4 comments/  11643 views/  4 favorites

Wedding Mouse

By: foozzzball



//: 2105, City of Minneapolis. University of Minnesota.

Troy hunched his head down, ducking out of the physics lab. First his breath frosted in the early winter air. Then he realized the sky was dark, and checking his wristwatch he found that it was a little past one in the morning. 

He shoved his right hand into a pocket, shivering in the cold despite the black fur covering him along with jeans and a winter jacket. The wind chill was catching his ears, big and flared, and was pulling the heat right out of them. Sometimes being a mouse sucked.

Gritting his teeth he pulled the hood of his jacket up, yanking it down painfully over his big ears before moving along, muttering to himself. He'd shoved his tail down the back of his pants, and if he stepped too fast it wrenched uncomfortably, but in this weather it'd freeze off if he left it free.

He edged down the walk uncomfortably, muttering to himself. They'd gotten tracks of Unbiquadium in the low energy particle accelerator last week, which was exciting - yet another new synthetic atom possible to produce by fission-chain directed fusion - but if they were going to use it they had to get a production method in place and getting that together was Troy's job on the research team and Troy didn't know how in the hell he'd do it. About eight hundred thousand New Dollars' worth of uranium should provide a good starting point, ditch it into Greg's new reactors and start fusing before Greg flipped out, but he needed more processing power and sim time to make sure he'd gotten the build-up chain right and they didn't have that kind of funding anyway but-

"Hey, Doc Salcedo!"

Troy looked up edgily. One of the campus cops, red-faced and cold, but looking comfortable, because even a freakin' campus cop made more money and could afford a decent jacket with a heater coil that didn't fritz out every-

"How's things in the lab?" he grinned. It was just Ted.

Troy bit down on his annoyance and counted his breaths for a moment. "Not a doctor yet. Still not done with the production sequences. We could fuse it down from hydrogen and try to get a critical mass in the reactor but that's finicky and I don't think we've got a licence for the kind of Uranium mass we need or the funding or-"

Ted chuckled. "Whoah! Damn, Doc. From how everyone's talking they're going to have trouble finding anyone specialized enough for you to defend your thesis to. It's in the bag."

Troy glanced back over his shoulder at the physics building. Still depressingly close. "Well that's great, Ted, but look, I really need to get home and find my old data-cards from last year and see if I can find my old sim results so-"

Ted reached up, scratching the back of his head. "Why don't you take a break, Doc? I mean, everyone else is gone for the holidays. Go get some sleep, try this in the morning."

Troy straightened, eyes suddenly wide. "Holidays? What holidays?"

"Uhm..." He pointed out at the city.

Troy looked up at the dark sky again, saw the blimps hovering over downtown Minneapolis, laughing human children and Santa Claus images, and presents and prices and stores and brand names and God knew what else. "Uhm." Troy swallowed, folding his arms, left over right, because his left hand never got cold. "What's the date?"

Ted laughed. It wasn't the first time they'd had this type of conversation. "Twenty-second," he replied, checking his security console before dropping it back onto his belt. "Sorry. Twenty-third," he corrected himself.

"I, think I, uhm. Might have a flight. In four hours."

"Yeah, where to?"

"My brother's wedding, but, uh..."

"That's great!" Ted grinned. "Who's he getting married to?"

"Researcher he met in Antarctica, but, uh-"

"Wow, Antarctica?" Ted lifted his eyebrows. "That's swell."

"Yeah, it's great, but, Ted, uhm-"

"What's her name?"

"Anne, but, Ted?"

"Yeah, Doc?"

"That's the twenty-third of November, right?" Troy asked, pointing at the blimps over downtown. "It's still Thanksgiving, right?"

Ted laughed. "Yeah, they haven't really gotten out the decorations yet." He looked up at the lights. "I hear this year they're going to get some cloud cover generated for projectors."

Troy glanced up at the Minneapolis skyline. A hundred foot long ad blimp wasn't elaborate enough, apparently. "Uh, would you lock up the lab? I've gotta..."

"Yeah, sure thing doc," Ted laughed, getting out his security panel again and flipping through menus to find the locks. "Happy holidays, huh? Just thirty-something shopping days!"

"Yeah, happy holidays." Troy hurried off, and found his tail wrenching against his leg, again. "Ow. Fuck." He reached back, pulling his tail out before setting off at a run. It felt practically frostbitten by the time he'd gotten to his apartment.

"-About eight hundred thousand and I have no idea how we're going to get our budget that high and I wish I didn't have to drop all this but it's not like I have a lot of time, you know?" Troy paused for breath, staring down at his little briefcase.

"Mhmm." Her voice was tired, liquid, husky and happy.

Troy glanced at his phone on his workstation desk, then sighed, slumping down on the edge of his bed. He contemplatively pulled a thick pair of socks back out of his briefcase's clothing compartment. "So what's the weather doing down there? Cold?"

"Nah," Jennifer replied, with only a heartbeat of time lag. "Equator 'n all. Y'know it's like three in the morning, sweetie."

He tossed the socks back into the pile of discarded clothing on the floor. "Yeah but I have to get on a plane in a couple of hours and there's no time to finish and Greg's going to flip out if I don't have a fuel solution for the reactor and-"

Jennifer sounded almost like she was grinning from halfway around the world. "Shh, baby. Shh."

"But if we don't get this done by December we're going to need new funding for next fiscal quarter and-"

"It's three am, sweetie. Tomorrow you're flying out here, and it's going to be your brother's wedding, and these are not things you should be worrying about. Aren't you presenting your thesis after this too?"

"But Greg's going to flip out."

"Greg's not going to the wedding, is he?"

"No but he's going to get that weird look and bitch about the genetic divide and he won't even say 'hi' when he does that and-"

"Shh. It'll be okay. If he does that I'll come over and... and bite him on the nose for you," Jennifer offered, giggling a little sleepily.

Troy took a breath. "Okay," he whispered, staring at his phone longingly.

"Okay, good, now, it's three in the morning Troy, and-"

"Mrf. Who's Troy?"

The voice had been entirely unexpected. So much so that all of the fur on Troy's body pricked up in one precise moment. He almost expected to hear it twang. The sick feeling in his gut, though, was not so much over the surprise of hearing of the voice, but the maleness of it. The sweat and six-pack abdomen sound, cologne and musk and too much money.

"Go back to sleep Andy," Jennifer said soothingly, with the rustling of bedclothes. She sounded a lot less tired, now. After a couple of moments there was the click of a door.

"Uh. Troy, you still there, sweetie?"

Troy swallowed uncomfortably. He looked down at his stomach, which suddenly hurt, clenching in on itself almost visibly. He settled his left hand, his artificial hand, over his midsection. It twisted up a little more.

"Troy? I, uhm. Andy's just, uhm..."

The fear in her voice was almost a tangible thing. Troy lunged forward, snatching up the phone. His thumb hovered over the disconnect button. Hovered there. Maybe he could just delete it. Delete the last minute or so. 

"It's nothing serious," she whispered, voice close to breaking. "Just. Just me, ah, being..." She choked back on her words. "He's gone in the morning, anyway. I didn't want you to find out, uhm... God, not like that. I don't mean it like that. I was just all alone last night, and he... I... Oh God. Troy? Troy? Are you still there?"

He dabbed at his eyes with his free hand, wiping away the threatening tears. "I did say it's okay with me," he whispered hoarsely. "I'll deal with it."

"I'm sorry, Troy. It's just..." A pause. "Can I pick you up from the airport tomorrow?" Her voice had a little forced cheerfulness.

Troy tried to smile a little. He found he couldn't. "Uh, no. Dallas said he was picking me up."

"Oh." Her voice fell again. "Troy I just.. I..." The pain in her voice hurt. It hurt a lot. Staring at the caller icon, her smiling face in the sunshine, hurt too.

"You warned me, about the open relationships and all," Troy said, wiping at his nose with a wrist. "You said when we met. Open relationships right?" He tried not to let the sniffles get into his voice. "I mean, if you want me to, I mean... I can crash with Philadelphia, I think, so you can-"

"No, no no," Jennifer interrupted. "I, Troy, I, I'd really like it if you'd stay with me again." There was a heartbreaking pause, the total silence of a mute button. When her voice returned a half moment later she sounded on the verge of tears. "You don't have to if you don't want to, but, uhm. If you want to you can. Or we could just meet for lunch somewhere. I really want to see you."

There's some guy called Andy in her bed. Right now. Maybe when we're done talking they'll start fucking again, like we used to.

Troy didn't like the words he was using in his head. 

"Troy?"

"I'm trying to think," he offered, voice tight. 

"Okay," she replied. 

Maybe he was some big human guy. Putting his hands on her fur the way Troy had. Feeling her warmth like Troy had, whispering into her slightly pointed ears, kissing her. Except the pink or brown flesh of a human hand on her thighs didn't look right in Troy's head. Because the hands on those thighs, stroking the tiger-stripes crawling up her leg, should be black furred. Like Troy's. 

There was a pause with the mute button again. "What're you thinking, Troy?" she asked afterward, voice shaking.

Troy stared down at the phone in his hands, trying not to rock back and forth, staring at those pretty green eyes he'd taken a picture of the trip before last, when she'd met him outside the conference hall during the lunch intermission.

The silence dragged on, an acid thing in his gut, until he found himself whispering, "Remember a couple of months back, when you met me for lunch and I told you about the corporate guy who kept mixing me up with Oslo and Denver?"

"Yeah. You took my picture."

He stroked her image lightly with his thumb, making the icon shift through the picture sequence he had set up for her. "I don't know anyone who smiles so pretty as you do."

"You have a pretty nice smile too," she whispered back.

"Maybe that Tyrel's, at like, uh, ten?" he offered hesitantly. 

"Ten," she agreed.

"Love you," he said, wishing he hadn't.

Don't say it back. Not with that guy there. Not with your fur probably still damp with his sweat, his kisses. From sleeping with him. But she wouldn't. She never did. 

Her breath caught as she tried to say something, failed. "I, uh. I'll see you at ten."

The call died, switched off from her end. The icon blanked and stole away the pretty femme's smiling face.

After awhile the phone's illumination died.

"Go back to sleep, Andy," he repeated to himself.

She'd sounded so caring.

*

//: City of San Iadras, 'Furry' district.

"But I can't figure out what that means," Dallas sighed, leaning over the car's control panel, chin on the backs of his hands while watching the traffic rush by. 

Troy hadn't been concentrating. He'd been thinking about other things. He shifted in the car's seat, twitching out his tail behind him through the gap in the seats. It was so damn hot down here. 

The little car Dallas shared with Florence didn't have much by way of air conditioning, either. They were used to it, but this morning Troy'd felt like his tail was freezing off and now his sinuses were feeling cloggy. And he hadn't slept on the plane, either, because he'd been thinking.

Dallas looked up, settling back from the various readouts and flexing the seat belt. "What do you think?"

Troy put a hand to his forehead tiredly. "Uh, what's your data set again?"

Dallas reached up, scratching behind an ear briefly, picking at his T-shirt. "Uh. Well nothing I can quantify too easily. She smiles a lot, which just makes me all... fluttery inside. And whenever I can make it out to one of her shows she adores it, sometimes afterwards she, uh..." Dallas stammered, flicking his head back awkwardly. "Anyway. Now all this has happened and I don't know what to think."

Troy had a weird sensation that he'd been the one speaking, so he remained silent, staring at his brother, his exact clone. Except that Dallas was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, while Troy was still wearing his clothes from Minnesota and quietly baking in the heat, even with his cruddy old jacket thrown off. 

Troy dry swallowed, glancing at the road ahead, staring blankly at an animated ad on the back of a bus for a second. He didn't really want clearer skin. It was covered in fur anyway. 

"Troy?"

"Sorry, uh, what happened with Nadine?"

Dallas shrugged. "Just ever since I told her Saigon's getting married she's been really, uhm." He frowned, biting his lip. "Weird. She kinda suggested we should move in together, but I live with Florence and I don't know how that's gonna work, and..." He scratched behind his ear with a sigh. "I can't figure it out."

Troy leaned over, patting his brother's shoulder. "It's alright. One way or the other, things will work out with Nadine."

"Yeah but I'm worried about Florence. I don't wanna move out, I mean..." Dallas grimaced. "He's used to getting his teaching notes prepared on Thursdays when I cook for us and if I move out then he's gonna have to change his schedule and everything."

Troy smiled vaguely, slumping back into the seat on his side of the car. "Florence will sort something out. Maybe Nadine could move in with you and Florence, rather than you moving out."

"That'd be... weird too." Dallas sighed, glancing down at the car's map. He looked up after a moment. "Sorry, I'm just blathering. You okay, Troy?"

Troy hesitated. Dallas was already worried enough about Nadine and Florence and probably about the wedding tomorrow too. Troy made himself smile reassuringly. "Yeah. Just worried about fuel chains. Gotta figure something out for a reliable buildup reaction sequence."

"Oh." Dallas reached up with a hand, covering his mouth while staring blankly at the road ahead. He pointed abruptly. "I think that's the turnoff," he said, before biting at his nails. There was a lot of traffic. The ETA counter on the car's screen kept showing a larger number with 'delays'. Troy wished the clock on the dash would stop moving. He was going to be late, and he still felt cramps in his tail from the plane seats.

"What's the end sequence you're looking at?" Dallas asked, looking away from the road.

"Hydrogen to helium then jump to beryllium and maybe carbon," Troy sighed, pinching his fingers across the bridge of his snout. "And, uh..."

"Well, I've got some numbers on red giant cores you can take a look at if you want, though the temperatures and pressures required are kinda high."

"That's not a problem, Greg's reactor uses a couple of Maxwell's nano-arrays to keep the pressures constant, the problem comes in with getting the initial mass of Unbiquadium to reliably spark off a triple-alpha process, but, uhm." Troy squeezed his eyes shut.

He was having trouble concentrating on the science of it. Because he was thinking about something else. Correction. Someone else.

The railing was hot underneath his elbows. Troy shifted a little, but kept leaning on the rail, there on the canyon's side. He stared across at the other terraced levels on the other side of the wide central gap, squinting a little against the light prisms pouring in sunshine from just over the street level. It'd be a little cooler near the bottom floors, given that it was nearly a hundred feet underground, but he couldn't go and walk down yet.

He checked his wristwatch, swallowing grimly. Eight past ten. He glanced around again, then leaned over to peer down at the garden pod hanging over the middle levels, its pretty green vines hanging down to be pleasing to shoppers' eyes. In the early mornings it was up higher, next to the railing here. He'd had breakfast beside it once, earlier that year.

For a couple of minutes he wondered if maybe his watch was still set to the time zone he'd just left, San Iadras was an hour or so ahead. Maybe he was early, maybe Dallas had gotten the time wrong when he'd asked. When he checked his wristwatch he saw it'd updated itself to the local time zone, but made it refresh anyway, just in case. He glanced up and down the walkway. He could only see humans for the most part, though there were a couple of red furred folks walking down one of the pedestrian access points from the streets above. He couldn't tell if they were actual furs or just body-mods from this distance.

Troy dry swallowed, settling back on the railing, flicking his tail from side to side. His pants were too hot, he'd already taken down the top two buttons on his collar and rolled up his sleeves. His feet hurt. He'd been waiting ten minutes now, and actually a whole hell of a lot more hurt right now than just his feet. 

He thought he caught sight of her, just on the floor below, a couple of dozen feet away as she wound through the growing crowds. The colours were right. A tawny yellow-brown canid-like femme, long red hair, stepping briskly along. But the way she walked wasn't quite right. Troy stared after her for awhile anyway, comparing her to Jennifer. Same height. Same features, same stunning body. The bikini top she wore didn't hide any of her curves, nor the tiger-stripes running up her back. But the purse she carried wasn't one Troy'd seen with Jennifer, the sight of her made him feel only a kind of wistful longing rather than the mad thudding of his heart he always felt when he saw Jennifer. The shade of her hair was a little different, too. Only a little, though.

He watched her move along, leaning forward to see her duck into a speciality shoe store, carrying ones made for furry feet.

Just another of Jennifer's hundred and fifty or so sisters. 

What was it old Fred Rodney had said the last time he'd come down here? Break up and how many sisters were there to try your luck with?

Troy pulled back from the railing, gripping it tight with both hands, trying to keep his breathing stable. He didn't want to try his luck with any of the rest. None of Jennifer's sisters would sit up on the phone saying soothing things after one of his nightmares. They hadn't wiped snot and vomit from his mouth when he'd had one that made him physically ill. None of them had held his hand on a park bench while they fed the birds, whispered soft nothings in his ear.

Because he'd only ever done that with one of the clone group TLC-Zero-A. Jennifer. The one with the individual number thirty-one thirteen tattooed into her gums with genedyes. One night she'd shown him, and he'd joked that 'TLC' must stand for tender loving care. She'd laughed, it meant thylacine, of course. 

He'd shown her his tattoo in turn, pulling at his lip until she could see the mark in the flesh of his gums. Something he'd never done before. Ever. She'd asked what BLM stood for, he'd explained the 'L' stood for lab, that he'd originally been derived from a model subspecies of lab mice.

She hadn't said anything about his individual number being thirteen, and hers being thirty-one thirteen. He hadn't either. He'd just kissed her.


Wedding Mouse



But maybe she'd seen those numbers, a little different, tattooed there in someone else's gumline. She'd dated Monaco once, he recalled, but Monaco had never said a thing about it. Monaco had shut off from his brothers entirely years ago, going off into eastern Europe to pick through archaeological digs.

Of course that wasn't Jennifer's fault. It couldn't be. Monaco had only truly withdrawn after Osaka died. After all the pain and confusion. But maybe there was some wise old fox who once told Jennifer, 'Hell. Break up, and how many more brothers are there to try your luck with?'

The thought made Troy whimper.

Monaco was coming into town for the wedding, uncharacteristically. Maybe Troy could ask him about it. Yeah. Dig up your brother's old wounds to make yours even deeper. That'd be a smart move.

Maybe he should call. Or just let her go, try and forget, go downstairs to Fred's little bar and drink himself senseless. Maybe... Maybe just do something, anything, he thought, pulling out his phone and staring at it.

There were a lot of people around, walking by. Troy rubbed his left wrist lightly with the back of his phone, looking around in case she was somewhere nearby and hadn't seen him yet. He wasn't dressed right for the weather. People would think he was weird, weirder than he was for being a fur. He checked his phone, his wristwatch, wishing one of them would tell him it wasn't quarter past ten.

He sighed and settled back against the rail, letting his tail flick out into the open air. He keyed on the phone's link to his workstation back up in Minnesota and squinted down at the small display. Eventually he pulled up the reactor simulator and started shuffling around virtual atoms with his fingertips for the next run. But his heart wasn't in it.

He took Germanium and stuck it in next to a couple of nitrogen atoms. He put in one each of Iodine and Iron, and bit his lip. He couldn't think of anything with just 'R' as a symbol, so he traded out the Iron for Fluorine and stuck in an Iridium atom on the end. Ge N N I F Ir. 

"What're you playing?" asked a familiar voice.

There she stood, out of breath, wearing a forced smile. Jennifer. Sandy-furred and red-haired and the most beautiful thing he'd lain eyes on today, limping a little on her strappy high heeled shoes. She was wearing a short blue skirt and green top, though the slight shading dye applied around her eyes was still wet. She hadn't put on any lipstick yet, either.

"It's not a game." Troy guiltily keyed off the workstation connection, shoving his phone back into a pocket. "Just, uh, some work stuff."

"Sorry I'm late, I, I got caught up," she explained, slinging her purse over one shoulder.

Troy felt his gut churn. He hesitated, going so far as to button the pocket down over his phone, glancing away awkwardly. Because he knew that if he looked at her, he'd wonder who she'd kissed last. Who she'd looked at with those dazzling green eyes, how she'd looked at them. How she'd gotten caught up with them, been late.

Her fingers caught his chin. Gently forced him to look up. 

Jennifer smiled at him. "Hi." Her smile didn't seem forced at all now. It still made his heart go a little faster. She ducked her head forward and kissed him lightly on the nose. 

He dry swallowed after a moment.

"This is where you say hi, back," she prompted.

Troy bowed his head self-consciously. "Hi," he said. He scuffed his foot against the tiled ground, adding sheepishly, "back."

Her smile made it worth it. The way her eyes sparkled with unvoiced laughter. "You big silly. You want some coffee?"

He nodded slowly, smiling back a little.

"Come on. You look awful. Didn't you get any sleep?" Jennifer offered out a hand.

He stuck his hands into his pockets, stepping up alongside, but not taking her hand. Not yet, anyway. "Just been thinking."

"About?"

"Crazy little molecule I was trying to model."

"Mhmm?" She stepped beside him towards an empty table, one of the few. "What's it made up of?"

"Germanium, Iridium." He shrugged a little. "Things with it seem pretty complex right now. I really don't know what's going to happen."

Jennifer smiled again, letting it crawl up the side of her muzzle. "Well. You'll figure something out, Troy. I'm glad you're thinking about work, I was... Kind of worried."

"No, uh." Troy didn't quite meet her gaze. "I'll be okay. So what was that coffee you had last time? I think I'll try that."

Jennifer was excited about a new play they were putting on at the Spirit of '67. Something based on old science fiction. Somebody's island. It was about vivisection, though, and she didn't mention much, knowing how Troy felt about it. Even so, she really was worried. She bit her lip when she didn't think he was looking.

Then again, those long searching gazes she gave him meant he was showing something, too. She didn't bother stopping him when he started a drawn out explanation of a fuel chain mix for mass production, fusing loose helium and hydrogen to heavier elements to start building them up towards more unstable artificial ones, using fission reactions to try and get enough free particles and a high enough energy state developed for heavy elements to fuse, temporarily, into Unbiquadium. Usually she stopped him, asked for explanation or a simplified version. Not today.

Today she just took tiny, tiny sips of her coffee and watched his eyes, which he found distracted by the Tyrel's ads on the tablecloth. The little sprite pointed eagerly at each of their brunch specials. Troy wasn't sure he could keep down more than the coffee.

"So, uh, yeah," he finished, taking a swallow of his coffee. "Greg's going to try and run some of the lab's equipment off his reactor later, so even if we screw up selling it we can still save some money for the physics department."

She leaned over the table, putting both of her hands over his right hand, her fingers gentle. "What're you going to be doing?"

"After I develop a fuel solution, pretty much nothing. Hopefully I can use the results to back up my thesis, if I get it done fast enough."

Jennifer squeezed his hand. 

He trailed off, and stared at those pretty hands covering his. He moved his left hand over hers, just resting there. Just to press it a little closer to his, so he could feel the flex of her fur. He could be that selfish, it was okay. He just wanted to feel her fur.

He let his head droop a little more. His eyes ached, kind of itched, as if he'd been crying. He hadn't been. Not in public, anyway, just in the plane's bathroom for fifteen minutes during the flight.

"You okay?" she whispered, voice soft, the way it was when they were alone.

He shook his head a little. "I thought it was going to be no broken hearts."

"This is why getting possessive is bad," Jennifer replied, pulling one of her hands back so she could pick up her mug. She lightly rubbed at the side of his knuckle with her thumb, a gentle little scratching. 

When Troy looked up, she was staring away, at nothing, at something else. Anything else. She wasn't smiling anymore.

"I fucked it up, didn't I?" she asked, blinking. She drew her hand out from between his, started wiping at her wet eyes before her eye shadow streaked.

"Fucked what up?" Troy asked, closing his hands over each other. He missed the friction of her thumb, the weight of her hand on his. 

"You and me."

Troy didn't reply immediately. First he folded over his napkin, offering it out to her despite the blurring in his own eyes.

Jennifer took the white square, pressed it to her face. She grimaced at the tan dye that seeped into the disposable fabric. She squeezed her eyes shut then, lifting the napkin to cover her mouth. "I mean, I warned you. I'm just... I mean." She paused for breath, staring away again, at the shining light prisms lighting up the canyon. Her shoulders shook as she drew breath, then shuddered. "I'm not a slut or anything," she whispered hoarsely. 

He reached up and scratched at his cheek awkwardly, chewed on his lip.

"You don't think of me like that, do you?" She reached up, brushing at her eyes with the napkin again. Her eyelashes looked almost dewy. 

"No." Troy shut his eyes a moment, sniffled at the back of one of his hands. He couldn't find any words for it, just waved a hand, It didn't so much buy him time as make him look like a spastic freak, he thought. "I'm just, uhm." He dry swallowed. "Confused."

His stomach churned again, and the words dried up in his throat. He picked up his cup of coffee, staring down at the little Tyrel's ad while taking a sip. More bitter than usual. He glanced up, noticed one of the waiters lingering at the doors, staring.

"I'm sorry, Troy, I didn't meant to hurt you, I just..." The sides of her mouth quirked up a little. Just for a second, before she covered her eyes with her hands, unable to get her palms over her trembling lips too.

Troy watched her for a couple of moments before he couldn't bear it. "I, I gotta..." He got so far as straightening his back to stand before he fell back onto the stool, crumpling like a wet paper bag. He bit his lip hard, trying not to notice how people were staring. 

She lowered her hands, covering her muzzle with the back of a hand for a moment. Streaks of dye were running down her fur, discolouring her cheeks a little. "You gotta what?" Jennifer asked, eyes wide. 

Find a way for you to stop crying. Make you smile again. Run far, far away because I hurt so much seeing you, thinking about your hands on someone else.

Troy folded his arms tightly, bowing his head, wrapping his tail around his legs. "I, uhm." One breath. Two breaths. "Uhm."

Jennifer glanced around, blinked. Had she recognized one of the passerby glancing their way? "Come on, Troy. Let me get you out of here," she offered, fishing through her purse before tapping her card against the table's centrepiece. "We can go home, and we can just calm down, and... and maybe have another coffee or something." She got to her feet first, glancing side to side quickly. "Where's your suitcase?" she asked, holding out a hand in front of him, open wide so he could slip his into hers.

He didn't "Dallas's got it. Philadelphia's putting up Orleans 'and Dakar 'n Boston so I'll just get Dallas and Florence to make some space for me on their couch tonight. And I can't. The guys are waiting for me. Saigon's bachelor party."

Her hand looked so empty. Finally she let it drop down to her side. "Oh," she replied softly. The fur across her throat shifted a little. "Maybe you should go. Have some fun. Get it out of your system with some girls." Her face was unreadable. 

"Not that kind of party," Troy replied. "His fiancée's there."

She tugged her purse around, fidgeting with it. "What kind of bachelor's party is this?" she blurted, relief in her stressed voice.

"What kind would you expect for my brothers? They're just like me." He dry swallowed. "Wanna come? It's just downstairs at Fred's."

It was thrilling. Troy couldn't keep her eyes off her. First a little left, then right. It was beautiful watching her move under his brother's furred hands. Almost shocking the way Saigon touched her. She was in the open, exposed, but that just made it all the more thrilling. Saigon rubbed his fingers, not willing to touch her again, those beautiful curves. Troy wanted to reach out and slap his brother's hands away and take over, out of a desperate need to just lose himself in the moment.

But he wouldn't. It'd be improper.

Saigon finally picker her up, used her base to knock over the knight, set her down, and tapped the chess clock. "Mate," he added after an uncertain moment, staring at the board. "Queen takes knight."

Philadelphia smoothed down his suit's tie, having taken off from work early, and grimly hunched over the board. "I was hoping you wouldn't do that."

"Mhmm." Saigon grinned across the table.

Fred's bar was almost entirely silent but for the party guests, closed off to the public today. No music, nice and quiet. There were another four games in progress, Dallas and Dakar, Boston and Orleans, Florence and his friend Tim, Turin and Monaco.

Nagoya and Oslo wouldn't be here until their flights landed tonight, Sydney wasn't coming until tomorrow and Denver was sleeping off jet lag, so Troy was the odd mouse out right now, no game to play. He bit his lip lightly, glancing over at Turin making his move, wishing he could join in. He slumped down, folding his arms on the table and put his chin down on them, listening to the quiet hubbub of conversation from the ladies clustered around another table with their drinks.

"I mean, this is really a bachelorette party?" he heard Jennifer ask. "Bachelor party, whatever?"

"Compared to nights at the research station, this is times square, sister!" Anne laughed a little, she was a tall human girl with tattoos flowing down her bare arms, brunette and built with a little extra weight.

Nadine laughed too, a grey tabby girl, with a different physique to her sister Therese, who for once was out of her waitress's clothes. Their faces were almost identical, but Nadine was a dancer, her limbs thin and graceful. Therese wasn't so toned. 

"It's kind of nice, actually. Dallas never likes it when we go out on the town, so, I'm happy to see him enjoying himself," Nadine said, glancing their way. "Isn't Troy the same way?"

Jennifer perked an eyebrow. "Hm?"

"You're his girlfriend, right?" 

Troy caught the way her ear tips tilted away from each other, tense. "Why else would I be here?" she laughed, nervously, picking up her drink. A quick sip and she added, "He's not in town all that often. All that fancy research work, you know?"

"Yeah, Saigon's like that, really distant when he's busy fixing the ice drones, or the lighting, or whatever," Anne agreed. 

"Huh." Troy glanced up, trying to work out who'd spoken. It was Turin, scratching at the side of his replacement eye while staring at the board. It didn't look good for Monaco, he'd left a bishop alone and unprotected. "Why'd you go and do that?"

Monaco settled back down, deliberately keeping his eyes on the chessboard, tail lashing out behind him. "Thinking."

"Work?" Turin asked quietly, looking over the pieces. 

Monaco offered a vague shrug. "Yeah."

Troy dry swallowed. He slipped back off his open-backed chair. "I'm going to get a drink. You guys want anything?" 

"Nah." A shrug here, the shake of a head there. 

Tim, a skinny human guy Troy hadn't met before Florence introduced them, looked up. "Ah, Pina Colada?"

Troy offered a vague smile. "Sure thing." He moved over towards the bar, giving the women a wide berth. Three or four from the research station were talking amongst themselves, a couple of errant friends and girlfriends. It wasn't much of a party, Troy knew, ducking his gaze so he wouldn't have to make eye contact with Jennifer.

"Y'know, Fred's got Karaoke software on the screen there," Therese said with a little grin.

"Oh really," laughed one of the research station girls. 

Anne grinned. "You wanna go boot that up for us? Lemme go and see if the boys have any requests."

Troy moved behind the bar, looking over the unfamiliar equipment. He dry swallowed. He didn't really want anything to drink. 

Anne draped her arms over Saigon's shoulders, peering over the top of his head at the chess board. "We're playing Karaoke. You have any requests?"

"Uh... Honey?" Saigon cringed in his chair. He pointed at the board with a wince. "I'm kinda, y'know..."

Speakers squealed, hands were clapped over ears. Dallas scrunched up his nose, glaring across at the girls.

"Sorry," Nadine called out in a sing-song way.

Troy slumped down behind the bar, sitting with his back against one of the cupboards, hidden from view. He leaned his head back, listening to the girls get set up, the errant bits of conversation. Nobody'd notice him missing.

Maybe Jennifer would. Maybe he actually mattered enough to her that she'd go looking. He looked up at the ceiling, the top edge of the bar longingly. Come and rescue him, all smiles, like nothing had ever happened. Take him to her place, and it'd be just like that first time. Full of passion, her gentle breath ruffling his fur when they fell asleep together afterward.

She'd put her head over the top of the bar and smile down at him sadly, because he was a little screw-up, not like those guys she usually fucked. She'd smile a little and say, hey sweetie, like she probably did to everyone, and take him home, and fuck him so he could think he was in love, and forget all about him the next day when she was with some other guy.

Troy squeezed his eyes shut, rubbing at them with the back of his hands. It was all his fault. If he wasn't out of town all the time, didn't get so damn caught up so he'd forget what month it was, let alone day of the week... She didn't need him.

"Hey kiddo." Troy looked up shakily. It wasn't her red hair dangling there over him, just a red furred face. A fox's, kind of the right shape, but not. It wasn't her. It was just Fred.

"Hey," Troy sighed. 

"Whatcha doin' down there, man?"

Troy reached out and tapped the white door of one of the appliances. "Waiting for my beer to cool down. Just a little tired. Been up since..." Troy frowned. He couldn't remember. He'd fallen asleep by the sequencers yesterday, maybe.

"Didn't know you could cool down beer inna dishwasher."

Troy laughed a little. More just like his chest caved in on itself and he made a noise. He looked around for some other explanation, shook his head. "Yeah, takes awhile, I guess."

"You wanna step into the basement for a bit? We could sit down and have a chat. My back's killin' me, man."

Troy thought of Jennifer. Maybe a dozen feet away with the other girls. Why couldn't she have stuck her head over the bar? Come to rescue him from his own immature stupidity, hiding behind the bar like a five year old. He bit his lip.

"Yeah. Sounds good, Fred."

"Un-da-whatium?"

Troy really didn't want to be here. He wanted to be anywhere other than here. But Fred actually looked sore as he settled down, putting his cane down. His tail didn't have much fur left on it, just a couple of white puffs at the tip. His breath stank of marijuana, nicotine, something else smoky that Troy couldn't identify.

Hadn't quite kicked the cancer yet, huh Fred? No wonder.

Troy dry swallowed, pulling the latex gloves on with a snap, trying not to inhale too deeply. "Unbiquadium," he replied, pulling open the dusty old drawers. "Which goes up hot enough to get fusion going, like inside stars."

"I thought you said it was cold fusion."

"Usually it happens at a hundred million kelvins," Troy snapped irritably. "If this works we can build it safely into baby rattles if we want. It's fucking cold, alright?"

"Geez, geez, alright." Fred lifted his hands defensively. "Hey, man, I'm sorry. I know you wanna be up with your girl, but old Fred, he's hurting, you know?"

Troy didn't want to be up there. Because up there it hurt. It hurt a lot. Down here, here Troy could be angry. Angry felt better. He held out his hand, hoping his fur wouldn't poke through the latex. Maybe he could stay clean this time. "Where're the bricks, Fred? I don't want to talk."

The old fox leaned forward, putting down a couple of paper-wrapped packages on Troy's old workbench, careful not to disturb the equipment. "You're a good kid, Troy."

Troy looked down at them, biting the inside of his lip. 

"Personal use only," he said finally.

"Yeah," Fred agreed. "Can't afford anything better, I use too much to ever deal."

"What do you want?"

Fred shook his head. "Whatever drips out of the tube, Troy. Heroin, whatever. I ain't picky today. Just something to make the pain go away, huh?" He smiled desperately. "Help me get through the wedding."




Wedding Mouse



Troy unwrapped the first brick. Hard stuff, brick was a bad term. The raw opium was round. Round because they got little kids to pack it up like mud pies in Columbia after first refinement of the poppy sap. Normally it got shipped to Africa these days, got made into pseudo-legal painkillers and highs and whitewashed through national hospitals, resold.

But Fred always had a couple of bricks on hand for Troy to make into something, because Troy was a good kid. Troy was weak, Troy wanted to help Fred as a kid, had been such a dumbass as to mention that he liked chemistry.

Fred smiled vaguely, his teeth all crooked. He was a third generation fur. Built out of cobbled together gene sequences, he was even more medically unstable than Troy and his brothers. Fred hurt, Troy knew. He hurt a lot, real physical pain because of the cancers he kept getting. God awful pain, but Fred never screamed or wept unless there wasn't anyone around to hear. Just late at night when he thought he wouldn't wake anyone, when Troy and his brothers shouldn't have been around.

Fred who'd helped Troy and his brothers get back on their feet after they got dumped out of the orphanage. Fred who'd put them through the last years of high school.

Fred who was making Troy cook up drugs in his basement during Saigon's bachelor party.

Troy just wanted to play chess. All he wanted to do was play chess and forget about Jennifer for awhile. That's all.

"I'll just, uh, let you get to it, huh?"

Troy nodded finally. "Yeah. Let me get to it."

Troy waited until Fred was gone before letting himself cry, cry and chop up the goddamn opium and turn it into bad heroin with the fast catalysts Troy'd been so proud of designing in high school so that Fred could stick it in his veins and laugh his god awful laugh again, instead of being in pain.

His tears kept getting in the way. That was okay. It made the brick easier to cut.

Troy could barely keep his eyes open. He slumped his head back against the wall of the little maintenance corridor behind the canyon fronts, lit perky white with neon lamps and with the scent of a dump because of all the garbage that got hauled through here.

He picked up his beer bottle by the neck and took a swig. It didn't help much. He could still hear her singing along to the music.

"My baby's lost downtown," he whispered along to the whispers through the vents, "where's he gawn," he drawled, twisting the word 'gone' to mimic the weird accent Jennifer was singing with, back in the bar. He couldn't sing as nicely as Jennifer. She really had the voice for it, all sultry, seductive. His was just squeaks and choking and sobs right now.

He pushed his head back against the plasticized wall, ears scrunching up against it. Got worse every time he twisted his head uncomfortably. After awhile he couldn't make out her singing, wished he'd listened a little more carefully while Jennifer had been at the microphone.

Then he heard Fred's laughter, loud and happy. Loud and doped up. Having the time of his fucking life with the first dregs of crappy heroin, just barely cleaned up enough not to poison him because Troy didn't give a shit anymore. Or at least Troy wished that he didn't. Troy wished a lot of things, like maybe that he'd saved a little to stick into his own veins. Maybe it'd help the hurt go away, let him picture something other than her hands caressing another man's face.

Troy looked at his beer bottle and tossed it aside at the trash pile. It landed with a gentle scrunch of plastic garbage bags and a clink of glass, not a satisfying smash like he'd wanted.

He shut his eyes against the fluorescent lighting, but couldn't make it go away. He wanted a nap, but he'd just wake up with the damn nightmares as soon as he dropped into REM sleep. Hour and a half and bang. It was like a goddamn clock.

He still felt too hot, his stomach hurt. He looked up at the light again miserably, head aching. Why did he call her this morning? If he hadn't none of this would've happened. He could just blithely live in ignorance and maybe have skipped the party with her, avoided Fred's mess.

After a long while his mouth felt dry. Maybe another few beers would help him forget. He got up tiredly and went back into the bar. It was mostly empty. Dallas and Nadine were standing by the door, Dallas with his head down, waiting for Nadine to finish rearranging her shoulder bag.

Troy cleared his throat. "Where is everybody?"

"Taking a break before we hit the park this evening. Fred's upstairs," Dallas offered. 

Troy couldn't help but glance up at the narrow office window. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. He got an, uhm..." Dallas frowned, biting his lip uncertainly. 

Nadine laughed a little and stepped in. "He hired a stripper for Saigon. You should've seen his face, Troy!" Nadine grinned. "She didn't even finish unbuttoning her shirt before he freaked out!"

Not out of character for the old fox. "So Fred's upstairs with her now, huh?"

"Yup," Dallas said with an uncomfortable nod.

"Just like old times," Troy said, trying to laugh. He couldn't.

The silence dragged on a bit, and Dallas put his arm around Nadine, and Troy looked away. "See you at the park later, huh?"

"Ah, okay." Dallas shrugged, stepping out with Nadine, leaving Troy alone in the bar.

Troy glanced back at the fridges. He wasn't all that thirsty anymore. 

He heard the click of high heels from behind him, glanced back down the short back room corridor. Jennifer stepped out of the kitchen, shutting the door. She looked up, saw him. Smiled. Broke his heart.

"Hey. I was wondering where you'd gotten to." She slowly stepped forward in her high heels. She tottered a little, a little drunk, maybe. Or her high heels were uncomfortable.

He dry swallowed. "New shoes?"

"Yeah," she replied. "I wanted to, uhm. You know, look nice."

Troy nodded quietly, settling back against the bar. "You do," he offered quietly. "But they must be iffy to stand in."

She nodded in turn, looking down at them, the little faux-leather black straps. "I thought you might like them," she whispered distractedly.

He did. They made her calves seem a little curvier. But he didn't say anything, just swallowed down air. "Everybody's going to go down to the park tonight," he finally said. "Going to have a family picnic."

"Which park?"

"Gordon's Park."

Jennifer frowned at him suddenly. "The cemetery?"

He nodded. "Kind of a tradition when something good happens." He leaned back, kicked at the flooring with the toe of his shoe.

"You okay, Troy?"

He shook his head a little before he knew what he was doing. He'd meant to say 'yes'. 

"What's wrong?" She tightened her smile a little. Realized what she'd said and shut her eyes, smile tightening uncomfortably. "Besides. That."

Troy blinked hard.

I want someone to hold me and make it better. To make this morning go away, to make today go away, to just...

"I just need a little space, Jennifer." Troy whimpered. "I can't look at you without it hurting right now."

The tip of Jennifer's snout dropped, pointed down at the ground. She pulled her purse from her shoulder, slipped her gentle fingertips over the handle, squeezed.

With a flick of her hair she looked away, up over a shoulder. She twisted around uncertainly, far enough that her scarlet hair slipped back from behind her shoulder, errant tresses falling over her collar, down the neck line.

"I guess I deserve that."

No she didn't. Troy twisted, settling a hand over his stomach, because it hurt. "I just need a walk."

"You need a walk," she repeated without looking at him, nodding. "And then maybe, maybe we could forget about things and I can take you home..." She ground her hands around the handle of her purse.

"I don't know about that," Troy swallowed. "Not yet, anyway."

She twisted her lips down, ears flat back against her red hair, tail shuddering. "You take your damn walk, Troy."

*

//: City of San Iadras, 'Midtown' district.

Troy didn't walk.

He ran.

He ran until his legs ached and his feet were tender. He ran so he didn't have to think about more than how much his feet hurt. He ran to feel the way the air flapped his rounded ears back with each lurching stride, feel the pain when his hairless tail smacked the concrete because he hadn't held it high enough.

His shoes, dumb old mass produced sneakers he'd bought off a street vendor a year or two back, weren't really made for his feet. The soles clapped into the ground with a jarring pain, squeezing down across his toes and pinching the collagen implants that gave him heels, something resembling a human foot shape.

He wheezed for breath at street crossings, grabbed the walkway rails and pulled himself downstairs through an underpass. The huffing of his breath filled his ears and the dumb slap-slap of his shoes echoed off the concrete walls. People stared at him, all out of breath and wheezing. He tried not to notice, just stared at the rapid flashing images of the adverts he ran by, trying to make the pictures in his head go away.

His legs ached, his tail hurt enough that he'd wondered if he'd fractured the tip, but he didn't stop running until he reached the stairs on the other side of the underpass. He doubled over when he reached the top, sticking his hands on his knees and sucking down breath after breath, heart hammering at his ribcage. Every breath was painful. He hadn't run like this for years. He blinked at his shadow, its goofy rounded ears, the tail sticking out the back of his pants.

The sunshine was bright today.

One time she'd told him her favourite part of the beach was the sunshine.

She'd smiled. Her scent had been dry and dusky, uniquely her. 

He'd been afraid to kiss her, uncertain of how, whether or not he should. If she'd reject him or not. She kissed him first, nuzzled her head into his shoulder, put her arms around him. Took all his fear away.

And then she'd found someone else.

His tears hit the concrete and dried away to nothing.

Troy turned around and practically fell, sitting on the steps, slouching over to put his face in his hands and weep, quiet as he could. Maybe the pedestrians going by and staring, almost all human, would think he was just out of breath. Maybe by some miracle they wouldn't see how much it hurt.

Troy remembered when he'd met Jennifer. She was kind. Accepted him into her life, into her bed. Made him feel good about himself, made love with him. He'd had a nightmare, woke up unable to do more than scream and wail and throw up. And she'd put a towel to his face and wiped away his vomit, held and told him sweet stories until he stopped shaking and held her again.

Then she'd gotten back onto that stage she danced on some weekend nights, took her clothes off and sang a little, or exposed herself to a crowd, or went so far as to masturbate while talking about crazy things like love and how a guy could touch her in some magic way and it'd make her all soft inside, like she was a girl in a fairytale and she'd found out what it meant to live happily ever after.

Why couldn't he be the happily ever after? Why? He stared down at his shoes. His shoes that hurt. Maybe if he ran again they'd hurt enough to make the other hurt stop. He didn't get up and run, though.

He knew enough not to run from police.

The cop in the uniform, who'd stepped into the underpass just to see why anyone would just sit there, stuffed a bulky sniffer unit back onto his belt. "Identification, please."

"Uh..." Troy blinked up at the police officer in his corporate logo embossed uniform. He clutched his hands together and let his head fall. "Troy Salcedo. Individual number thirteen," he replied, getting out his wallet slowly.

The cop slapped it down on top of his wrist console. "Okay. And why were you in contact with opiate derivatives, Mr. Salcedo? You've had four charges for temporary possession of section two drugs previously. Do you have some kind of explanation?" 

Troy squeezed his eyes shut. "It hurts."

"You're using painkillers? Do you have a prescription?"

"No." His breath shuddered, thinking about Fred. Fred and his goddamn stripper. "I don't. Are you going to arrest me this time?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Turn left."

Troy did, shuffling around in his goddamn shoes that hurt, eyes fixed to the floor. 

"Look forward," the officer said, flicking a light pointer against the wall.

He lifted his head, stared at the institutional blue wall. The camera snapped, like one of the automated medical examiners from his childhood. 

"Face front," the officer told him, and Troy turned to face the camera.

His wrists hurt in the cuffs they'd shoved on him. More the right wrist, though. The left one didn't hurt all that much. He twisted his hands while waiting, staring blurrily at the camera lens. Small and shiny. Like surgical eye protection.

Another snap. Another turn, another snap. Troy looked down, expecting the hiss of pneumatics for his blood to be taken, like when he was a kid in the labs and they'd given him a medical exam. Thank God, that didn't happen. Not right away.

The officer's hands were unfriendly, covered in latex gloves. No kind explanation of what was to come. No concern for his rights as a sentient being. No nothing, just rough hands on his face, tugging at his lips.

He struggled half-heartedly, backing up against the wall, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to make it go away. Trying to think of something other than medical exams as dry gloved fingers probed his mouth, pulled his lip up and dragged him back in front of the camera, dragged him back there so they could all see the tattoo on him, the letters etched into his mouth because he wasn't one of them, wasn't human.

Was an animal. The animal they dragged back out of the photography room when they were done prodding him, only for them to start up again in the search area. They took away his wallet, his phone, left him standing in the tight plastic cuffs while they looked him over in a backscatter camera, trying to find drugs he didn't have.

He could see his image reflected on the window, amorphous surfaces that made him look like he was naked on there.

Except it was more than naked. The fuzz of his fur was stripped away to leave the coloured melanges of scars, all the Goddamn scars his fur hid. Sharp cuts across his torso from surgery, over his throat and good hand and feet where they'd helped remake him out of the genetic specimen they'd started with.

It revealed all the scars. Even the memories of pain and screaming and blood and the way the cold, cold disinfectant showers stung.

"Hey, look at this," one of the cops said, pointing up at the screen. Someone shoved his shoulder, turned his face to the wall while they stared at the circuits under his skin, through his back and spine. The circuits they put into him at the lab, cutting into him without anaesthetic so they wouldn't miss which nerve they spliced the wires into.

Actually they had used anaesthetic. On his larynx, so he couldn't scream. He didn't scream now, though. Not even when they tugged at his left hand, found the catch and pulled it off his arm, making his stomach spasm, made the god awful sick feeling come into him in one electric jolt.

They pushed him against the wall again and hurt his shoulder while they cut open the cuffs, took his hand away, left him a stump of pink scars and sockets. He didn't scream, though. He was proud that he didn't scream when they stuck needles in his arm and pulled out his blood. Didn't make any noise at all. At least not on the outside.

He didn't answer them when they wanted to know where he'd come into contact with drugs. He couldn't. Or Saigon would find out about Fred. Fred who'd helped pay for the wedding. Kindly old Fred and his crooked teeth. They told him they'd scanned him and found raw opiate particles on his fur, not just scents. Threatened him with all kinds of felony charges. But there wasn't anything in his blood, and he didn't say a thing, so they couldn't charge him with more than temporary possession.

Eventually they gave him a phone call. Shoved him in front of a console with his contact list, the names of all the people he worked with and cared about ripped out of his phone and put on the screen.

"If you know someone who will sign your bail for you, Mr Salcedo, now is the time to call them," the officer advised, pointing at the list.

A cross for Turin. A steer for Dallas, an icon for each of his brothers who he couldn't let know, because they'd work it out about Fred. About Fred who they admired, Fred who they could still look up to.

There were the contact codes for some of his co workers, one of the students back in Minnesota. But he didn't look at those long. Because her face was there, in this awful place. Her beautiful smiling face, a tiny icon on the console. He couldn't help touching her face. She looked so far away.

"This is Jennifer." He pulled away in shock at the sound of her voice. "My phone's off, so, you know what that means." 

What? What did it mean, that she'd learned to switch off her phone when her new guy was asleep? Or that she was busy with him already? The tone beeped and Troy squeezed the tears out of his eyes. That's all it meant. It meant he had to leave a message, that's all. Nothing else, please, let it mean nothing more than that.

Troy pushed his forehead against the console, tears slipping down his fur. "Jennifer, I'm, uhm. I'm at the midtown police station, and, uhm." His chest shook. "I've been arrested. Saigon can't know, or it'll fuck up his wedding."

He leaned his good hand against the top of the console, rubbed at it with his thumb, like she always touched his hand. "I'm sorry. I just need someone to sign bail for me." He took a spluttering breath, shook his head. "You don't have to deal with me or anything I just..." 

The cop tapped his wristwatch.

Troy slumped against the wall beside the console, eyes squeezed shut.

"I just need you, Jen. I need you."

And then the cops switched off the line.

Shoved him into a cell. 

Left him there. Alone. 

Troy craned his head back, stared up at the tiny barred window. He couldn't see much, laying on the cell bench. Probably be a camera or two somewhere, watching him.

He rolled over onto his side, bowed his head, scraping his ear against the wall. Pulled his knees up close with his good arm, held his bad one against his body. When he'd been a kid there'd always been cameras. Watching, judging. The doctors knew everything, knew how to make him hurt by sticking their fingers in his mouth and putting needles in him.

The cops knew everything too. They were almost as good as the doctors.

They'd taken his phone, stripped out his contact list. They were probably going through the rest of his life now. They'd find most of his notes boring, except maybe the ones he kept buried in the middle of his physics reference files. All the love letters he'd tried writing Jennifer, never finished. Never deleted.

Did they have the rest of his data? His research notes? The copy of York's suicide note? Paris's unfinished book? The pictures of Jennifer she'd asked him to take one intimate morning when she'd opened the curtains wide, lain naked in the sunlight, gesturing for him to come closer, closer until she pulled him down on top of her and kissed him and made him promise he'd never forget her?

Would they figure out why the phone shook so much in his hands while he was taking those pictures, or would they just go and jack off, maybe ask her to give them a little show if she came to help?

What about that silly little picture of the note she'd left on her fridge's screen? 'Buy peanut butter, Troy's coming tomorrow.' He couldn't help taking a picture of it. Her handwriting was so beautiful. Maybe the words meant something more than that she was out of something to put on toast. Maybe it just meant he ate all her peanut butter and she wanted extra. Maybe it meant something that she'd never told him. That she loved him.




Wedding Mouse



Could they make sense of that, looking at her notes to herself?

Troy scraped at the wall with a fingernail. Would they know? Just know, like the doctors had known, what to take away from him so he'd hurt? Would they come into his room at night and take away the folded pages recording all the chess moves he'd made with his brothers? What about his sanity? Could they take that away like the doctors had, telling him that he was helping his brothers even while he cut open dead Berlin?

Or would they take Troy away this time instead of Berlin? Anaesthetize his voice again so he could only make horrible wheezes when he screamed, so it didn't hurt their ears while they cut him open and made him scream until he died and could scream no more? 

Would any of that hurt more than the way her voice had sounded, so gentle, so caring when she'd said, 'Go back to sleep, Andy'?

He was tired. And he hurt. So he closed his eyes. Just for a second.

"I did it because of Fred."

"What do you mean you did it because of Fred?" The face was black furred. A mouse. Almost his mirror image, except for the wide eyes in shock. "Why's Fred on heroin? Why are you making him heroin, Troy?" Dallas's fear. Full of Dallas's fear.

"He's in pain. Cancer."

"But he was good to us, he was..." Dallas shook. "He's not dying is he? Why's he making you do that, Troy? Fred's good, he's nice, he's..."

"He's just in pain. It's okay, I... I don't mind doing it. I mean, I shouldn't. It's so he's not in pain."

"He's fucking you over, Troy." Dallas shook his head. "He's the one guy, the one guy who did anything good for us, and..." Dallas reached into his jacket. Put the package on the table.

Neon orange.

"Dallas?"

York ripped the package open with his teeth, shaking his head. He spilled out the contents, tablets like pink candy. Licked the pad of his finger, stuck it down over one of the little pressed tablets so it stuck to his saliva. Put it to his mouth.

"York, that's rat poison."

"What's the point? She fucked some other guy," Saigon said, laughing. Like it was a joke. "Was fucking him when I was on the phone with her." He stuck another in his mouth. Blood started trickling from the tip of his nose, drooling down his snout. "Can't believe I loved the bitch."

"Saigon that's not true, Anne wouldn't do that, you have to stop!"

"But Jennifer already did it." Troy said. He pinched his nose, swallowed down another and another, so he could bleed, bleed like he was on a surgery table, let blood pour out his mouth and eyes and ears. He screamed without anybody hearing when they put the knives in. He howled in pain, wailed for them to stop and they just asked for suction to take the blood out of his mouth so that he wouldn't gurgle while-

He screamed. He opened his eyes and screamed because the ceiling was white, the walls were blue, he could see the cameras in the ceiling and he hadn't grown up, he hadn't gotten out, he was still there, still there in the labs and they wanted to hurt him.

But they couldn't hurt him, because her hands were on his chest. "Shh, baby. Shh." Her beautiful beautiful hands.

"You okay, Mr. Salcedo?"

Jennifer looked over her shoulder sharply, face stern as she looked up at the policeman. "He's okay. Would you give us a minute?"

"Sure thing ma'am."

Troy tried to sit up, found his trembling hand on hers, held it tightly over his shaking heart.

She slipped her arm around him, held him close. "Are you okay Troy?"

"No." He squeezed his eyes shut. "Please, make it stop hurting."

Jennifer leaned her head against his, rubbed at the side of his hand with her thumb gently, ruffling the fur. "Okay."

*

//: City of San Iadras, 'Uptown' district.

Jennifer pulled him through her bedroom door. Settled him on the corner of her bed and straddled him, putting her hands to his face and putting her nose against his. Stared into his eyes, so all he could see was the pretty green sparkle of hers.

"You look calmer," she said. Made it true by tilting her head just a little so she could kiss him, putting her lips against Troy's.

He wrapped his arms around her, hugged her close. Pulled away, put his head on her shoulder.

She wagged her tail a little, settling her muzzle beside his neck. She smelled flowery. Some kind of perfume. Troy missed her old smell. "Wanna fool around or something while the coffee boils?"

Troy shook his head just slightly.

"Okay." She reached up to move her hair back behind an ear, kissed his neck lightly. "We don't have to. Just... thought it might help. How're you feeling?"

"I'm scared."

"How come?" she asked, lips dragging a little in his fur.

Troy pulled back, tried to keep her gaze for a second. Failed. Found himself staring down at the white sheets of her bed. "Do you still love me?"

She glanced down at herself, shuffled back a little, more towards his knees. She flattened her skirt down over his lap as chastely as she could.

"Did you ever love me?"

"Don't be like that." Jennifer forced on another smile.

Troy sighed, let his hands slip from her back, fall to the bed beside him. He bit his lip for a second. Looked over at the wall.

Jennifer put her hands in her lap, well away from his zipper. Flicked an ear quietly.

"Thanks for getting me out of there," he offered quietly.

She lifted a hand to scratch behind an ear. Shrugged, smoothed down her hair. "I'm glad you called. I'm just sorry my phone was off."

"It's okay." Troy tried on a smile. Found he didn't like it, let his lips sag again. "Probably would've interrupted something."

"Nah." She patted his shoulder gently. "I was hoping you'd call." 

"With your phone off?"

She let her jaw go slack, glanced off at the bedroom door. Lifted a shoulder awkwardly. "You ever broken up with a girl before, Troy?"

"Uh." He felt something bad in his throat. Swallowed down on nothing but spit, trying to make it go away. "Been dumped. Once or twice."

"Then you know what it's like, waiting for her to call you. Thinking that she probably won't. Ever." Jennifer blinked a little. Stared at the floor when he didn't say anything. Nodded at the door. "I think that's the coffee."

She squirmed back off him and stepped out of her bedroom, heels of her shoes clicking as she made it out onto the tiles of her living room, quiet again when she stepped onto the rug.

Troy edged back on her bed a little, letting his tail dip over its edge, its tip still a little sore. Waited awhile, finally heard the beep of her coffee maker finishing its boil cycle. He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands. Funny, how good Jennifer's hearing was.

He heard the clink of mugs, the pouring of coffee. A coughing sound, sharp edged and tearing, high pitched like a scream, but so short, so quiet. Another, wetter. A sniffle. 

He realized why she'd been using the mute button.

She was all smiles a moment later, though, a mug in each hand. She leaned forward gently, tail lifting a little as though helping her keep balance. "Here you go."

He took the mug, shifted it to his left hand because it was hot, he didn't want to burn. "Thanks." He took a little sip while she sat down beside him. Lifted the mug with a smile. "It's good."

"Thank you." She nodded a little, as if to herself, letting her eyelids close momentarily. "I make the best damn coffee in the whole world, you know."

"You do?"

"Sure," she smiled, nudging him with her shoulder. "Where else are you going to get coffee that good?"

He took another sip, rested the mug on his knee for a moment. Smiled a little, despite himself. "Nowhere?"

"That's right," she agreed with a nod, taking a sip. She lowered the cup a little from her muzzle, tensed her fingers around the mug. Took another. Smiled. But it wasn't her smile.

He looked down at the coffee, little whorls of part-dissolved milk whirling around. Closed his eyes for a second.

She shuffled a little on the bed, leaned back and put her mug down on her bedside table. 

Troy scooted back a little, put his down next to hers.

Jennifer unwound the straps of her shoes, set them down carefully before seating herself on the bed. She crossed her legs, pulled up her ankle and tucked it down behind a knee. Set her hands on her lap, picked idly at her clawish fingernails, tiger-striped tail thumping the bed occasionally behind her.

He kicked off his shoes, his damn hurtful shoes, and lay on his side.

She smiled again. But again, it didn't make her face pretty. It just made her look sad. Sad and alone, so close where he could touch her if he wanted just by reaching out to her. Bridging that little gap. Touch her on the bed she'd been sleeping in this morning when he'd called.

She glanced down, flicked one of her ears errantly. Reached up to scratch it. "Does looking at me still hurt?"

"Only because you're not smiling."

"I am smiling. See?" She wiped her muzzle with a hand, made the corners of her mouth lift. But her eyes were sad.

Troy put a hand against his forehead, slumped back on the sheets. "When I see you smile it's the prettiest thing in the world, Jen. It makes everything bad go away." He stared up at the ceiling.

"But it doesn't do that now," Jennifer said, looking at her lap, flipping her hand over, palm down. Palm up. Palm down. "Because now you know I'm a lying bitch."

He blinked hard. Took a breath through his nose so fast it hissed.

"That I really am a slut. And that I act like a whore," she added, putting a hand over the bridge of her muzzle. "So this is how it's going to be, Troy. You're going to find out you don't love me anymore. And I'm going to find somebody like Andy to fuck, and I'll cry in the night sometimes thinking about you.

"And, uhm. You're going to think back to that girl who fucked other guys, that bitch Jennifer. And you're going to think good riddance, and get on with your life, and not hurt anymore." She let her ears droop, took a wheezing breath. Let it go in one coughing bark, all squeal and pain and fear, took a sharp breath to steady herself. "Because the other way, Troy. You're going to wonder whose cock my mouth's been around last, and whether or not it's your name I whisper to myself before I fall asleep. Then one day you'll see me on the street with another man. And then you'll find out you can't deal with it anymore, so you'll go and sleep with the first girl you can find."

Her tear hit the sheet, made the soft fabric billow down, turn dark. "Except she won't be like me, Troy. She'll be different, so you'll find another girl. And maybe she'll be nice, really great, perfect. But you'll think about that guy I was with. Wonder if this new girl isn't fucking him too. And then you'll sleep with some other girl, Troy, and another one, and another one, because you can't get me out of your head. 

"And you'll always wonder if you could've been happy with that new girl, but she'll be long gone because you were sleeping with other people." She quirked her lips up in a faltering attempt to smile. Trembled. "Then you'll know what it's like being me," she whispered.

Troy turned away, burying his face in her pillows. He thumped his tail against the sheets, clawed his fist into the pretty white sheets and dragged them up, crumpling them between his fists.

"I get naked, feel good up on that stage because guys are looking at me. They want me." She plucked at the sheets. "Some guy'll think I'm special. Any guy. And maybe he'll make me feel pretty, beautiful. And if I take him home, when the morning comes I won't have to be scared because I know he'll be gone. I know he won't think I'm a slut, because that's just how the world works. I know that I can fuck him again next week, next month, next year, and it's not going to hurt me. And I'll be special again when I do.

"But sometimes I'll wake up," Jennifer said to fill the silence, swaying her head back and forth. "And you'll be there, crying, screaming, gasping like a fish. And in that one little second, I can't do anything. I just have to watch you be in so much pain." Her voice cracked. "I can't do a damn thing except watch. And then the one thing I can do to keep you from being in pain, that one little fucking thing, I don't do. I can't keep my knees shut, because I'm a dumb whore."

Troy watched her shake, the tears fall from her eyes. "You're not." He pulled his way closer to her, dragging the rumpled sheets until he could get his arms around those trembling shoulders. "Please don't cry, Jen. Don't cry."

She shook her head, choked out a little sound. A little coughing wheeze that was everything a scream should be, tearing his heart in two, but quiet. So very quiet. "I fucked us up, Troy."

His stomach felt sick inside. But he'd do anything to get her to stop crying, to pretend for a second that he'd see her smile again one day. Do anything so that he'd never have to hear that that heart-wrenching sound again. Anything.

Even lie.

"No you didn't. We're okay," he pleaded, wiping her tears away.

She shook her head, looked up. Her eyes were damp pools, full of misery. His heart froze in his chest. "Y' mean it?" she whimpered.

"Yeah." He lied again by kissing her.

For a second there, for just a second she smiled and it didn't hurt to look at her. For just a second things were okay, and then he found himself wondering who she'd kissed. Where she'd kissed them. But she wasn't crying. 

Her neck flexed a little as she nuzzled the side of her face against his, caught his ear lightly between her teeth. Her tongue, hot and wet, slipped across the fold of flesh. She didn't say anything, just ran her fingers down his shirt, unpicking the buttons one by one.

Jennifer looked up, pretty green eyes uncertain and afraid.

He lied again, with just a tiny nod of the head this time. It wasn't easy, but it made the fear in her eyes go away. He lied a little more and pulled her close, praying she didn't notice the way his stomach was tense, didn't see the tears in his eyes for what they were.

She ducked her nose forward against his neck and lapped at his fur as if he were Andy. She shifted her legs over his body and straddled him again and pulled up her skirt, yanking it over her tail and bunching it up around her stomach. She kissed her way up the side of his neck, locked her mouth on his while pushing her hands down between them, snapped open his belt buckle, worked at the button of his pants like she'd done it a thousand times before, even though he'd only felt her hands there twice before.

The lie hurt when he slipped his tongue into her mouth, angling his head so their jaws meshed a little, his breath huffing into her fur and his tongue scrubbing up against hers. It hurt a little less, just a stabbing pain in his gut, when he put his hands on her and squeezed at her striped thighs where his black furred hands were so alien now.

She yanked down the zipper and pulled back, muzzle pointed down so she could see what she was doing. His body believed the lie, his penis sprang up erect in her hands when she pulled it free of his shorts, throbbed eagerly while she dragged the crotch of her panties aside and slid down on him, warm and wet. The lips of her vagina met in a soft V shape around his shaft. He watched the way the V was made slightly deeper when she bobbed up, made shallow when she pushed down hard on him. He wasn't the first to notice, he knew.

But it was almost like that first time when he hadn't known what her warnings about open relationships had meant. He gasped for breath, feeling a hot fuzziness inside when she rolled her hips, made his flesh burn for her. He tried to forget how much she did this, how she'd learned how to pleasure him by the gasps of other men.

He forgot to lie for a second, moaning into her hair, rolling her over and pushing her against the bed. Forgot he was lying when he rolled his part-clothed hips against hers, flexing himself into her while she sang out in tiny moaning breaths. Maybe he wasn't lying when he kissed her pretty face, dragging his lips down her muzzle until his face was pressed beside hers and he could feel her every breath. Maybe he could pretend he was the only one who did that.

She pushed her fingers against the base of his penis, stroked his length while he pumped in and out, shifted her thighs so that she was tighter, ran her tongue across her lips and gasped his name. His name, not Andy's. His.

So it wasn't a lie at all when his legs started shivering. No lie, the way he jolted her against the bed with reflexive humps and grinds, pushing her thighs wider apart, rubbing his hand into her soft fur. Put his hands over her butt and dragged her harder against him. The beautiful truth when he breathed that he loved her.

She grunted in his ear, started trembling when he tensed, his balls rubbing up against her tail as he pushed her into the bed. She quivered like a leaf, licking at his neck. Moaned at him with her beautiful voice, slightly liquid, happy. Husky. Lay shaking with him for a few precious seconds that made him believe she loved him back.

Lay shaking with him, like she'd shaken with Andy.

And Troy wished that he'd managed to keep lying just a few minutes longer.

*

//: City of San Iadras, Gordon's Park Cemetery.

It was nice up on the hill. It wasn't sacred ground like the rest of the privately owned cemetery. There were a couple of trees nearer the fence, looking good despite all the shade they caught from buildings. Grass was pretty green, and the paths were gravelled. And then there were the two dozen plots near the crest of the hill, a neat little row. The first fourteen were empty patches of grass marked out with a fence, marble covers over the other ten graves. Well. Seven of them. Three were just for show, because those brothers' remains were mixed up in a couple of tons of ash and medical waste somewhere.

Dallas was up at the graves, laying out little plastic chess boards and setting up the cheap chess pieces according to the old games in his pad.

Dakar and Orleans were fussing over a portable stove, awkwardly rearranging things with an almost obsessive compulsive flair, getting the pots of food lined up right by size, then contents, then how much heat they needed. Monaco, a beer in hand, pointed something out and they stood, scratching their heads in almost mirrored unison.

"No, look, the instructions say-" 

"Yeah but look at it in German. It's different in German."

"It was made in Japan, though," Denver complained, flipping over the cheaply translated instructions.

"Troy!"

Jennifer smiled a little, laying on the grass beside him, having been watching too. 

He looked up at her sheepishly, staring at her hand, unsure if he should pick it up, kiss it. "Denver and Nagoya need me."

"Go," she replied, leaning her head back and smiling. "I'll go and see how those, uhm, two are getting on with the cooking."

"Dakar and Orleans," Troy replied. "That's Monaco with 'em."

"How do you tell the difference?"

Troy stared down the hill for a few moments. "Same way I can tell you from your sisters. They make me feel different when I look at them."

"Like how?"

"Turin always makes me feel worried about him. Dallas... sorry for him. Never quite know about Florence. Not when he's dragging around somebody. Bewildered, mostly. Happy about Orleans and Dakar, they still lean on each other like we all used to as kids."

"Me?" she asked looking up at him uncertainly, swatting her tail against the turf. 

Troy dry swallowed. "Well my heart does a funny thing. Kinda, flips and thuds real fast. Sometimes my fur will feel all tingly, I'll be warm inside and I just want to stop and stare so I can remember what it's like holding your hand."

She slipped her hand into his, squeezing his palm lightly. He stared at it. Lightly laced his fingers between hers after a moment. Looked up at her smile, wondering if his eyes could still lie.




Wedding Mouse



"Troy! Can you translate something for us?"

And he let go of her hand. He shut his eyes tight, because her smile became sad. Sad, as she watched him get to his feet and walk away, turning his eyes from her. Sad, because she knew he still hurt. Walking wasn't enough, so he jogged down to his brothers, trying to hide everything that hurt, even the way his shoes pinched his feet.

"Troy, which way around is this diagram?" Nagoya asked, drawling out his vowels like a true ozzie, pointing at the thin sheet of rice paper. 

Denver stuck his hands in his pockets, grumbled, "That's not how you use a freakin' pressurized tank, there aught to be a bayonet lug in there..." 

He stared at the Japanese pictographs for a couple of seconds, realized he wasn't reading a damn thing, just reliving the way she'd shaken in his arms. Troy dry swallowed. "Uh." He pointed at the diagram. "It's, uhm. Don't operate near open flames, and, uh... not during storms..."

Eventually they sorted through it, working in teams when Philadelphia showed up and read out the instructions in Hebrew with a chuckle at another bad machine translation. They staked out the lines, got the gas canister into the balloon. There was a brief argument over who should link their phone with it, Troy just keyed it in while the others were fighting, set up a link and switched the damn valve on so the blimp hovered up, then tossed his phone over to Denver so he could futz with the lamp settings.

After awhile Denver got the lights on, and the little static blimp lit up the hillside. The Guacamole was pretty good, and the flour tortillas one of Anne's friends handed him went well with it. He hung out by the portable stove, watching Dakar and Orleans pass back and forth bowls, tossing eggplant into the pans, take an occasional sip from one another's beers without noticing, because they kept getting shuffled on the little plastic table they had for a work surface. 

Jennifer didn't come to see. She sat far up the hillside, watching nothing in particular. Eventually she edged down towards the fence, helped unpack a cooler from Dallas and Florence's car.

"You know I was going through Osaka's notes yesterday," Dakar offered after fishing out a beer from the cooler, handing it over to Troy. "He had some really fascinating algorithms going with genomes. Search routines to pick out safe parts of the sequence once it's digitally captured."

Troy frowned a little, breaking the seal and flicking the lid off onto the work surface. "Safe?"

Dakar nodded quickly, glancing up to take a spatula from Orleans. Orleans grimaced, shaking his empty hand, and Dakar stuck a beer into it. Orleans took a sip and handed it back, trading it in for his spatula. "Stuff parents can pass on to children with no possibility for a disease piggybacking."

Dakar shrugged a little, scooping up some trash from the work surface to get them into a bag. "I'm kind of tempted to pick it up on the side," he said, biting his lip. "Could help make filtering out genetic diseases cheap enough for everyone to do it."

"That'd be pretty good," Troy agreed, picking up his beer and swilling it around his mouth. Maybe it'd take the taste of her lips away.

"Yeah, but first we have to automate germline alteration or getting a check for genetically spread diseases down to five or six nudies a pop isn't going to help," Orleans pointed out, taking one of the pans and upending it into a pot.

"Hey, it's like ten grand now?" Dakar asked, reaching past Orleans to shake another of the pans on the stove. "And they don't even get everything, we could get this into the red cross and maybe the disadvantaged communities could just go with abortions for kids with it, or abstain. It'd still help up the health levels."

"Yeah but a lot of the developing world's still Catholic," Orleans griped, and within a couple of moments Troy wasn't in the conversation at all anymore. 

Monaco crouched down in front of York's grave, set down his bottle of beer next to the chessboard for a minute. "Been thinking about York a lot, lately." He brushed his fingertips across the engravings on the stone.

Troy looked up. He didn't need to read York's epitaph. He knew it by heart. One of York's favourite sayings. A desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy. Something Guy Fawkes, some ancient revolutionary, had said.

"He was right," Monaco added, dropping his eyes to the board and moving a rook, then gently reaching out to rotate the knights to all face in one direction, to show which side would move next. "It's all so fucked up. Everything's so, so goddamn fucked up."

Troy settled down onto the grass. Now and then the blimp got caught by a breeze, and the fuzzed edge of its light panned over his feet. "Feels that way," he agreed.

"No, it really is," Monaco sighed. "The old Eurasian war fallout's everywhere up there, Troy. Designer viruses and corrosives that turn the goddamn fish into sludge in their ponds, let alone what the nukes did."

Troy dipped his gaze to the grass. 

Monaco sat down beside him, almost collapsing, legs crossed, beer bottle held by its neck. "Nobody cares. Nobody listens. It's all just..." He shook his head. "Fucked up. There's treasures of art work rotting into nothing because there was a file photo taken before the wars and nobody wants to go into the deadzones for the originals."

"Because people don't care?" Troy asked.

"Yeah." Monaco grimaced, pulled down a swig of his beer. "Nobody listens. To each other. We don't say the things that matter, that, Goddamnit, here's something culturally important, we need to save it, or, no, victory wasn't worth that, we were wrong. We didn't fix anything."

"We were wrong," Troy repeated, looking up at the blimp. Maybe I was wrong. She mentioned him. Right after introducing herself, hadn't she? Or was it afterward?

"Don't go all psychologist on me, Troy," Monaco snapped.

"I'm not, I'm just." He sighed, looking up at Monaco. "What do you mean by that? Wrong for what?"

"Everything, I mean, now we all practice eugenics in our goddamn back yards. Were you listening to Orleans and Dakar? Christ. It's like we're saying the National Socialists were right, we did it again, we tortured people for no fucking reason and..." He clutched at his face for a minute, shook his head. "The UN moved in on Tajikistan last month, Troy. Not because of last year's coup. Because they were producing designer viruses and... and they condone everything that went on here." He grimaced at the lights downtown. "They don't give a shit because we pay more taxes and the Tri-Corp halfway bought out the UN anyway."

No Christmas lights up yet. The central American corporate preserve didn't have Thanksgiving to blend into one long holiday season. Troy looked down at the grass again, picked at it with a finger.

Monaco looked at him. "You listening to me?"

"Yup," Troy replied. 

"So why aren't you bitching at me to stop getting myself worked up over stuff I have no control over?"

Troy looked up at Monaco. "Because I'm wondering... what happened. With you and Jennifer. I mean, did you guys date in college, or..."

Monaco ground his teeth together, spat off to the side like one of the Georgian peasants he kept hiring to help him with his digs. 

"We fucked," he said.

Took a sip of his beer. Like he hadn't said anything important. "My first time." Shrugged. "And hung out for a week or two after that, and, then she found some better guy." Monaco glared off at the sky. "Blonde bastard. Lots of money. Looked almost Aryan," he laughed, heart not in it.

Troy looked down at the grass again. He didn't want to see his brother's face. Think of Monaco's arms around her, too, along with Andy's, some blonde guy's, whoever else's. Maybe some of the patrons down at the club where she danced sometimes. Or what Monaco must be thinking.

"Then what?"

Monaco bowed his head, sniffled. "Got over her," he said, smiling. A little too broadly. He dragged himself to his feet, "Long over her. Found a prettier girl like she found a prettier guy. Good riddance," Monaco said, lifting his beer up for a sip

"You don't mind... me and her? I can back off, maybe you two could..." 

He lifted his shoulder in a shrug. "No. I got on with my life," he said, smile forcing itself onto his face even harder. "I'm sure she did too." He shrugged, a little too casually. A little too loosely. Held up his beer. "Anyway. It's a party. You want another one?" 

Troy shook his head, not wanting to open his mouth. Not wanting to say a word because he couldn't believe what his brother had said, because maybe Troy'd say it too one day. Maybe he'd even say it tomorrow.

Monaco stepped off into the light of the party, waving his empty beer bottle, while the edge of the blimp's light licked at Troy's toes.

Troy shut his eyes and covered his face with his hands for a second, almost tasting the bile in the back of his throat.

Troy sat and stared downhill, watching the circle of light cast by the blimp wave back and forth over his brothers, their girlfriends, Anne's friends. Jennifer.

"Dallas?" Nadine was trooping up the hillside. She squinted at Troy where he sat in the dark. "Not Dallas," she sighed.

Troy nodded to his side. "Have a seat. He'll be around eventually, he's still playing Houston."

Nadine stepped over and settled down, flicking out her cat's tail, clawing at the ground beside her, letting her claws flick back into her fingertips before she got her hands dirty. She sighed a little. "I don't get how that works. The chess."

"Well, you move the rooks straight along the rows, and the bishops go diagonally..."

"No, I mean," she batted at her own ear, scraped her hand down along her hair. "With the graves."

Troy rubbed his heel in the grass, he'd inadvertently kicked up a little dirt. "When Springfield died," he explained, "Toledo was still in the middle of a game with him. We were just little kids, Toledo kept making excuses for why he was crying. Stupid ones." Troy swallowed at the air.

"We all did. But he was the only one with a half decent explanation. I can't finish my game with Springfield," Troy said, settling his hand over his stomach, trying to still the queasiness at the memory, trying not to frown, not to relive those tears. "So I took the board, and I finished the game with him."

Nadine glanced back at the graves, not saying anything, tail tip wagging back and forth anxiously.

"Then there were twenty-three of us. And when we were playing chess together, there'd be an odd mouse out, without a game partner." Troy took a deep breath, willing the tears not to come. "So we'd all trade places, rotating around the boards, as if Springfield was still there to play. We stopped after Kiev died, started again after Berlin." He wiped at an eye. "Nobody had to be alone when we were playing chess."

"And, uh." He nodded back at the graves, "We didn't want them to be alone either."

"I wish he'd told me that." Nadine stared at the ground, hard. "He cries at night sometimes, when I can get him to stay over. I don't know what to do about it." She scraped at the grass. "He'll say a little then, but... I don't understand. He won't tell me more. Jennifer, Troy's girlfriend... you know Jennifer?"

Troy straightened his back, bit his lip. "Yeah," he said. "I... met her."

"She says there's nothing you can do but be there." Nadine wiped at her nose a little. "I don't know. I just wanna hug Dallas and make it all go away for him. You guys have been through so much."

Troy took a shaky breath, nodded a little. "Be there. It helps. You don't know much it helps." He looked up, then, hoping she wouldn't realize who he was. "What else'd Jennifer tell you?"

"Wanted to know how me and Dallas made up after a fight." Nadine shifted a shoulder. "It's real easy, he doesn't let any start." She smiled tightly, eyes sad, folding her arms. "He's so sweet. I just don't know what he's thinking half the time."

"You don't?" Troy asked, staring at his brother's girlfriend.

"No. He took me stargazing once, pointed out all these stars I'll never remember the names of." She tipped her head back to look up at the sky, the few stars not overwhelmed by the city's light. "It was nice, he was happy. But he never talks too much when he's unhappy. Like he's trying to spare my feelings or something."

Troy smiled a little. "That's because he's scared. He wants to look perfect to you, Nadine," Troy offered. "But, uh. We ain't perfect."

"But I love him because he's him, not because he's... some knight in shining armour. I just want to be happy with him."

"There he is," Troy said, leaning to one side and pointing downhill. "See? Next to Dakar and Orleans, talking to Florence."

She squinted down. "I think that's his shirt. How can you be sure?"

Troy offered a smile to her, shuffling a little to get comfortable in the grass. "Just look at him. Ain't he the luckiest guy in the world? You can tell it's him."

She got to her feet, dusting off the back of her jeans, running her hand over her tail to dislodge bits of grass. "Wanna walk me back, uhm?" The 'uhm' hung in the air, begging to be filled with a name.

She didn't know which brother he was. He wasn't about to tell her, not right now. He got to his feet, picking up his long empty beer bottle, smiled. "Yeah, I'll, uh. I'll be along."

He edged his way downhill after Nadine, picking his steps carefully so his shoes wouldn't pinch his feet. 

Dallas looked up and spotted her first, the look on his face was great. A smile, just a smile, without anything else dragging at him. He patted Florence's shoulder and rushed up to her, and Troy kept on walking past them as they embraced, fixing his eyes to the ground.

"What's with you two?" grumbled an unfamiliar voice. The only one, so it'd be Tim. 

"He's my brother," replied Florence.

"And you live with him, so you have to spend all your time with him when I'm around too?" Tim complained. "When do we get to be alone, Florence?"

"He's my brother!" Florence grimaced. "I don't like being away from him, alright? Jesus."

"Is that why you don't invite me back to your place? You sleeping with him or something?"

Troy stopped, looking up with a kind of shocked blink. He found his teeth grinding into each other. What the hell had that prick said?

"He's my brother you sick bastard," Florence snapped, tail out straight. He shook his arm out of Tim's grasp. "What the hell do you think I am, Tim?"

"We've been going out for three weeks!" Tim yelled. "What are you, frigid?"

Florence blinked, long and slow. "Just go."

Tim reached out to him, "I didn't mean that."

"Get your damn hand off my fucking jacket and fuck off, Tim." Florence pushed past him, striding up the hill.

Tim stood there, pink faced with the booze. Shook his head, and stalked down to the stove, yelled at Dakar to get him a fucking beer.

With Philadelphia helping, it didn't take long to shove Tim into a cab and make him go home.

"I mean I'm just the effeminate one, aren't I? That's all I am to him. The fur he might be able to bang," Florence griped through his tears. "I mean I thought he was nice, but." He put his hand to his forehead. "God, I'm so embarrassed. I didn't mean for it to come out this way."

Troy shrugged, settling back on the grass, a couple of fresh beers in hand. "Well it's not like we didn't know."

Florence picked his head up, eyes wide with fear. "You do? Did Dallas? I didn't want to freak him out."

Troy offered over one of the bottles, leaned back and pushed the bishop over a square on Kiev's grave. "It doesn't. He worries about you."

Florence opened the bottle and shuffled back so he could move a rook with a little more care than Troy had. He wiped at his face with a handkerchief, blew his nose. "I'm such the Goddamn stereotype, aren't I?"

Troy cracked open his beer, swilled a little around in his mouth before swallowing. "It's easier that way."

"No it's not," Florence sighed. "I spend all my money on clothes, try to impress. Try to see if there's somebody out there, but..." He frowned tearfully. "All they wanna do is fuck the Goddamn furry."

"You don't have to, you know," Troy said, offering a smile. "Being alone's not so bad, is it?" He leaned back and took one of the pawns, set it a square down.

"Yeah it is." Florence wiped at his eyes. "I watch Dallas with Nadine and I know he's going to move out with her one day, and then I'm going to be even more alone. Nothing to do but stare at the walls and be afraid to go to sleep in case I dream something awful."

Troy took another sip of his beer, set the bottle down between his leg and his tail so it wouldn't spill over. 

"When he's not at home, Troy, I'll wake up and the whole apartment will be dark, and I'll go and make myself a cup of coffee or something and just..." Florence's face twisted up miserably, he clutched a hand to his head. "I just want somebody strong there to hold me."

"Come here," Troy whispered, putting his arms around Florence's shoulders. "We're out of there, Florence. They're just dreams now."

"Hurtful dreams," Florence replied, shaking a little. Finally he hugged Troy back. "You don't think less of me, do you?"

"No. You're my brother, Florence." 

Florence clutched Troy tight for a long moment, finally patted Troy's shoulders and drew back, picking up his beer. "Does padre Munez know?"

Troy shook his head. "Doubt it. I don't see him much anymore. But if he did, I bet it wouldn't stop him from telling you to sit down and eat lunch so you can grow up big and strong."

"But it's such a damn sin." Florence scratched at an ear, blew his nose again.

"So's a mouse marrying a human being. It's kind of bestiality, y'know. But he's still coming to the wedding, even if he won't officiate it." Troy sipped from his beer and set it down carefully. "The padre's a good guy."

Florence glanced back at the row of graves, lifting up a hand to bite at the sides of his fingernails. Slouched down, tapped the neck of his beer bottle before taking another gulp. His breathing evened out after a minute.

"I'm gay, Troy."

Troy smiled a little, patted his brother on the shoulder.

"I know."

Saigon leaned over and made a move on the chessboard laying on Houston's grave. He didn't say anything until after he'd finished turning the knights. He didn't have to say anything, he just had to lift his beer bottle and take a long swig, come over to stand next to Troy.

Troy knew that uncertain flick of the tail. "You okay, Saigon?"

"I don't know if it's going to work out, Troy. Anne does," he said, shrugging a little. "I don't. The rest of the world's not like the research station."

Troy nodded a little. He stepped along the row of graves, paused to move a piece over Berlin's. "What do you mean?"

"We didn't have to go anywhere for weeks, sometimes. We could just stay there and concentrate on work. Anne with her low temp hydroponics, me with the robots and keeping the IT infrastructure up." Saigon shrugged helplessly.

"Easy to know what you're doing. What's expected of you," Troy offered.

Saigon nodded, scratched at his back where he aught to have a couple of kidneys his own, but didn't. He took another sip from his bottle, looked up. "I mean what if we don't work out later on, when things are different?"

"You're having doubts?"

"A couple. I mean, I was looking at the statistics." Saigon rubbed at his arm, slouched his shoulders. "Humans and furries get more divorces than other cross-ethnic groups by a margin of like twenty percent. Don't wanna be that twenty percent."

"Marriage isn't gambling," Troy said, looking down the row of graves where Boston was folding up one of the finished chess games. "You think she's going to cheat on you?"