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"So is there anything interesting going on at your job, Tim?"

It was Wednesday again, and that meant, again, drinks at Casey's; myself, Sarah, and Sam in a row from left to right, Enrique leaning on the bar opposite us and occasionally dashing off to give one of the more transient customers something to drink.

I wasn't sure if having Sarah still be right next to me was a good idea - beyond, of course, the fact that I'd have trouble holding a conversation with her if Sam were in between - but it probably was good news; it seemed to suggest she hadn't been offended by my little display at the pool, anyway.

At any rate, this time I'd actually been looking forward to this sort of question.

"Funny you should mention that." I grinned, pulling a USB stick out of my pocket. "AdvenTech has been trying to break into the PC game world on their own, rather than porting something over from console. They're trying for something that's got some traditional MMO feel, but it's sci-fi instead of fantasy, and with more flexible character progression. Things are getting far enough that they're starting to look for testers - beyond the alpha stage, but not quite a public beta yet. I took the liberty of requesting a few keys and a copy of the installer."

The skunks exchanged glances. "Funny you should bring up something like that," Sarah laughed. "We just got the network working so we can both get online at home. We were wondering what we could do to break it in."

"We've even got a spare computer for it," Sam chimed in. "Might not be quite as good as your own home setup, or at least not as comfortable, but, hey, it's something, right?"

I laughed. "That sounds almost like a LAN party or something. Okay, that should work; we can do that after dinner."

"It's a date!" Sam declared, reaching past Sarah to clap me on the shoulder and, fortunately, not dislodging me from my stool in the process. Being the designated driver now that evenings were getting cold, he had a swig of iced tea.

"So what's dinner tonight?" Ric asked, bustling back over.

"Got a roast in the oven. Oh, hey, Ric..."

The chinchilla flashed a knowing smile. "Yes, Sarah?"

She leaned onto the bar, chin resting atop her laced fingers, elbows bent to prop herself up, eyes half-lidded. "Could you possibly provide me with a Cocksucking Cowboy?"

Enrique blinked, ears stiffening, then flicking back. "I, uh, could go for - I mean, could put that together, yeah, sure!"

"Heeeeeey," Sam drawled, one finger lifting, pointing. "I think he's actually blushing!"

"All right, all right!" Enrique laughed, digging among the shelves and producing a bottle of butterscotch Schnapps. "You win. For some reason I wasn't expecting that one."

"So what is it you could go for?" Sam rumbled, grinning. "The drink, or...?"

Ric sighed. "Y'know, there's something odd about me complaining instead of being complained at," he chuckled, grabbing the Bailey's and a bar spoon. "But it's kind of frustrating..." His voice dropped slightly as he poured off the spoon, carefully floating the cream on top of the Schnapps, "...to see a whole bunch of people go through here, and because I'm on duty 'til past closing time, I can't do a thing about it, you know?" He lifted the bottle and capped it, carefully sliding the shotglass over to Sarah. Two parts Schnapps, one part cream.

"I can sympathize with that," Sarah replied. "In my line of work, you meet some people in amazing shape, and you also get to hear some of their troubles, the things that make them people... but the one I wound up with, I met doing my post-grad and we just kept in touch." She smiled over at Sam. "But wipe that grin off your face, you. I know exactly how badly you've hurt yourself trying to show of, don't think I've forgotten."

"Yes, Doctor," Sam said in a meek tone.

While they were bantering, I happened to be looking at Ric, and saw a very brief, but unmistakable flicker of pain cross his muzzle. And no wonder; for all she talked about her job making it frustratingly hard to flirt, she'd wound up with someone - a whole lot of someone.

I don't know what possessed me to do it, but it seemed like the right thing to do: I brought my hand up onto the bartop and set it over the chinchilla's. It tensed a moment under my fingers, and then the man let out a soft sigh and turned his hand over, giving mine a squeeze, his expression shifting to a soft smile. "Thanks," he mouthed.

I had to smile back; the tension had made me nervous, but that smile made it all worthwhile. "Hey," I murmured, while the skunks were chatting about some function or other they'd attended together and laughing at each other's missteps. "If you want to talk sometime..." I reached for my wallet. I'd never been sure why exactly the company gave us business cards, but I was glad enough to have them now; I scrawled my home phone number and e-mail on it.

"Well!" Another hand fell on my shoulder. "If you two are done for now, maybe it's time to settle our tab and get some dinner?"

And so the moment was broken; Ric dealt with the bill, and managed to toss me one last grin as the three of us shuffled out.

I was actually expecting to be teased a lot more about the interchange than I was. They commiserated with Ric's plight, said the guy deserved a few good friends outside of work - he'd always been a good sport with them, he seemed like a good guy. Yeah, they thought it'd be amusing if I hooked up with him... In times past I'd have protested that I was looking for a girlfriend; considering how much effort I had to put into not ogling the driver, I just said that I didn't think it likely to happen.

Fortunately, dinner being served spared me from further interrogation, and we dug in hungrily.

The tentative title of our project at work was "IMC Online," IMC referring to the "Interstellar Marine Corps" that was the core faction - the place everyone started. While Sarah was supervising installs, I got into the test site and made my account, and handed it over to Sam along with the two test keys.

"Hold on a sec," he said, pulling me right back down with him and setting me on his thigh - I'm not sure whether or not he noticed the way I tensed up at that move, or if he did, whether or not he interpreted it right; at any rate, he went on, "Some of this looks neat, and I might want you to help interpret it."

I don't know. Maybe he honestly didn't know how distracting it was to be so close to him, to feel his chest rise and fall against my shoulders; how tempting, how exciting it was to feel that subtle ridge in his jeans; to have one of his strong hands on my thigh, keeping me close. Maybe he was just being friendly. At any rate, I needed to distract myself from all those things before I popped another insistent hard-on. So I answered a few questions about how the players were laid out, and looked the other way when he was entering account names and passwords, and then it was time to move; Sarah had finished with the other two computers and now needed to get installing on the third, hers.

"Install was quick and painless," she said. "So you can pass that on as a good word to your team, Tim. Some screenshots might make it a bit less boring, though."

"That'll have to wait until we're using the content it'll be released with," I pointed out, chuckling; and I let Sam usher me over to the other computers to get it running.

Their spare rig was about on par with my home computer, and well within the test specs. His own was a fair bit better off; I'd get to see some of the shiny graphics I'd been working on implementing. At any rate, we bounced ideas back and forth in the character creator.

I wound up deciding, fairly early on, on a medic, and went with the default build for one; after a few appearance tweaks, I leaned over Sam's shoulder to see what he was doing, and he responded by pulling me right into his lap again.

"The pilot looks like a neat start," he observed over my ears, "but not very cooperative."

"You can trade in your bike for one that is," I said. "Maybe drop a level of Maneuver, take some extra ranks in Heavy Weapons instead; shouldn't be too long before you can move up to a rig with a gun mount."

"Okay, there's a thought..."

For the most part, he did all the tinkering from there, while I made appreciative noises and tried to answer coherently when asked a question. With his breath warm over my ears, his hand spending most of its time on my thigh, and the base of my tail really, really close to his groin, all combined with that very familiar smell of his fur wash...

Well...

It was a wonder I wasn't in an embarrassing state when Sarah's triumphant voice in the other corner of the L-shaped room prompted me to get back up to my feet. "All ready to go?"

"Getting there, yeah. If I've heard you guys right, sounds like we still need some plain, straightforward damage? A trooper?"

"That sounds about perfect," I agreed. Given some chance to work up toward better gear and training, a pilot could serve as a much more literal tank than anybody on foot could; for places vehicles couldn't go, a trooper could take over the role of the damage sponge and leave the pilot to tote some specialty damage-dealing hardware.

She made her character, and the pair marveled that the female models actually looked, well, practical. Modest about the chest, rugged, and with body armour that was every bit as thorough as a man's, without a trace of the chainmail bikini syndrome that afflicted so many games.

We got into the game proper, and found that the tutorial needed a bit of streamlining, but the controls, once one got used to them, were pretty nice. Sam and I both played duck-and-cover a lot, with Sam frequently shooting over the hull of his unarmed, two-passenger hoverbike; with most of his equipment budget spent on his ride, all he had was a basic energy pistol, but it was better than nothing. I was slightly better off in that department, but my own gear was more tuned to weakening and hampering the enemy than actually doing damage.

With the two of us providing crossfire and being general nuisances, though, Sarah's plasma rifle chewed through infestations of alien critters with great speed and many a blue-green tracer flare.

We got through the tutorial, and then it was getting late; Sarah begged off to go to bed, and Sam offered to get me home. Part of me thought it wasn't such a good idea, all things considered, but it was quite cold and windy out; I yielded to temptation.

The ride over was straightforward enough that I was starting to feel silly for worrying; Sam heaped praise on the game, said he'd like to play through more of it through the week if we could all find a good time, and would I be up for some more time on the console on Saturday?

My social calendar being about as full as it ever was, I said, sure, I could do that; after a stint at the pool, anyway, my day was wide open. I still wasn't in shape to go back to taekwondo, not yet, but the pool was one way of working on it.

"Great," he said, teeth gleaming in the dashboard light. "Let us know when you'll be done, or give us a call, and we can save you the bus ride." His hand came to rest on my thigh and gave it a squeeze.

High enough up that his "little" finger was against my inseam.

The thought of what that strong hand could do to me in anger was terrifying.

The thought of what it could to do me in pleasure... well...

I tensed, of course, my breath catching. He turned toward me, gentle concern in his dark eyes; such affection that I could hardly believe it to be real. Nobody looked at me like that, ever... Yet when my fingers found his jaw, they found that it was indeed inclined toward me; his head tilted down slightly, and he pushed his snout against my palm. I let that touch draw me in, like a beacon; leaning over, I steadied myself with my other hand on his own strong leg.

In that moment, I wanted so badly to be closer to him.

My left hand slid around from his jaw, behind his neck; his head tilted slightly, maybe in puzzlement, as I leaned in close - but whatever the reason, it provided the perfect angle for my lips to brush his, and his pushed into the contact. My hand shifted upward, felt that swell of masculinity that had been so close to me earlier in the evening, traced over it.

It was his groan, wafting over my whiskers, that shocked me back to the present. What the hell was I doing? This wasn't like my accidental collision with Sarah, this was kissing him, feeling him up - it was that simple.

I lurched back as though I'd been shocked, panting. Oh, God. I'd gone too far this time - way too far by half... "I... I'm sorry," I choked out.

"It's all right," he rumbled, giving my shoulder a gentle squeeze. "Don't worry about it, Tim. It's okay."

I sat back, trying to calm my racing heart and not doing a very good job of it. What the hell had I almost done...?

A pat on my shoulder. "See you Saturday, Tim? And maybe online before that?"

"Uh, sure," I said, and fled.

I dodged the questions and teasing of my roommates - or at least, ignored them and left them all behind me - and locked myself in my room. I didn't feel drunk; but in a way, that just made everything that much worse.

What the hell was I getting into now?