San Iadras: Not Divorced
#23 of The world of the Spirit of '67
Becky twitched an eyebrow at Anne. "So what is it now, anyway? Treyer or Salcedo?"
Anne hadn't seen Becky in three, four years? It'd seemed like a wonderful, wonderful idea to try and catch up. "Still Treyer." She scratched the back of her neck, just under the first fronds of short hair. "We were thinking we'd hyphenate and be double-barrelled, if it ever became important." She waved a hand over the cafe table. "Y'know. If we had kids or something."
Becky smiled tightly. "Not that you could have kids. I mean. He's a furry."
Yeah. There was a reason she hadn't invited Becky to the wedding. "Well we might adopt, or, donor sperm, or, I could go get single-source fertilised." She threw up a shoulder. "We were just thinking about it anyway."
"Well, I'm glad you didn't take on Salcedo, at any rate. It wouldn't sound right." Becky flipped her hair out of her face.
It was easier for Anne to just bite her lip and glare at the cafe table, rather than look at Becky and her fucking perfect hair. "Well it was mainly because of the citizenship thing. They don't recognise cross-species marriages back home and I'd have to change it by deed poll over there."
"Still. A human with a clone's name?" Becky crumpled up her face in a pretty little smile, an ironic smile, a smile that said everything about how she couldn't possibly be patronising. Her? Christ no.
Saigon might have been an exact genetic match with his dozen or so brothers, from the tip of his mousey nose to the end of his tail, but calling him a clone? Anne tilted her head sharply, propped her cheek up on her palm, elbow on the table. Absent-mindedly stroked the trio of rings through her left ear, set them jangling, felt the weight of the other three on the right.
Becky drank in the silence. Paused. Maybe figured out that what she'd just said to her friend wasn't the nicest thing in the world. "They're trying to change it in California, you know."
"They're not gonna put through a law for... what. There are a couple hundred furries in the states?" They'd all been born in labs. Every last one of them, cloned and genetically engineered and... and that was it. There weren't many.
"Well you know Californians." Becky's smile tightened up again. "Why'd you marry him, though?"
Anne splayed her fingers out over her ear, twisted her head around until her fingers caught up short black locks. Black like Saigon's fur. "Uhm." She yanked her head around and blinked owlishly at Becky. "Because I love him?"
It was that look. That mute incomprehension, the faint twitch of disgust. The way Becky hurriedly said, "Of course you do." It all brought back high school in a heartbeat.
Anne bit her lip, propped her head on her hands, and stared innocently at the table. "Yeah. Maybe it's like you used to say..."
A smile, a beautiful self assured I-Knew-You-Knew-I-Was-Always-Right smile. "A girl's got to take what she can get? Well." She flipped her hair again. "I suppose it's true, you-"
"So how's Jack doing?" Anne reached across the table, absent-mindedly pulled Becky's phone over and quirked an eyebrow at it.
Becky tensed up, leaning over the table. "Uhm, he's fine."
"Got any recent pictures of him on here?" The contacts menu...
Becky sank back down, watching worriedly. "Yeah? Pass it here, I'll show you." She stuck out her hand.
Anne scooped up the phone and held it up to her face. "No, it's okay. Wedding plans?"
"February." Becky chewed her lip.
"Valentines? Nice, very romantic." Set the volume down, hit Jack's connection icon. "Oh, here. I see. He's looking good."
"Mhmm." Becky smoothed down her dress. Glanced away, eyes flicking nervously over other nearby patrons.
After awhile, the 'connecting' icon switched to 'connected'. Anne pulled the phone close. Crooned, "You're a piece of shit, and Becky's busy sucking off a mestizo ladyboy, so don't bother calling back."
"Anne!?"
She flicked the phone off and lobbed it at the cafe's fountain.
It went gloonk.
His eyes were tired eyes. Old eyes, even though he was younger than Anne. Maybe mice aged faster, maybe it was all he'd gone through in his life, but Saigon read out of his decades old paper books in a desperate way. A way that screamed about how hard he had to push his mind in the lonely moments to keep away from the nightmares dogging him. Tired eyes, strong because they were tired. Old, free of the fears of his childhood. Poor Saigon. Pretty, black-furred and skinny little Saigon whose shoulders were narrower than hers by a half inch even though she was a little shorter.
Okay, maybe she was, y'know. Big boned, but sometimes he really did feel frail when they held each other. Sometimes not, though. Sometimes strong, full of righteous anger and drive and determination, and sometimes...
Saigon stuck out his long, pink wet tongue. Licked the pad of his finger slowly, very slowly, and turned the page.
Sometimes there were other reasons to be glad she'd married him. Very simple ones, very base reasons. After all, marriage was not just to have, but to hold.
"Saigon?"
"Mhm?"
"These bags are real heavy, and there's more in the car..."
And sometimes, just to hold groceries.
Oil sizzled in the pan. Anne watched Saigon's back as he scraped chopped onion and peppers into the pan. The way his shoulders rolled while he slung the pan back and forth over the flame, the twitching end of his naked pink tail. He paused, flipping his head back to get the fringe of his dyed white hair out of his eyes. She'd gotten him to dye it.
It looked good on him, made him look a little more like him. Seeing him with his brothers had been a little frightening, especially the first time. She'd met him at the research station, in Antarctica. She'd been looking at lichens and plants gengineered for extreme environments, he'd been working on the station's robotics. Only furry to go that far south, it'd never really dawned on her that he was a clone. That his dozen or so brothers shared his face, his voice, his smile.
It was a little scary. The only real way to tell the differences were their scars. After all, Saigon was a mouse. A lab mouse. And the researchers had hurt him.
He turned around, pulling the pan off the flames, started scraping the stir fry into a couple of plates.
"Come here." She threw out her hands, wiggling her fingertips.
Saigon glanced back, lifting an eyebrow, his broad pink ear flexing just so. Shook the pan and scraped out the last. "Uhm." He set it down by the sink, picked up the plates. "Lemme just bring the plates."
Christ. Why wouldn't he just listen? "No, come here." Anne got up and wrapped her arms around him before he got halfway across the kitchen.
He lifted the plates carefully, biting his lip. "Uhm. I gotta put these down."
"No." She laced her fingers together, dipped her chin onto his shoulder. "My little mousey. Mine."
"Honey," Saigon whined, lifting the plates a little higher as she started nuzzling her face into his neck. "I just gotta get the plates down!"
Anne scrunched her face up into a frown, let her arms slip off him. "I never get to see you anymore."
He leaned over their table. Their table, they'd bought it together. "You're the one taking overtime." He took a moment, turning the plates on either side of their table so the patterns lined up.
"Yeah, but." She sighed. Dragged her chair back out and slumped down, put her elbow on the table and ground her knuckles into her forehead.
He set down a couple of glasses, leaning over her left shoulder to put one down on his side of the table, her right to put the other down by hers.
She chewed her lip. "With you having trouble it's just like-"
That warm mouth on her neck shut her up pretty quick. A long, hard kiss with his fur and whiskers rasping at her skin.
"Like, uh." She sucked in a breath, hard.
The second kiss was shorter, just on her cheek. Saigon flexed his ears, the trio of rings on his jingling against the ones through her own ear.
Three rings through each of their ears. Saigon had thirteen brothers, he'd never be able to pick just one for best man. So they'd had a lot of rings. Twelve through their ears and one... well. One somewhere else, for her. That was her honeymoon ring.
"I'm just saying," he said, punctuating it with one last peck, "it's not my fault, so don't make like I never pay attention to you."
"Well, no, it's not your fault." Anne sank back down, leaning her head to a side. It took a second for the air to chill her neck where he'd kissed. "But it's not mine either and I just really feel like I don't get to see you ever." She reached up to rub gently at her damp skin. "I just work all the time, and then like a stupid bitch I go to get caught up with Becky instead of stay home with you."
Saigon leaned forward before sitting down, threading his tail through the chair-back. "And how was that?" He looked up from under his fringe at her.
Well. How to put it nicely? "She's a fucking racist bitch and I hate her guts and hope she dies. She was a fucking cunt in high school, too." She caught the tip of her tongue between her molars and blinked at him innocently.
His eyebrow lifted questioningly. "Racist? I didn't think that was a problem in the states, uhm. Not anymore anyway-"
"Sorry. I meant, uh. Speciesist. Speciest? Bigot-bitch." Anne picked up a fork and ducked her head. Dug the fork into her food.
Saigon picked up his fork. "Oh."
"Yeah. She also implied I only married you because I'm some kind of fuckup."
"Uhm." He put it back down beside his plate neatly, put his hands in his lap. He started chewing his lip. "You're not a fuckup, Honey."
Anne slumped forward over the table with a sigh. "Could you say it any more guiltily?"
"Well I just mean, uhm." He started picking at his fingernails. "I don't want to get between you and your friends."
"She's not one of my friends." She turned her fork over in the stir fry. Brought up a mouthful. Saigon wasn't the best cook in the world, but he could do stir fry well. It was just... She set down her fork, reached into her mouth and pulled a short black hair off her tongue. It went onto the side of her plate, smeared down delicately.
"Sorry."
"It's okay." She flashed a quick smile. "I mean I always tell you I wanna eat you all up." Her smile didn't last long. She started turning over stir fry, looking for errant hairs.
She'd given up on white shirts. Their washer was kind of old, stray hairs from his fur ended up on all their clothes.
"No, really, I mean. I'm sorry. My fur just gets everywhere and-"
"I said it's okay," she snapped. "I'm just not having a great day, okay?"
"Okay."
It took a long time for him to pick up his own fork. It was alright for him. He didn't seem to mind snarfing down his own fur.
Saigon wet his lips. "I'm really sorry, it's just-"
"For fuck's sake!" She slapped down her fork. "Will you stop saying sorry?"
He nodded mutely, like a wounded puppy.
Today really wasn't a good day.
It wasn't a good day the rest of the day, either. Eventually Saigon had given up and gone to his hobby room to work on some actuated joint he was custom building for another robotics hobbyist. That's all he could do, nobody wanted to hire him. All the robotics experts in San Iadras were established with years of experience, and he was overqualified with a doctorate and had too little industrial experience behind him. He'd get a job in a heartbeat if they moved somewhere else, but he didn't want to move away from his brothers in San Iadras and she didn't want to move him. Not when seven of his brothers had died in the last eight years or so.
Especially because seven of his brothers had died in the last eight years or so. Sometimes she was terrified of moving someplace there wasn't a sizeable enough furry population for there to be any specialist medical services. And that meant living in San Iadras. There just weren't enough furs anywhere else in the world.
Those researchers really hadn't left him in good shape. Waiting for him to come out of the bathroom, that could be terrifying sometimes. Long, silent moments that dragged by in panicky fantasies about having to go in there and finding Saigon laying there dead or in the middle of some seizure. He hadn't had one in the time she'd known him, but one of his brothers had and she'd waited helpless while Turin got taken to hospital, feeling panicky because she could hardly tell him and Saigon apart.
That was another reason she'd made him dye his hair. Made him change, twisted him up so he was hers just that little bit more. A little less like his brothers. They were sweet enough, Dallas and Florence were always nice enough when they got everyone together, but somehow Anne never wanted to go to their place. She'd have to watch Saigon change a little, especially after drinks when he and his brothers got to hashing through the past. Then all she could do was watch his eyes grow old until he felt almost like a different person.
It was a scary feeling, a bad feeling, almost as bad as the eight inches between him and her in bed.
Anne didn't like bad feelings, didn't like those eight inches. Not in bed. The distance wasn't some kind of yawning gulf, some uncrossable chasm. Just eight inches. Her hand and his, that'd cover it.
But he didn't reach out to cross those eight little inches. Neither did she. She was a stupid bitch, right? That's why she'd hung out with Becky and been thankful for every meagre scrap of acceptance she'd gotten. What if she didn't get it anymore? What if she reached out and he didn't reach back?
It was a stupid hurtful idea, the kind of thing she thought she'd put behind her after she'd gotten out of high school, yet here she was, laying with her husband, and there were these eight little inches.
She spread her hand against the sheets, eyes squeezed shut. Stretched her fingers out, willing herself to find fur instead of just empty sheets. Some sign that those eight inches weren't so far.
There wasn't anything. She took a miserable, snivelling breath. Stupid. Stupid, stupid. Her dad had been right, getting married was a mistake, it never worked out and her parents never had, a lot never had, and when she'd found someone she'd not only scraped the bottom of the barrel but she'd had to try and twist what she'd found because she was scared of losing it. Scared of losing him and she squabbled about shed fur and not having more time together, even though they'd never had that much time together, in Antarctica there'd always been too much work, and down here they'd never thought it would be the same.
And there were eight little inches between her and the man she loved even though he wasn't even a man. And she hated each one of those inches. So finally, even if she was shit-scared, she reached over and yanked his hand onto her stomach.
He didn't pull it away.
Instead, Saigon rolled over and pressed his lips against her temple, fur and whiskers scraping over the pillows.
She turned her head and opened her mouth on his, trying to find the warm little line of that beautiful tongue of his. His mouth was warm, and it took a couple of teasing moments before she got his jaw that wide.
Saigon tilted his head to one side, the other, caught her lip gently between his teeth and sucked it. Slid his hand from her stomach to her side and pulled her closer even as he shuffled across the sheets and all eight of those damn inches vanished. Gone, like they'd never been there in the first place.
Anne scrunched her nose, twisted her face until the tip of her nose poked out over his, her bottom lip stretched out achingly warm until it slipped from his mouth. She opened her eyes to the dark and found his in the dull city light filtering in from outside.
"You know what's good about you?" He ran his fingertips down the side of her face.
She tipped her chin, so he had to murmur against her skin. "What?"
"You are mine to love."
Her hands wound round his back, clasped the back of his night shirt. "But you're mine."
"Oh. My bad."
"No." She shook her head slowly. "My bad. I'm mean and nasty and horrible." She made herself smile as she said it.
His fingers dipped against her hair. "I thought that was me."
"You're nice," she breathed, then kissed the tip of his snout.
"I shed." He pushed himself up on his elbow, shrugging the bedsheets back.
Anne slid her shoulders down into the hollow he'd made in the mattress. "It's okay. I'm just stupid, I had a bad day and I'm sorry about-"
She stopped babbling. His fingertip had come down across her lips.
They blinked at each other, not longer than a moment.
He dipped down and kissed her. Really hard.
Him pulling her out of her shirt was a tangle, they had to break the kiss and by the time she'd gotten it over her head he'd switched to kissing her throat, swirling his tongue around one of her nipples, on his hands and knees over her. He scooted back, dragging the sheets with him, tail getting tangled.
She wasn't worried about getting out of her shirt anymore, her panties were the problem. Her legs scrabbled while she tried to get her butt off the mattress long enough to push down her underwear, but Saigon's tongue in her navel flattened her out pretty good.
Saigon shoved his hands in under her buttocks, grabbed the band of her panties and yanked, nuzzling his face against her abdomen. His fur was soft, but his whiskers were rough. He worked his way down, planting one hard kiss against her inner thigh while he kept working his way down, pulling her ankles together to get her underwear off.
She sucked down a breath, lifting her foot and dragging it down his side. She bit her lip. "Does that mean I'm forgiven?"
"Shh." He caught her ankle again, put that foot down on the edge of the bed. Pushed against the other knee aside as he dipped down again. "I'm nice. Remember?"
Anne remembered. Saigon helped her remember.
He helped her remember why that thirteenth, tiny little ring was such a great idea. Just through the skin under her clitoris. The honeymoon ring. He caught it with the tip of his wet, pink tongue and flipped it over. Then back, and the shivery little tingles started catching up with her.
She pulled her arms up and clutched at her hair, while his whiskers needled her thighs, while the warmth of his mouth engulfed her and the hot patch of contact from his tongue became a burning set of lines sweeping back and forth through her body.
He drew back just long enough to press the tip of his tongue against the edge of her honeymoon ring and drag it back, dipped his head and yanked it with his lips. Her shuddering pulled the ring from his mouth, and he followed it, tongue swirling against her in wet throbbing aches.
Saigon made her remember all about his tongue. The fact it was wet, and pink.
And long.
Anne's knees juddered helplessly against his sides, her breath came in yelping gasps and when he pulled away she groaned for more, so the hot pressure of his mouth came back and she squealed.
Yes, squealed. Just a little. Felt silly, guilty about it a moment later, but her insides were bubbly, the sweat on her skin was cooling way too fast. Then his lips found the lips of her vagina and she squealed again. She just couldn't help it.
Finally, when she could blink at the ceiling and it was mostly dark instead of mostly stars, Saigon crawled up over her, on his hands and knees. She reached up and delicately ran a finger along one of his whiskers and found it to be damp.
He smiled.
She smiled back.
Apparently she was forgiven.
He made her a packed lunch while she was in the shower. It was in a plastic container, and he'd drawn a sappy little heart shape on the screen of her phone. she put her palm on it, and the drawing program left the print of her hand there. Some Monday mornings were not all that bad.
"Made you breakfast." Saigon settled the cereal bowl down on the table and kissed her cheek.
A little black hair serenely twirled on the surface of the milk, ducking between flakes.
He froze, watching her stare at it. His ears twitched, just the once.
Anne pulled him over, put her head on his shoulder, and closed her eyes. Held him. He slipped his arms around her, held her.
"Uhm. Sorry, Honey."
She took a deep breath, ground her head against his shoulder. "If I get mad about it can we have make-up sex again tonight?"
"Uhm..." Saigon blinked.
"I can come home early." She pressed her hand against the flat of his stomach, pushed her fingertips down, as if tucking in his shirt. A little too far down for that. "Scream. Maybe throw something..."
"I, uhm." Saigon dry swallowed. "I could get a bottle of wine?"
Anne laughed. "And maybe a little hand-vac." She fluttered her fingertips along his arm, made a shlorp sound with her lips.
He looked at his fur speculatively. "That might work."
She nodded gently. "Maybe." She nuzzled her face into the hollow of his neck. "But remember the wine."