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The boy sat in a bar waiting for his friends, staring into the mug in front of him and watching the foam on the top slowly fade from the center outward, where a clear patch had already formed. He had just sat on the stool, staring at the cup for...well he wasn't quite sure how long, exactly. He knew he had come in some time around six, maybe six-thirty, after he'd gotten off of work, and he just ordered a beer while he waited for his friends to show up. The mug from his first beer was long sitting off a ways to his left, having finished it about an hour ago while he chit-chatted with the bartender here and there. It was usually quiet in the bar at this time, none of the younger guys around his age were off work, but then again most of the guys his age worked at dead-end burger joints, tossing patties or whatever the hell it was they did at those places. He never stayed around them long enough at the drive-thru to really get a look at the inside of the place, and the times he'd been called out to the local Fas-O-Food down the street from the bar the people he needed to pick up were usually in the dining area where it was easy to get to them and start looking them over, before he lifted got them onto the gurney and loaded them up. Jayden had devoted his life to saving others after he had turned fifteen, unable to sit back and watch as more people around him suffered and...slipped away. He graduated high school at seventeen, thanks to extra-credit courses, and enrolled in a top-notch medical school, and while he had the brains and the test scores to be a brain surgeon or some white-coat in the hospitals, that wasn't what he really wanted to do. He had the degrees to apply as a coat, to, but they didn't really save lives. They just did what they could, and guessed. To Jayde, guesswork didn't save lives; it hadn't saved Chrissie's, and short of sheer dumb-luck it wasn't going to save the masses. No. He was a First Responder paramedic. His hands held the power to truly save a life more than the doctors and nurses at the hospitals he drove people to, and his record reflected that ability. Out of five years so far as a paramedic, Jayde had a virtually spotless driving record. Hundreds...probably thousands...of people had been in his ambulance, and of all of those people he had never lost a single patient in his bus. Sure, a few of the patients hadn't made the last fight at the hospital as well as he'd have hoped, and there were a few times he had to deal with the horrors of a DOTS call, but his job was fulfilled. He had gotten every single person that went into his bus alive, to the hospital without a Dead On Arrival tag attached to them. The hybrid had driven himself to the Emergency Room as well as patients on two occasions after being stabbed in the side by a frantic child, scared he was going to hurt his papa like the person before, he had the scars to prove that claim, but he got both himself and the person he was called to help there alive, and that was all that mattered to him. He didn't want to hold the kinds of tools that you had to guess with to save lives. He wanted to be the person who got there as fast as he could, and told the person it was going to be alright.

"Hey, I know that face, sweetheart." He looked up at the vixen behind the bar, perking his ears a little and scrunching up his eyebrows. "Rough shift today, Jay?" He stared at her for a little and blinked, her question sinking in slowly as he was brought out of his reveries. "Huh-oh." He shook his head, realizing he was still in his First Responder uniform while he was sitting at the bar. "No...they had me take an early clock today." "Well, at least you didn't have to see nothin'." He nodded a little and took a drink of the beer in front of him, drumming his finger pads on the counter slightly. "I don't like not working...especially today." "I'd have thought it would be the opposite, being a paramedic and all." She commented, her arm appearing in the corner of his vision. "And I'd have thought you would be unable to drink that beer." "Whaddya mean?" "Well, I'm only sayin' this because you're the only person in the bar right now, but you've been dripping into your drink for the last twenty minutes." He glanced up at her and opened his mouth a little, scrunching his face as he tried to get what she was meaning. She smiled and tugged on her bottom eyelid a little, prompting him to reach up and wipe at his eyes. "Fuck...I didn't even realize I was crying..." He used the fur on the back of his hand to wipe away what he could, letting out his breath to ease the tightness in his chest. "It's not something I haven't honestly seen before, tiger." She tapped on the bar again and her tail flicked through the air behind her, but her smile never left her face. "Yeah, but I--" "Jay, don't sweat it." She cut him off and shook her head. "You aren't nearly drunk...you had one beer, and with your tolerance that's nothing to you." He nodded to her, and she continued. "You're not the first person I've seen cry over a drink, and you won't be the last. You're definitely the first to keep it to yourself, though." He smiled a little himself and nodded. "I believe you shouldn't bother people with your problems, if you aren't sure the want to listen." Her eyebrows raised on her head, and her ears swiveled. "I never would have figured a nice guy like you to be into Satanism, Jayde..." He sat back and put his hands up. "Oh, fuck, no! I mean, they aren't bad people, most of them...but you can take a lot of wisdom from the book, you know?" "How do you mean?" Jayde shrugged and put his hands back on the bar. "Well, just common sense, really." She opened her mouth and nodded, making a silent 'Ohh...' exclamation. "No, I'm not into that kind of thing...just the common sense." She nodded to him and chuckled as she grabbed his empty glass, turning around to put it on the back counter with the rest of the dirty glasses. "I was only kidding, anyways. Trying to get you to cheer up, huskolf." "Thanks, Bianca. I appreciate it." He offered the best smile he could work up as she turned around, then took another gulp of his drink while he looked around. "Speaking of appreciation..." He looked back at her, leaning back slightly when his whiskers collided with the side of her muzzle, which was jammed into the space where his had been. "You and I have known each other for a while now. Maybe we could get to know one another a little better?" He chuckled a little and cocked an eyebrow, looking her dead in the eye. It was his turn to tell a joke. "I never figured you for that_kind of vixen, Bianca..." She blinked a few times and opened her mouth, then threw back her head to laugh, leaning against the bar as he started to join her weakly. "Oh, that was the best line I've ever heard from you..." She wiped her eyes and giggled, her tail flicking through the air behind her. "You just might have too much fox in you, to be that clever." "I'll have to remember to get that checked, then." He mused, drawing another giggle from her while she glared at him. "I could check that for you, if you like...just like I check the oil on my car." She growled, taking him aback by the sudden change, but she leaned forward and put her nose close to his. "Just let me under the hood so I can get a feel for that dip-stick of yours." He could smell her breath as it wafted up between them, stinging his nose with a strong scent of peppermint, and he could also detect strawberries, and a hint of some kind of hormone medication as well. "I...uh..." He cleared his throat and smiled warmly to her, flicking his ears back a little. "I don't have sex on the first date, Bianca." She opened her mouth to say something, grinning, but he corrected himself with a short yip. "Or before!" "And here I thought I never saw any gentlemen in here." She lunged forward and pecked him on the lips. "Alright, then. Are you off tomorrow?" "Uhm...oh, yeah. I'm off." "Good. We'll go to the seafood place on the other side of town tomorrow night. It's a date." She pulled out a tab slip and wrote down a few things, then slid it over to him. "There's my address, and my number, stud." "How's pick up at seven sound?" He smiled up at her, looking over the slip before sliding it into his breast pocket. "I didn't see that coming..." The question seemed to stall her for a few seconds, but she smiled and nodded. "That sounds--" The door to the bar popped open, creating a sudden cacophony of shouting and laughing as a group of furs charged in, and when he looked down at his watch, sure enough it was eight. "Hey! Jay-jay!" One of his friends walked over and clapped him on the back with his hand, lurching him forward with a short exclamation of discomfort. "What the hell are you doing here so early? I thought you'd be at that mess on the I-Twenty One!" "Boss let me go early today, Tim." He rounded on the ferret and flicked his hand off of his back. "Try not to get the uniform dirty, man, I just had it cleaned." His friend stopped for a little, then reached up and tussled his hair playfully with a squeaking giggle. "Alright, suit yourself, just being playful." He held up his fist to tap knuckles with the rest of his friends, but the last one in he opened his hand flat and caught the otter's fist firmly, giving it a shake before transitioning to a forearm grip. "Looks like we're all here...well, for now, anyways." He shrugged a little and turned around, earning a little slap on the back of his head from Tim. "Dude, what's your problem? It's Friday, not Monday. _Ow!" He closed his eyes and massaged the sides of his snout, flicking his ears at a quick yelp that followed a hard hit. "What'd I do?" "Twitch, damn it! "You dick, it's April third!" "Oh..." He heard a bar stool scraping a little and a nudge from his left. He opened his eyes and looked at Tim, half expecting some ridiculous remark from the ferret. "Hey, I'm sorry, Jay..." He just let out his breath and shrugged. "Look, I forgot...I'm sorry, okay?" Jayde pinned his ears back and scratched an itch behind his ear. "Don't get yourself all worked up." "Will you just drop it?" The bark caught the ferret off-guard, and stopped the conversation going on behind him between the Carl and Frank, the group going quiet. "Alright...I'm sorry..." Somebody put their hand on his shoulder and he turned around, finding the otter staring at him with knowing eyes. Shayde never did say much...hell, Jayde never really knew if he could completely understand Standard yet at all, but most of the time he didn't really need to say anything that often." "Tim, he mean what he says, Jayde." The words caught him off guard, and the ferret to his side muttered an explitive under his breath. "I'll be a Sergal's uncle...the fucking otter speaks Standard!" He turned around and took another drink of his beer and straightened up as Bianca walked over. "What's so bad about today, if you don't mind me asking?" Jayde opened his mouth to speak, but the otter behind him spoke up first, the otter's alluring accent cutting off his remark. "Jayde lost his first mate. It was--" The otter stalled, struggling with the right words before he blurted out. "--not Jayde fault...but he cause it to happen, but he were there for her in ending." He glanced up at the vixen, who was looking at him with an expression that bordered on pain, her ears flat against her head. "Thank you, Sha'yde..." The Snow Leopard standing off talking to Tim quietly spoke up and walked back over to the group, clapping his hand on the otter's shoulder. "Could have put it more delicately...but there you have it. He was young, an accident happened, and we all lost a friend dear to our hearts." Jayde lowered his head and rubbed his face a little, biting his lip a little to ignore the burning in his throat and eyes. "He was hurt more by it than the rest of us, and the scar just, never properly healed." He flinched as he heard a glass being set down a little hard and looked up at Bianca, who was watching him. "You know...don't worry about tomorrow night, Jay." She gave the back of his hand a pat and smiled to him. "I don't want to seem rude." "Bianca, it was seventeen years ago." He shook his head and pointed at her. "I'm still game...tomorrow night, seven o'clock. Be ready for our date." She looked at him and perked her ears a little while a strong hand smacked him on the back, lurching him forward. "That's the spirit!" "I need to move on eventually..." "And if I say so, myself..." He was hauled back to face the Snow Leopard upside down, digging his claws into the underside of the bar to keep his balance. "You made a nice pick, bus-driver." "Thanks, but she picked me." He extracted himself from the leopard's grip and sat up, downing the rest of his drink before pulling his wallet out to pay for the drinks. "Hey, I gotta get going. I stay any longer I'll end up too drunk to drive." He chuckled and set the bills on the bar under his glass. "You could always crash at my place, handsome." His friends broke down into catcalls and claps on the back, but when he stood up Shayde looked slightly confused as he looked at Bianca, and then at the rest of the guys. "Would not someone be hurt if he crash his vehicle into a house?" The group paused for a few seconds, looking at the otter, until a snort from the vixen sent everyone except the poor ruddertail spiraling into hysterical laughter at his expense. Shayde, for his credit, appeared to have no idea what was so funny, and tilted his head at the ferret, who was unable to stand. "Why do you all laugh?" "Doc, make sure Twitch over there has his inhaler, his nose is starting to change color!" He choked out, holding his sides as he backed out of the door. "Frank, explain it to Shay, I have groceries to get!" He left as the Snow Leopard hauled Tim up, and as the panther started to explain to the otter as carefully as he could in between chuckles. "I'll see you tomorrow, Bianca; And _go easy on him guys!_He's only been here a year!" "Damnit, ferret, _breathe!_I'm not taking you to the ER _again--_He should talk more often!--No, no, Shayde. When she says 'crash', she doesn't mean his vehicle...it is a word we use like sleep. She is saying--This is fucking great!" The door closed and cut off the sound of their laughter, making his way to his bike to put his helmet on and lift the visor so he could see what he was doing. He pulled on his gloves and boot covers, reaching down to flip the ignition switch and listen to the engine hum to life. He revved it up a few times to make sure it wouldn't stall out on him as he started backing up out of the parking space, when the otter stuck himself out of the bar door a few minutes after he had put his helmet on. "Jayde, you are not want to sleep at Bianca house? You do not to want breed with her?" The laughter that poured out of the bar was louder than before, and a jet-black hand wrapped around the otters shoulder, turning him around as the panther it belonged to pushed the door open more to wave to Jayde. "Come on, Shay...you still don't get how we do things here. Let's go back in, and I'll explain it to you." "Oh...okay. I still do not realize why do you all find it so funny..." The panther laughed again and pulled the Shayde back into the bar, flicking his tail. "Oh, we are so getting you drunk, rudderbutt...this is comedy gold. Bianca! Put in on--" The door cut off the rest of his sentence, and Jayde peeled out of the driveway shaking his head. He made a quick stop on the way home by the drug store to get some over the counter sleep-aids, and again at the supermarket for a few groceries, carefully stowing them in his backpack before he continued the rest of the way home.