Tiger Winter - 12. Fantasy

Jian slipped his fine fingers down the length of his firm but narrow chest as Emmett watched, heart pounding in his ears. The tiger didn’t stop there, but opened the fly of his jeans, arched his hips off the couch, and had soon kicked off the denim, naked but for the unzipped tiger-striped hoodie he wore, still with the hood up: to Emmett it seemed as though his ‘ears’ were extra pricked up. Jian stroked himself slowly, his amazing orange eyes closed, lips wet and inviting as he panted softly. Emmett couldn’t see the exact shape of him, but from the flesh vanishing and reappearing as if by magic from his fist, the polar bear knew that Jian’s erection was a pinkish-tan and perfectly proportioned to his tightly wound body.

Emmett couldn’t tear his eyes away, couldn’t even blink lest he miss a moment of watching the tiger playing with himself. Jian wasn’t shy, he had no need to be, and Emmett stared in fascination as the boy rubbed one nipple to a tight bud between two fingers before licking those same digits and delving into the soft flesh under his scrotum. Emmett groaned gently, setting his teeth in his own lip to keep from crying out in reflected pleasure as he watched; imagining it was his fingers invading Jian’s body, bringing such sweet whimpers from his throat. Jian released his cock and they both watched the rigid column of flesh bob and bounce over his tense abdomen. Jian gasped in little wet noises as he stroked his prostate, and then arched up off the couch as he cried out. His orgasm painted sticky white trails over his chest and abdomen, and Emmett licked his lips as he watched the last few drops ooze from the tip of his penis and land on his skin like hot oil in a pan. Jian pressed the pads of two fingers against the head of his cock, making them shimmer with his seed, and on the way to his lips, he stopped and his eyes flashed up at Emmett.

“You wanna try?”

Emmett blinked, took a step back, and fell into the tangle of his sheets, waking with a shout of surprise and panic. For a long time he lay staring at the stars on his ceiling, running through their names in his head and trying to calm the erratic race of his heartbeat. Whenever he had dreamt of Jian, he had always been aware, acutely so, of the fact it was indeed a dream. The fantasy he had just woken from seemed more like reality than many of his actual memories. But there had been no way it was true. He was alone, in bed with a raging hard-on, and a glance at the lighted digits of the bedside clock told him it was still early, still very dark, and that no one would be up and about.

Emmett pulled himself out of bed, and wished he could take a shower without waking the whole house. But thankfully, he lived in one of the coldest and most remote parts of Ontario, so there was an available alternative to a cold shower. Emmett pulled on a pair of sweat pants, tucked his erection back under the waist band, and padded out into the house. All was quiet and dark, and though ordinarily they left the soft lights of the Christmas tree glowing all night, they had been turned off so Jian could sleep easier. Emmett crept past the couch, wincing at every creak of the floor under his feet. As he reached the hallway that lead through to the back of the house, Emmett looked back to where he could just see the heap of blankets and comforter that made up the shape of Jian in his bed. He couldn’t actually see the young not-tiger, but all his senses filled with the boy’s location in a spicy exotic mass. Emmett did not disturb him, but pulled on a pair of snow boots before letting himself out of the air-lock of the back porch and into the snow.

It was very early Christmas morning in Moosonee, there was only a light wind, the sky was clear and full of stars, and it was more than twenty degrees below freezing. Normal people were not outside at all, let alone outside bare chested. Even Emmett felt the cold bite, but it let go of him as he trudged through the old snow in the vague direction of town. There would be no one out for another hour at least, and Emmett wanted the time to think. He was grateful for the cold, because it distracted him from the rising heat between his loins. When Jian had looked at him in the dream, his eyes had been the same as just after the kiss, both of them, full of a banked inner fire that Emmett found unfamiliar, terrifying, and intoxicating. He longed for everything the kiss might mean, but it scared him.

Emmett took himself on a route that passed through the centre of the little town, and his crunching footsteps disturbed only a few of the town’s dogs. Pets slept indoors, but working husky-dogs were often chained up outside or tucked up warm and safe in their kennels, and they lifted their noses from their sleepy nests as he passed. Emmett hushed them softly, and in the presence of a stronger predator, the dogs went back to sleep. There were wild dogs in Moosonee, strays and lost pups who had grown up half feral on whatever they could find, and one of these, something that was part husky and part tan and black Alsatian, trotted out of his hiding hole and accompanied Emmett on his morning walk.

“Hi Boots,” Emmett smiled at the familiar four-legged creature, who had been so named for his one very white hind paw, “good winter so far?”

The dog flicked an ear at him.

“You look well, someone’s been feeding you.”

Once, Emmett had fed him on a fairly regular basis, and he’d even convinced his father to let him take Boots in. But the dog hadn’t wanted to come inside and stay there. He was happy being half wild, and while life might have been hard, it was the life he knew and wanted: Boots was a big, confident dog, and he didn’t need a polar bear to look after him.

“I’m going to stop in at my grandparents,” Emmett said as he got to the crossroad. Boots huffed at him, then wandered across the distance between them and rubbed against his legs. Emmett knew better than to pet him unexpectedly. The dog wagged his tail, turned, and took off in the direction of the river. “Goodbye, Boots!” In the unseen distance, the dog barked.

Emmett figured he may as well make what he’d said to Boots true, and took the road that led to his grandparent’s house. He wasn’t far from home, less than a whole street away, but it was somehow relaxing to know that upon entering the house he wouldn’t have to cope with his libido, the questioning looks his father gave him, or Rye’s good-natured teasing. No one locked their doors in Moosonee, and there was even less need for any house where a shifter lived to be worried, so Emmett let himself in, knocked the snow off his boots, and wandered through the house in bare feet.

True to form, his grandfather was already awake, sitting at the little Formica kitchen table with a lined yellow legal notepad, a pencil worn down to the nub, a set of photographs of mostly ice, and at least half a dozen academic reference texts. Emmett went to the fridge and began making himself a hot chocolate on the stove without a word. When his grandfather cleared his throat, Emmett took another cup from the cupboard over the sink and filled them both with the thick rich drink. He sprinkled cinnamon over his own and drew a little swirl of cream on each before he sat down opposite the older bear.

“Morning Emmett.”

“Morning…” Emmett sipped his hot chocolate. “What’s all of this, Pa?” Emmett flicked his way through the spread of photographs, pulling one out which showed a cross section of sea ice. “Isn’t this up at Resolute?”

“A colleague sent them: we’re preparing a book about the conditions of the Arctic Circle.”

“Awww, Pa…”

“You’re young little-bear, you’ll get there eventually.” His grandfather pushed his reading glasses up his nose and scratched something on his pad. “Your little tiger friend was telling me all about a book he gave you?”

“Fergus Fleming; Ninety Degrees North,” Emmett had a feeling that Jian had been reading it in the many weeks since he’d finished, because it kept on moving around the house by itself.

“Fleming is a wonderful researcher, but not always the most fluid of writers: he’s no Giles Milton.” Emmett remembered being given a copy of Nathaniel’s Nutmeg at the age of ten and being completely overwhelmed by a land far away and long ago, seas he had never seen and heat that he had not known existed: it was a very good book.

“And this is going to be a less academic text?”

“Indeed, a book for ordinary people and armchair explorers; just your kind of thing Emmett,” his grandfather took the photograph back, “I always said that if you’d studied bears then you’d have the perfect excuse to go north.”

“Pa…” It was an old argument: Emmett saw no point in specialising in an area in which he was already an authority. He knew more about the natural habit and habitat of polar bears than any researcher alive, and he had wanted to go to university and study something he actually had to study. Being more knowledgeable than all one’s peers was only attractive to a certain sort of person, and Emmett wasn’t that sort.

“Yes, yes… I was hoping to ask you about that thesis you wrote on cold weather sleeping gear and hard-climatic camping.”

“Pa?”

“For the manuscript: you’ll get research credits.”

Emmett beamed.

“Really?”

“Sure, John Murray is publishing; and Meredith called me up and yammered for an hour after I sent her your work. I think she likes you very much. It’s refreshing to read about a subject from the perspective of someone who actually knows what it’s like to sleep outside at forty below.”

“Hell, I slept in the garden the year we had the storm and it got down to minus fifty-five with the wind chill.” Emmett grinned widely: his father had told him he was mad. Even little Ryley had kissed his big brother goodnight in the airlock of the porch and left him to struggle out into the blizzard by himself. But Emmett had been proud of his tent pitching skills, and the little Hilleberg Tarra had weathered the storm happily. Even so, Emmett had been more than happy to pack up in the morning and spend the rest of the day in his fur by the fire with his little brother playing NASCAR on his pelt with the Garrick collection of chipped-paint die-cast toys.

“So what brings you to our door at such an hour, my boy?” His grandfather arched a pale eyebrow, “and in so few clothes?”

“I just needed to get out of the house.”

“You’re surely not regretting bringing your friend home for Christmas?”

“No!” Emmett used the pad of one finger to clean the inside of his now empty cup and painted the chocolate on his tongue. “It’s complicated.”

“It doesn’t seem so complicated to me.” His grandfather raised his palms in a supplicating gesture. “But then what would I know about young love these days. I’ll see you around midday after we go visiting?”

“Thanks Pa, can I borrow a jacket?”

“Your brother left another hoodie in the hall, and there are socks in the basket.” There were always clothes lying around shifter households. “Have fun Emmett.”

He got home just as Christmas morning was starting properly, and Rye was turning on the lights, lighting candles and chatting to Jian in an overexcited manner. The little tiger was dressed in a pair of Rye’s sweats, the seal fur booties Emmett had given him, and a salt and sun-bleached long-sleeved t-shirt. He was hugging a cushion to his chest, and grinned at Emmett as he entered.

“You went out already?”

“And you had hot chocolate at Grampa’s!” Rye moaned, “Emm!”

“Merry Christmas to you too, little brother,” Emmett ruffled Rye’s white blond hair as he passed, “breakfast?”

Emmett cooked spiced salmon cubes and made another enormous batch of hot chocolate and another of coffee and gradually the rest of his family crawled out of bed, lead mostly by their noses. Kateri’s marinated ham went into the oven, and by the time Emmett had started frying orange slices and bacon bits in butter and red wine the whole house emanated a truly heavenly aroma. Jian was spreading a selection of toast triangles and crackers with salted butter when Tilda arrived in through the front door with an overly long red scarf wound around her neck and an enormous sigh.

“You can always tell when Emmett comes home,” she smiled warmly at her brother, “Emmett, please tell me you have pancake batter stashed around her somewhere?”

“You can make pancakes?” Jian looked surprised, “I thought his repertoire only extended to meat products.”

“Cheeky.”

“Emm makes the most wonderful pancakes.”

“Because he cooks them in seal blubber,” Logan shouldered past, hoovering up food as he went, stopping only to hug his sister with one arm, “Happy Christmas little Tiger. How does it compare to Christmas back in China?”

Jian laughed and snatched a hot slice of orange from the pan with his bare fingers.

“We don’t have Christmas in China, least, not in our house. We’re Buddhist.”

Rye craned his head around the door jamb.

“You mean this is you first ever Christmas?”

“Yup!” Jian exclaimed with some satisfaction.

“OH!”

Within seconds, there was Christmas music playing, and from that moment on, everyone in the Garrick family put all their effort into showing Jian the best kind of Christmas love, snow, and family happiness could buy.

*

The Garrick family gave each other presents in the morning, in between visitors, the arrival of their grandparents, Tilda’s friends popping in and out with warm embraces, smiles and laughter, and exclamations of delight in seeing Emmett again. As they were waving off their neighbours, Emmett heard his name called from the end of the road, and turned to recognise some of his high school friends and hockey teammates.

“Boxing day drinks?”

“See you there!” Emmett waved to them as they vanished around the corner, and wondered what his friends would think when he rolled up to the only bar in town with the diminutive Chinese man he called his friend. Emmett didn’t want to have to define his relationship with Jian to his family, let alone to anyone else.

“I get to meet your friends?” Jian inquired; and Emmett could only smile at him.

There were squeals of delight and joy when Emmett began handing out presents from what he and his family referred to as ‘the south’, despite Toronto’s location as previously the highest point North Jian had ever been. Tilda instantly kicked off her fluffy socks to strut up and down in her new heels, and Logan wriggled his fingers in the new Canada Goose gloves and thanked his older brother in gruff sort of tone. Rye, true to form, instantly tried on everything he got given, including the new Maple Leafs jersey, and lovingly ran his fingers over every millimetre of his new hockey stick and rambled on about the specifications and the laminate surface.

Ryley gave his older brother two books: Sextant, which was a history of how the world was explored and the oceans mapped, using the named instrument; and a slim volume on how to take navigational latitude and longitude using one. Emmett thanked his brother, thumbed through the manual, and frowned when he saw Jian and Rye grin conspiratorially at each other.

“Here,” Jian held out a brightly wrapped box for him, and as Emmett took it he wondered how he had managed to miss such an object amongst the luggage they had packed into the Chevy.

“But you already gave me a present.”

“I know,” Jian’s smile made Emmett’s insides start to turn gooey, like warm honey over pancakes, “but I figured someone who loved maps so much should learn how to make his own.”

Emmett unwrapped his present. It was a mahogany box with polished brass corners and fittings, and inside rested a sextant. Emmett hefted its weight in one hand, and his fingers instantly found where to hold it as he raised it to his eye. At such close range to everything, the motion made him feel slightly sick, so he lowered it again, and his fingers traced the etched and oxidised numbers around the lower rim which showed the degrees. Emmett was filled with the sudden desire to take his latitude at the Pole and read off ninety degrees north. Moosonee was only fifty-one degrees north, and Emmett dreamt with the brand new sextant in his hand of increasing that number.

“Thank you.”

“It was all Jian’s idea: I just got the books.”

“And he wrapped it,” Jian beamed, “when I wrap presents, they look like a car ran over them.”

“Thank you.”

“Now you can take your bearings wherever you are.” Jian knelt up and took a hollow chocolate shape from the tree and popped it in his mouth before handing another one to Emmett. “I could so get used to this Christmas thing.”

*

In the dark the Christmas tree lights made Jian’s skin glow like the dance of The Great Spirits, and Emmett blew out the last candle, plunging the last corner of the living room into darkness. By necessity, because Jian’s bed was the couch, they had been the last two awake. His grandparents had chatted and drank, and hugged everyone including Jian very hard before they have left around ten: Tilda had said her goodbyes and ruffled Emmett’s hair soon after. They had all stayed up to watch most of the rest of their favourite Christmas movie, which starred an animated polar bear, and one by one, the Garrick’s had become full and sleepy, and retired to bed. Rye had been last to leave and had hugged Jian goodnight and kissed his brother with the most enormous of yawns: for a moment Emmett thought that it might be like old times, when Rye was a cub, and he had carried the boy to bed on fairly regular occasions. When Jian had yawned with a high pitched squeak like a rusted hinge, Emmett had got up and made to leave.

“No, it’s OK.”

“Uh-huh; go to bed little tiger.”

“Sorry…” Jian had murmured sleepily.

“Huh? Why?”

“I didn’t wanna fall asleep on Christmas…”

“It’s two minutes to midnight, we’ll wait.”

The polar bear sat on the sofa and watched the lights play over Jian’s features. It was past midnight now, not that either of them could see the clock anymore, and Jian had fallen asleep on his shoulder. Lit by the tree, he was even more exotic and beautiful than he was in real life, and Emmett wondered why everyone was so big on candlelight when the ever-changing blues, greens, and pink-gold shades of the festive lights were so close to the natural beauty of a clear northern sky. Emmett didn’t want to wake the boy. He was so smooth and lovely, but he could feel heat pulsing from his belly down to his crotch. It was embarrassing enough to feel impotently aroused when thinking about Jian, that Emmett didn’t want to do it in his sleeping presence too.

He shifted his weight, and Jian’s eyelids fluttered softly.

“Shh…” Emmett cushioned Jian’s head as he got up, placing him very softly against the sofa.

“Mmmm…” Jian reached up and hugged his pillow, snuggling into the plush cushions and blankets as Emmett draped the comforter over him. He sighed softly, and as Emmett went to straighten up, the not-tiger mewled softly, and Emmett felt a little bit of his heart breaking. He almost didn’t dare, but the polar bear rested his weight on the back of the sofa, and placed the faintest of whisper-kisses on Jian’s cheek. The tiger rolled over, taking the blankets with him, and Emmett knew that he was fully asleep. He padded to his room, shut himself in and only then did Emmett breathe again.

He felt like a thief, a criminal; and Emmett raised his fingers to his lips and felt his pulse shudder at the memory of Jian’s skin. He went to bed feeling equal parts awful and elated, and was very pleased upon waking to find that he had not dreamed.

*

“Emmett! Laundry!”

“It’s not my turn…”

“You’ve been here a week and already it’s like you’re a sulky teenager all over again,” Logan smirked. Just as Emmett was deciding whether or not it was better to cuff his younger brother over the head for his comment, Kateri leaned in through the doorway.

“I just need you to collect yours and Jian’s stuff, and put the machine on. It’s not rocket science…” her voice drifted away into the kitchen, accompanied by the sounds of the Boxing Day cold cut lunch being assembled.

The polar bear got up with a grumble, took the laundry basket, and wandered to his room. Jian had ended up with most of his clothes in Emmett’s hamper, and since every item the boy owned seemed to have been exposed at some point over the last week to snow, ice, bear slobber, seal grease, and in the case of at least one pair of jeans and socks, the frozen waters of his grandparent’s creek, there was actually quite a lot of laundry to do if Jian wanted to wear clothes in the next few days.

Emmett wondered about how wise a decision it had been to let his little brother and his best friend go off together: not that he’d had any power over the event at all. Rye had invited Jian out over the river, a bunch of his teammates were heading into Moose Factory to drink expensive imported soda and play pool, and Jian had near-enough jumped at the chance. Emmett wondered vaguely what it meant when his little brother was more comfortable around his friend than he was.

He began to load the clothes from the hamper into the basket, and paused with one of Jian’s long-sleeved t-shirts in his hands. The temptation to just fall back on his bed and inhale the exotic, slightly flowery, scent of the little tiger was almost overwhelming. Instead Emmett settled for lifting the shirt fabric against his face and closing his eyes: the image of Jian, smiling under the dance of the northern lights, flashed across his inner vision, and Emmett put the shirt down again. When he scooped up Jian’s newly purchased salopettes, they jangled.

Already Jian had begun to collect bottle tops, and these he had strung onto a leather cord and stuffed into the back pocket of the water proof trousers. Suddenly curious, Emmett wondered what else the boy was carrying around with him. In the front pocket was an aluminium bottle opener in the shape of a shark, branded in blue with the scuffed logo of some surf shop or other where Jian must have hung out for a while. Accompanying this was the messiest fold of bank notes Emmett had ever seen, and he wondered what possessed the boy to still be carrying around plastic currency from Australia and green paper notes from the US when he was going to be in either Moosonee or Toronto for the foreseeable future. There was a coin stuffed deep into that pocket too, and Emmett recognised it from the sort of ‘fashionable’ jewellery worn buy guys in clubs as being Chinese. It was bronze in colour, intricately designed, and had a square hole cut in the middle.

Emmett put all these things down on top of the chest of drawers so Jian could find them again, but as he reached into one of the boy’s jeans pockets to check for more non-washable money, his fingers drew back with a slim red-foil packet in his fingers. Emmett couldn’t have explained why, but he had not thought Jian was the kind of guy who carried condoms around with him. Suddenly, Emmett wasn’t so sure of his assumption that Jian had been into him from the start, despite the wealth of evidence to the contrary. Carrying protection around was not the usual behaviour of a person who wasn’t regularly getting lucky.

Emmett tried to shove aside his doubts as he put the rest of the laundry on, but instead ended up sitting on the chill linoleum floor of the utility room watching as his and Jian’s clothes tumbled around each other in far more intimacy than their owners had ever known.

“Pondering the existential mechanics of the washing machine are we?”

“Hey Logan,” Emmett didn’t look up from the soothing motion of the spinning clothes.

“Someone has been doing too much thinking for his own good.” Logan paused for a while and when Emmett blinked again he reached down and waved a hand in front of his older brother’s unfocused eyes. “Emmett, you’re staring at a washing machine: you need to get out of the house.”

“I can be as lazy as I like until about five o’clock,” Emmett grunted obstinately.

“Well sure, but you’re not being lazy, you’re being morose. Now come on, let’s go for a run.”

When Ryley wanted to go for a run, it meant getting naked in the airlock and piling out of the back door in their fur to make as much mess as possible; but when Logan went for a run, he did just that. Emmett pulled on boots and pulled a thermal t-shirt on before tying his stolen hoodie around his waist. Logan liked to run when human, liked to prove to everyone in their small town that the cold wasn’t a decent reason not to get out of the house, and as they took the path which ran alongside the ice road towards the shore of the Hudson Bay, they were passed by alpine trucks with confused passengers, and waved to by a family travelling the other way by sled dog. Lots of people used dogs to get around in the long winter, but Logan preferred to screw crampons to his boots and pound through the snow with Emmett keeping pace just behind him.

“C’mon then, big brother, what could possibly be the matter with you?”

“Nothin’,” Emmett sulked.

“You were always a shitty liar, Emm…”

“Fine,” Emmett growled, “my boyfriend dumped me when I told him I was coming north for the holidays.” It was the first time Emmett had mentioned Zeke in more than a week, and the first time he had thought of him in several days: Emmett was surprised by how little he found he actually cared.

“Boyfriend?” Logan sounded just as confused as he had done when Emmett had come out, “what boyfriend?”

“Zeke.”

“Huh,” Logan shrugged.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Logan turned round and jogged backwards at a fast pace to keep ahead of his brother.

“Means: you haven’t mentioned him, we all figured you and Jian were sneaking off privately somewhere, and the only time you ever smell blue is when the little tiger is out of your sight for ten seconds or more.”

“How many fucking times, Logan?” Emmett wanted to tear his hair out. “He’s NOT-!”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re an idiot Emm,” Logan sighed. “At least if I had a good thing going on I wouldn’t be so blind as to let it pass me by. You hold out too long, and you’re going to lose him: wake up and smell the pheromones.”

They had stopped running, and Emmett was distracted from the desire to hit his brother by the clearing in which they found themselves. He sniffed the air, and his dark eyes found a female tundra reindeer standing in the shadows across from them. Just as Emmett wondered what a tuktu was doing so far south, her pearly coat shimmering in the wan winter sunlight, Logan clapped him on the shoulder and grinned cockily.

“You get to run back alone, big brother: I’ve got a date.”

“A date?” Emmett stared at his brother in complete incomprehension, “with a deer?”

“People on very thin ice should not jump up and down, Emm. Have fun. See you at the bar tonight.”

Emmett tried very hard not to imagine his brother and the caribou together as he walked away. Logan had never mentioned a date or a girlfriend to him, especially not one from a species which was so delicious, but then, Emmett hadn’t asked, and if Logan was going to tell anyone anything it would be Tilda. People always thought it mean of Emmett to favour his youngest sibling above all others, and while it was true that the moment Rye was born, Emmett had fallen completely in love with his brother, Logan and Tilda had always been close. Just once Emmett had heard his father joke that Emmett had formed such an attachment to Rye out of necessity, because even when they were children, and Emmett and Logan shared a room, it had been clear the two middle siblings shared a bond their older brother just did not feel. Emmett wondered if they were simply cut from different stuff, because while he loved Moosonee, adored coming home, loved the snow, and wanted to travel to the Pole one day, he also knew he could not live here for the rest of his life. It was why after university he had never actually considered moving home, why he had done his PhD, and lived with his old student mates. His father would have loved him back forever, but even Jason knew it was not a life his eldest son could lead.

Emmett was nearly back to town when he heard the truck behind him, and turned to see Rye and Jian grinning at him. Rye’s truck had been Emmett’s first one, a beat up Dodge Ram with Shelby striping and enough modifications to make it Moosonee weather-proof, and Emmett grinned at the familiar rumble the truck made as it halted next to him.

“What are you two doing out here? I thought you went to Moose Factory?”

“We did, and then we went hunting,” Rye grinned, “show him what you got Jian!”

The tiger jumped down from the cab and Emmett smiled at him across the flat bed of the truck. Wrapped in a piece of old carpet-underlay felt were five snowshoe hares, their white pelts bloodied and their eyes hard and glazed over. Emmett arched an eyebrow at his friend, but it was his brother who replied from the cab of the truck.

“Jian got them all.”

“Rye got six…but he ate them already,” Jian muttered in a self-depreciating tone, “Rye said you were best at skinning; you’ll teach me, right?”

“Sure I will Tiger,” Emmett smiled at him, and watched as Jian’s orange eyes lit up with happiness. The sight produced a mirrored reaction in Emmett as the world got suddenly brighter along with the dilation of his pupils. He was suddenly grateful that his eyes were so dark it became hard to tell he was wide-eyed, staring at Jian smiling in the snow.

“Are you getting in for a lift home or what then?” Rye revved the engine impatiently, “c’mon, c’mon…”

“Shut up Rye…” Emmett sighed, but turned away from the truck-bed to heave himself into the back of the cab. He was not expecting the opposite door to open, and Jian to jump in and join him, forsaking the coveted shotgun-seat, as Rye pulled away. “Hey…”

“Hey,” Jian didn’t stay on the other side of the bench seat, but scooted across and placed himself so close to Emmett that when the big polar bear moved, the not-tiger ended up under his arm. “Rye’s friends are so funny: and mad! Rye, who was that friend of yours, carrying the husky around?”

“Mesier?” Rye grinned at them in the rear-view mirror, “he taught that little black and white Siberian of his to jump up and sit snugged up around his shoulders. She’s a happy pup.”

“Your goalie? The Cree kid?” Emmett remembered Mesier Quachegan as a short skinny guy with a badly cut fringe, and he though he saw Rye’s friends in a general manner when he came to visit, he had a bit of trouble envisioning them all as boys who were nearly men. “Rye, please tell me you’re not encouraging all your friends to go race huskies in Alaska…”

“Not many…” Rye sulked softly. Emmett sighed loudly, but was halted in the middle of the breath by Jian’s slim hand on his sternum.

“Let him dream, Xue.”

“OK.”

Emmett didn’t say anything else after that, but he couldn’t help but dream too. Jian was there, close and warm and full of laughter: smiling, shining, his pulse beating through every place where their bodies touched, and Emmett fantasized about how good it would feel to reach down and kiss him, all the way home.