Right to a Bear's Arms, Ch. 19 (Patreon)

Hera jerked awake.  She blinked, rubbing at her eyes with a paw, and yawned, flashing rows of long, sharp teeth.  Looking around the table, she noticed that the entire group had died down from the excitement and rush of their climactic battle.  Having reached the point where their assorted characters had all progressed to the next level, they had all broken up into small groups, comparing notes, comments, advice, and questions amongst one another on how to progress their heroes further.

From there, the exhaustion of the incredibly long day had sunken in.  Everywhere she looked, she saw the lightly dozing, half-asleep, or glazed eyes of her new friends as they struggled to remain awake.  Some slumped over the table, resting their heads on their arms, while others, like Dylan, actively had their head hanging back over their chairs and lightly snoring.  Jeremy sat at his seat, hidden mostly behind his DM screen, and furiously scribbling things in his notebooks.

She glanced down to her side.  Kelin's head rested there on her arm, his eyes closed and his breathing soft.  She gently combed a strand of his dark hair back out of his face, causing him to stir.  His blue eyes fluttered open for a second before he mumbled something and leaned his head heavier into her furry bicep.  Chuckling, Hera leaned down as much as she could and kissed the top of his head.  "Tired, my little Paladin?" she teased.

Kelin mumbled something again.  "Don't want tonight to end..." she thought she heard him say.

Her heart melted a bit.  She'd been a tad emotional all night ever since his confession in the garage.  "When the night ends, no matter how wondrous or dismal," she murmured down into his ear, "There comes a dawn more beautiful than any before."

"That's pretty," Kelin grinned.  He took a deep inhale, nuzzling deeper into her fur, and then finally lifted his head.  His hair on that side was all messed up.  He scratched at it.  "Gotta go use the bathroom.  Head to bed, y'all," he announced, closing his Player's Handbook.  The muted snap jarred the entire table out of their drowsiness.  Hera stretched her arms above her head as several people filed slowly out of the room, wishing each other a good night's sleep, all of them groaning as they popped their backs or necks.  Dylan still had not stirred beyond that initial jerk before his head fell right back to where it was.

Bryan blearily fished his phone out of his pocket.  He stared hard at the screen and whistled.  "1:31 AM," he announced to the few remaining members: Hera, Jeremy, and the dozing Dylan.  The young man rubbed at a kink in his neck and stared down at the field of battle, still set up from their confrontation with the latest incarnation of Rrorl.  "Man...it's been too long since we've done this," he commented happily.  He stood then, scratched at his beard, and filed off as well.  Hera's keen ears could easily pick up the soft chattering of people down the hall as they all headed upstairs to bed.  "Night all," Bryan called back to the room just before he left.

She waved, then turned her eyes to the only other person who was awake.  "That was very good game," she told Jeremy, beaming over at him.

Still absorbed in his work, Jeremy nodded wordlessly.  He'd fluctuated between great bursts of productivity and energetic voices to a quiet, sedate moodiness.  Every so often, he would tense up, one hand trembling involuntarily into a ball before he was able to relax again.  He didn't even seem conscious of doing it.  Hera decided not to ask.  As she made to stand up as well, however, Jeremy spoke up.  "Please take care of him," he said softly.

Their eyes met.  His face was tired but not for the same reason everyone else's seemed to be.  She saw the same cave she had been lost in behind his eyes.  His backpack, while probably not quite the same kind of weight as hers had been, was still no less heavy upon his slender shoulders.  He didn't look strong like Kelin did.  His cheerfulness had been consistently battered out of him, not helped by his disability.  She could also tell, just from that look, that he wasn't climbing up.  Jeremy was standing on the precipice, torch in hand, a footstep away from going downhill as easily as he might go the other direction.  She knew that feeling.

"I will," she breathed.  They shared a nod.

He closed his notebook, eyes softening, and he yawned.  "Come on, Dylan," he said, standing up and rousing the slumbering redhead.  The boy grunted but stood after a second of bleary-eyed blinking.  Together, he and Jeremy shut off their screens.  She followed suit.  Just as the two were leaving, Kelin passed them, wishing them a good night, and coming back into the room.

Looking around, her boyfriend chuckled.  "Everyone else head to bed?" he asked.  She nodded.  "Did you want to take a shower before you went too?"

Shrugging, Hera just smiled at him.  She couldn't help but looking him up and down.  Memories of their time together, even as chaotic and frantic as recent events had been, made her warm from her ears to her foot paws.  She hummed a noncommittal sound, not minding either way.

His nose scrunched up slightly and he grinned at her.  "What?" he asked.  He glanced up as a strand of his dark hair drifted down over his face.  "Is my hair that bad?  I tried combing it."  She shook her head, still smiling.  "Are you aware just how much of your fur I apparently have on me?" he joked.  He held out his shirt hem, flapping it once or twice.  "I must have pulled a hundred of your hairs off me by now."

She just shrugged.  "It is summer.  My species loses fur coat in such hot seasons.  We are made for cold climates, not warm."  She leaned her cheek into her paw, still gazing at him.

Kelin just chuckled, although his cheeks noticeably darkened a shade.  "Well...Wyoming is a good place for you.  It's rarely this warm out.  Usually, the weather is windy."

She hummed again, nodding.

For some reason, Kelin looked away from her, face still flushed.  "A-and we get really bad wind gusts.  I've seen semi-trucks pushed off the road or flipped by it.  There was this one time, we were all driving across the country on a road trip, and we got stuck in a blizzard on the border for three hours.  It was pure white outside of the windows.  I was in the van with mom and the dogs, although we didn't have Viggy, Ivar, Ragnar, or Bjorn yet."  She smiled wider as he started to ramble on, but she didn't mind.  "So...we finally get through the worst of it and they start waving cars on.  We come to find out a shipping truck had gotten caught by a wind gust, flipped the cab, picked up the trailer, and twisted it like a soda can before dumping everything in it all over the highway."

She nodded.  "Sounds very bad," she commented.  "I assume driver was all right?"

"Oh yeah, at least I think so.  Mom never saw any news update the next day for anyone being injured.  Probably scared the hell out of him though."  He laughed but it sounded nervous for some reason.

Her cheeks dimpled more and her nose quivered.  His scent had changed.  She just chuckled and shook her head.  Standing up, she crossed over to stand in front of him, looking down at her flustered boyfriend.  "Probably," she agreed, letting him keep the conversation going.  She had a feeling he was stalling for time for whatever reason.

He stared up at her, pupils going wider as if trying to soak in the sight of her, and abruptly looked down at his feet, fidgeting from side to side.  "I'm sorry," he said a moment later.  "You probably want to go to bed."

Her heart skipped a beat at his surge of shyness.  "It is late," she admitted.  "But you do not especially have to go.  We can go room and talk a bit more, unless you are tired?"  She cocked her head to the side, ears wiggling as he looked back up at her hopefully.  She realized that she was slightly biting her bottom lip and had linked her paws behind her back, thus thrusting her chest out the tiniest bit more prominently.  Her hips had set up a soft sway back and forth.  She realized she probably looked ridiculous, acting like some teenager trying to get her boyfriend to look at her.  She wasn't even dressed seductively, but for some reason she really wanted him to look.  It was the same feeling she had when she had teased him at the gym only a week ago, asking for him to trade dirty pictures with her.

His eyes slid up her large body torturously slow and she had to resist the urge to let out a pleased growl.  She could all but feel the burning hot, uncertain trail those crystal orbs left upon her fur as they traveled ever higher.  Finally, both of them were staring into one another's faces openly.  A rush of adrenaline and Aggression surged through her as she smelled his own scent climb a bit higher.

Then he started to shake.  It was nearly imperceptible but she could see every breath or so he would tremble ever so slightly, almost like a horse shaking off flies.  Oh, how she longed to just sweep him up into her arms and carry him down the hall.  She knew exactly what those shuddering tremors meant.  The absurd level of satisfaction she felt from watching him stand there, trembling like a leaf in a storm from his pent-up indecisiveness, was like something out of her secret, private collection of Japanese adult mangas.  She had a type, and Kelin was it.

Still, perhaps riling him up like this wasn't the kindest thing to do.  He was probably as worn out emotionally as she was.  A part of her, one buried deep down, still gnashed its teeth that she didn't want to be especially kind right then.  She tamped it down hard, taking a deep breath to steady herself and let her Aggression sink back down to a manageable level.  She opened her eyes back up, not having been aware she had closed them, to realize that his own were now locked onto her chest again.  Apparently, that deep breath had had the opposite effect on him.  She snorted, unable to contain herself, and his eyes flicked back up to hers before his face went even redder and he hurriedly tried to laugh it off as well.

"S-sorry," he grunted, tucking his hands into his pockets.

She shrugged.  "All men look.  Some I mind more than others."  She let her voice play itself off as unruffled, cool, teasing.

He gave a huff and he finally seemed to gain control over his tremors.  "You're evil, you know that?" he asked, grin more relaxed now.  She nodded.  "As long as we're on the same page."  They shared a laugh.  "It...may be the best and smartest thing to do if I just go up to bed," he admitted.

Even as her inner Ursid wailed, Hera just smiled.  "That is true; that may be best.  We both have been through much last day or so."  She held out her paw and he took it.  They walked out of the gaming room together, her having to duck the doorframe.   They turned once more to face one another.  Her paw slid back out of his hand.  "I will see you in morning," she stated matter-of-factly as if he were leaving her at her own front door.  "Today has been one of best in my life.  I look forward to actual birthday celebration tomorrow.  Or is proper term today?"

He grinned.  "It's already the best birthday I am likely ever to have," he teased up at her.

She wiggled a furry eyebrow.  "But you have not yet gotten my present," she teased right back.

His macho façade faded and he swallowed, looking suddenly nervous and exhilarated all over again.  "Present?" he asked.  She hummed and turned to waltz down the hallway away from him.  "H-hey," he said a bit louder, voice tinged with tentative hopefulness.  "Don't I get a hint?  A kiss goodnight?"

She looked back over her shoulder at him.  Her eyes smoldered and he visibly went stiff from his head to his toes at the heat of that look.  "If I kiss you," she growled softly.  "It will not be goodnight."  She chuckled at the shudder that took over his whole body.  "Do not trip walking upstairs," she playfully warned him, then ducked underneath the doorway to her guest room and shut the door after herself.

Once she heard him beginning to sullenly trudge up the basement stairs, Hera leaned her weight against the door, giving a long, suffering growl.  She closed her eyes, thudding her head back against the wooden frame.  She repeated the motion several times as if trying to bash her inner self over the head.  "Down girl," she snarled at herself under her breath.  "You are in his family house.  You do not want to alert his whole family by how loud you get.  What with the growling, tearing both of your clothes off, and..."  She groaned again at the mental image she had just conjured into her mind.  "Too loud," she snapped, thumping her head one more time, standing up, and reaching down to undo her pants.  She shucked them off, as well as her shirt, leaving them in a hamper beside the door that Mrs. Leod had thought to place there for her.

She looked down at herself.  Scowling, she rolled her yellow eyes and moved over to her suitcase.  Unbuckling it, she flung the top open and began digging for some clothes that would be more comfortable to sleep in.  After pulling out a nightgown and fresh underwear, she stripped out of her bra and panties, put the latter into a ziplock baggie, tossed the bra into the hamper, then pondered the sleepwear she had just pulled out.   The idea of putting clothes on over her nearly smoldering fur just made her lips pull back in distaste.  She felt too warm already, so she just tossed the sleepwear back into the suitcase and closed the lid with a grumble.

She tried not to flop into the wide but slightly too-short bed, since she didn't want to break it.   She ended up kicking off the covers and laying on her side, facing the wall.  Her fur was so thick she wasn't likely to need them, but, on the off chance that someone came in, she knew she needed to be at least a little modest.  Grumbling, she pulled just the sheet up over her midsection.  The urge to tend to herself was way too irritating and she wasn't about to indulge now, not after the images still rushing through her undersexed brain.  

What on earth would she have done with Kelin if he had actually followed her in here?  She might have died from embarrassment for him to see just how much he affected her right now.  Not to mention, she wasn't sure she could have held back if temptation had been right there.

"Get a hold of yourself..." she grunted, looking up at the ceiling and rolling onto her back.  She tried to console herself.  Was it really so bad to feel...aroused to that degree?  She normally wasn't like this, had good control over her Aggression and hadn't actually indulged in quite a while.  A really, really long while.  "How long has it even been?" she pondered, trying to mollify herself that she wasn't that hard up.  She began to tally up the last time she'd shared a bed with someone, but, as the numbers climbed ever higher, she knew she couldn't justify it that way.  "Too long..." she muttered.  Why was she like this?  She looked down at her currently sheet-covered midriff.

She closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and thought about Kelin.  She allowed herself to think about his hair when it got all messed up from its bun, about how his eyes dilated when he was caught staring at her.  She pondered, grinning, how he shuffled his feet, or how he would squawk when she teased him more openly than just little quips or jokes.  What about when she had said how little her DND character wore in the game?  Wookie rule, she had been told was socially laughable and an acceptable standard.  She loved the way he looked at her.  She liked looking at him.  She thought about his tattoo...

Her eyes snapped open and she jerked her paw back up out from underneath the covers.  She snarled at it.  "Bad," she grumbled, holding it with the other tightly around the wrist as if restraining a whole other person.  The hand flopped down beneath her eyes as if having deflated from being chastised but also frustrated.  "I know it has been long time!" she told it.  The paw rolled at the wrist downwards at her hips.  "I am not about to play the DJ when I am houseguest of boyfriend's family and sleeping in their basement guest room!" she snapped, voice a bit louder.  "I am not little cub learning what the sex is anymore!  And is not like I am in heat right...now..."  She let go of her paw, letting it flop back down beside her atop the covers as the realization hit her.  She swore, softly, in Russian.  She needed to go to sleep.  She needed to go to sleep.  She closed her eyes.

At that exact moment, on the floor, her phone suddenly buzzed.  She opened one eye to glare over at the hamper.  She only then realized that she shouldn't have just dumped her clothes in there without emptying out the pockets.  Flinging the covers up off of her naked, furry bulk, she rose and crossed over to it.  Squatting down, she extricated her phone from the pants pocket and swiped the lock open.

It was a text message.  From Kelin.

"I hate doing the smart thing."

She stared at the single line of text, slightly confused.  Then she realized what he meant and her ears fluttered up above her head, standing completely at attention.  Her eyes wide, she sat back down on the edge of her bed, staring at the phone and pondering the implications of his admission.  Slowly, a feral grin spread across her face.  He was having issues too.  The absurd satisfaction she felt nearly set her Aggression to full strength again.  She thought about teasing him.  She pondered sending a photo of herself, right then and there, intending to rile him up.  She imagined him tearing back down the stairs and flinging himself into her room for her to do unspeakable things to him.

Deep down, however, slowly but steadily building, a different kind of smile then took over her.  She beamed down at the screen, eyes actually heating up and her fur fluffing up even more than it had been.  It had taken a lot of Kelin to tell her this.  He may have been a guy, a young guy just now firmly entering adulthood, but he respected her.  He respected her so much that ordinarily, he would never have attempted to be so, what he would have called, vulgar.  

Any other man might have made a part of her question if it hadn't been a trap of his own, intending to rile her up the same way she had just been pondering doing to him.  But not him.  Even after everything he had been through, all of his pain, uncertainty, and the constant pressure he put on himself, he was pure.  He was a real Paladin, treating her with chivalry and no doubt judging himself very harshly for this small supposed moment of weakness in his character.  And by the Spirits, did she love him all the more for it.  It was one thing to play a part.  It was a whole other thing to actually live it.

"I do too," she typed back.  She crawled back into her bed and snuggled into the sheets once more, eyes glowing at her brightly lit screen.  It was all that she needed to say.  She had never felt so understood by anyone and similarly understood another person, so completely in her life.  It wasn't a matter of if.  She wasn't worried that he didn't want to.  It was only a matter of when and how.  It would come.  She loved him.  He loved her.  They had all the time in the world to figure out the logistics.  She had been overthinking it all this time.  "I'm sorry I put so much pressure on you."

She saw he was immediately typing back.  "I'm sorry that I don't seem to put enough pressure back out there for you," he said.  She shook her head, letting herself laugh and biting her bottom lip.

"You put out just enough.  Perhaps you are knightly gallant after all," she teased.

"And lady fair you are as well," he shot right back.  "Even if lady fair still is a Barbarian."

"Druid," she countered.  "Even better."

"How so :P?" he asked.

Her eyes smoldered a bit more and this time she didn't feel guilty for it.  "It's not rage.  It's instincts."

She could all but imagine his completely flushed face at her implications intended there.  His typing alert flashed on and off several times, and she giggled knowing exactly why.  He was probably deleting every single thing his frenzied brain was trying to make him write before his nervousness once again took hold.  She knew exactly what that was like.  She'd deleted a fair few, less than PG statements and questions as well already.

"If...I had stayed?" he finally asked, seemingly unable to keep that question contained.  He started to immediately type again but she rushed to cut him off before he could tell her to 'Forget it' or 'Ignore that'.

"We wouldn't just be talking," she sent, rolling her lip slightly and letting a soft growl bubble in her chest.

His line of text halted dead in its tracks.

"Did you just fail Wisdom save?" she teased.  "Or would that be...Constitution?"  Another long pause.  "If you are about to knock on my door, it'll be Death Saving throw instead."  She craned her ears eagerly, seeing if she might hear the creak of a stair or a muted footstep down the hallway.

Instead, her phone buzzed, distracting her, and she saw a picture message was loading.  All at once, her fur fluffed up, her ears folded back, and she stared, wide-eyed at the screen.  Could he possibly be sending what she thought, hoped, feared he was sending?!  She waited for a whole, torturous minute, barely bothering to breathe.  Had he finally given in and let his male brain completely take over?  She waited longer.  Her brows furrowed and she tapped the screen.  The message still had not loaded.

Growling in annoyance, she was about to ask him to resend it, when she saw he was already typing again.  "I don't know why that picture isn't sending >.>," he said.  "We have some of the best reception here.  Are you on our Wifi?"

"No," she told him.  She bit her lip.  "Can I ask what picture is...?"

"It's not that!" his next message said, making her deflate immediately.  " ^^' sorry.  It was just a dumb joke picture off of a cartoon show.  Do you know much by Matt Groening?"

Rolling her eyes up and tamping down her furious lady-frenzy, she sighed.  "Not really.  I really should have taken a shower..." she told him.  "I am so..."  She realized what she had sent before her brain had finished processing it and she frantically began to type out a statement for him to ignore that last message.  It was his turn to beat her to the punch.

"Me too."

Her eyes went wide at the screen and she heard a high-pitched sound coming from somewhere.  She realized a second later that she was the one making it.  She shut it off by clamping her jaws shut firmly, locking her dark lips over her teeth, and furiously counting to ten.  Once she had finished, she sent a blushing bear emoji.

"Maybe...we should just go to sleep," she sent next.

"Probably for the best," he agreed.  A second later, her phone buzzed again, as she had accidentally minimized the messaging app.  "I love you."

All of the heat of her flustered feelings, all of her rushing emotions about what to tease him about and what not to allow past her pent-up, sexually frustrated animal brain and internal filter that was working at absolute capacity, all of it went away.  Warmth blossomed inside of her chest again and she curled up into a huge, fluffy ball atop of the bed, curving in around her phone which she cradled like a feather made of glass as she read that last text over and over.

"I love you too," she finally sent back.  "Goodnight, my little Tyr."

"Goodnight, my Ursid."

She sniffled and placed the phone up by her pillow delicately.  Closing her eyes, she let out a deep sigh of contentment.  In the end, that truly had been all she needed.  All of the sex in the world couldn't compare to how she felt right now, like a million after-glows all at once.  She drifted right off to sleep, where she dreamed of the day she had met Kelin for the first time, and their walk around the gym's jogging track.

She awoke as the sun was just barely beginning to rise.  An early riser on basic principle, the Ursid woman sat up, yawning.  She checked the time blearily, rubbing at her eyes.  7'o clock AM.  The time she usually woke up by every day.  She yawned again, scratching at her fluffy side, and then, just to give herself a pleasant morning, reopened the messaging app to reread their conversation.

The picture had loaded.  A set of three cartoon skeletons were chained to a wall, all of whom were posed in relaxed and satisfied positions.  Their hips were shattered into pieces, but they still looked pleased as all hell.  A single line of text was written beneath their bony feet.  She recognized the show.

"Death by snu-snu," she snorted.  She couldn't contain it.  She laughed, hard, openly, and loud.  A moment later, she heard the dogs upstairs begin barking furiously.  She bit her lip, clapping a paw over her mouth.  The damage was done.  Giggling, she got up and started getting dressed for the day.  It was Kelin's official birthday, and she intended to give him the best one ever.  After everything he had given her, she intended it to only be the beginning of a beautiful life together.  He was hers.  She was his.  She intended it to be that way for a long time.