough to make his wrist hurt. His claws even stung at the base, like he'd unintentionally used those too.

"Leave me the fuck alone, Bryan. We're done here, I'm busy."

"I hate you sometimes." He held his arm.

"Mm," Anton grunted. He smiled after, showing teeth all the way to the back when he did. His phone started to ring again but he mashed the button to refuse the call, silencing it.

"Fine. I don't care what happened to you. I really don't. Would that make you happy to hear? I don't care, I don't understand it, I just want to be here today with you. God fucking damn it - will you look at me, Anton!?"

Bryan's shout didn't startle him as much as his phone had. One ear twitched, just a little bit, before Anton turned and looked over his shoulder. His muzzle was low, leaving just the bridge of his snout and his eyes visible, piercing and cold. The colored lights of the club licked at the outside of his irises, staining them unearthly tones. He saw Bryan's face soften in that way he hated, the way that only happened when the cat was feeling sorry for him again, the way that people always looked at him when he was trying to be angry. He gathered his words from deep in his chest, trying not to rush. 'Utter them,' he thought, 'don't say them.' But his voice still shook.

"You weren't there when it happened."