Tribulation

Part 5 - Tea with the Devil

"I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes

And just for that one moment I could be you

Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes

You'd know what a drag it is to see you"

- Bob Dylan (Positively 4th Street)

The dumpy little snow leopard would admit, if asked, that he had never given much thought to what tea with the devil would entail. In his mind, the idea conjured up images of an ethereal setting with lots of polished brass and white marble, where the fancy silver tea service reflected distant flames, and succubae in stylish tuxedos delivered dainties on gold-frilled carts. Reality looked more like a fast-food doughnut shop with worn linoleum floors and molded plastic chairs. The devil was waiting for him in a booth to one side of the shop, with two tall cups of tea resting on a white-topped table supported by a single metal pole bolted into the floor.

Plonq was certain that the tea would be to his liking, since they had spoken extensively on the phone the day before, and the other had confirmed his tea preferences twice. As he neared, the snow leopard noted that the devil appeared to be fiddling around on his phone. The dark prince did not notice his approach until he had reached the booth and was standing at the end of the table. The wolf finally glanced up from his phone, and after an awkward, aborted attempt to rise, he waved at the feline to sit across from him.

"Thanks for coming," said Larry. He pushed the unopened cup of tea across to Plonq after the cat doffed his coat, stuffed it into the corner, and then wedged himself into the narrow space between the table and seat back of the little booth. "I wouldn't have blamed you for not showing up, but I'm glad you did."

Plonq shrugged. "You promised me free tea, and I am a sucker for free things," he said. The cat flipped back the mouth on the edge of the lid and took a cautious sip of the tea. It was still a bit too hot to drink, but the proportions of milk and sugar were to his liking. It was clear that the wolf had paid attention to his preferences on the phone the day before.

The wolf gave a tentative chuckle at what he assumed was a joke, and then turned serious again. "I just wanted a chance to say I was sorry again in person," he said. "I ... geez, your head looks pretty bad. Are you sure you're okay to be out and around?"

The snow leopard delicately tapped the bandage on his temple. "It looks worse than it is," he replied. "They shaved away all my fur in the area so that they could put on the bandage - which is among the reasons why I kept telling them not to take me to the ER." He shuddered. "They also took blood and gave me a tetanus shot. The last time I had that many needles in me was when that drunken porcupine kissed me at the New Year's party."

"I remember that," said the wolf with a genuine laugh this time. "She was pretty loaded. I feel bad for her, because everyone blamed her for the party being a dry one the next year." He shook his head and sighed. "Geez, I'd forgotten all about that one. It was actually kind of a fun place to work back then." He drowned the remains of his laugh in a long draught of tea. "I remember when I used to not dread going in to work."

"Anyway," he continued, "I'm sorry about what happened last week. I didn't mean to drag you into my fight with the otter, but between the stress, and my recent migraines I hadn't been sleeping..." He stopped short and made a quick chopping motion with his right hand. "No, I promised myself that I wouldn't sit here and make excuses. I dragged you into my fight with Giblet, and I genuinely apologize for that." He paused to allow a particularly loud party of geese to pass their table before he spoke again. "Arjun said the fight was probably going to cost you your raise and bonus this year."

Plonq shrugged. "It did," he said shortly.

"Aw, dude..."

"Life goes on," said the snow leopard with a wry twitch of his whiskers. "I would have spent it foolishly on hedonistic pursuits and drunken debauchery until it ran out, leaving with me with no job, no clear memories, and a sad life of regrets. In a way, perhaps you helped me more than you hurt me."

"Is there nothing you take seriously?" demanded the wolf.

"I am very serious about my drunken debauchery," said the snow leopard with a hint of reproach. He punctuated the sentence with a sip of tea. "What about you? Arjun said that you pulled the pin."

"He told you that, did he?" said the wolf. He shook his head. "Well, whatever - everyone would have found out soon enough." He leaned forward onto the table, resting his right elbow on his left hand and waved his other hand while he talked. "I was ninety-nine percent sure they were going to fire me anyway, so I handed a written resignation to Arjun when he met me at the door. He was all like, 'Are you sure about this, sir?'," said the wolf in a remarkably accurate mimicry of the red panda's accent.

"I told him I was sure," he continued, "so he got hold of Hanna, and they told me that my resignation might be coming too late." He shrugged. "You know that whole 'You can't fire me because I quit' kind of thing. They were going to fire me with prejudice, which would have screwed me out of severance and other stuff. So they told me if I was willing to take full blame for the incident and offer my resignation, they would use it as leverage to give the VP an out so that he didn't have to fire us both. They said if I took the fall, they would ensure my resignation took priority over the firing."

The wolf stretched and gave a long, luxurious yawn.  "You know what," he said, giving his head and neck a quick shake, "I think I've slept better in the last five days than I have at any time in the last five years. I wish I could retroactively quit a decade ago; I think that's when work stopped being fun."

They drank their tea in silence for a couple of minutes. Plonq watched the ebb and flow of cold people entering the shop and warm people leaving with hot coffee and doughnuts. He cast a couple of sidelong glances at the wolf across from him, but Larry seemed to be floating in a sea of his own thoughts at the moment. It was the cat who finally broke the silence again.

"So, now what," he asked.

The wolf grunted. "If I calculated it right, I should be getting well over a year's pay in severance. As soon as that's securely in my bank account, I'm booking a flight to the hottest resort I can find and spending a month baking in the sun. After that..." he shrugged. "I've got a couple of irons in the fire. My brother up in Fort McMurray thinks he can get me a temp gig at the small company where he works. They're looking to get their data organized, and start measuring their performance. He said they were interested when he mentioned that I'm available. He's got a finished basement and said I could move in for as long as I need." Larry cast a piercing stare at the snow leopard. "I'm more worried about you than me."

It took the snow leopard a moment to process the wolf's statement. "Why are you worried about me?"

"Because I'm leaving you along with that little spawn of Hell," said the wolf. He waggled a finger at the cat. "Don't roll your eyes at me - I'm serious. You haven't seen how bad he can be."

"I know that there is a certain amount of ... enmity between you two," said Plonq.  It was his turn to lean on the table now. He rested his elbows on it and tapped his fingertips together while he thought. "I have been on the receiving end of his temper a few times, so I know how bad he can get..."

The wolf was waving his hands and furiously shaking his head. "No, no no, you don't know how bad he can be," he said firmly. "He behaves himself around you because he likes you. When you're not around, the knives come out. He knows how to get under your skin. He knows how to hurt you with tiny jabs and cuts. He's relentless." The wolf was staring right through Plonq now. He drained the last of his tea and crushed his cup in his right fist. "He behaves around you because he fancies you. You had better hope he continues to," he added darkly.

His gaze suddenly focused on the feline before sliding over to the crushed cup in his hand. "Oh, hey, how's your tea holding up? I think I could use a refill."

Plonq drained the last of his tea and held out the empty cup to the wolf. He watched as the canine dropped the empties into the trash and queued up for fresh cups. Larry quickly reached the front of the line and the snow leopard watched him point animatedly at the menu board before finally paying. When he returned he was carrying a tray with two teas and an additional bag of food.

"I bought you a bagel too," said the wolf. "I'm pretty sure these are the kind you usually get, with lox and all those other things that have no right being on a bagel."

The snow leopard graciously thanked the other, and they both sat in silence for a few minutes, enjoying their respective bagels and tea. In keeping with his namesake, the wolf finished his in very short order.

"What do you mean when you said he 'fancies' me," said Plonq. He casually nibbled another bit off the edge of his bagel as he asked it, but his laser focus on the wolf belied any casualness in the question.

"Just what I said," the wolf replied.

Plonq gave a longsuffering sigh. "He and I are friends, Larry. I know it looks funny that we live together, but trust me when I say that we are just good friends and roommates living in a platonic situation. I am intractably straight, and he accepts that. If I cannot convince you otherwise, then I am not sure what else I can say."

The wolf chuckled dryly. "He says and does things all the time. You came in dressed really nice one day because you had to do a presentation to the lead team. When you wandered off for a couple of minutes, I commented on how nicely you were dressed and teased him about having dressed you that morning. He said, 'Obviously not - does it look like he is wearing buttless chaps to you?'"

"He was obviously trying to get a rise out of you," said Plonq, rubbing his brow as if he felt a headache coming on. "He is a nasty little otter when he wants to be - trust me, I live with him. You said yourself that he knows how to get under your skin."

"It's not just the things he says," countered the wolf. "He's constantly calling you over for help on things that he should know how to do. You always wheel your chair over to his desk, and he always makes sure your tails are touching while you're there. He does that and casts me these little smug looks out of the corner of his eye, knowing that I know what he's doing."

"Larry..."

"Or how about Halloween three years ago," said the wolf, who was on too much a roll to be interrupted. "When Giblet cross-dressed in those super tight shorts with that halter top, glitter and clip-on earrings. He makes a beeline right for your desk, pulls out your chair and then he struts a full circle around you, running a fingertip around your neck before he starts doing that ... that simulated lap dance with you. You'd have needed a micrometer to tell there was no actual contact."

Plonq held up his hand. "There was a bit of contact," he conceded, "but I am going to stop you right there. That was an amazing costume, and we both thought she was really hot before we knew who it was. You were over there patting your lap and saying, 'Hey, wolfie has needs too' while it was going on."

"That was before we figured out who it was," growled Larry defensively. "Once we knew it was Giblet, it should have ended there. Instead, he insisted on finishing the lap dance, and you let him."

"Because it was still kind of hot in a slightly disturbing and awkward way," said Plonq primly. "Also, I think he probably spent a long time practising that dance, and it just did not feel right to ask him to cut it short before he could finish. Besides, half the office was egging us on."

"That's how it works with these people," said the wolf grimly. "That was a really calculated thing by him. They find their target and they take little liberties. A touch here, a hug there - they're always testing the boundaries. Maybe sneak in a quick kiss and see how it goes. They work their way in until you start to question your own sexuality."

Plonq leaned forward and stared slightly askance at the wolf with a hard, dubious gaze. "Larry," he said slowly, "do you actually, seriously think that the 'gay agenda' is a real thing? I live with a gay otter, and he does not have an agenda." Larry started to interrupt, but the snow leopard pushed on over him. "We are talking about an otter who is so disorganized that he has a meltdown when he cannot find the work shirt he wants in one of the piles of clothes he has strewn about in his room and he does not care that there are lots of other good shirts because those are not the shirt he wants to wear today and we have to leave for work in three minutes and why does this always happen to him."

The feline paused to catch his breath. "An agenda of any kind, gay nor not, would be beyond an otter with such minimal organizational skills. Giblet can barely even dress himself some mornings, let alone enact a plan to turn his roommate gay."

The wolf looked around the restaurant and noticed a few heads turning their way while they spoke. "Look, grab your coat and tea and let's go for a walk," he said quickly. "This place is starting to fill up."

The two zipped themselves into their coats, collected their drinks and stepped out into the early-afternoon chill. Larry motioned down the street with a flick of his head. "My car's this way," he said. "I'll give you a lift home if you want." He strode off quickly while the shorter snow leopard stepped in double time to keep pace.

"The gay agenda is just political wedge words invented by people to push an agenda," said Plonq, puffing clouds of steam that dissipated quickly in the light breeze. "It is the same as calling something a gateway drug, or labelling poor people as welfare queens."

"The gay thing is real," insisted the wolf. "I know, because they got Sammy."

"Sammy?"

"My sister," said the wolf with a low, angry growl. They stopped for a crossing, and Plonq glanced over at the wolf while they waited. The canine's lip was pulled back slightly in light snarl. "She was a normal, boy-crazy, Jesus-loving girl until she went to college," he said. He shook his cup of tea, causing it to spurt up through the drinking spout. "That's one of their favourite places to find prey," he added coldly. The light changed, and they scurried across the street without speaking.

When they turned up the side street, Larry began to speak again. "She was fine through her whole junior year, and then she met Tiffany in second year." He turned and spat on the sidewalk, narrowly missing a pedestrian who had been coming the other way. "Goddamn otter with rings everywhere. Both ears, over the eye, nose, lip, tongue ... and God knows where else. I've never hated anyone more in my life for what she did to Sammy. I don't want to see it hap..."

"An otter..." thought Plonq as things began to gel in his head. Part of him was tempted to let the wolf rant himself out, but the snow leopard already had a good idea of where the story was going.

"Larry," he said sharply, interrupting the wolf in mid-sentence. "Sammy was always gay."

"She was not," snarled the wolf. He stopped dead in his tracks and whirled on the snow leopard. "I grew up with her, and I know my own sister. She was not gay until that dyke got to her. If she'd shown signs of it earlier, we could have got her help. She was completely normal right through her teens."

Plonq stepped out of the centre of the sidewalk and waved the wolf over to join him next to the building out of the way of pedestrian traffic.  The snow leopard slouched back against the brickwork of the building where they'd stopped. He took a sip of his tea and stroked his chin a bit in thought.

"Would you hear me out on something?" he asked. "It may sound unrelated at first, but just hear me out."

At first the wolf looked like he was going to decline, but then he gave a dismissive wave with his free hand and turned so that he could lean on the building too. "Whatever, it's not like either of us have anything but free time these days," he said.

Plonq cupped his tea and swirled it while he willed his own thoughts to stop swirling. When he felt they were sufficiently composed, he began to speak.

"Once, when Giblet and I had been drinking rather a bit, he started opening up to me about his own family. It pains him to talk about them, but I guess he decided he had found a friend who he could trust with his pain. They disowned him when they learned that he was gay. They have completely cut him off, as have all of the family friends he grew up with. They were a very close, loving family but now he has nieces and nephews whom he has never met.

"I asked him why he told them about it when he knew how they would react." Plonq paused and pondered his tea for a moment.

"And what did he say?" prompted Larry.

"He said it was because they had raised him to be honest. He said that in retrospect; if he had the ability go back and change one thing it would have been to not have been born gay."

"He - wait, what?" demanded the wolf.

"Nothing has caused him more hardship in his life," said Plonq. "He has no desire to change what he is, but he would sacrifice it to save his younger self from how much it has sucked over the years. He always knew that he was different as a kid, but he acted the way he knew he was expected to act for most of his younger life because it was easier than the ugly alternative."

He saws the wolf's jaw working, but when the lupine did not speak, Plonq pressed on. He drew another long sigh. "What I am saying is that your sister did not turn gay. She did not choose to be gay - no sane person does when they know how hard that will make their lives. Sammy might not have known that she was gay when she was younger, but I think she probably knew for a long time and was trying to wish and pray it away."

The snow leopard paused. "Did you guys completely cut her off?"

The wolf shrugged. He was focusing very hard on what was left of his tea. "Not ... as such," he said. "She knows how to reach me, but it's not like she's tried."

"Anyway," Plonq continued. "That was a few years back. These days when the subject comes up, he usually refers to them as 'my fucking family'. He does not say it with his old vitriol any more, rather as somebody who has buried them in the past with other misplaced shames." He paused for another sip of his tea, and he turned to eye the wolf over the back lip of his cup while he slurped. The cat lowered the cup again. "I am sorry if this is a very personal question, but do you still love your sister?"

"She knows where to reach me," repeated the wolf.

The two stood with their backs to the wall and finished their tea. As the cold began to seep its way through their jackets, Larry finally peeled himself from the wall and began ambling down the street without a word. Plonq turned to follow.

"Larry," he said, chasing after the wolf. "I know that I am not in a position to give you advice on something like this, but it would be way easier if you were to call her. If she is not reaching out to you, it is probably because she thinks that you want nothing to do with her."

The wolf shrugged, but did not slow his pace.

"She is still your sister. Call her. Let her talk."

"The offer of a ride is still open," said the wolf tersely. "My car is just over there." He turned when he noticed that the snow leopard had stopped walking.

"Thank you for the tea and bagel," said Plonq, "but I think we both have some things to think about. I am going to walk home from here so that I can clear my head."

The wolf nodded. He stepped back to the feline and held out his hand. "I know we aren't going to agree on this thing, but thanks for coming out today," he said. "Watch out for yourself."

"I appreciate that you are looking out for me. Good luck in Fort McMurray," said Plonq, accepting the hand. "I am going to miss you at the office, and not just because I am going to get stuck picking up a bunch of your work, you bastard."

The wolf laughed and pulled the cat in for a proper, manly hug. "I'll almost miss you too," he said.

Though Plonq was eager to get home and kick off his shoes, he stood by the curb with one hand in his pocket and the other clutching his tea, watching as the wolf got into his car, adjusted the seatbelt and mirror and then pulled out into traffic.  The two gave a final, parting wave before the canine drove out of his life for what they both believed was for good. Even after the car was out of sight, the snow leopard remained still for another minute and stared at his breath as it condensed out of the air and drifted away. Finally he took another good slug of tea and started the long trundle toward home.

The cat unzipped his coat enough to fetch the phone out of his shirt pocket to see why somebody (who he assumed correctly was Giblet) had been blowing up his phone with texts for the past few minutes.

"hi. where r u? trying 2 reach u @ home."

"hello?"

"r u there."

"helloooooooooooo. is this thing on?"

"R U OK?"

"Hullo," he texted back. "Sorry, I met Larry for tea and had my phone muted."

"ugh. >w<" replied the otter. "did u punch him?"

"Just talked," typed Plonq. "I will tell you about it later. Pretty messed up."

"kk," texted the otter from the other end. "picking up bf & fried chicken on way home can u pls dig out dining room tbl."

"Sure," said the cat. He could imagine how frustrating it must be for others to chat with him by text, since he struggled mightily with his fat furry fingers on the tiny virtual keyboard. On the other hand, he was a something of a perfectionist when typing, so the person at the other end often had to wait through a long stretch of '...'s at their end to indicate that he was, indeed, still typing a response. "I will clean up the place a bit when I get home."

Plonq returned to work the following Monday with no fanfare, and almost no attention other than a few scattered 'good morning's as he passed. He knew, via Giblet, that Arjun had made the rounds, asking people not to make his return any more awkward than it needed to be.

Before he could even take off his coat, the cat was tapped for a meeting with Hanna to outline some rules for him in the immediate future, including a reminder of the mandatory course he was to take.

"Oh, you already completed it? Good. You should stop by HR with the forms before you do anything else today."

He was intercepted on the way back to his desk by Arjun, who wanted to discuss some of the work he would be picking up from Larry. He followed this with forty minutes on the phone with IT trying to get the suspension lifted from his user code. This is how it was almost two hours into his day before he was finally able to log into his workstation and start checking his email. He hoped that they had suspended his email account at the same time as they had locked his user code, but to his dismay he found that they had not.

The feline scrolled through a page and a half of status reports and noise before one subject line jumped out at him.

"From: Larry_T_Wolf@dogmail.com

To: Plonq.Snowcat@railway.ca

Time: 04:35

Subject: ok so I phone her lik you said"

He glanced over at the empty desk where the wolf used to sit. Facilities had worked their magic on that corner of the cubicle to the point where one might never guess that it had been occupied for years. Plonq looked back at the time stamp of the email, and the subject line that looked like it might have been written while drunk before he locked his workstation again.

He stretched and yawned before pushing back his chair and toddling over to where Giblet was hunched over his own workstation. Plonq tapped the otter gently on the shoulder.

"I think I need a bit more fortification before I deal with this inbox..." the cat began, but in a motion almost too fast to follow, the otter locked his own workstation, leapt from his chair and snagged his coat. He stood in front of the snow leopard with the jacket slung over his arm.

"Did I hear something about caffeine?" asked Giblet. "You know me and coffee. Lead on, good sir!"

Prisha was fighting with the laser printer again when she heard them passing. She glanced up and watched the pair walking in stride toward the front elevator. As usual, the otter was speaking very animatedly with lots of exaggerated arm waving that forced him to constantly rescue the coat that threatened to fall off his arm. The snow leopard, meanwhile, occasionally shrugged or made other small signs to indicate that he was at least pretending to listen.

"Now there goes double trouble," she said to nobody in particular.

Nobody in particular was inclined to disagree.

The End

Tribulation

Part 3 - Homecoming

"The me that you know he had some second thoughts;

He's covered with scabs and he is broken and sore.

The me that you know doesn't come around much.

That part of me isn't here anymore."

- Nine Inch Nails (The Becoming)

Giblet quickly found that one of the downsides to having both of his cube mates missing was that he got a lot more work done - that is, he got a lot more work done when he logged out of the messenger application to stem the flood of coworkers wanting to know what had happened. This was also after he stopped himself from constantly glancing over his shoulder at the yellow tape that separated his little corner of order from the mess in the rest of their cubicle area.

The Facilities department had come in very quickly once the police had taken all of their pictures and measurements.  Part of Plonq's desk was missing now, with just the bent stands remaining. Both chairs had been pushed into the unused corner of the cubicle, and five squares of the carpet had been removed. They had also taken away two of the fabric cubicle wall-panels that has been smeared with snow leopard blood.

Normally management frowned on employees wearing earbuds at their workstations, but they had - by unspoken agreement - understandably given the little otter a pass for the day. Giblet had the buds buried deep in his ear canals and his music was cranked to an unhealthy volume to drown out the uncomfortable silence behind him. It was only when he saw a hand waving at the periphery of his vision that he realized somebody was trying to get his attention. He paused the music and popped out the ear pieces when he saw who it was.

"Hey, Josh," he said. The older otter tilted back his chair and clasped his hands behind his head while he rotated his seat around to face the younger otter.  "Still here, I see."

"Hi," said Joshua.  "Ya, I'm still here." He laughed. "It was a close call earlier this morning, but the totally professional, but unprepared way in which they handled this thing convinced me that it really is an anomaly. Also, everyone here is just so gosh darned nice."

"That's because you're new," said Giblet with a quick wink at the other otter. "Give it six months and the safety caps come off our claws. That's when you start to realize that a lot of what you mistook for being nice is actually just passive-aggressiveness." He glanced at a sheaf of papers under the other otter's left arm. "Homework?"

Joshua looked puzzled for a moment then pulled out the papers. "These? Oh, this is for the pension options, vision and dental plans..." he paused. "Not to be rude, but when they started handing me all of these physical forms, I almost forgot what decade we were in. This was all electronic at my last place."

"It is here too," said Giblet. "I think they just want to get your physical signature for the first iteration." He cranked his head around, glancing over each of his shoulders and then lowered his voice to a conspiratorial hush. "We have some suits in the upper ranks here who live for pulling out pieces of paper and demanding, 'Is this not your signature on this form agreeing to the terms that you now question?'"

Joshua laughed again. "I love how I can't tell if you're being serious or not," he said.

"I learned from a master," said Giblet, peeling away one of his hands and thumbing at the empty desk behind him. He sighed and sat upright again. "Me and him are going to have a serious chat when I get home."

"That's partly why I stopped by on my way out," said Joshua. "I'm sorry about the 'boyfriend' remark I made earlier. It was really presumptuous of me, and I could tell that it really upset you."

"I wasn't really upset about it," said Giblet, batting away the younger otter's concerns with a quick wave of his left hand. "If you asked around the office, I think you'd find that half of them think that Plonq and I are boyfriends with benefits, in spite of the fact that we're both actively dating other people of various genders." He picked up a well-chewed pen off his desk and began slowly flipping it back and forth through the fingers of one hand. "I was really upset about everything earlier this morning, and I reacted a lot more strongly to your comment than I normally would. I've calmed down a lot." He chuckled. "Well, inasmuch as I can ever be considered calm. Just so you know, I am still screaming on the inside, so don't be alarmed if I accidentally externalize a bit of that without warning."

Giblet could have gone on at some length about his absent friend. He could have mentioned how he had first come out to the snow leopard - the first time he'd come out to anybody (besides family, which had not gone well) - because he'd had a crush on the cat, and mistaken the other's awkwardness and friendship for a deeper mutual interest.  He'd have waxed on about how not only had the faux pas not driven the other way, but they'd become even closer, with the feline bending over backward to be supportive. He'd have told the young otter about how Plonq had taken Giblet in after he'd lost everything in a fire. How the cat had convinced him to march in his first Pride Day parade a couple of years later and even held his hand along the whole parade route to lend him courage.

But he barely knew the young otter, and didn't want to bore him with personal anecdotes. Instead, he clasped his hands behind his head again and said, "I think I speak for both of us when I say that I'm glad to have this morning behind us."

"And how," agreed Joshua emphatically. "Well, good luck. Wish your friend luck as well when you see him later today. He seemed very nice, and I hope he comes out of this ok."

"Thanks," said Giblet. As Joshua turned to leave, Giblet glanced at his desk phone and noted the time. It was very near the end of his day, and he had not yet heard any word on the snow leopard's condition. He had hoped that Plonq might call him from the hospital, but he also understood that the cat probably had other matter on his mind. Plonq also had the car keys, which left Giblet in the position of figuring out an alternate way to get home.

Fortunately, the logistics of getting home were resolved for him when Rahul wandered by his desk ten minutes later and gave him Plonq's car keys.

"Plonq said to give you these," said the lanky mongoose as he put the keys on the corner of Giblet's desk. "I dropped him off at home after we left the hospital."

"How's he doing?" demanded Giblet, snatching up the keys as he spoke.

"He's a little shaken up, but he's going to be ok," said Rahul. "The bleeding had mostly stopped by the time they finally got around to treating him. They put on a butterfly bandage and sent him home with some pain killers. They said he has no sign of a concussion."

"Oh, well that's some good news!" Giblet glanced at the time again. "Holy crap - you guys left this morning. You were in ER with him the whole time?"

When Giblet arrived home, he found the snow leopard in the living room in a messy, supine sprawl on the corner of the sofa. The cat had one arm draped over the back of the sofa, and the other draped over its arm with his left foot resting on the coffee table. On the selfsame table were a small prescription bottle and an open scotch. As near as the otter could tell, his friend had been staring blankly out the front window before the mustelid had interrupted him. Even then, the snow leopard remained ostensibly motionless, moving only his eyes to track Giblet as he entered the room.

"Hi," said Giblet tentatively.

"Hullo," said Plonq. He lifted his hand from the back of the couch and gestured toward his head. "Unfortunately, it looks like I am going to survive."

Giblet glanced at the languid feline, then at the open bottle of scotch and the pills on the table. "What's with the scotch," he asked with a gerbil of concern gnawing at his gut from the inside. Now that he was standing in the living room, the smell of alcohol was fairly prominent. "Tell me you're not mixing those."

"Oh," said Plonq. "Well, they gave me some pain killers at the hospital and told me to take them with liquid. They did not specify which liquid and it occurred to me that scotch qualifies as one." The cat shrugged. "Then I figured that in large enough quantities, scotch also acts as a pain killer, and I could just skip the pills entirely."

Giblet tutted in disapproval and picked up the bottle, slamming the cork back into the top. He held it up and noticed that it was two thirds empty. "Christ, how much of this did you drink?" he demanded. "Am I going to have to take you right back to ER for alcohol poisoning?"

Plonq seemed to consider the question. He glanced over at his left hand on the back of the couch and began counting off fingers. "Well, if you discount how much was missing from the bottle when I brought it out here, and how much is left now..." He extended four fingers one after another. "I had, uh, a tiny sip and then decided to take one of the pills instead. I just had not got around to putting the cork back in."

"You are a prick," said Giblet in something between a growl and a laugh of relief.  He stepped around the coffee table and threw himself into the opposite corner of the sofa, placing the bottle on the end table beside him as he sat. He reached back and slapped the feline's arm off the back of the sofa angrily. "So, why didn't you call once you got home? You know me well enough to know that I'd be worried sick about you!"

"Sorry," said Plonq with genuine-sounding contrition. He crossed his arms loosely over his chest and gently massaged his biceps as he shift himself upright on the sofa. "I have kind of been lost in my own brain since I got home." The snow leopard drew a deep breath and gave a slow, trembling exhalation. "I am probably going to get fired."

"No, you're not," said the otter. He slid over a cushion to the right so that he was sitting next to his friend. He punched the snow leopard gently, but firmly in the upper arm. "They're not going to fire you for a first offense after you've been there that long. No - stop. Don't you sit there and shake your head at me!"

"They have a zero-tolerance policy for physical violence," said Plonq. "I tackled him pretty hard." He shuddered, and when he spoke next his voice trembled a bit. "I lost my senses for the briefest moment there, and when I pounced at him I think I was going for his throat. When I had him down, and I was sitting on his chest and he was staring up at me, I could see that he thought I was going to kill him." The cat drew another long breath. When he spoke again it was barely over a whisper. "I think ... I guess ... at that moment I was more scared of me than he was. I have never lost control like that. Everyone says I was yelling a bunch at him, but I have no memory of that." He glanced over at the otter and met his eyes. "He really pissed me off, but I have never lost control like that before."

"About that," said Giblet flatly. "Please understand that what I am about to say is said with as much love and respect as is legally allowed in a nonsexual relationship but..." The otter reached over and clamped a hand under the snow leopard's chin to prevent the other from breaking eye contact. "Don’t you ever ... fucking ever pull that shit again. I'm a big boy, and I can fight my own fights. I don't need you being my white knight and putting your neck on the line for me - especially when it could cost you your livelihood." He let go of Plonq's chin and sat back again. "I mean it. Bandage my wounds and offer me words of support, but let me fight my own fights. You're my friend, not my bodyguard."

He watched as the snow leopard dropped his hands to his lap and fiddled with them, massaging one hand over the other while he mulled on the otter's words. The cat glanced at the otter out of the corner of his eye, but stayed mum when he sensed that the otter was not done speaking yet. The snow leopard stared down at his hands again.

To the otter's own great surprise, he quickly leaned in and kissed the snow leopard on the cheek.

"Thank you, though," said Giblet gently. A hint of tears glistened in the corners of his eyes. "I'm really touched and humbled that you were willing to throw yourself so totally into my defense. Sometimes I get the feeling that you genuinely like me." He quickly held up a hand to the snow leopard's muzzle when he saw that the cat was about to speak.

"Not a word until you take off your shirt," said the otter. He rose and stepped in front of the snow leopard while the latter started sheepishly unbuttoning it. "Give me your undershirt too, while you’re at it. Seriously, you've been home for at least two hours and you're still wearing that shirt with all the blood on it?"

"It is already ruined," said Plonq defensively as he shrugged out of the layers. "It just seemed like wasted effort to bother changing out of it until I was ready to put on something else."

Giblet grimaced and shook his head disapprovingly at the feline. He took the garments and held them critically up to the light. "You're probably right about them being a loss," he said, "but it can't hurt to put them on to soak. I'll take care of that, since you're hopeless at these things." The otter bundled the shirts up and tossed them onto the armchair. He leaned forward and inspected the snow leopard's exposed fur. "At least it didn't soak all the way through." He started to raise his arms, hesitated and quickly lowered them again. "Ya, it looks fine."

"A shame, really," said Plonq sadly, "that was one of my favourite shirts." He glanced at the wad of clothes, then back at the otter standing in front of him. Giblet seemed to be in the beginnings of a mild trance as he stared fixedly at the feline's bare torso. The cat lifted his hand to the arm of the sofa and rhythmically tapped his fingers along it. He cleared his throat politely.

Giblet made brief eye contact with the snow leopard, and then he looked longingly back down at the cat's mid-rift.  "May I?" he wheedled. "I promise it will just be a quickie."

Plonq sighed. "OK, fine. Just try not to make it ... weird," said the snow leopard

Giblet dropped to his knees and leaned forward, and then he paused with his arms outstretched. "What do you mean by 'don't make it weird?" he demanded.

"You know what I mean," said Plonq dryly. "I mean no suggesting moaning, and no burying your muzzle in my solar plexus for a good sniff. Get in, get your fix and get out."

Giblet giggled. "Would I do that?" he asked innocently. "I can't help it if I love the smell of cats." He leaned forward and buried his outstretched hands in the snow leopard's thick belly fur. The otter lost himself in a few moments of bliss as he gently petted and kneaded the fur. "It's amazing," he breathed. "It's so thick and soft and fluffy! How can you not spend all of your waking hours doing this?"

The snow leopard chuckled, sending a pleasing vibration through the thick fur. "You have no idea what I do in my room at night," he said, eliciting a return laugh from the otter.

After a couple of minutes, Giblet was sated enough to pull his hands back and rise to his feet again. He gathered up the snow leopard's shirt and undergarment into his arms. "OK, I'm going to go put these on to soak," he said. "Also, I'm starving. I worked right through lunch. I don't know what we've got in the cupboard at the moment, but I can toss something together for us."

Plonq shook his head and sighed. "We grabbed a little snack on the way home from the hospital, and I ... am lacking in appetite at the moment," he said.

The otter nodded, understanding. "Well, I'll make a bit extra and put it in the fridge in case you change your mind later." He started toward the hall, and stopped again at the threshold. "You know," he said thoughtfully as he hugged the garments in his arms a little tighter, "I think I know why we get along so well. You let me run my hands through your belly fur without getting weirded out by it, and you just accepted it as 'Giblet being Giblet' when I gave you that sloppy kiss on your cheek. Most guys would have freaked out if their friend did that."

"Well, it is a quid pro quo thing," said Plonq. "You get to run your hands through luxurious fur, and I get a belly rub." He blinked as the otter's words continued parsing in his head. "Wait, you kissed me...?"

It was almost ninety minutes later when Giblet returned to the living room bearing two tall cups of steaming faux hot chocolate, each brimming with marshmallows. He found the snow leopard sitting in the same corner of the sofa, leaning against the arm of it with his knees pulled up under his chin.

"I brought you a little something. Even if you're not hungry, there's always room for fake hot chocolate," said the otter, handing one of the mugs to the cat.

Plonq accepted the mug and sat it on his knee, holding it there with one hand while he tentatively poked at one of the marshmallows with an extended claw on his other. In the meantime, Giblet perched on the edge of the armchair with his knees crossed and took a sip of his own drink.

"So what are the next steps?" Giblet asked. "Is there anything I can do for you at the office to help?"

Plonq paused in his attempts to spear a marshmallow. "Oh," he said, "I am going to be coming in on Thursday morning to meet with the inquisition. Arjun called Rahul while we were waiting in ER and said he needed to talk to me if I was available." He finally managed to capture the prize he was after, and he delicately licked it off the tip of his claw. "He told me to show up at work if I was available for 9:00 on Thursday, or to suggest another time if that did not work. He said they want to get this handled quickly."

He made a stab at another marshmallow, but it just bobbed elusively away every time he tried. "I had to surrender my phone and pass card to Rahul." The cat gave up trying to catch his prey and just stirred the floating confections with the extended claw. "I had to give him my corporate credit card and authenticator too while I was at it," he said. "You know things are serious when they take your RSA device."

"That's just standard procedure," said Giblet quickly. He took another nip from his fake chocolate without ever taking his eyes from the snow leopard. "And it's good that they're trying to resolve it quickly. The sooner they get this mess out of the way, the quicker we'll have you back at work."

Plonq glanced up at the otter, and then just shrugged and returned his attention to his hot drink. "Actually, I think the speed of this is a bad sign because it means that they have already made up their minds about the outcome."

The cat had a point, but Giblet refused to concede. "They're not just going to let you go," he said firmly. "I know that Arjun really likes you. He's pretty respected there, and he won't give you up without a fight."

"Maybe," said Plonq. He sighed, and sadly shook his head. "I keep replaying this morning in my head, trying to come up with other ways that it could have gone.  There were so many paths I could have chosen that did not involve screwing up, but I managed not to take those."

"It'll work out," said the otter firmly. "Look, I'm on your side. You've helped me get through so many things over the years; I can't not be here to help you through this."

"Thanks," said the snow leopard, glancing back up at his friend briefly. "That means a lot."

"Is there anything I can help with right now?"

Plonq shook his head. "Maybe tomorrow," he said. "I need some time alone out here to wallow. I would stew, but I am pretty much past that phase."

Giblet uncoiled himself from the armchair and walked over to the end of the couch. He clapped a hand on his friend's shoulder and gave it a couple of reassuring squeezes. "OK, I'll leave you here to wallow," he said. "I'm going to head back to my room to watch some porn - or whatever it is I do in there when I have the door closed. If you changed your mind about needing anything, just come back and knock."

Giblet woke at just shy of three o'clock the next morning with a bladder that had a mind to punish him for drinking hot chocolate so close to bed time. He reluctantly slid out from under the sheets into the relative cold of his bedroom and tip-toed out into the hall. As he rounded the corner toward the bathroom, he saw light streaming from the living room. He considered dashing back to his room for pants so that he could check on the situation out there, but his initial purpose in venturing out was more pressing.

Once he had dealt with his personal issue, the otter donned a tatty pair of sweat pants and made his way to the front room to see if Plonq had accidentally left the light on when he'd gone to bed.  When he rounded the corner, he found the snow leopard in the same corner of the couch. The cat was fast asleep, draped over the arm and snoring softly. Giblet shook his head in awe at the feline's ability to sleep in a position that would have left most species crippled by the morn.

A mug of cold chocolate - untouched save for a vague indentation in the sticky foam where a marshmallow had once been - sat on the table by the lamp. The otter strode lightly out of the room and returned a minute later with a blanket that he gently draped over the cat. Plonq muttered and shifted slightly at the touch of the blanket, but snored again a few seconds later.

Giblet turned off the lamp and tip-toed back to bed.

n  End of part 3

Part 4

Part 1 - New Guy

"Whether you're woman or whether you're man

Sometimes you got to take a stand

Just because you think you can."

- Buffy Sainte-Marie (You've Got to Run (Spirit of the Wind))

When the muttering wolf stomped around the partition corner with a steaming mug of tea clutched in both of his hands, neither of his two cubicle mates spared him a glance. The stomping and muttering was as much a part of his routine as the nine-thirty tea, and it typically indicated that he was irritated by something he'd seen on the break-room television. It was usually a contemporary political issue that set him off, and since the canine's politics ran diametrically opposite of both his cubicle mates',   neither of them were eager to ask him what had him bothered.

The wolf was creeping to the far side of middle age, and it showed. He had the look of one who had likely been very fit in his youth, but time and a sedentary job had slowly built him a paunch as well as a sunken, dull, brown-eyed stare of one who was about done with everything. He flopped heavily into his chair and, as had also become a routine of late, opened the top-right drawer of his desk and shook a couple of the acetaminophen he kept there into his left palm. He washed them down with a large enough swallow of tea to burn his tongue and slammed the drawer shut again.

The snow leopard and otter who shared the cubicle with the wolf readily caught the rattle of the pill container, and they recognized it as the preamble to an uninitiated rant. They were caught unprepared when he finally spoke in a very level tone.

"Either these migraines or these pills are going to be the end of me." The wolf took another slug of his fresh tea. "I see they've hired a new guy," he added, thumbing nonchalantly in the direction of the main elevator. The ears of this cubicle mates perked up visibly at the news, but neither removed their headsets, or otherwise responded while they waited for the meat of his rant to begin. The wolf grunted at their lack of reaction and quietly turned back to his workstation.

"That's it?" demanded Giblet. The otter pulled off his headset and spun his chair around to face the wolf. "Come on, spill it. Who and what did they hire?" The wolf picked up his tea, took a languid sip, and then slowly rotated his own seat to face the otter. Giblet's whiskers twitched in annoyance when he saw the other's measured movements and he realized that he had probably just stepped into a trap.

"You want to know what they hired," said the wolf slowly. He made a show of sipping his tea, gave his wet nose an exaggerated lick and continued. "You know we're supposed to be blind to species - or whatever stupid term they use for it these days. I seem to recall you announcing with some relish that you had completed the mandatory online sensitivity course well before the deadline." He relished another quaff of his drink while the otter stewed in anticipation. "Were you hoping for something in particular?"

Giblet was used to being baited by the wolf, and while he generally found it amusing to get into verbal spars with the canine, he found himself losing patience with the other's games of late. The otter considered a verbal retort and then changed his mind, reaching through the bottom of his chair's backrest to flip his middle finger at the canid.

"You know what I meant," he said sourly. "Is he the new DBA?"

"Better be," said Plonq without turning. The snow leopard had a visual schema open on one screen, and an editor with dense SQL code on the other. Although he caught the verbal barbs between his coworkers, the feline's pretense of working caused him to miss the visual elements of it as the wolf returned the otter's sign with both of his hands before following them up with a gesture that one of British descent might have identified as the wanker.

"I dunno." The wolf shrugged and quickly grabbed his tea again as the snow leopard made an aborted move to look his way. "I spotted him with boss-man and what's-her-name from HR." He scratched under his muzzle and reached his other hand back to perch his tea precariously close to the edge of his desk. "He was wearing kind of a douchey shirt, so I'm guessing he's probably going to SAP." He started to turn back to his workstation and made a show of pausing partway around. "And Giblet, even though you're pretending you don’t care, I know you're dying to find out. He's a slotter."

"He's a ... what?" demanded the otter. The snow leopard's ears perked up again at that as well, and he half-turned his head to pay closer attention to the conversation.

"A slotter," said the wolf cryptically. "You know, one of those boutique hybrids you hear about in the news. Half otter and half snow leopard." Giblet exchanged a quick glance with Plonq, but the latter just gave a quick palms-up shrug and shook his head.

"Bullshit," said Giblet. "There are things you can't hybridize, and that's one of them."

The wolf blinked innocently at the other two without speaking for a moment. "I seen what I seen. I expect an apology when you eat your words later." He rubbed his temple and grimaced before rotating his chair back to face his workstation, rescuing his precariously-perched mug as he turned.

Plonq sighed, pulled off his phone headset, grabbed his glasses and rolled back his chair. The dumpy snow leopard rose, stepped around the edge of his desk and peeked over the top of his cubicle. He slid his glasses a bit further down his muzzle and peered in the direction of the elevator. His tail thrashed a couple of times, but other than a noncommittal grunt, he gave no other indication of what he saw.

"Huh," was all he said as he removed his spectacles and lumbered back to his chair. Giblet watched him put his glasses back on the desk and reach for his headset again. When it became clear that the snow leopard was not going to elaborate on this reaction the otter could not contain himself.

"So?" he prompted. He pumped his short legs to wheel his chair over to the other's desk so that he could slap him on the shoulder. "Spill it!"

"He is a slotter," the cat replied. He paused. "Or a snotter, perhaps, depending on how you portmanteau it." Giblet tried to read the feline's body language, but if Plonq was pulling his leg, he was putting on a very good poker muzzle while doing it.

"You both suck," said the otter. "You can't get a hybrid from a snow leopard and an otter."

"Sure you can," said the wolf. He made circle with his index finger and thumb, and stuck the index finger of his other hand through it. "All you need is for a snow leopard and an otter to love each other very much. Then they get married, do the thing and make a baby."

"Makes sense," said the snow leopard, nodding sagely.

"They can do the thing all they want, but no baby will happen," retorted Giblet, casting a quick glare at his friend. "If hybridization worked like that, we'd be up to our necks in little Frankenbabies with all the cross-species marriages these days. The pegs and holes aren't compatible."

"Especially not when you're doing it in the butt," muttered the wolf, loud enough for the other two to hear. The otter ignored his jab.

"I'm no genologist..." continued the otter.

"Geneticist," hissed Plonq, but Giblet pressed on.

"I don't care how much they love each other; they will not produce a 'slotter'. You're both full of crap."

"Then explain the new guy," said the wolf. He donned his headset and pulled his keyboard closer; making it clear to the otter that he was being dismissed.

"Ugh," said Giblet. He doffed his own phone gear and stood abruptly, "fine." The chunky little mustelid crossed over the cubicle and stepped around the snow leopard's desk to the wall of their shared cubicle. He was a little shorter than the feline, so he had to hook his hands on the top and pull himself up onto his toes to see over the top.

In the distance, Giblet could see the new employee speaking to their director and a familiar ocelot from HR. Whatever their director had said, the other two were treating the little red panda to a hearty laugh. As he stared at the newcomer, Giblet could not think of a better word for him than the wolf's description. The new employee was a young-looking otter, but his fur was silver and marked with very distinctive snow leopard rosettes.

The otter lowered himself down again and turned to lean against the partition.

"He's adorable," said Giblet breathlessly.

"I knew you'd like him," said the wolf without looking back, dropping his pretense of disinterest. "'cuz you've got the hots for spots."

"And stripes," said Giblet quickly, "also, those are tattoos, you shit stains!"

"Oh," said Plonq with feigned innocence. "That makes at least as much sense as a hybrid."

"I'm jealous," said Giblet. "They fit him perfectly." The little otter ran a hand over the side of his muzzle and sighed. "I've always wanted to get some tat work done, but the peroxides irritate my skin, and the thought of that many needles gets my jimmies in a knot."

"I thought your type was into pain and stuff," said the wolf. The canine was swirling the tea in his mug while he spoke - it was one of the affectations he adopted when he felt like he was on a roll. The otter glared at him, and his muzzle worked like he was going to come back with an angry retort, but he cast a quick glance at their other cube mate and changed his tactic.

"Not as a rule," Giblet said sweetly. He winked saucily at the canine. "But the right kind of pain, judiciously applied in the right places for the right reasons is always an option to keep open." His reply had the desired effect on the wolf as the latter stopped swishing his tea and tossed back another mouthful without further comment.

"I am going to borrow that line for my next performance review when the boss accuses me of making my goals too unambitious," said Plonq, tossing the otter a quick thumbs-up without taking his eyes from his work. Giblet turned back to the partition, hooked his hands over the top and pulled himself up on his toes again.

"I need another look at those gorgeous tats," he said. Out of the corner of his eye, the snow leopard saw the otter freeze, lift his right hand briefly from the partition to wave, and then he quickly lowered himself down.

"Crap!" he said hoarsely. "Well, that was awkward."

"What's the matter, did he catch you fawning at him over the partition?" asked the wolf.

"All three of them did," said the otter glumly. "The boss pointed at me and they all waved, so it was pretty obvious that I was staring."

"That is certainly not embarrassing at all," said the snow leopard. "In fairness, you were gawking."

"Nothing for it now but to go say 'hi' in person," said the wolf, "may as well drool on him up close rather than ogling from a distance."

The otter bobbed his head in thought - it was a practise he'd picked up from their director and many of the other ex-contractors the company had hired into their department. "I guess I could go ask him where he got the ink done," Giblet said pensively.

"Ask him if he is the new DBA," interjected Plonq quickly. "Tell him that if he can get these tables indexed without needing five requests and three months, he will never have to buy his own coffee again as long as he works here."

"Fine," said the otter. "If we're going to be working together I don't want him to think I'm some kind of creeper peeking over partitions at people."  Giblet brushed down his shirt and tucked in the tails that had come loose when he'd pulled himself up on the partition before he trundled around the corner of the cubicle and out of sight.

As soon as the otter was clear of earshot, Plonq whipped off his headset, slammed it on his desk and whirled to confront the wolf. "Dude," he said in something between a hiss and a growl.

"Dude what?" said the wolf innocently. He turned as well to face the snow leopard

"You know what," growled Plonq. "I know you are only teasing him, but you are really starting to toe the harassment line lately."

"If he can't take a little ribbing from a co-worker then fuck him," said the wolf. He rubbed his temple and winced. "Though from what I hear, you probably have."

"Larry!" the growl carried a bit more menace this time. "Do not even go there. I can only speculate on what you think you have heard, but it is none of your business either way." The snow leopard's tail thudded solidly on the floor as he formulated his words. "I am just saying that you are setting yourself up for some HR pain if you push him on the gay thing."

"Giblet's a big boy," said Larry with a low growl of his own. The wolf tossed back the last of his tea in one swallow. "The otter gets in his own share of shots. If he wants me to stop, he can damned well stop it himself. I'm open to a truce. In the meantime, you worry about your own business and we'll worry about ours." The wolf turned his back to the feline, thumped his empty mug noisily on the desk and grabbed his headset again, clearly communicating that he considered the conversation to be done.

"You are not the one who lives with him and gets to hear him complain about you," the cat muttered darkly as he continued to stare at the lupine's back for a moment longer. He fidgeted with his hands, and his tail trashed as he considered saying more, but instead he quietly returned his attention to his own work. Plonq spent a few minutes trying to figure out why his small query was bringing the database to a standstill, but the snow leopard was too irritated to concentrate on his job for long. He spent a few minutes updating some of the comments in his code to include snarky shots at a future debugger, but that lost its lustre fairly quickly as well.

Eventually he gave up on real work and sought catharsis in browsing the internet and informing strangers that they were wrong. Plonq's irritation with the wolf was slowly being pushed aside by his aggravation at the ignorance of people in online forums when the otter finally returned.

"So, his name is Joshua, and he seems really nice," said Giblet in a rapid, airy tone as he burst his way back into their work area and cut between his workmates to his desk. "He's not the new DBA..." He paused to let the other two groan, and then continued. "He's going to be working with Middleware. He came over here from Furlife Insurance because - get this - he gets better coverage from our plan with them than he was getting when he was working for them. Pretty young; I figure early 20's." The otter locked his workstation and shrugged into his coat.

"What else..." he said, doing up the zipper and snaps as he talked, "the tats are even better up close. They're just upper body - head and shoulders, really.  He popped open his shirt and showed me where they fade into his normal fur colour. I'm super jelly."

"Geez, he's here five minutes and you're already undressing him," said the wolf with an audibly snide tone. Plonq glanced over his shoulder toward the otter, and Giblet met his look with a cheek twitch and an exaggerated eye roll.

"He's not really my type," said the otter as he adjusted his collar and tugged his jacket down around his hips. "Way too young for one thing." He flicked the snow leopard a quick wink. "Besides, why would I need to undress him when I can undress you in my mind any time I want? Not that I think you’re sexy," he added quickly, "but the mental image kills my appetite whenever I feel like cheating on my diet."

The wolf gave a chuff that the other two recognized as the sound he made when he was trying to think of a good, biting retort. Acting quickly to forestall it, the otter strode over to the feline's desk, placed a hand on the feline's right shoulder, giving him a good jostle. "Come on, make quick with the jacket.  It is the time for the coffee, sir!"

"I have got a call in, uh," the snow leopard glanced at the clock in the corner of his nearest monitor, "eight minutes. If you had not spent half the morning talking to the new guy I could have joined you."

"Eh, it was the boss as well. He glommed onto me and started enthusing on about a new project, and all this stuff about real time visualization," said the otter. He gave the snow leopard's ear a flick with his index finger. "Were your ears burning? We were talking about you too." The snow leopard cast an askance look in the otter's direction, but stayed mum. "He wants to put us together on more projects because we work so well as a team. Anyway, you do ... whatever this call of yours is," Giblet said, waving his right hand in a circular flourish to imply that the call involved vague things that held no interest to him. "I suppose I can bring you back a coffee and add it to your tab. I guess you want the usual?"

Plonq nodded.

"The otter is leaving the building," said Giblet to no one in particular. "Smoke me a kipper for my return." Plonq sniggered at the mustelid's mangled reference, but the wolf just muttered darkly under his breath.

"The usual..."

Barely a minute after one otter left their work area, another entered from the other side.

"Knock, knock," said Joshua, poking his spotted muzzle around the corner. "I hope I'm not intruding. I met your workmate and thought I'd come and introduce myself to the rest of his cubicle."

"Oh, hey," said Plonq and Larry in near unison as both stood to address the newcomer. The two of them hesitated when the otter extended his hand for a shake, and after a couple of false starts as each waited for the other to respond, Plonq finally took the initiative and clasped the extended hand.

"Plonq," he said. "I am a data guy - mostly deep dives and analysis." The otter pumped his hand.

"Joshua," said the otter. "I'm sorry that I'm not a database guy," he added with a mischievous gleam in his eye. "I hear I could have had my own shrine." The snow leopard looked pensive, and gave the same head bob that the Giblet had done earlier.

"Shrine might be understating things a bit..." he began.

"You've already got your first worshiper anyway," interrupted Larry.

"Ha," said the otter with a single, barking laugh. He let go of the snow leopard's hand and extended it to the wolf. "I wish I felt worthy of it, but middleware usually doesn't inspire much of a fervent following. You must be Larry."

"The same," said the wolf, taking the proffered hand. "I'm mostly a UI guy. I take the mess that these slobs," he pointed his other thumb over his shoulder and swivelled it to encompass the desks of his coworkers, "try to pass off as usable dashboards. I do the layered charts and heat maps and the like."

"Basically Giblet and I are the cartoonists, and Larry is the colourist," said the snow leopard, "except that all the actors are numbers." This elicited another laugh out of the otter. He extricated his hand from the wolf's firm handshake and leaned up against the corner of the cubicle's partition with his elbow flat on the top.

"I like that analogy," he said. "I have a friend whose dad is a colourist for an indie comic. It's a discipline that deserves a lot more respect than it gets sometimes."

"Exactly!" The wolf winked and motioned a quick finger-gun at the otter. "Totally on point. I think we're going to get along just fine." He held out his right hand and made a vague waving motion toward Giblet's empty desk. "And you've already met your adoring acolyte. He's off flouncing around somewhere at the moment."

The otter blinked, and the snow leopard cast a puzzled glance in Larry's direction.

"My what?"

"Your acolyte - you know - an adoring worshipper for your shrine. Giblet's totally smitten with you." He nodded in Plonq's direction. "You were here - you heard him." The wolf clutched both hands to his chest and breathlessly said, "He's adorable." Joshua withdrew from leaning on the cubicle corner and took a step back, crossing his arms nervously.

"I'm, uh, not quite sure how to take that," he said hesitantly. The snow leopard cast a glare in the direction of the wolf that could have both frozen and cut his workmate if the laws of physics had permitted it.

"He was talking about your tats - he just has his ... mannerisms when speaking. You get used to it," said Plonq quickly. He never took his eyes off the wolf while he spoke, making a quick, open-palmed 'what the hell?' gesture with the hand that was out of the otter's line of sight.  "He has been talking for years about getting some ink done if he can work up the nerve for it." The otter visibly relaxed.

"Oh yes, we spoke of that at some length," said Joshua, and his demeanour perked up immediately. It was obvious to the others that it was a topic close to his heart.  "He was asking me where I got them done, how much it cost, how much it hurt and the like." The otter became more animated as the spoke. "He mentioned that he's got a thing for spots, and he's wanted to get some done in ink. He joked about getting a rosette tramp-stamp so that it's less visible if he chickens out partway through."

"Spots above the tail," said the wolf with a loud guffaw, "that would be a switch. From what I hear, he prefers to take them below the tail."

The spotted otter started to speak, hesitated, and then said, "Are you insinuating something about your co-worker that you think I should know?"

"I'm just saying that if you drop something around Giblet, you may want to wait for somebody without spots to pick it up for you."

"CHRIST, LARRY!" Snow leopards are not one of the roaring cats, but there were few other words to describe the cat's tone at that moment. "What is your damage?"

"I'm sorry," said the wolf loudly, feigning innocence, "it's not right of me to assume that he's the top. Do you guys trade off?"

The otter's body language switched from zero to squicked in an instant. He nervously bumped his fists together in the area of his solar plexus and began to slowly back away from the other two. "It, uh, sounds like you guys have some things to discuss. Maybe I'll go check out my new work area."

The others were too entrenched in their own discussion by now to notice the otter.

"He is not... we do not..." the snow leopard stammered angrily, "actually, THAT IS NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS!" If their confrontation had not yet caught the attention of the office, the cat's latest outburst certainly did. Joshua was glancing back and forth between the two combatants with wide eyed alarm as they bared teeth and claws. Heads started popping up from neighbouring cubicles, and a buzz of voices began to drown out the usual clacking and buzz of the office.

"Was Plonq just swearing?"

"I never hear him swear."

"What's going on over there?"

"Well it's my business every time he gets up in my face about it. I just want to be able to come in to work one day without having to hear him brag about his latest gay exploits. If you guys want to talk about homo stuff, go to the break room and knock yourself out." All pretense of civility was gone from the conversation now, and Larry's words floated on a low growl as he spoke. "And why is it any of your business if I warn the new guy that Giblet is gay? It's not like he's shy about it anymore. Who died and made you the defender of furry faggots?"

"I am defending him because he is my best friend," snarled Plonq. His tail was puffed out in a manner that would have been amusing in any other circumstances. "I am not going to stand here while you drag him through the mud - especially in front of a new employee."

"Oh, the poor baby," said the wolf mockingly, "needs his big boy to stand up for him. If you feel so bad for him, maybe you can go give him some comfort sex later."

The snow leopard growled and stepped forward, jabbing the wolf in the chest with a clawed finger. "Larry, you are out of line," he hissed.

"And you're in my space," said the wolf with an angry bark. In a rapid move that caught the snow leopard completely off-guard he planted his hands on the feline's shoulders and shoved him violently back.

n  End of part 1

Part 2