Until Death - Beyond those hollowed words
Chapt 3: Beyond those hollowed words
"You want go out to eat?" Tex said to me as we walked back into the house from our walk
"Chinese? I know how much you love that spicy Lo-mein they got by the Market."
"Ugh, I can't eat that for a least a week. We just finished what we had leftover like last night."
"Last night, it was a week ago. Last night we had fish and rice. You have a really bad concept of time."
"Or maybe yours is to good" He said with a grin
"Meaning?" I asked cocking my head in confusion
"Well you always say I last too long in bed and I say you don't last long enough"
Before I had a chance to respond he had darted to the bed room and closed the door. I knew he would not lock it and I also had a feeling where this was going. I opened the door to fine him crouching on the bed like a ninja ready to pounce on his target.
"How do you go from zero to hornball in less than 3 seconds? I swear if you were a sports car you would be the most exotic." I couldn't help but throw the exotic pun in there but he understood it quickly enough for it to wasted air.
"Huh, could an exotic car handle you in bed?" he replied with eager eyes.
"Well I think it would be too big to get into the bed, not to mention it would probably break it, and how I'd ever get it in the house..."
"Oh shut the fuck up" he said as he dragged me on top of him, pressing his lips to mine. I could feel him rubbing his sheath against mine coaxing murrs out of both him and me.
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I awoke from my dream looking immediately over to my Futon where Tex had been sleeping only to not find him there. Immediately I panicked jumping out of my bed to go search for him. However it was short lived as I got to my doorway where I saw him stepping out from the bathroom. Feeling my heart reintegrating itself into my body I looked back at my alarm clock to find it was well passed 9.
"Sorry, I thought I would take a shower. Did I wake you" Tex asked with a look of concern on his face.
"Uh no, I just thought for a second..."
"That I had run away again. Sorry to disappoint" he said with heavy sarcasm
"Well it looks like someone is in a better mood today. Feeling any better at all?"
"Yes and no, sleep does wonders for clearing your mind but I'm still..." He paused to look and the floor "broken."
"No you are not!" I said loudly flattening my ears against my head. "Don't say that, you are not broken. You've just been through some shit, and if anyone else had to go through it they would be the same."
He looked up at me, straight to my eyes. I swear through them I could see a hurt soul, a fur who had been through more than what he should have been for his age. I could see the tears and fire at the same time, both being held back by a force only a god could know. Than a single tear broke through and ran down his check through his fur and fell onto the floor.
I caught him as he collapsed to the ground and dragged him into my room and shut the door. My parents always slept late on the weekends and I didn't want to wake them. I lifted him up on the futon and let him be for a few minutes. He neither cried nor laughed in that time, rather seemed focus on trying to put feeling into words.
"My parents separated..." He started, than pausing again to think something through
"Stop thinking about it, you're not going to make it any easier. Just say it how it comes to your mind" I said encouragingly. We were finally getting somewhere and I wasn't about to let him stop now.
"They had their reasons" he continued. "My father was, very unsupportive and manipulative, while my mother was... not exactly an alcoholic but she did drink a lot and she took very strong codeine for her back pain. I've... I've seen her taken off many times due to overdosing on purpose. The police found out that she was abusing the drug but she still gets a hold of it. She started when my father became a real ass and continued when he left. "
He sat up, eyes focused on past memories not even seeing the emotions they conveyed. How he got the strength to see past the feelings was beyond me, but to him it seemed like a normal activity.
"All this began when I was about 8 years old. I didn't know at the time my mom was taking those drugs just so she could numb out the feelings and her misery. I never understood what made her marry my father, I didn't even like him. He showed extreme disinterest in me up until a few years back, and then he seemed to genuinely want my attention. I ignored it though, not to be mean but because we... we wouldn't get along. My mother was always there for me, but she did her own thing and cooked dinner every now and then. So I guess I've been alone since I was about 12, not homeless, just alone. "
Tearing up a bit at the confessions, I couldn't help but feel sadness for him. He was opening up to me, probably the first person he has ever told this story to by how much he was hesitating. "What about your mother? Do you still live with here?" I asked knowing that the answer was probably going to be bad
"She... got taken away again, a few weeks ago for CPCS. She most likely won't be back... for a long time."
"So what you are saying is that you don't have anyone at all to look after you." The words escaped my mouth before I had a chance to think them through and resulted in him flattening his ears but not breaking into a fit.
"Yea... Pretty much exactly right. I'm sorry I've just..."
"Don't be sorry" I cut him off. "There is nothing to be sorry for"
He opened his maw to say something more but shut it. He thought for a moment and rolled his eyes around but shook it off with a nod of his head. He readjusted the towel hanging on his waste and walked back and fourth in my room to end up sitting back down on the futon with a look of discomfort in his eyes.
"Do you have anything I can borrow to wear, at least until we go to my house. I'm just a bit smaller than you but your clothes should fit close enough. I just don't like to wear dirty clothes, defeats the purpose of cleaning up"
"Uh, yea, no problem. What kind of fashion suits you?" I asked opening up my dresser drawer.
"Casual is fine, Jeans and a T-Shirt. It's pretty much all I ever wear... well have anyway"
Flattening my ears at the comment I searched my drawer for the most bland clothes I had, which were a pair of moderately new jeans that I never wore due to the fact they rubbed my crotch too much, and plain gray shirt and tossed it over to him with a smile.
"Is that suitable enough for you?" I smirked with a cocked head
"It'll do fine, kinda better than what I was hoping for."
"Hmm?"
"I was expecting a 'Mountain Dew' Shirt that was green and a pair of ripped jeans." He answered with a smile.
"heh well I am glad you like them. Put them on, I have to check my email real quick and we'll be off."
"Alright, I'll be back in a minute." He said as he gathered up the clothes and walked out. I walked to my computer and turned on the screen and pulled up the browser. As I started to type in my email information I heard movement by my door.
"I think your father is in there." He said with splayed ears.
"Oh, well feel free to change in here than" I replied and went back to my computer without second thoughts about the matter.
"Here? With you in the room? Wont that be... awkward?"
"Oh.." I mentally face pawed myself "Sorry I didn't think. I'm used to going to a gym and showering and to me it's not a big deal. But I am feeling thirsty so I'll be back in a few. You want something?"
"Yea sorry I'm just... never mind and I'll take a glass of water"
"Afraid or nervous?" I asked back
"It's something you are not interested in, plus we have only known each other for less than a day" He said with flattened ears. I felt like pursuing the matter but decided to drop it; it wasn't worth a newly formed friendship.
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I wanted... so bad to tell him, to tell him the reason why to the questions he asked, but I was afraid. If it had been anyone else that would have tried to save me, I still would have jumped. But he, he had a presence about him. It was nothing I have ever felt before. When he grabbed my paw on top of the roof and suddenly felt weak, I wanted to fall to my knees yet I kept my composure. Was I trying to test him? Maybe but who would know at this point.
Koaden managed to save me, tried to make small talk, and took me into his house. His parents weren't rich, just well off enough to afford a few nice thing like most middle class people. They also welcomed me into their house and tried to make feel like I was one of their children. I wanted to talk, to tell them how I felt about their kindness, but my mind was too scrambled to make sense of anything at that time.
I will continue to wait and hold of my secret. I have to be sure we know each other first, and I want to know his views before I say anything. I can't risk this right now, it is all I have. If I lost this, no one would be able to save me, not even the gods themselves.
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"Hey, are you done yet?" I whispered through the slightly open crack of my door.
"Yea, I had to borrow a belt. Hope you don't mind but your waist is a bit bigger than mine."
"It's better than your pants falling down so no I don't." He seemed to flatten his ears a little at that statement but quickly perked them back up and half smiled
"Well I guess we should get going if that's all right, I'm not sure what to bring back here but I guess whatever will fit" He said monotonously.
With that we headed out to my car and drove off to his house. It was about a 30 minute drive but was more due to traffic than the actual distance, and we had to end up going a back way due to a truck driver who thought it would be funny to race one of his buddies. Apparently that had not gone so well and both of the trucks had wrecked inside of an underpass blocking all 4 lanes of the freeway.
The part of town Tex lived it seemed normal enough, a little lower class than my own family with smaller houses and cheaper vehicles, but still nice and clean. He lived off a main road on a dirt road that was about 4 miles long and had other houses in the vicinity, but about half an acre from each other. These houses were a little poorer than the ones on the main road and had aluminum siding instead of stucco and appeared to be made more of wood than concrete based materials. They were still nice, clean and well maintained, just made of cheaper materials. Most of them still had modern day tile rooftops that seemed to be of reasonable quality.
Near the end of the road he pointed to a driveway that appeared to be made of mostly pinestraw and leaves, but still level and somewhat maintained. I assumed he was the one that took care of the house since his mother was in jail, or at least tried to maintain the façade of it being well maintained.
"Don't worry there is a concrete driveway under all that straw, it was just in bad condition and we couldn't afford to fix it, so we filled in all the cracks and holes with dirt and covered it up. Looks much better than it did and works better too, much more smooth to drive on."
He wasn't lying when he said it was smooth to drive on, my car sank into the loose soil and it felt like I was driving on one long pillow. The one downfall of course was the fact that I could not steer straight but it didn't matter since his house was only 15 meters away.
Putting the car in park and turning it off we got out and went inside his house. It wasn't so much as beaten down and poor looking as it was just plainly out of date. There was a flat screen in the living room and a modern microwave and stove, but beside that everything looked a decade or more old. The refrigerator looked to be something out of a low rent apartment and the washer and dryer looked like they had seen better days.
He led me upstairs to the second story, which could not really be considered one due to it was just a small hallway half the size of the first story and only had two rooms. One of them was obviously his and had its own bathroom but the second one couldn't have been anything bigger than a closet since his room was most of the top story.
"Sorry about the mess. I don't ever get a chance to clean." He said as he opened the door. "I'll only be a few minutes, I don't have a lot to bring. Feel free to sit down or walk around the house. There might be a few sodas left in the fridge if you want one."
"I'll stay here with you; want to make sure you get everything you need. You think you will ever comes back here, like to live one day or if your mom gets out?"
"If my mom gets out I won't bother, she'll go right back in a few months later. Hell I'm not even sure if I'll take this house if it was given to me for free... but I suppose I can't live with you forever, that would be, weird to say the least" he splayed his ears on the last comment and looked further into his dresser for things to find, or to just look busy.
"You're hiding something" I said putting together his mood and reactions over the last few hours. "You have a secret you are not telling me. What is it?"
"I don't know what you are talking about" he replied with perfect precision and no hesitation, like a practiced movement.
With that I got up and pulled him up to me and into a hug and pushed him onto his bed with me pinning him down. "We aren't going anywhere until you tell me what's up. Your avoiding something, the way you answer questions, your quick practiced remarks. You might be able to fool some people but you can..." I stop dead mid sentence as I saw his crotch move inside his pants.
"If I wanted you to know I would have told you" he yelled and with sudden strength threw me off of him into the wall. "What do you think of me now? Gonna call me a fag and tell me I'm no longer welcome in your house. It was none of your damn business."
"That might be true" I said getting up brushing the drywall off of me. "You can't hide something like that for long though, and so what if you like guys?" I pushed him back down on the bed with more strength than I thought I had. "You think I'm going to care at this point if you like guys? I saved your life, and I would have done it whether I knew you were gay or not!"
"Get off!" he yelled and pushed back but I used my claws to keep his movement minimal. "I've got claws too you know I'm a cat!"
"Have you ever thought of why I saved you or what I think about you?" I yelled back and pushed harder. I looked back to the dream I had the night before and realized it was true. I did like him that way, and I wanted to be with him. "I like you!" I said with all the meaning of my feeling behind it.