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 Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 5:41 pm
Iosef lurked for some time outside of Tui's den, pacing in the woods nearby, wondering whether to go through with this or not. He was confused; happy, but confused, and the confusion had rolled into a tight ball in his gut.
Sighing, finally, the calico-pelted wolf stepped forward, pausing just outside the opening of Tui's den. It was late -- the sun was below the horizon and the first stars had begun to shimmer in the darkening sky -- and he really had no business here so late. But he came as...a friend. "Tui?" he called, craning his neck to see if his new friend was even in the den.
He was - even with the early rising, it was a little early to turn in for the night, but Tui continued to cherish the small security of having a hole to duck away into at the end of the day. Still, though, alone in his den, the day's anxiety had a habit of leaving a void comfortably filled with his old melancholy ghosts; so he curled into himself and tried to think without feeling, to cut the hurt out of the presences that were impossible to shake.
Iosef's voice bit him like a pang of something - was that regret, humiliation? - but he rallied in his miserable way, shoving his ghosts aside to make room for Iosef, who was so much more pleasant to look at, anyway. Just the voice made his heart skitter, got his knees shaking to think someone would put such an effort into sounding kind for him. He made a little noise of assent, crawling towards the exit to stare big-eyed up at Iosef and wait to be filled in.
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Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 5:43 pm
He smiled his usual shy, uncertain smile, and glanced around. Luckily, Tui's den was so far removed from the pack that at this hour they were guaranteed some degree of secrecy. "Sorry to bother you so late," he said, with a nervous ear flick. His voice was low and husky and there was an air of excitement about him -- as though he'd had a very odd day already. "...Are you busy? Can I come in?"
"Um," he mumbled, backstepping and briefly overtaken by a rapidfire onslaught of nerves, "sure, of course." As much as he was smitten for sweet, helpful Iosef, the peculiar attitude he had about him tonight, and oh god, to have him crawl into the den with him, it was...well, it was a frightening development. He sat against the wall, and tried to tamp down his inner monologue and listen to Iosef at the same time.
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Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 5:45 pm
Iosef slipped in, squeezing against the wall. The slave quarters were not nearly as spacious as the sisters, and Tui had possibly the dankest, tightest den Iosef had been in -- originally designed as a temporary border shelter, not even meant for permanent habitation. Still, there was enough room for him to settle against the wall, reclining back on his haunches. "...You've seen something of the world, right Tui?" He said, tentatively, with an eagerness in his violet eyes.
As it turned out, being nestled in a small den with Iosef was proving to be the most intimate situation Tui had been in in a long time. He seemed to be blinking at their proximity like Iosef was a bright light, and it was difficult to listen over the impulses urging him, in tandem, to shoot out the den like a startled pheasant, and to press his nose to the hollow of Iosef's neck. So, dry-mouthed, he shuffled his bony paws, tried to translate Iosef's question into the language of his life and then find an answer that made sense to him. "A little something, maybe," he finally offered, his ears flipped back.
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Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 5:46 pm
If Iosef noticed Tui's discomfort, he was for the moment too distracted to act upon it; his introspective, nervous expression remained fidgeting across his features. "Must be nice, in a way," he said, his eyes exploring the ceiling. He was fidgety, distracted, and seemed suddenly to realize how desperately stupid he was for coming here. "I've never been outside of Antianeira, except for that short period alone...and I didn't see much of the world then, either. I wonder, sometimes....how things are, outside." He glanced at Tui, started to say something, then silenced himself.
Tui was developing a look of bewildered consternation; he could maybe handle unclear conversation like this alongside a job they both had to finish, but it was so radically different to respond to small talk when they were sitting barely a body's length apart from each other, tucked away in some unused corner of the pack's central grounds. It didn't seem like idle talk; it seemed like he was being asked for something. Finally, into the ill-handled silence between them, he asked, "what do you wonder about?"
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Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 5:48 pm
He sighed, looking down to his paws now. "I just..." he forced his eyes up to Tui. With a forced attempt at nonchalance, he said, addressing Tui's cheek, "...while you were traveling...have you ever heard of....a wolf -- a male wolf -- that....was not interested in the companionship of females?" He attempted to look politely curious and nothing more.
His pupils must have shrunk to pinpoints, and his heart was surely audible; his stomach kicked up from its nervous gurglings to a painful clench. Oh, as much as he had thought of it happening (only for flickering moments, but two hundred flickering moments a day), he would give anything for it not to happen now, here, wedged in a foxhole and in the encrypted language of small talk. He was silent for a long time - it would feel like too long for both of them, for reasons that were arguably different or exactly the same - and tried not to pant with nerves. How on earth was he supposed to respond to this? What if he wasn't even talking about That at all? Feeling atrociously exposed, he bowed to this unfathomable politeness, offered up a meaningless hedge. No way was he going to show his cards first, not when he was literally the lowest wolf in the hierarchy. "I haven't known a lot of wolves," he whispered, which was true.
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Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 5:49 pm
"Oh. Right," Iosef said, and looked a little...deflated? He glanced again at the mouth of the den, as though expecting someone -- surely Varia, knowing his luck -- to burst in upon them at any moment. "I just wondered. I know that females are not dominant over males in all packs, and slaves are somewhat unique, but...well, it's stupid," he said, finally, and shook his head. "I'm sorry to have bothered you."
He was three-quarters sure his organs were all failing - he could not be alive and see Iosef's soul knocked down a peg and think about his ghosts all at the same time. He let out a gasp of air like he'd been kicked, clenched his jaw, lost every shred of holding-it-togetherness as he strained and trembled to work something marginally courageous out of his body. "I knew somebody," he gulped, his face turned almost completely away from Iosef. "A male in a pack." And here he fought lockjaw, struggled to wrench out the right words, even some of them, until he felt something minor snap somewhere in his rigging; his face went a little slack, and his eyes a little vacant. When he spoke, it sounded like a declaration of surrender. "And I don't, think, he was very interested in females."
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Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 5:50 pm
"Oh?" He said, stopping halfway to standing and rolling back to his haunches. His ears perked at the thought but, very tentatively, he asked with the innocence of a child -- "...and was he...also...interested in ... other males?"
Tui's glance crept over to the perimeters of Iosef's face; so, for sure, that was what he was asking. All his terrified exhileration seemed to have drained out into an all-over raw soreness, and he wanted to be done with this in a whole different way. He was talking about something terrible, and here Iosef was asking like he wanted to be let in on a wonderful secret. He nodded, forgoing words to better watch Iosef, to look for some behavioral cue.
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Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 7:00 pm
Iosef was silent for a time, and if it weren't for the soft trembling in his extremities it would see that he was perfectly at ease -- but the shakiness in his legs, and the knitting of his brow, betrayed him. "I...Tui. I think I've done something terrible."
Well, that seemed ludicrous - he had to halt an awful bark of a laugh in his throat, stopped it at an unhappy grin, tried to dredge his awful self up out of awfulness so he could sit in the real world next to Iosef. It took some time, but eventually he felt like he was mostly in the den and not somewhere else, like he could feel what Iosef was feeling over his own low buzz of angst. "What could you have done?" He asked quietly, and sounded genuinely caring and dubious.
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Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 7:02 pm
He blinked, as though realizing that he was, in fact, talking to another wolf. He lowered his voice to a low, hard whisper. "...Seraphin. The new pack nanny. She has...she has taken me as her consort. And..." his face contorted; why was he saying this aloud? Why was he saying this to Tui?
....Because Tui was the only wolf in the pack with a lower rank than himself. And Iosef sensed, in his soul, that the white wolf was too damaged to do him any harm.
"Tui...I don't think I can do it."
Tui's brow crinkled as he tried to follow. A consort...had they talked about this before? Then he remembered, and slowly began to piece together, the Warrior Iosef had mentioned, the pack's new pups, and the impossibility of what he considered a conventional romantic relationship in a pack structured around the complete domination over males. He went rigid all over, paralyzed at the conclusions he'd failed to draw, and their consequences. Iosef's problems again lost their precedence over his own. "I don't understand," he whispered, but he thought he did; maybe it would help to hear Iosef's glossy-eyed take on his nightmare.
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Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 7:03 pm
"...Remember how I told you about Alkaia?" He said, finally, wishing desperately with each word he uttered that he could just shut up. Why was he doing this? What good would it possibly do to say anything now? What if he had misjudged Tui entirely?
Well...it was too late, now.
"...Remember how I told you about Alkaia? How we...never had a chance to have pups?" He winced, and felt something in him wither. He wondered why he couldn't stop speaking. "That wasn't....entirely accurate?"
Tui's face went a little blank from so much confusion - what he wanted to understand was how he was liable to be utilized as a, as a propagation device in the pack. He had thought Iosef was asking and admitting something, and then he'd gone and wanted to admit something completely different. And Tui didn't understand that new thing and now Iosef was back to that first subject again, maybe? About males out there in the big wide world, not being interested in females. So he tried to raise his eyebrows, affect a little mild surprise. "No?"
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Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 7:04 pm
He read the uncertainty in Tui's face, the confusion, and his brow furrowed. Perhaps he shouldn't have tried...but somehow, it seemed too late now to back away. Still, Tui's apparent confusion was unnerving to Iosef, who hoped desperately that he wouldn't have to spell this out in plain English -- indeed, he wasn't even entirely sure he could do such a thing. "Alkaia loved me. And she...wanted...me. As more than a slave." He felt the tears biting at the back of his eyes and in the depths of his throat. "But I...there's something wrong with me. She sensed it, when we were together. And I...I'm afraid Seraphin will find out..."
oh gods, was anything he said even making sense now?
A sad little smile trembled over his lips, and a sense of almost maternal tenderness pulled at him; though he certainly wasn't at peace with most of himself even now, there was an extremely poignant quality to Iosef's admission. Something you know about almost forever, and it transforms from one thing to another once you speak it aloud. "I know what you're talking about," he said quietly, his own throat tight with tears, and tried to figure out where to go with this. To weigh the living death of stiff denial against the spare, cruel pickings of being honest. "It's not...I want to say it's easier, to not pretend to be like everybody. But I think it's just hard in a different way."
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Posted: Sun Aug 08, 2010 9:31 pm
He sighed, leaning against the wall of the den, thoroughly deflated. Tui knew? did he? Did anyone? He looked up, met Tui's eyes with immense effort, and forced a smile. "I...I can't. I want to make this work. I want to have a family of my own and a normal life. I want it so much it makes my heart ache." He forced his eyes to stay on Tui's, though his trembling limbs nearly collapsed him to the ground. He had perhaps expected it to feel better when he admitted to the beast that dwelled in his heart....but he didn't. If anything, he felt worse, deflated and aching and hollow. "...But if I want it so much, why doesn't it make me happier?"
Something about seeing this self-assured, self-motivated little wolf so defeated kept striking Tui as unacceptable. Though precedent and personality put a stutter in his motions, an ambivalence, he made himself do it anyway - crossed the little half-space between them and nudged Iosef's shoulder, chastely pressed his nose against the back of his neck. He stayed close enough he barely had to whisper to be understood. "Because pretending's hard, and it hurts." And that's all you're setting yourself up for, he finished silently, eyes flicking on and off of Iosef's face.
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Posted: Sun Aug 08, 2010 9:33 pm
He shivered; the touch was oddly intimate, and unexpected -- and, he realized, the first time a male had ever touched him in such a way. He had felt the nuzzles of females all his life, the platonic touch of his beloved sister, the hopeless advances of Alkaia's doomed love, the coerced touch of Taiyou and now Seraphin....but the touch of a male confused him, and exhilirated him, and he felt his heart leap into his throat even at the simplest touch.
Why was he suddenly so excited? what was going to happen? What did Tui expect of him?
he moved as though to pull away, but found himself pinned against the wall, and shivered instead, trying to sort out his emotions.
Tui lost his bearings for a long, vertiginous moment; was he home, and young, and somehow Iosef? Or was he someone else and here, somehow? Here, with a wolf pinned and shivering against his touch. He stood with his head poised above Iosef's neck, eyes unfocused, until a reel of sounds and images in his head stopped playing, until that new strangeness drained from him. And he stepped back, shaking, at a frightening loss. He had meant to help, to comfort, and instead had opened up some hazardous pit between them.
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Posted: Sun Aug 08, 2010 9:34 pm
Iosef blinked, resurfacing from the drowning pool of his thoughts, and furrowed his brow at Tui. "Sorry," he said, finally, and recovered something of himself, enough to spare a soft smile at the wolf across from him. "I...it's being a very strange night." He sighed, and glanced out the mouth of the den. "I...I should leave you to your evening," he said, at length, not wanting that but not thinking of much else that could be said tonight.
Tui gave himself a moment to stare sickly downwards; this visit had been excruciating in an extravagantly varied number of ways, and it seemed they were settling back into the original - Iosef seemed to be speaking in an inscrutable code, and as badly as he wanted to understand, he couldn't parse that courteous, upright tone. Shame curled through his gut as he began to grasp how thoroughly he'd failed to comfort the wolf he cared most about, who soothed and coddled him through every single day he'd been here, and he closed his eyes, maybe nodded, tried not to to shake. Please leave, he thought feebly, so I can fall apart.
He stood, paused a moment longer in the mouth of the den and waited a moment as though for a signal. "I'll be by in the morning, for our usual chores," he said, and, unable to think of another thing, unable to quell the desperate ache in his mind, he pulled away and up through the den opening. "I...thank you, for listening. You're...the only wolf in the pack I feel I can talk to...like this." he said, with great effort, and ducked away before he could say anything more incriminating.
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