FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Hi everyone!

This chapter contains more sex, towards the end, and more plot development towards the beginning and middle.

Minors - Get ye gone, whelps! No sex for your eyes!

Feedback is very strongly encouraged. I want to get better at this :)

Chapter X - Action Begets Reaction

Arlen had slept an entire day after he'd been sedated, the exhaustion of combat combining with the drug to knock him down good. Buck had been in to check him every few hours the entire time, as he made phone call after phone call to lay the groundwork for their coming mission.

Having just completed a call in which he'd been updated on the company's overall status, he stepped into Arlen's room again right about noon, to notice the bed was rumpled and empty, no black tiger in sight.

With a frown, he slid the cellular into his pants pocket and strode off down the hall, checking his corners as he went just in case. While the stag doubted anyone had found them, given what Goza Securities had paid the hospital to keep quiet, there was no such thing as too much caution with the enemy teams still likely in Sao Paolo and looking for them.

The stag's long strides carried him down the hall and up a set of steps to the hospital's Intensive Care Unit, which he judged as Arlen's likeliest destination. He strode past several nurses, looking into rooms as he went, largely ignoring the occupants, though the machines hooked into and in some cases covering their bodies gave him willies he'd never admit to anyone.

Each room was variable in many respects, except that they all had two-part glass walls, opaque from about the stag's waist level down, likely just for style's sake. Privacy was entirely illusory in the ward, so nurses wouldn't miss a patient in need just for someone's misplaced sense of courtesy.

When he spotted a pair of black tiger ears sticking up over one of the opaque partitions, his heart jolted with relief and he blew out a breath full of tension and readiness for violence.

With a tap on the glass, he signaled Arlen he was about to enter the room, and walked through the automated sliding door.

The tiger looked like hell, Buck thought. He was rumpled, fur un-groomed, wearing a hospital gown that showed his toned back and ass to the whole world, and seemed to care not the least bit. Arlen was holding the unconscious wolf's left paw, stroking over it repeatedly with his thumb, and quite obviously holding back a storm of emotion whose expression wouldn't help things.

The unconscious silver wolf's medical file was laid out on a tray table attached to the bed and sticking out to one side, making Arlen's little spot a sort of office corner where he could sit.

Buck looked over Sato then, when Arlen didn't immediately take note of him, and saw much what he expected. The wolf was covered in tubes, wires, hooked up to a machine that took up an entire wall of the pleasantly-decorated lavender and blue room and gave soft, muted beeps. Sato's face looked sunken, circles under his eyes that looked like bruises under the fur, and the inside of his ears were so pale the stag couldn't help but compare his pallor to that of a corpse. The stag refused to look too closely at the tubing running under the leg end of the sheets covering the wolf, knowing it was likely helping substitute for damaged intestines that were the most life-threatening of the wounds.

Buck leaned against the wall, and stood there in silent commiseration with his two subordinates, while his mind ran over events, ticking off each and every encounter of the fight that got them here. He was checking for flaws, for mistakes, and gave his head one sharp shake to stop himself. The veteran of half a dozen wars and hundreds of missions knew better than to let himself go down that road.

The sharp head-shake seemed to wake Arlen from a misery stupor, and he raised red-rimmed eyes to the Captain, clearing his throat once, swallowing, then again, before speaking in a hoarse voice.

"I tried to block for him..."

Buck nodded, and gestured to Arlen's shoulder, where the bandages had reduced in size in the time since his injuries.

"You did block for him. That bullet would've probably taken his leg off if it'd hit."

Arlen looked down at his wolfie, reaching out his free paw to trace Sato's cheek, then cup it as his eyes slid down the supine form. Sato's left leg was in a form of traction and heavily bandaged, and it choked Arlen up to look at it so much he couldn't ask the question he was burning to know.

Buck thought about not saying it. But he knew that was cowardice. The truth was inevitable, and the permanent nature of the injury wouldn't change by pretending it wasn't there.

"They told me he'll never walk again unassisted. The knee they could replace, but the muscle and nerve damage is too extensive. I'm sorry, Arl."

The tiger let out a shuddering sigh, and leaned forward, putting his forehead on the wolf's shoulder, before speaking in a scratchy muffled voice.

"I can't...I can't read the charts very well...C-could you...Could you tell me when they think he'll wake up?"

Buck strode over and pulled the room's second chair around so he could sit across the table from Arlen. Blunt fingers nabbed the medical file and flipped it around so he could start leafing through.

"I'm no doc, Arl, but I'll see what I can do."

"Thanks. Sato's right...I shoulda gone to school or something..."

Buck read over the charts, which were full of a lot of medical-speak, but he could at least get some handle on it. Better than Arlen anyway, who was a bit too distraught to exert enough effort right now to get past his reading troubles. The tiger was no idiot, but his family hadn't really put him through school properly as a kid.

"Not much here on when he'll wake up, but they do say he's stable. Critical but stable. Expected to survive."

That was a relief to the both of them, and Buck set down the file feeling some of his sense of anger and dread drain away at least for the moment.

Arlen let out another shaky sigh, this one of relief, and bobbed his big head against Sato's shoulder, before rising back into a regular sit in the chair and fixing Buck with a suddenly fiery, iron-harsh look.

"What've we got?"

Buck didn't need explanation, he knew what the tiger meant. The buck sat back in the chair, meeting Arlen's eyes with a similarly determined face of his own.

"Still gathering intelligence. Goza Sec's in a bad way, but we're still alive as a company. The boss's brother is taking over while the boss recovers, which I ain't happy about, but I'm not going to turn down his resources."

Arl just nodded, and made a gesture with his free paw to keep talking, while his left one squeezed Sato's limp one.

"Simon Gecko was behind this, but we have no idea where the hell he is. The boss' agents near Gecko's headquarters reported that he hasn't been in town for the last few weeks, but nobody knows where he went.

"So that leaves us with what to do now. Thanks to Zebra, that burro who picked us up on the riverside, we were able to find out that Gecko was hiring just about every drug pusher and gun runner they could to get us. Most of them took hush money but refused to get involved, and we killed one of the fuckers who accepted. So far as he was able to find out, there's one leader who took the money and helped them still in the Rocinha."

"So we go in and get him."

Buck nodded, once, and turned his eyes toward the wall. There were no windows in the ICU here, just paintings of the outdoors...But that direction lay the hell-hole that had nearly killed them all.

Arlen raised Sato's paw and kissed it, before laying the limp limb gently back down on the bed.

"How's Tamra?"

"She'll live. Pretty serious concussion. They won't let me take her along for this, and I wouldn't anyway. Her sense of balance is pretty much gone right now, plus the risk of re-injury..'

Arlen shook his head and got up with an unfolding of powerfully-muscled legs.

"I saw Rene on the way up here. It's just the two of us this time, huh?"

Buck pulled out his pack of cigarettes, rumpled as they were, and started packing them against his off paw even though he wasn't intending to draw one out. Just an old habit. He smiled slightly though, just on one corner of his muzzle.

"The burro volunteered. Goza paid him twenty grand for getting our asses out of there alive. Seems trustworthy enough for a drug runner, if a bit of a thrill-seeker."

Arlen just shrugged, not giving a damn about the new guy at the moment.

"When do we leave?"

He'd been sitting there on the floor with her about ten minutes during a break in his web searches, when she finally moved, at first just to stir under the blanket he'd brought in for her the night before.

She's beautiful even like this, he thought. Also, he was pretty sure his uncle was going to kill the poor woman when he was done with her. The woman named 'Tasha' brought out the sympathy in the slightly chubby brown wolf, though he admitted he was afraid to do anything for her beyond these little things he knew he'd get away with.

When the vixen winced, he knew she was awake. One of her paws rubbed at her eye, balled up, and it made her look like a young teenager when combined with her slenderness.

With a start, she fixed her eyes on the young wolf, tension rising through her as her aching body refused to let her move much so quickly after waking. She opened her mouth to talk, and winced again as her throat felt like it had been sand-blasted and then filled with gravel.

"Could...You get me...Water?"

The wolf perked and nodded, happy she trusted him enough to do that for her. He stood up, stretching his slightly stiff legs, then paused as he saw her trying to stretch out and wincing too much to continue, repeatedly.

"He's out right now, won't be back for hours. I...Um. Do you want to lie down on the bed?"

She looked up at him, her eyes uncertain, one of her ears pinned back and the other forward. For long moments, she wondered if this kid was going to try raping her too. She looked at his groin, and saw it wasn't looking particularly tented out in his loose cargo shorts. Probably a good sign, she figured, as she nodded.

With surprising strength, the bespectacled nephew knelt down and scooped her up, arms under her shoulders and knees. Reflexively, she wrapped an arm around the back of his neck, and closed her eyes so she wouldn't have to meet his eyes and see more of the pity there.

As he walked, she felt the blanket slipping, and nearly panicked trying to grab onto the edge with her other paw. He grunted, almost dropping her, stumbling at the unexpected shift in his arms, but managed to brace himself by bumping into the wall. As he did, the blanket slid off her breasts, showing the bruised, perky, cream-furred flesh to the wolf. He couldn't help but stare at them for a second, more in surprised than anything, though the blush ran all the way up his ears.

Tasha covered herself with her arm and glared at the young wolf a second, before realizing he was making the effort to look away from the girls and keep carrying her. His stuttered "s-sorry!" made her bunch her brow in confusion, before remembering dimly that he'd brought her the blanket and generally treated her well the few times they had interacted.

The bed felt altogether too good after so long sleeping on the hard marble of the bathroom floor, though the softness made the aches flare all over her body as she tried to relax into it and found she couldn't. Tasha let out a whimper, then turned red-skinned under her fur in embarrassment for the sign of weakness. She felt the bed shift and compress as the kid sat next to her, and stiffened even more when he put a gentle paw to her cheek with a tentative touch.

"Please relax, I...I'm not going to hurt you okay? My name's Tristan. You can call me Stan, though...Um...My friends do anyway. You're Tasha right? Russia sounds like an interesting place..."

The words were meaningless, or nearly, as he went on to ask her about where she was from. She answered quietly in a single word, "Sebastopol", realizing by how unreal everything seemed that she was still half-conscious...Maybe a side effect of whatever Gecko had drugged her with the previous evening. A slow shift of her neck showed her the window, and through the tinted glass that it was daytime. Another slow shift brought her eyes up to the nervous-looking young wolf who was sitting next to her head.

Not a field agent, not with a build like that...Chubby, tall...Maybe 19? Definitely a resemblance to Gecko himself.

She found it odd he wouldn't meet her eyes, or at least not for long. He didn't seem Autistic, so maybe he just lacked confidence. Tasha focused on his eyes, which looked grayish in this light, until he looked down and caught her gaze, or perhaps more correctly was caught by it.

"You forgot the water."

He turned red again under his fur and got up, hands wiggling together as he trotted to the kitchenette.

"Shit, sorry...You just looked...Um. Like you were hurting, so I...Uh...Idunno."

The young wolf puttered around in front of a fridge, digging out a glass from the cabinets and filling it with cold water from a spigot on the freezer door. Then, seeming to think for a second, he grabbed a couple pawfulls of ice from the freezer and wrapped them in a few layers of paper towel before coming back over.

With his arm behind her shoulders, she managed to sit up and weakly drink from the cup. The water tasted delicious, cutting through the stale sperm taste in her muzzle, and she nearly choked on the stuff as she tried to drink too much too quickly while still groggy.

"I think he dosed you with something. Sorry, I would have warned you, but..."

She shook her head and tried to get comfortable leaning like she was. After a few seconds of her neck straining, she just laid her cheek against his chest with a grunt of frustration.

"I am not angry with you. You did more than you had to."

He hesitated a few seconds after she touched him, before sliding his arm around her at about stomach level. His other paw offered her the ice, and he spoke with a blush.

"Do you want...I mean...I don't know what he gave you so painkillers...P-probably a bad idea."

Smart kid, and thoughtful. How weird he works for that psychopath...

She took the ice, looked at it, then dropped it to the bed and leaned against him, taking comfort in physical contact that just might be safe. After her experience of the night before, she knew she needed to make sure she didn't develop a phobia to touch, and the best way to do that was to get touching in with a safe male while she could. Not to mention she needed the help getting bruised and tweaked muscles loosened.

"Kid...Er, Stan...Do you mind if I lean on you?"

"Um no...No I guess not."

The vixen lay against him, and his other arm went around her too. The sensation of being warm and embraced was almost enough to jerk tears out of her, and that surprised her enough that she just closed her eyes and rode out the feelings, the flashes in her mind of the night before. Just as she was starting to relax from the mini-episode, her abused rear pulsed with a spear of dull hot pain, and she sucked in a breath.

The wolf she was laid against grimaced, and helped shift her with his arms, until she was basically in his lap with her back to his chest. Once she was there, he reached for the ice and pulled it back over.

"Do you need it...Um..."

The vixen, vaguely mortified, just nodded and shifted her hips with another twinge that had her wincing. The wolf hesitated, waiting for her to put out a paw for the ice.

"You'll...Sorry, you'll need to. I'm still drugged...Clumsy..."

She could, she thought, feel the heat of his blush through both their fur and his shirt. But after a few moments of hesitation, she felt a sting of contact on her sore crotch, followed by cold that wriggled around, starting at her vulva then moving down to rest against her rump more directly.

She managed to clumsily pull the blanket back around herself, though his paw was inside it holding the bag.

"Its okay, kid. Thank you for helping me."

Tasha was getting her control back, and the vixen noticed it, though her voice still felt like gravel and she still felt like her limbs were noodles.

The wolf bobbed his head slowly, giving her a light squeeze with his left arm.

"Let me know...Um...When you want it taken off."

The journey back to the favela was made in near total silence, at least by the stag and the tiger. Both had dressed in their tactical gear and urban camouflage, and had packed weaponry in duffel bags when they'd picked all that up from a hidden stash Zebra had driven them to in his beaten old put-put.

The burro had been boisterous and friendly when they met him at the rear doors of the hospital, but had since become more attentive and was acting far less of a caricature once they visited the Goza-owned hidden armory.

"Don't tell me they got that shit here that fast. How long has the armory been there, Cap?"

Buck shrugged and rested his elbow out the window of the moving car while he smoked.

"Don't know, don't care. Old Man Goza is smarter than me. Must have foreseen a need to hide weaponry here. Just glad his brother knew about the stash. Guess they're not as much enemies as everyone thought."

The black tiger grunted, his mood the same color as his fur, though he was trying to lighten himself up any way he could. The problem was, his mind kept shifting back to Sato, his silver wolf, his lover, lying broken and unconscious in that bed back at the hospital.

He realized he was clenching his paw when the brace handle above his head broke off from the force of his muscles clenching while his paw was in it.

The burro looked at him in the cracked rear view mirror, made a show of his many huge, flat teeth, and brayed a laugh.

"Sheet mang, jore boy back there ees peesed. I don wanna be tat warlord, nosir!"

The Captain snorted smoke out of his snout, and flicked the low-burnt cigarette out the window.

"Sorry about the handle, we'll get it paid for when this is over."

The burro threw his head back laughing, which seemed to bray out of his gut more than his lungs.

"Fuck handle, mang! I'm goin to buy a Mercedeeez when I get back to Mexico!"

How the fuck can this idiot drive when his eyes aren't on the road? And what the fuck is WITH that accent?"

Arlen just glowered at the burro while thinking those thoughts, and had to remind himself to set the handle down in the car rather than throw it out the window in frustration. Meanwhile, a heavy paw moved to rest on the duffel bag and its multitude of weapons.

"Why aren't we hunting those fuckers who backstabbed us in there? I want a piece of that fucking asshole lion leader of theirs."

Buck turned a bit in the seat, looking at Arlen out of one eye.

"All in good time, kiddo. We don't know where they're holding up yet."

Zebra chimed in.

"Jep. Hadda frien of mine look at your safe house. Dey never wen' back dere."

Arlen sighed loudly and slammed his fist against the window at about half-force, which was luckily not enough to crack the un-tempered glass.

"Fuck. Fuck! Ugh!"

Buck frowned at him, and spoke in an entirely less friendly tone.

"Get yourself together, soldier, or you get to sit this shit out, got it?"

The harsh voice snapped Arlen out of another terrible daydream he'd fallen into, a daydream of the moment he'd seen pink fly out of Sato's body back in that raft. The tiger shook his head hard and rubbed a paw into his eye.

"Sorry captain, I'll keep it cool, just...Don't drop me from the mission, this one is personal."

Yeah...That's the problem isn't it?

Sato slept, and dreamed, and this time it was of memories and not of pain or gods or whiteness.

He was looking down on a scene he knew was from his past, and as he did, he realized he must be in a coma...A lucid dream that meant he was, at least, still alive.

The room he saw was a dingy dive motel room, which he remembered as being somewhere outside Tallahassee. The company had rented two rooms for them, adjacent as per company policy on such things, for the mission they were executing that day.

The mission had been an unpaid one for him, as it was 'family business.' However, the other room's two operatives had gone off to go bar-hopping after a simple and successful operation that had been so basic they now treated it, after it was over of course, like a joke.

Arlen saw himself sitting in a ratty arm-chair drinking a bear with his shirt off, and wondered if he'd looked that skinny to everyone else back then.

Has it been four years? Gods, I guess it has.

From the bathroom, his teammate emerged. The black tiger, black-striped, was wearing boxer shorts and a black t-shirt, and tottered slightly from the celebratory bottle of vodka they'd shared with the guys earlier in the night. He also had a massive erection, which seemed to be the source of much consternation and no small bit of embarrassment.

To Sato, it was a cause for amusement and nostalgia, and to his dream-self a cause for a winning grin and a beer raised in toast while pointing at it.

Arlen gave him the finger and grouchily flung himself out flat on his back on the bed.

"Goddamnit, the only pussy I've gotten in a month was...Fuck...A month ago! You'd be having problems too if you were so high and fucking dry."

Sato laughed from the chair, and drained his beer, before tossing the can at the tiger, who batted at it and missed entirely.

"Who says I'm 'high and dry'? I feel quite low and well-watered right now."

The tiger glared at him.

"I know English is coming out of your mouth, but I have no goddamn clue what language that is."

Sato snickered at him, and tossed the tiger another beer, which the inebriated cat missed catching. Luckily it bounced off his chest rather than his face, eliciting an "oof" rather than a probable ass-beating.

In its wake, the wolf zipped across the room and tackled the tiger, much to Arlen's surprise. The tiger yelled and flailed, knocking the diversionary beer off the bed in the first few seconds of drunken panic, before he realized what was happening and wrestled right back.

The wolf had had the edge in combat training at the time by a wide gulf, and it wasn't long before he was straddling the tiger's waist, pinning the other fur's wrists and smirking down at him.

"No fucking fair, you had a diversion!"

Sato laughed and looked behind him at the boxers, noting they were no longer tented. Primarily because the barbed cock inside had pushed through the slit in their front, not that Arlen seemed to notice.

"I will make you a deal. We can start over, but if you lose, you have to do whatever thing I tell you to do."

Arlen scrunched his nose and responded with a puff of his chest before his words spilled out.

"Fuck you, pussy, you're going down. Fine, it's a deal."

"I have your word?"

Arlen grunted, and tried to wiggle free again, to no avail.

"Yeah, you have my word."

The contest was heated, but at the end of a minute or so, the tiger was pinned face-down on the bed in a complete submission, arms twisted up behind his back by the nimble, powerful silver wolf.

Sato leaned down and whispered into his ear with a fat grin on his slender muzzle.

"Do you give up?"

The tiger thrashed, or tried to, but was barely able to move. He snarled, squirmed, and then gave up, panting and sweating.

"Fine...Fuck!"

"You remember you promised, right?"

"Yeah, my word...Ugh...What do you want?"

The silver wolf let him go, and Arlen rolled over, rubbing his wrists, as the wolf game him a look half predatory and half mischievous.

"I want you to put these on."

The wolf padded over to his neatly organized tactical gear, dug, and tossed over a pair of cuffs while palming a second set and keeping them behind his back as he walked back over.

The partly drunk tiger raised one brow, then shrugged and cuffed his paws together with practiced movements. Then looked damn surprised as Sato snapped a second set of cuffs onto those, and cuffed his paws over his head, to the iron bed rail.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

Sato chuckled and knelt down between Arlen's legs, using his body to keep them spread apart, as his paw went down and nimbly took a grip on the exposed pink flesh, causing Arlen to gasp in arousal and try to get a growl out.

"You fucking faggot, get offa me!"

The silver wolf just laughed and started stroking with his paw, gently rubbing his thumb over the tiger's tip and along his glans.

"You made a deal, tiger. Don't tell me you're breaking your word?"

The tiger glared at him, fuming, nostrils flared, and paws popping claws as he pulled against the headboard to no avail.

"Goddamnit Sato, that's not fucking funny!"

"Its not supposed to be, tiger."

With that, spoken in a soft voice, Sato slid down from his perch on Arlen's legs, and to the tiger's surprise and momentary revulsion gave the twitching shaft a long lick that had the pent-up feline's toes curling.

"Ugh fuck...You really are...Nnf...Gay..."

Sato looked up at him, raising both eyebrows with a smirk and giving another lick that had the tiger panting and wiggling his hips.

"I will stop if you really want me to. But give me a chance to show this to you, all right?" Another gentle lap, broad tongue tickling barbs and nerves in plenty of good ways. "And consider it incentive. Next time you win, you get to pick what happens."

Arlen couldn't tell if he was too drunk to think straight, too horny, or maybe just went crazy after the ass-beating he gave the mark earlier today. But this was hot and he couldn't deny it. The bright-eyed wolf, his friend, sometimes his trainer, was down between his legs licking his dick while his own paws were chained to a bed.

His father would've flipped. Slapped him. Called him a tiny-dicked nut-licking faggot Communist or something. On some level, spite to his crazy old father was what made him let this continue.

He bit his lip for a few seconds, then spoke again as the wolf was nuzzling his balls.

"Fuck...Just don't stop..."

The wolf grinned and lapped at the tiger's silky-furred pouch, stroking fingertips up above getting wetted down with copious precum.

A few seconds of lapping later, Sato shifted to get more comfortable, one paw gripping Arlen's delectably muscled ass, and the other guiding the tip of his cock to the wolf's heated lips. As he slid his muzzle down the hot, wet shaft, the paw let its grip on Arlen's dick go and slipped down between them to fondle and roll the tiger's balls.

Arlen couldn't believe how good it felt. Maybe it was the alcohol, or how forbidden this was to the Midwest-raised tiger. His claws had gone back in, and his paws were now gripping the iron headrail, as his feet kicked around slightly on the bed, trying to find a comfortable position.

Shit that's good...

Sato was slobbering on the delicious meat in his mouth, himself just a bit drunk, and enjoying himself immensely if the wagging tail and full-mouthed smirk were any indication.

Up above, the dreaming Sato remembered the taste, the feel, and how embarrassed he would be later for pushing this on Arlen. The apology he'd tried to make the next day, and how shocked he'd been when the tiger had punched him in the mouth and then told him they'd try for round two later that night. The punch he'd expected, in fact kind of hoped for. The second try not so much.

That night, Arlen had lost again, and awkwardness had overcome them both right up till the tiger asked, embarrassed and toeing one heel with a toe like a small kitten being put in front of the class, if Sato would teach him to suck a cock.

He laughed to himself, silently, as he saw the action down below heating up. Dream-Sato was suckling on the tiger's tip hard enough to have him wriggling and pulling his knees up. Then he traced a finger under the tiger's balls and pushed, making Arlen jolt and yell out as the digit expertly hooked its way inside and jammed into the prostate.

I always did have sneaky paws.

He'd managed to grab lube out of the bed stand during all that, and lubed up that finger, or else things might have ended quite differently.

As it was, his dream self was grinning with victory as the tiger's last bit of resistance gave out. The powerfully muscled tiger arched his ass up off the bed, nearly choking Sato first with his meaty pole and then with a huge gush of cum that had the wolf startled at its volume and struggling to keep up.

Ten seconds of cum-gushing orgasm later, Arlen was wiggling on the bed again, shouting.

"H-hey, s-stop that! Agh, it...Overse....snsitive!"

The tiger's dick was bouncing around squirting the last bit of his jizm onto his own groin, as Sato had been wiggling his finger and poking the prostate to milk it completely. Then, he patted the tiger's chest, and opened his muzzle to show off the mouthful of creamy tiger cum he'd won.

Sato would have blushed, if he weren't dreaming. As it was, he felt a bit embarrassed at his own drunken antics. Pleased, but embarrassed. Arlen looked about the same, proud evidently of his massive load, bemused at the wolf's playful look, and confused but happy as the wolf gave a noise of pleasure and swallowed his mouthful.

What a night.

The dream was ending, he realized, as whiteness started to flow in from the seams of the room. The windows were streaming light like the sun breaking through storm clouds. So was the television set, the wall joints, the bathroom door...

He itched. The world was dark, and he was itchy. Something was beeping softly in the backroom, and goddamnit he was itchy.

And he couldn't seem to make his body move to scratch or, he realized, open his eyes.

Still, he mused, I seem to at least be alive...