The Rule of Four - Overnight Interlude
#7 of The Rule of Four
A short story that takes place after The Rule of Four and Jaron's Awakening.
Hello! I had a creative blurb and I had to write this. The writing bug has come to me so infrequently of late that I felt I had to share.
This takes place a few months after Jaron's Awakening.
Jaron came awake, unsure of what woke him, or why. He smiled as he noticed that his hands and nose were buried in a virtual mountain of soft, warm, slightly musky fur. Damn, but Rubric got fluffy when he hadn't had a fur-trim in awhile. For that matter, the twins were getting really scruffy-looking themselves. He'd have to pester them about it tomorrow.
Suddenly Jaron's ear tickled and twitched on its own. He looked up to see that Chaz's ear had flopped down off of the red panda's shoulder and landed on him. Maybe that's what had woken him.
He brushed it away, rolling his eyes at what Rubric referred to as the rabbit twins' "bizarro kookiness."
For whatever reason, the brothers made a point of climbing on top of Rube and him to sleep whenever they could. They wouldn't say why, but it couldn't be because it was comfortable. Sure, neither he nor the overlarge red panda found it particularly _un_comfortable, but considering how hard and well-muscled the two makeshift mattresses were, neither of them could understand how the white rabbits managed to fall asleep so easily on top of them.
At least Rubric was large enough to accommodate them. Jaron, not so much. Which usually meant that they migrated entirely onto Rubric's wide frame during the night, such as now.
As gently and quietly as he could, the Tasmanian devil eased away from his friends' unconscious bodies and sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with a yawn. He stood and stepped away a few paces, then turned around, his eyes closed for a moment before he opened them to take in the scene.
He held his breath for a moment, awed by the sight.
Moonlight flooded into Rube's -- their -- bedroom, casting everything in a silver hue, with only the green numbers of the alarm clock lending any color to the night.
He could see Rubric laying unclothed, uncovered, and sprawled out on his -- on their -- bed, his thick dark fur making blankets unnecessary, even in the cool night air. Atop him lay Raz and Chaz, their pale naked bodies literally glowing in the diffused lunar light. The twin rabbits lay on their sides, spooned together, with Rubric's arms and tail wrapped around them both and his muzzle buried in a forest of headfur and ears. Raz whimpered and growled quietly in his sleep, and he gently thrust his hips at his brother's backside, obviously dreaming about what he'd done before they'd all finally given in to exhaustion. Chaz was probably dreaming about the same thing, considering the beatific smile he wore on his handsome face -- the one he always seemed to wear when Raz was inside him.
Now, wasn't that just the most beautiful and adorable thing he'd ever seen.
Damn.
The fact that he found the three of them, their minds, bodies, and spirits, so incredibly attractive still amazed him and left him feeling breathless and a little scared. He wasn't gay, so how could he have fallen so hard for not one, but three other men? How could he find them so captivating and, if he were honest with himself, so downright sexy?
But in the end, Rube and the twins were Rube and the twins, and his attraction to them was inexorable as the tides.
Those three insidious little words Jaron had always struggled with ran around his head as he looked down on his friends. Even though he knew they knew how he felt, he still found talking about it really uncomfortable. Why did he find it so awkward? Why wouldn't the words come unless he forced them out? He meant them every single time he left them unsaid, which was pretty much all the time. He showed his friends every day, in every touch, in every smile, the truth of how he felt. And he was sure they understood.
I...
...l-love you.
How was saying that so hard? Why was thinking it so hard?
Jaron huffed, annoyed with himself, before giving in to the sudden weariness seeping into him. He yawned again, gave himself a scratch and a shake for good measure, and climbed back on the bed, snuggling into the warmth that had nothing and everything to do with the thick fluffy fur and body heat of his best friends.
His boyfriends.
He smiled.
Yeah. He liked the sound of that.