197

by LoveBear

I folded the paper again, and stuffed it back into my pocket. There's only so many times that you can read the same news before the impact doesn't seem to do you any good any more. Who would've ever thought that three little numbers would have changed so much so quickly? I suppose today we run our lives by numbers, as much as we try to ignore and deny that fact. Credit card numbers. Bank account figures. Salaries. Even the ones and zeroes that lurk on the insides of these little desktop demons. Our lives are governed by numbers. Now, it would seem, so are our deaths.

As I walked away from the lab, back across campus, I looked over and saw the ad for the display again. What poetic justice. What irony. If there is a supreme being, then surely He must be out to get me. I stood, motionless, looking at the advertisement. I checked my watch. I had time. Then I had to laugh, out loud, bitter echoes in the wind. Time. Of all the things I had, time was the one thing I didn't have any more. But I had the minutes before class to look at the display, and I felt it would be fitting to see what lay ahead.

I toured the panels, looking them over each one in turn. I could almost feel the love that went into them. The pain and anger at the loss of someone that meant so much. I wondered if David would put one up when the time came. I knew it wasn't long before that question would face him. I wondered how this new piece of news would hit him. He knew the day was coming. Now it was here. Would he leave me this time, would he stay? Would he finally throw his hands in the air and proclaim that he'd had enough of my self-destructive behaviour?

Self-destructive. I sighed, unable to let an ironic smirk creep across my face. He didn't know just what those drugs did. Aside from the abusive dosing schedules, the nausea, the headaches. Even beyond all of those, there was one thing those drugs did that made the chance at living to a natural death a sisyphian task. I had one reason above all others why I wouldn't.. why I couldn't get treatment.

I went to class, and then to our apartment. David was waiting for me in the kitchen, chopping up vegetables for homemade stew. I remembered the smell of it well, though I'd long since lost most of the sense from the perpetual cold I had. He looked up when the front door closed. "Matthew? How did things go?"

I smiled. That was my David. Always attempting to put the best face on things, even when he knew that the news would be bad. He had the heat turned up in the apartment for me, even though I knew he could barely stand it. I shrugged off my coat, starting to feel warm for the first time since that morning. "Classes went alright. The semester's almost done."

He went back to cooking; I could tell he was nervous. "And the count?"

I sighed; no point in delaying it. "One-hundred-ninety-seven."

I heard the knife drop to the cutting board and then he walked out of the kitchen, hands on his hips. I smiled, looking him over. His shoulder-length dirty blond hair was in a tangle as always. He hadn't shaved that morning, but the stubble only gave him a professorial look that still made my heart skip a beat. Because of the heat of the apartment, he was only wearing a pair of shorts and a tanktop that did nothing to hide the promises beneath. His eyes, the colour of the sky an hour before sunrise, were wet. I rose from where I'd sat on the couch and walked over to him. "David.. what?"

He turned away from me. "I don't understand you. You're letting yourself die. Do you hate yourself so much for what's happened to you that you're willing to throw this away?"

I sighed. I knew this was coming. "David, I want more than anything to live."

He turned around and grabbed me. "Then why won't you get help?" The tears he'd been holding in since this morning began to run freely down his face. "If you'd done something sooner, you could've lived a long time. But you quit taking the drugs. You stopped getting help. You completely withdrew. You won't even touch me in bed any more. For God's sakes, Matthew, why?" His voice ran out then, cracked and broken by his sobs. He clutched at me feebly, while I slowly ran a hand over his back.

We stood there, for an eternity or an instant I don't know. Then it came to me. He had to know. I cupped a hand under his chin and raised it. "David."

At first, he wouldn't meet my gaze, but I held it and he finally looked into my eyes, his own puffy from crying. "Why, Matthew? Why?"

I smiled gently. "I'll show you. You should know it all now." I withdrew from his arms, and shrugged aside my shirt and pants. "You deserve to know why I can't treat this." I removed my shoes and my underwear and stood before him nude in the subdued apartment lighting. I hoped the lesions weren't too severe; I hadn't checked them myself in two weeks.

David looked at me, eyes curious. I smiled as encouragingly as I could. "Now is the time to not be afraid, my love." With that, I closed my eyes, and willed the Change. At first, I could feel nerves and muscles screaming in complaint; the myriad symptoms that riddled my body only made the sweet pain of the change that much spicier as I felt the fur of my pelt bloom from beneath the empty fields of skin. My muzzle pushed its way forth from my face, ears pulling back and up. My tail grew from between my legs. All of my weight redistributed to permit digitigrade walking. Then, the burning, itching, dizzying sensation was gone, and I looked at myself. My fur was dull and lackluster, not the normal soft brassy-coloured coat I had when I was 15. My limbs seemed too thin, even on this frame. Thus were the signs of the times, I guessed.

I looked at David with my new eyes. He was staring at me, one hand over his mouth. At first I couldn't tell if he was ready to cry or scream. Or both. I sat down on my haunches. "David?"

My voice, though foreign, was still enough to reach him. "M--Matthew?"

I nodded. "Still me. Bit hard to talk."

He rose from the couch and walked over to me. He reached out to me, and I held my breath, standing rock still as his hand came in contact with the top of my head. Slowly, he ran his hand down my back, stroking my pelt, and I fought hard not to growl in pleasure at the contact; he needed to explore without my sex drive interfering.

Little by little, he overcame his shock and fear, and he sat next to me. "How long has this.. how long have you been like this?"

I growled softly. "Birth. Always like this."

He looked into my eyes. A million things flashed through them, but then, I saw the one thing deep within them I'd feared I'd lost: love. He smiled at me, the way he did on the night we first met. The way that melted my heart. "Matthew, why did you never tell me?"

I looked away, down at the floor. Not for the first time, I wished I'd had the courage to tell him. I guess it was for all the same reasons I didn't come out to my parents until I knew I was positive. I didn't want to risk losing them, so I did nothing to dispel their fantasies. When I did finally tell them, I got nothing but unconditional acceptance, but it was too little, too late. I sighed, feeling the tears begin to roll down my own cheek, into my fur. "Didn't know how."

He continued to stroke my back, and even beyond my own control I began to growl. "And this is why you stopped geting help?"

I nodded. "Drugs block the shift. Couldn't live without this. Too much me to lose."

He looked at me, and then suddenly he wrapped his arms around me and buried his face into my fur. "Matthew.. I love you. I wish you I could change your mind, but I understand your reasons. I.. I'm going to miss you."

At that, we both began to cry, and we held each other and cried together through the night.

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