“Uh, talking to you?” he said, snickering like he’d told a funny joke. Then he grunted again.
They probably didn’t want to know the answer, but they still asked, “Why are you grunting?”
Dex snorted a laugh. “Oh, I’m doing push-ups.”
“Why?”
“Seemed like a good idea.”—grunt—“Why waste the moment when I can do both?”—grunt—“Why? Is it distracting?”
The way he saiddistractingheld a layer of, not accusation, but expectation or significance. Like if they said that it was, indeed, distracting, it would confirm something, something Cya didn’t want confirmed.
“No,” they said, even though they did find it distracting.
“Cool,” he said with another grunt. “Then I’ll keep going. I’m starting to feel the burn.”
“Lovely,” they deadpanned. “What about food? I can arrange a caterer, but—”
Grunt
“—the ones we usually work with only do large events, and—”
Grunt
“—I imagine the usual menu we’d order wouldn’t agree with—”
Grunt
“—oh for deities sake, would you stop it with the grunting?” they cried, flushed and flustered now.
Dex laughed. “You said it wasn’t distracting.”
“It’s not, but it still sounds—” They swallowed the worderoticin the nick of time, shoving it back down their throat where it would never see the light of day. They could never say that; they couldn’t even think it!
The shame of ever admitting, or even hinting at, carnal feelings for the Lupyn would be too much to bear. Cya would rather strip naked in the middle of campus and streak through the dyscus field during the play-offs than admit to Dex that they found him attractive. It just wouldn’t do.
“It still sounds?” Dex prompted.
“Annoying,” they said primly.
“Sure,” he said doubtfully.
To add insult to injury, Dex released a low, satisfied moan, and Cya scrabbled to cover the phone with their hands to stifle the inappropriate sound. They prayed Hemersyn was in the other wing of the house; they didn’t need him to think they were watching pornography.
“Oh, yeah, that’s the stuff,” he rumbled so low in his chest it ended in a little growl, and a wave of heat washed over Cya, from the top of their head to the tip of their tail.
Even their scalp prickled, and their rattle shook, though they couldn’t decide whether it was from annoyance or—annoyance. It was annoyance!
“What in the deities are you doing now?” they demanded in a hiss.
“I was just stretching! Gods, what crawled up your ass and died?”
This time, their tail definitely rattled out of aggravation. “Would you just stretch quieter?”
“I am literally just a person existing. Newsflash, Cy, people make noises.”
“Well, you’re on speakerphone, so could you at least attempt to keep your noises from sounding like a porn?”
The silence that settled over the phone connection was heavy, and Cya nearly hung up to save themself the humiliation. They didn’t, because the last time they’d hung up on Dex without a goodbye, he’d given them a rather impressive lecture the next day about manners and how “friends don’t hang up on other friends like that, unless the friend is actually a douchebag.”
