The Hardest Part
Liz and Jinx were going out for Senior Crawl, and Allen had planned to go with them, but his mood had shifted after the last class of the day. The whole senior party thing suddenly seemed like the desperate flailing of fish caught in a net that was slowly being drawn out of the water. Summer was coming up fast, and after summer he'd be living at home until he found a job, and with his political studies degree, he'd probably be working at Starbucks for a couple years unless he went to grad school. And right now, the prospect of grad school felt worse than the prospect of living at home.
It wouldn't have been so bad, of course, if he'd had someone to fuck. Or to fuck him. Liz and Jinx were good friends, but Allen wanted a boyfriend, and he was on an unprecedented four-month dry spell. He hadn't been so familiar with his own paw since his junior year of high school. It was getting to the point that he was browsing for porn on the Internet at eleven o'clock on a Friday night. Worse than that, none of it was turning him on. "Fuck," he muttered. None of his regular type-fucking buddies was around--of course not, on a Friday night--and while he knew he could go out to a bar and hook up, that held even less appeal.
And then his phone buzzed, and of all the people to interrupt that particular reverie, it was Daniel. "r u home?"
He texted back quickly, "yeah," not even annoyed that Daniel would assume he was home on a Friday night. And then he waited, staring at the phone.
Someone knocked on his door. He kept the phone in his paw as he scooted back his chair and stood up, sweeping his long ringed tail out of the way. "I'm kinda in the middle of--"
Daniel's ears were pasted flat to his head, his black mask damp, and he was wringing his slender paws. His light silk shirt hung askew on his frame, the collar riding up against his left shoulder and leaving exposed the ridge of his right collarbone. Allen wrenched himself away from that sight and back to the glistening brown eyes. "C-can I c-come in?" Daniel said. "I d-don't know where else to, to go."
"Yeah, sure." Allen stood aside and shut the door as Daniel shuffled in, his shorter ringed tail dragging behind him. They stood awkwardly for a moment, until Allen gestured to the velvet loveseat. "Uh, you want something to drink?"
Daniel shook his head and wiped his nose on his sleeve. "No, I'm..." He sank into the loveseat, his head drooping onto his chest. "I just n-need someone to talk to."
Allen grabbed a bottle of water from his mini-fridge anyway and brought it over. He sat down next to Daniel and started to put his arm around the raccoon, then stopped. Would that be too forward? Yes, too forward for right now. He almost missed what Daniel had started saying.
"Y'ever think," Daniel was saying, "you know someone and then they just say something and it turns out you didn't know them at all?"
Allen thought about Vinny, whom he'd helped get over Jinx. I'm not a faggot like you. "Yeah," he said. "What happened? Was it...uh, Jake?"
Daniel nodded, because of course it was Jake. Who else could reduce the poor kid to tears? "Is he seeing someone else?" Allen said softly, holding his breath.
"No," Daniel said, his voice small. "Maybe. I don't think s-so."
"Here, have a drink of water." Allen felt like his heart was going to explode. Careful, he told himself. Don't fuck it up like you did with Vinny.
"I'm okay."
"Honey," Allen said, trying to be stern, "there's no calories in it. And you're leaking enough, you need to get some water back in you. Drink."
He'd hoped for a smile, but settled for the meek nod. Daniel took a couple drinks from the bottle and then held it in his paws, squeezing it. "He's right, though," he said.
"About what?" Allen said gently.
"About me." Daniel's voice hitched.
God, it was killing him, sitting here like this. He couldn't stop his paw from resting on Daniel's knee. Hell, he could barely keep it from moving further up. Already he was getting hard. Focus. "What did he say?" If he said anything about his weight, I swear, I swear...
"Do you have any tissues?"
Allen stared at the box, over by his bed. "Yeah. Hang on." He lifted his paw from Daniel's knee and padded across the room. Don't touch him again, he warned himself as he sat back down, tissues on his knee. Not yet.
Daniel grabbed one and blew his nose, then pulled another out to wipe his eyes. "I'm all packed already," he said. " I was looking forward to this so much."
"Whoa." Allen pulled the trash can over for Daniel to toss the used tissues into. "You're not going to see him?"
"I'm going to see him," Daniel said. "That's all."
"Not move in?"
Daniel shook his head, slowly. He started to talk and then couldn't go on. Allen waited patiently. Finally, Daniel whispered, "He told me not to. He said I could visit."
"What? Why?"
"H-he said I n-need to grow up. Stop acting like...like...a child."
Allen leaned back into the loveseat and closed his eyes. "What was that supposed to mean?" he said, more coldly than he'd intended.
Daniel cringed. "You know," he said. "Like, like my clothes and the jewelry, and the," he swished his wrist back and forth a couple times. "You know."
"Don't you enjoy that?" Allen held out another tissue.
Daniel took it, sniffling. "I'm using all your tissues," he said.
Allen had to smile. "It's okay. I have plenty."
Daniel nodded. He threw the tissue in the trash can, but he was still trembling. "I really like this vest," he sniffed, fingering the satin material. It shimmered in the light from Allen's desk lamp.
"I do too," Allen said. "I don't think it's childish."
"Jake said I need to be more sensible. He bought me some shirts..."
Allen frowned. "They must be horrible."
Daniel wiped his nose with the back of his paw, then took another tissue when Allen held it out to him. "You remember that one FLAG meeting? When you said I was trying to dress like Liz?"
Allen blinked. "Oh my God," he said. "He bought that for you?"
Daniel blew his nose. "Everyone hated it."
"I didn't hate it," Allen lied. "It just looked...it was weird on you."
"It wasn't that bad," Daniel said. "And nobody in Boliat knows me, not really."
"Did you wear his clothes when you went to visit?"
"Yeah." The answer came with a soft hiccup, like half a sob, though Daniel seemed more in control than he had been.
It was difficult for Allen to imagine a worse place for the raccoon than Boliat. The image of a rainbow flag hung in front of a series of uniform grey buildings wouldn't leave his mind, though he'd never been to Boliat specifically. Why couldn't Jake have found a job in Port City, or Yerba, somewhere on either coast? "So you just wear his clothes for a summer and then you come back here and flame on," he made himself say. "What's wrong with that?"
Daniel had a way of looking at Allen sometimes that made him feel transparent. When he did it this time, it also made the ringtail feel like a complete dick. A big, transparent dick. "I thought you'd understand," he said.
I do, honey, I do. "Well, I mean, Jake's probably just feeling nervous. He's got lots of new friends. He's in a new place."
"He went to all our meetings too."
"He didn't join until late," Allen reminded him.
"We talked about stuff," Daniel said. "God, I thought we had something. We always seemed to click, and on the phone this year, being apart wasn't bad. It was like, he knew me and I knew him, and we were just waiting, and now, God, Allie, I don't know." His fingers rubbed the fabric of his vest. "I don't know."
"Did it just come out of the blue?" Allen tried to dissipate his nervous energy by flicking his tail over the arm of the loveseat and tapping the side.
"Kinda. I guess, last time I was there, I was acting...there was this dinner, and I said something like, 'oh, sister,' I don't know, maybe that was it. He was kinda annoyed after, but..." He trailed off, and then gave another small hiccup, this one definitely the prelude to more sobs.
You can put your arm around him now. It's what a friend would do. Still, Allen hesitated, and then Daniel listed to the side, his head landing against Allen's chest, and Allen's arm dropped around the raccoon's shoulder as though of its own volition. He rested his paw on Daniel's upper arm and squeezed, lightly. "People have fights," he said.
"This wasn't even a fight," Daniel sniffled. "He just said, 'I think you were making Barry uncomfortable.' I said I was sorry, and that was it. But just now, we were talking, and I think...I mean, it feels like..."
Allen waited. Daniel's head fur was right under his nose, overpowering him with the smell of Verette Lucien conditioner and the raccoon himself. He tried breathing through his mouth, but that didn't help; if he thought he'd been hard before, he'd been a limp noodle compared to the iron rod in his sheath now. Daniel was bound to notice. He wasn't a fox, but he also wasn't an oblivious skunk. "Feels like what?" Allen said softly.
Daniel's ear flicked. "Feels like..." His small frame shuddered. "Feels like he's ashamed of me."
He closed his eyes and pressed them into Allen's shirt, sobbing earnestly now, and Allen couldn't not hug him. "Oh, honey, he's not ashamed of you," he said.
"He is," Daniel wailed. "He said, if I can't dress like a grown-up, he doesn't want me to come down at all."
Like a grown-up? Allen's chest tightened. Daniel went on, words pouring out of him. "And I want to, Allie, I want to go to him so bad. We feel so right together. But this feels right too, this feels like me, and how can I feel right with him and feel right about who I am when I'm with him if he doesn't want me to be me?"
Allen didn't have to work his way through the mess of words to figure out the sense of it. "You have to find a way to be you," he said, and then had to roll his eyes at himself. That's just great. That's the best you can do, channel some cut-rate gay motivational speaker?
"But what if this is me?" Daniel's paw rested on Allen's thigh. "I mean, I spent years figuring out who I am. I can't just change who I am, can I?"
Allen pulled Daniel closer. "I don't think so." He reached down with his free paw and held up another tissue.
The raccoon took the tissue and wiped his nose, snuggling against him. Allen held him tightly. "What if it's for someone you really care about?"
"Well, then..." Allen had the little speech all ready, the whole 'if he can't accept you for who you are' bit, and then he remembered Vinny. He'd said that same thing to the skunk, or very nearly, and it had turned out that what Vinny was, what he'd fought against in more than one way, was something very different than what Allen had thought he was, what Allen had wanted him to be. I'm not a faggot like you.
And what was stopping up the speech he wanted to make, what was holding him in suspended time while Daniel cried against his shirt, was that he knew what Vinny meant. He didn't mean that he didn't like to suck cock. God, no, the big skunk loved that. He didn't mean, I'm not a faggot, comma, like you. He meant, I'm not A FAGGOT LIKE YOU.
He knew how the rest of this evening could go. Had gone, more than once in the past. A night of sticky passion, followed by Daniel's guilt at betraying Jake. Followed by Daniel inevitably associating Allen with that betrayal. Followed by the end of a friendship.
Carefully, slowly, Allen pushed Daniel away from his chest. "I think if it's for someone you really care about," he said, "you can change a little bit."
Daniel held the tissue to his nose, sniffling. His soft brown eyes met Allen's. "You think so?"
"God, I hope so," Allen breathed. "You have to talk to Jake. You gotta tell him that you want to be you, but you can rein it in a bit. There's got to be gay clubs in Boliat, right? Tell him you'll dress like a fucking breeder six days a week, but on Saturday night he's got to take you out dancing. He can't just demand everything. Remember he's probably scared, too. I don't think they have many faggy cougars in that law firm."
Daniel nodded. "You don't think I'm too...too flamey?"
That look, the need in it, tested Allen's new resolve. "Honey," he said, "I think you're every color of the rainbow. But I'm not the one you fell in love with."
Daniel smiled, sniffled, and wiped his nose again. "I wish I had," he said.
Allen almost broke down himself, then, wanted to clutch the raccoon to him again and not let go this time. He knew all the steps from here: "if he doesn't appreciate you..." "look, it doesn't have to be anything serious..." "I really care about you." He'd never said that last one aloud without meaning it, and he'd never meant it as much as he did now, swallowing it back into his throat. "Well," he did say aloud, "if we got to choose the easy path, we'd all be straight, wouldn't we?"
"I wouldn't," Daniel said. "I wouldn't give this up for anything."
"Yeah, well," Allen said, lifting his paw from Daniel's shoulder. "Me neither, I guess."
"Thanks, Allie." Daniel lifted his muzzle quickly and touched his nose to the ringtail's. They stayed like that, their breaths so intimately entwined that they might almost be kissing, past the time Allen knew he should break away. He just couldn't manage to stop it, somehow. If he pressed a little bit, he knew, they would be kissing. Daniel would open his lips. Their tongues would meet. Then they could embrace again. It wouldn't be bad if Daniel wanted it too, would it?
But then what?
Allen pulled back firmly. He rested both paws on Daniel's shoulders. "You going to be okay, now?"
Daniel took a breath. "I think so."
"You need any more tissues?"
"Nah. I'll be okay." Daniel got up as Allen did, and put his arms around him. "Thanks. I really needed a friend to talk to."
"What I'm here for." Allen hugged back, resting his muzzle between the raccoon's ears, angling his hips so his hard-on wouldn't be obvious.
"You wanna grab a cup of coffee?"
He took a breath to say no, and then glanced again at his computer, where an Internet full of porn was waiting for him. "Sure," he said. "Just let me grab my phone, and I'll be right there."
"Okay." Daniel padded to the door.
Facing away from him, Allen slipped his phone into his pocket, adjusting his pants to make sure the bulge in his sheath wouldn't show. He picked up the box of tissues from the couch and set it next to the bed, then followed Daniel outside and locked the door behind them.