Divisions (Dev and Lee) (29 page)

My gaze flicks from the logo down to his sheath, and back up to his blue eyes. “What the hell…?”

He flicks his tail at me, turning to one side. “I thought you might like a little practice tackling the other team.”

I swipe at him, but he dodges out of reach. “You…” I step forward and swipe and miss again.

“Gosh,” he says, staying teasingly back a step, “looks like you need to work on your tackling.” He rubs a paw across the Knights logo.

One paw unbuttoning my shirt, I advance on him, growling. He circles the bed, muzzle wide in a grin, and he’s starting to show how much he’s enjoying this. “I’ll show you tackling,” I say, and leap at him.

He’s quick. I miss him a few more times, but eventually I get him on the bed, pinning him down while I yank the rest of my clothes off. I flip him onto his back to fuck him, so that when he comes, too, he spatters the Knights logo, streaks of white across the black.

“Hope you have that much energy tomorrow.” He grins up at me teasingly, and his tail flicks between my thighs.

“Rrr.” I play-growl down at him. The messy Knights logo makes me smile, fills my chest with a fierce joy and confidence. “If I do, you have to do this before every game, you know.”

“The t-shirts are cheap.” He smears his finger in the mess on his stomach. “Even if I have to get a new one every week.”

I grab his paw and lick the messy finger, tasting salt and fox. “If one of them works, we can re-use it.”

“Fair enough.” He pulls himself up by my shoulders to kiss me. “Shower and then try your barbecue place?”

“Yup.” I slide myself out of him, panting, and kiss him back, and we put that plan into action.

The barbecue is great: sweet and spicy sauce over flavorful pork, with onion rings and garlic toast. “Strike would have a fit if he saw me eating this.”

“Good thing he’s not here, then,” Lee says. “Or wasn’t up in the hotel room an hour ago.”

“Yeah.” I chuckle. “Maybe he should try sex before games.”

“Does he have a girlfriend?”

I frown. “I don’t know. He’s never talked about one.”

Lee nods, chewing on a rib and looking thoughtful. “You sure he’s straight?”

“Uh, yeah. Pretty sure.” He raises an eyebrow, and I brandish a rib at him. “You haven’t been around him. He’s all painted up, sure, but I promise you he never even looked at me funny.”

“Do any of the guys?” He grins.

“Not anymore. Used to, in the shower. But not that kind of funny.”

“Statistically.” Lee pauses to tear the last bits of meat off his rib. He tosses the bone to the plate and licks his paw daintily. “Statistically, there should be one or two other gay guys on your team.”

“Yeah, well. Statistically, um, we shouldn’t have won ten games.”

“What?”

I lick my own fingers. “Some guy on some paper wrote that we’re a fraud, that if you look at advanced numbers like, I dunno, pass efficiency and pass defense times rush defense or something, that we should really be eight and six. That we’re relying on flukes: turnovers, mistakes by the other team. Coach put the article up on the wall for us to read.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“That’s what Coach said.” I hide a grin.

“Anyway, your team is over fifty people, and so yeah, it’s possible that there’s no other gay guys on your team. But it’s probable that there’s at least one. And it’s impossible that there isn’t another in the league. If there were another one…” He trails off. I’m not sure what he’s getting at.

I think about Saito, the white wolf backup quarterback for Highbourne, and his comment that he wanted to double date with me sometime. I never told Lee about it, because I wasn’t sure if he just meant he’d take out a girl with me and Lee, or if he meant he was gay, too. Either way, it was supportive, and it reminds me that I ought to drop him an e-mail just to say hi. After the playoffs. Highbourne looks good for a playoff spot, so we might end up playing them.

Anyway, I can feel the prickles of irritation at Lee’s activist side working their way through the velvety haze of good sex and good food. To head them off, and head him off, I put on a warm smile and a purr. “Yeah,” I say. “Well, they haven’t come up to me. Maybe because they know I have a super fox boyfriend.”

He grins and licks barbecue sauce from his muzzle. “If we weren’t in Kerina right now, I’d kiss you for that.”

“I’ll just count one of the ones from an hour ago.” I grin at him. The prickles subside. “I like the shirt idea, if I didn’t say that.”

“Oh, good. I found it in the airport and I thought it might be good motivation.”

“Not like what was under it wasn’t motivation enough.”

His tail flicks behind him. I curl mine under the table toward him, but he doesn’t notice. At least he doesn’t bring up the question again about why there isn’t another gay player on my team or in the league. It’s uncomfortable enough for me right now and I’m happy that things have settled down to the point that me being gay is just something in my bio, like Gerrard having two kids or Charm attending one year at Linwood College.

Oh God, I hope they don’t put it in my bio next year. I can just see it now. “Devlin Miski, 6’2”, 200 lbs., Forester University, gay.” Actually, they might put Lee’s name in there—no, they don’t list girlfriends for the other guys, only spouses.

“What’cha thinking about?” His blue eyes stare across the table at me.

I look past his head, at the menu on a huge board on the wall. “Cornbread,” I say, “and maybe some apple pie.”

***

The game itself, the next day, is one of those great games that is really fun. It feels the way all the media assume it does when they ask you how you like getting hundreds of thousands of dollars to play a game. I mean, there’s a lot of hard hitting, and Brick turns his ankle and has to go out for a series, but he’s back right after that. Strike shows off, making two incredible highlight-reel grabs and one amazing run where he breaks three tackles on his way to a touchdown. We only punt twice the whole game, and the only thing that really mars our day is when they block one of our extra points. Charm fumes about that, but not for long.

As for me, I have a really good game. I find Lee in the stands before the game—or at least, he tells me where he is and I think I see a flash of red fur up there—and I feel like I’m seeing everything, swatting down a pass in the first quarter, getting one and a half sacks, even keeping up with one of their wideouts when they try overloading the weak side. Vonni has to take the number one wideout, but the guy who’s my responsibility also takes off up the field, and I haven’t run with a wideout in over a year, but I plant my feet and sprint after him, and the old instincts come back. I turn and see the ball heading my way, so I leap and get a fingertip on it, enough to break up the pass. Good thing their number three wideout isn’t faster, and their quarterback isn’t better.

Still, we end with a convincing 34-14 win, and I look up at the banners as we leave the field. The past is the past—it makes for nice decoration, but that’s all. The present is us: 11-4 and in the playoffs almost for sure. There’s no champagne in the locker room, but there’s a lot of cheering, a lot of backslapping, and some teasing of Gerrard about his “history” thing. The loudest cheers come when Coach Samuelson announces that our playoff shares, about forty thousand each, will be paid out at a dinner following the last game.

We don’t know where we’ll be. If we win the division at 12-4, we might get a week off. There’s only three other teams that could reach twelve wins, and Hellentown is one of them, assuming they win this week. I turn my phone on and exchange text-kisses with Lee—for once, he doesn’t have anything to criticize about my performance—and sit around the locker room with the team watching the Hellentown game. If they lose, our division-winning bonus is assured as well.

Unfortunately for us, Hellentown is at home against New Kestle, and thanks to my boneheaded predecessor, New Kestle is without their star running back. Even if they had him, it wouldn’t have been much of a game. Hellentown has been on a tear since we beat them back in November, and the Pilots aren’t going to let up at home against a division opponent. They trounce the Unicorns pretty soundly, including one breathtaking pass that starts as a short dump to their slot receiver, a nimble fox, and ends up being a touchdown as the fox jukes past four defenders who never touch him. We all go “oooh,” and then, “oh!”

“Gonna have to pay attention to that one next week,” Gerrard says to the entire room, and particularly to me.

“I remember him,” I say, and flex my paws. “He didn’t get past me last time.”

“Every game is a new start.” Gerrard scans the room, then talks lower, just to me and Carson. “We’ll have to get that cheetah from the practice squad to play slot receiver. I don’t think we have anyone else fast enough to be good practice.”

“Baki? I think he’d do it.”

“He’ll do anything he has to.” Gerrard says it absently.

“Strike could do it,” I say, and they both glare at me so searingly that I say, “Kidding, kidding!”

“Guess it’s a game next week,” Aston calls from another part of the room. “Merry Christmas, everyone.” He lifts a paw and takes off, as though he’s not going to see us in four hours on the plane.

“What are you guys doing for Christmas?” Pike leans forward between me and Gerrard. Kodi’s behind me, keeping quiet, Brick beside him.

“Angela’s having a Christmas party at our place Christmas morning,” Gerrard says. “Usual thing. Anyone who isn’t with family can come.”

“Can’t fly home and back in a day.” Pike grimaces, his muzzle twisting. “Hate missing it, but Mom and Dad will call.”

“Same here,” Kodi says softly.

“My girlfriend invited me to her parents’ place,” Zillo says. “But uh, I don’t think we’re really there yet.”

“Come on over.” Gerrard looks at me. “Your family’s up north too, right?”

I nod. “Lee’s here and his father’s coming down, but we’d like to come if that’s okay.”

“Sure.” The coyote turns to Carson, who just nods. “Fisher’s coming with Gena and their boys.” He grins. “Vonni’s bringing his wife, I think. Not many other married couples around. We’re a young team. You guys are going to win a lot after me and Fisher are gone.”

“Ah, cut it out.” I bump his shoulder. “You’re gonna be our linebackers coach when you retire.”

“I see how it is.” Steez, our current linebackers coach, calls from ten feet away. His ropy tail flicks behind him.

“We love you, Steez,” Zillo and I say in more or less unison.

“Hah.” He snorts and looks back to the screen as the game starts up again.

I text Lee,
Christmas at Gerrard’s? Father welcome.

He texts back a moment later,
Sure. Christmas Eve just us and Father?

Yeah
, I write back.

By the fourth quarter, the Hellentown game is pretty much over at 40-12. The Unicorns seem flat and uninspired and “just about ready to put a capstone on this disappointing season,” in the words of the announcer.

We pile into the bus to go back to the hotel and pack up, which Charm and I do mostly in silence, except for the parts where he asks me how my night went, which is his way of trying to get me to ask him how his night went. “Twins,” he says with a huge grin. “Wolf twins, and not those big stocky mountain wolves. Swamp wolves, all slinky and…” His hands describe curves down his sides and hips, and then come back up to cup two sets of breasts, as if he’s juggling.

“Great.” I can’t help grinning.

“Oh, and there was a guy who says he knows you.”

“You had a foursome with another guy?” This makes me stop and raise my eyebrows.

Charm puts his hands on his hips and glares at me. “If I had a foursome with another guy, I would ask you first, Gramps.”

“Oh God, don’t even.” I laugh. “So who was this guy?”

“Just a fox. He was in the hotel and came up and asked where you were. Said he came all the way from Chevali.”

“A fox? From Chevali? Oh, shit. Was he wearing like a scarf around his neck?”

Charm snaps his fingers. “Yeah! Like kind of a pink thing.”

“Pampel-moose.” I groan. I had one persistent gay groupie, fox named Argonne who sort of looks like a gay stereotype of Lee. He’d be perfectly at home in one of those gay clubs. “Fucking kid, I thought he’d given up.”

“He said he didn’t want to fight the crowds in Chevali around that cheetah.”

“If you see him again, tell him to fuck off.”

Charm salutes. “Already did, Gramps. I said you were with your boyfriend and he should take a hike.”

I want to ask if Argonne said anything about meeting up with someone else on the team, like he did last time I saw him. I wonder if he met up with Ty. Couple of foxes—no, Lion Christ, I need to stop thinking that way. “So did he?”

“I didn’t see him again.” Charm shrugs.

I clear the groupie out of my mind and settle back into the seat. “Hope I don’t either.”

Christmas week is weird. We’re supposed to get Monday off because we won, but the team votes to come in Monday afternoon for a light workout and film study in exchange for being off on Christmas Day, which is Wednesday. We know we’re going to have to work even harder the rest of the week, but because we’re not traveling, we have a little flexibility with the schedule. When I was with the team last year, we were on the road Christmas week and we had no time to do anything. I had a phone call with my parents and another with Lee, and that was my Christmas.

So this feels pretty good. I’m mostly worried about Lee, my mind going back and forth between whether he’s going to bring up the activism stuff again (I have a reply ready: “after the Hellentown game”) and whether he’s going to be depressed that he isn’t spending time with his mother. He seems to be okay, though; he went and bought some Christmas decorations, garlands for the door and windows, and a small silver tree, under a foot tall, to put on the small end table. We didn’t get a full tree, but he did buy this Christmas tree video.

Lee’s father comes in Tuesday and we’ll have a Christmas Eve together. “Is he gonna sleep on the couch?” I ask Lee Monday night, when we’re snuggled on the couch together watching “A Christmas Story.” “Because, uh, I might have to get it cleaned.”

“It doesn’t smell that bad,” he says. “But no, I think he’s getting a hotel for Christmas Eve and Christmas night. Don’t worry about it.”

“If he even sits on the couch, though.”

Lee puts a paw to my lips and smiles. “I said, it doesn’t smell bad. Just watch the movie.”

I crane my neck and see his picture, grinning naked at me from the bedroom. “We’ll have to clean up some things.”

He nudges me. “You’re more worried than I am. Don’t worry. We’ll clean up and the place smells fine.”

And indeed, when we’ve picked his father up at the airport and the older fox walks into my apartment, he doesn’t wrinkle his nose. He looks around, points at the wintry landscape painting, and says, “I like that one.”

My fox’s tail arches and his muzzle lifts. “Thanks,” he says. “The decorating here has been a joint effort.”

“Meaning I give him money and he buys pretty things.” I drape an arm over his shoulder.

He leans into me, and his father smiles. “It looks good. I’m glad things are going well.”

“So are we.” Lee’s tail swings back to brush my legs.

“No tree?” His father looks at the pile of gifts under the television, at the tiny silver tree.

“Er, no.” Lee hurries to the remotes. “But we have this…” He clicks some buttons and the video of a Christmas tree comes up on the TV. “With me just moving in, and Dev on the road, we didn’t really have time to get a tree and bring it up here. So…this’ll have to do.”

“It’s fine.” His father smiles, and as far as I know foxes, I believe he really does mean it.

“Can I get you a beer?” I ask him, and he accepts. I don’t have another chair in the living room, so I pull one of the stools out from the kitchen, and after a brief argument, Lee’s father takes the stool and insists we sit on the couch. We do, though we don’t snuggle up as close. I’m a little unsure how affectionate we can be in front of him, and I wouldn’t pull Lee against me in front of my own father, so I just sit with my paws in my lap.

“So, Mister Farrel,” I say, and he stops me.

“Call me Bren, or Brenly,” he says. “Everyone does.”

Lee’s ears twitch; there’s something there I think I’m missing, but I let it go. I’m definitely not up to calling him Dad yet, if that’s what it is. Still feels awkward, though. “Uh, Bren. So you’ve been following the Dragons this year?”

“And the Firebirds.” He smiles. His tail swishes back and forth. “You guys played a nice game yesterday.”

“And the Dragons won, too.”

He nods. “They have at least a little to build on for the future. Less than they did a couple months ago, of course.”

Lee grins. “I’m not bitter. Well, maybe a little. Looking forward to Yerba.”

I pat his thigh. “You’ll do great there.” Then I freeze, realizing that I’ve just been affectionate.

He doesn’t seem to mind, and his father doesn’t flinch or make a comment, so I guess that was okay. I leave my paw there, rub his leg, then withdraw it, and his tail flicks back against me.

“They know about the relationship?” His father gestures to us.

“Course.” Lee nods. “I might have to sign a paper or maybe Dev might have to sign something saying he won’t pass on anything he learned from me.”

I react with mock-dismay. “Wait, anything?”

“About the Whalers.” He nudges me and I nudge him back, playfully. It feels open and nice and relaxed, even with his dad there. His tail flicks against me again. “So should we open gifts tonight, or tomorrow morning before heading over?” He looks back and forth between me and his father.

“Tomorrow morning.” I look defensively back at Lee. “Your gifts just arrived yesterday! I haven’t wrapped them yet!”

“Yesterday!” He shakes his head.

“Uh-huh. And when did you get my gifts? They only appeared under the TV when I got back from Kerina.”

“I just moved here.” He pushes at me and grins, though his tail wags. “And I got them last week. I was just waiting for you to be gone to wrap them.”

“You were hiding them in the apartment?” I lean forward to tease him into telling me the hiding place, and then remember that his father is watching us. Brenly has an amused grin on his muzzle as he takes a drink of his beer, but I sit back anyway. “I’m impressed.”

Lee arches an eyebrow and smiles. “I have secrets. But tomorrow morning is okay. Would you like me and Father to go somewhere so you can wrap?”

“Nah. I’ll just wrap them in the bedroom.”

He keeps looking at me, his smile getting wider. “Well? Go wrap!”

“Okay, fine.” I get up. “I was going to be social with your father and all, but…”

He shoos me off. “Go. We’ll be fine here, and you can hear us from the bedroom anyway. Just leave the door open. I won’t peek.”

I stare back at him. “Oh, really?”

“I don’t want to ruin surprises.”

This is true. He loves surprises more than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s just that usually he wants to be the one springing them on people. “All right. Fine.”

He wags his tail as I disappear into the bedroom, taking the presents out from under the bed where I’d stuck them last week. I wonder if he found them and is just letting me surprise him, but they’re all still in their boxes and they don’t have any of his scent on them, so maybe not. “Where’s the wrapping paper?” I yell.

“Closet!” he calls back. As if that helps. I had that big closet all neatly organized, and he had to go and actually fill it with stuff.

I suck at wrapping, but I manage to get the paper around the three boxes and taped in place. Meanwhile, he and his father talk about Kerina, where it turns out his father spent six months once. “Second year out of college, took a job there. Hated it and quit.”

“The job, or Kerina?” Lee asks.

“Both.”

“What were you doing?”

“Data analysis. I was dating Eileen, but she had second thoughts about Hilltown, and I thought Kerina might be nice—big city like she grew up in, but without her family. But it turned out to be just…”

Lee lets him have a moment of silence. He seems to be okay talking about his wife. Ex-wife. When Lee does talk again, it’s just to prompt him to continue the thought. “Big?”

“Too different, I think. I didn’t like it, didn’t feel comfortable there. I felt like there were groups of people all around who knew each other and that I would never latch on with any of them.”

“That’s weird.” I hear Lee shift on the couch. “You always seem like you can get along with any group of people.”

“It’s a learned skill.”

“Guess I learned it from you.”

A short pause. “I’m glad.” He clears his throat and lowers his voice, so I can only just hear him. “I talked to your mother.”

“Oh?”

“She says you’ve been harassing her about her friends.”

“I just asked a few questions! I wanted to know why she turned to them…”

“I know how your ‘few questions’ can go.”

I stop crinkling the paper so I can hear Lee’s response, but he doesn’t say anything. I bet he’s staring at the floor with his ears back. Finally he says, “In my defense, they harassed a kid to suicide.”

“You don’t know that,” his father says, patiently, while I go back to wrapping because now I really am not sure I want to hear this. Does his father really not know that the only way to make absolutely sure Lee does something is to tell him not to?

“I know it. I just can’t prove it.”

“Leave that to someone else.”

“Why do you care about that? They’re the people she left you for.”

Now I really try to crinkle louder with the paper, but somehow I always have to stop to tape, and I can’t block out all the words. “…not that simple,” his father says, and then, “I want you to talk to her tomorrow.”

“Fine.”

“And be civil.”

I’m done the wrapping, but I wait. Lee doesn’t say anything, so he must have nodded. I hope. I carry the presents out into the living room and find them there looking thoughtful, though not at each other. Lee’s ears perk up when he sees my armful of presents. “I got you four,” he says with a grin.

“It’s quality, not quantity, isn’t that what you always tell me?” I place the presents under the TV and sit back on the couch.

He just looks smug. “Remember last year when you gave me the same expensive tie you’d given me for my birthday?”

“You liked it! I wanted to give you a spare.” I know he likes to tease me about it, but I really did forget, and I thought of him when I saw the tie—after he gave me a weird look when opening the box, I knew why.

“Right.” His tail flicks on the couch; I curl mine over to brush it. His father glances between us. I worry, but he lets his gaze linger on our tails and then looks away, not upset, just accepting.

When his father’s gone, I ask if he’s okay, and he says he is, so I don’t push. Well, I do, but in a different way, and later, and he likes it. We wait until midnight so that it can be real Christmas sex, and he whispers, “Merry Christmas” up at me when we’re both finished, panting and happy and tired and twined together, and I tell him I like that present best of all.

***

Christmas morning, Lee makes coffee while we’re waiting for his father to come up in the elevator. I sit on the couch and turn on the Christmas Tree DVD, watching the flickering. I miss seeing my family for Christmas, but it’s not as bad as last year, as much because I have Lee with me as because, I guess, I’m getting used to it. I don’t necessarily want to, but it’s part of my life now. Hey, at least I’ll always have Easter off.

Brenly’s brought over his own coffee. “Starbucks was open,” he says, and Lee sticks his tongue out when he sees the red-and-white holiday cup.

“Our coffee’s way better.”

Brenly sips. “I like Starbucks,” he says mildly, but I see a little of Lee in the way his eyes crease when he says it.

“Let’s do presents,” I say, to forestall Lee from saying something else, and Lee goes to get two cups of coffee from the kitchen.

“Shall we gather around the TV?” Brenly perches up on his stool, still there from the night before.

The video pans around the Christmas tree, showing an array of shiny ornaments. I point to a cloud covered in glitter with a wolf angel on it. “This is my favorite part.”

Brenly stares at the TV, staying quiet for a moment. I study his muzzle, so much like my fox’s, with the same sharp angle from the eyes to the muzzle, the same little twist at the base of the big black ears (though there’s grey on his), the same black marking up near the nose, a different mark than Ty has, or Vonni, or Colin, or any of the other foxes I know except his son. It’s funny how much Lee is his father’s son, even if he doesn’t always want to admit it. I wonder if he’ll need glasses later in life, too.

“We had that ornament, I think.” His words startle me back to looking at the TV. One black-furred finger is pointing toward the rotating image, following a cherubic polar bear Santa. “Eileen always thought polar bears were very Christmassy.”

“Do you have any polar bear friends?”

He shakes his head. “Up in Hilltown—well, you know. Species groups stick together. I’m sure your family knows some lynxes. We had a coyote friend, some wolf familes. Other foxes, of course.”

I nod. “Gregory and I were babysat by a lynx a couple times.”

“How is it with the team? Everyone gets along?”

“Pretty much, yeah. Species doesn’t matter, just how you play.”

Lee comes back out with two steaming mugs. “They’re good guys,” he says. “Most of them. But you’ll get to meet them later.”

“I know. Fisher Kingston.” Brenly sips from his coffee again. “I know he’s just a regular fellow, but I remember those two championships. It’ll be a little strange.”

“Will it be strange when Dev wins a championship?”

I flush, a little warm. Brenly smiles at me. “No, because I knew him before. Then it’ll just be something I’m proud of.” He pauses. “Like if you had actually graduated from college.”