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Jamal had slept easily throughout the night whilst this was going on, shifting only slightly when Antony began to move about in her restless dreamstate and giving a soft grumble now and then. However, it was hard to sleep through a shrill scream of "YOU BROKE MY ******** a**!" and he did wake, sitting upright so fast that he nearly gave himself whiplash, and growled irritably.

"What da ******** you talkin' 'bout?" he muttered disorientedly, rubbing heavily at his blurry eyes, as he tried to peer at her in the dark. "You ain't neva' complained b'fo..."

God damn, if she woke him up to b***h about how sore she was...she's the one who practically asked for it since she came to the duplex with the full motive of sex. She ought to know better.

"Yeah, dat's what happened. Glad ya remember," he remarked grouchily as he finally could get a good look at his surroundings. Yay for improved eyesight thanks to transformation, he guess.

Jamal resisted the urge to roll his eyes and instead assumed a look of complete innocence, telling himself that she'd get over it...she always did...but as she moved to stare daggers at him over the sheets, his expression went from angelic to one of disbelief and confusion.

No way. Maybe he was seeing things...

The black man fell completely silent, whiskers drooping and pressing firmly against his cheeks. It wasn't a comfortable silence at all. Clearly something was wrong but he sure as hell wasn't talking.

He might be stupid on a lot of things and slow on the uptake at other times, but he had first hand experience with this sort of thing, regretfully. The change in eye color was definately a subject close to his heart, having lost his dark brown color for the icy blue of his tiger.

Jamal didn't want to look at her a** and see what was the problem...and that ought to signify that there really was an issue because the day Jamal refuses to look at a woman's a** is the day he ought to be checked into a mental ward. He didn't think he could go through watching someone transform again.

"Maybe...maybe a...tail," he whispered in an answer to her question, his eyes glazing over briefly as he thought back to how bad his rear had hurt when his little nub had grown in. It had hurt pretty bad.

He might have continued in this self-absorbed flashback had he not been jolted out of it by her sudden cry. ******** was generally really uncomfortable with playing the role of a comforting soul and this wasn't any different, but he felt he owed it to her, especially since she had taking a clawing in the shoulder from him when -he- was going through his transformation. Of course, he didn't know that she was mourning her inability to see her father again or know that she was afraid that her nitemare was the truth of her father's fate.

Blankets were shoved aside to the floor as he attempted to more or less scoot to her side of the bed. His own fear was only barely masked as he tried to console her as best as he could with his presence, a hand hesitantly reaching out to her thigh in a sort of "I'm here" gesture. Jamal wanted to make himself available for her but was afraid that he'd hurt her more than she already was if he took matters into his own hands.

"Tails...?" Jamal looked bewildered at the very thought of having more than one. What animal on earth HAD more than one tail anyway? Maybe she was just confused...he wouldn't blame her if that was the case. He knew he did some weird s**t when he was fresh out of his transformation and saw things that were due to the stress and pain. He gave her a sad, appraising look before crawling over the bed to see exactly what she was talking about. He could at least make her feel better that she only had one tail, right?

Definately wrong.

It wasn't hard to see three little bushy tail against the dark background of the room, especially since they were all stark white. Fuuuuuuck. As she struggled to stand, he reflexively went to steady her, but she wasn't able to get up far enough to require his assistance. Understandable...she didn't seem to be fueled by the insane rage that he had been and that let him do some remarkable things before he crashed on the limb of a tree. He wanted to say he understood the pain, because he had been there, but somehow that didn't sound like a remotely comforting thing to say.

"Da pain'll go away," he responded in a manner that was remarkably gentle for one who was usually so...not. It was easy for him to be sympathetic for her and he felt that way intensely. "Don't try ta move yet if ya can't do it easy...it'll only hurt worse." He didn't want to sound like he wasn't an expert on this sort of thing, because lord knows that he'd have given anything to not have a first-hand experience, but it was true that the pain would go away.

Jamal didn't like how badly she was shaking though and she looked very much on the verge of a breakdown of some kind. It bothered him a great deal, both in human instinct and tiger instinct, and so eventually he had more or less -very- carefully practically curled about her in the front, feeling that he would be guarenteed to hurt her if he went near her back.

He couldn't blame her for not exactly staying with her tough, ******** attitude over this whole thing, so he didn't think any less of her as she looked up at him again and sniffled. Jamal felt bad for her, but tried not to show it so much on the outside because it might make her feel worse.

"I wish I knew what got three tails," he said faintly, a careful hand rubbing between her shoulder blades in an absent attempt to try and soothe her nerves, feeling the stiff fur that had grown in there but not really registering it. His whiskers flicked as he repressed the growing irritation that had begun to bubble in his mind as a result of the situation. He was angry that she had to suffer but it wasn't going to do -any- good if he got riled up over something he couldn't change; All the anger in the world would do nothing at this point. "I don't even know what 'zactly I'm turning into...I ain't dat smart about animals..." He sighed and shook his head in a self-depreciating way.

"Is da pain goin' away any yet? I got painkillers somewhere, if ya wanna try dat...or I got pot...I don't want ya ta hurt much longa'."

Perhaps Jamal had grown so used to the fact that fur was just something that was 'normal' that he hadn't even commented on it. He hadn't really sprouted any yet aside from the odd peach-fuzz on his ears, but he didn't consider himself lucky for it. He knew it was coming eventually.

He carefully extracted himself from Antony so he could reach the bedside dresser where a small baggie of pre-wrapped joints sat, plucking one out and swiping at his lighter that also lay nearby before returning to her side. Jamal lit the blunt for her and passed it over, tossing the lighter back onto the table with a brief backward glance to see where it landed.

"Smoke up."

reserved

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