Archive of Our Own

“Fire in the hole!”

An ear-bleeding explosion ricochets off the concrete walls of countless structures strafing the blast site. The shockwave embeds itself deep within Feist’s bones, reverberating against his eardrums in spite of the puffy muffs resting taut against the sides of his head. Urban construction is never not a total pain in the ass, but urban demolition is a whole different beast. It’s nearly impossible to obliterate a building of this size without causing any collateral damage unless your team is equipped with a structural engineer who really knows what they’re doing, hence why there’s a tiny, dirty blonde Perro tacking away at a shiny, chrome tablet beside him. She grumbles to herself about some logistical nonsense, adjusting a pressure gauge on her shoulder strap as she plugs numbers into advanced mathematical formulas as light speed.

“Shana!” she suddenly shouts, snapping her head up and surveying the rubble for a sign of her demolitionist.

Twenty feet away, a helmeted head pops out of a crumbled stack of concrete bricks that had once constituted a support column. Three comically oversized LEDs arranged in a triangle and glued to the front of a fiberglass hard hat blind the project overseers before Shana, always slow on the uptake, remembers to switch them off. The mole Zalak pulls herself out of her rubble jacuzzi, the bright orange bands adorning her safety vest reflecting the midday glare back into the atmosphere.

“Howdy doody, fellas! That was a fine blast if I do say so myself!”

Shana Moleman - the third and final Rhodes Islander on the job site after Laura and Feist himself - had been recruited in tandem with Laura after she’d had her leave of absence from Blacksteel Worldwide validated. Shana is… well, she’s one of the weirdest people Feist has ever worked with, not that that’s a bad thing, but her techniques are hardly generic. Specialized in demolition, she prefers to supervise controlled detonations from within the blast zone, which is to say she enjoys burying herself alive and calling it work. Maybe it’s the Zalak blood running through her veins, but with her trusty drill by her side, Shana could probably tunnel straight through the planet without breaking a sweat if she wanted to. Right now, however, she’s standing proudly before Laura completely coated in a fine dusting of concrete powder from the tips of her muddy, brown hair to the thick soles of the oversized work boots she refuses to trade in for a proper size.

“So, how are we looking for round 4?” Shana asks, the infectious pep in her voice ever present.

Laura scratches the side of her head, disrupting the little bone shaped hair pin stapled over her balance regulating Terran ear. She spins her tablet around, pointing to keystone hotspots as she explains. “Well, that last one wasn’t exactly ideal, but I can work with it. If we blow the Northeast sector inward next, that should minimize any spillover.”

“Okie dokie!”

A cluster of government contractors follow Shana across the disaster zone towards the largest of the remaining load-bearing towers equipped with a fearsome arsenal of C-4. Laura immediately returns to quietly rumbling as she fiddles with her tablet. While he’s a solid mechanist and passable engineer, Feist isn’t exactly fluent in the precise art of controlled destruction, so he hasn’t had much to do these last few days. As such, he’s resorted to teasing Laura out of sheer boredom. Feist sighs and rests his elbow on her head, an action that actually requires him to bend down a bit due to her being comically short at just over four and a half feet tall.

“Feist. Stop it,” she growls as he begins mussing up her short, choppy hair and joggling the visor resting atop it with his forearm.

“Or what?” he counters. “You gonna bite me, doggy?”

Laura smacks his arm with her free hand before lugging it off her head and watching it fall loosely back to his side. “Don’t tempt me.”

Feist leans back on his heels, stuffing his hands into his armpits as he crosses his arms and takes up a casual stance that gives him the appearance of a teenage vagrant loitering outside of a Circle K while his friends illegally purchase cigarettes for him. His eyes flicker back towards Laura, who has yet again resumed her frenzied tapping. At the end of the day, he doesn’t actually know her all that well; their relationship boils down to that of mere colleagues more than anything. For a social butterfly such as Feist, however, that’s nothing more than a challenge that he’s more than willing to take on. Their current assignment consists of not only deconstructing a derelict parking garage in downtown Londinium but also replacing it with a government wire tapping facility disguised as a call center. Needless to say, the details of the operation are top secret, with only the three Rhodes Islanders being privy to every nitty-gritty detail. It’s basically a foregone conclusion that Feist will be getting to know Shana and Laura pretty intimately over the course of the next few months, so he figures it’s worth starting early. Unfortunately, his default setting is ‘generally obnoxious,’ so he hasn’t been making the best first impression on his project coordinator. Before he can say something idiotic and further sabotage their already tenuous relationship though, a head bursts out of the ground between his spread legs. Shana looks around, evidently confused by the lack of supervisors in front of her until she looks directly up into Feist’s groin.

“Oh,” she pipes before plunging back into the soil and emerging a few feet away, this time in front of the Perro and Feline. She presents a mock salute, still buried up to her midsection. “The explosives are set and primed! Ready to blow on your command!”

Laura barely has the chance to get a word in before Shana disappears back into the ground, displaced dirt refilling the tunnel she leaves behind.

“Seems clear,” Feist says, scanning the blast zone for any signs of straggling workers left in a hazardous position. “I say send it.”

Laura taps the little plastic band wrapped around the edge of the Perro ear she uses primarily for auditory reception. It springs to life, spitting a monotonous buzz directly into Feist’s air canal. Laura’s voice assaults both of his Feline ears, one through the earpiece and the other via their close proximity.

“Shana, you know you can use the communicator, right?”

The Zalak giggles, peaking the fuzzy, electronic drone at the vertexes of her laugh. “I know, I know, but I much prefer chatting face to face.”

Like he said, Shana is a weird one.

“Ready?” Laura asks, receiving a bubbly affirmation from her demo crew head. “Three, two, one-”

“Fire in the hole!”

Another deafening pulse of energy radiates outward from the base of the northeastern support pillar as Laura remotely detonates the lowest clump of C-4. The explosion chains its way a few levels up the tower, shattering the innermost beams. As its load-bearing scaffolds crumble, the building collapses under its own mass, gravity deconstructing the tower in sheets like a tremendous heap of pancakes falling onto its side. Laura flips her reflective visor over her eyes and tugs the tan snood encircling her neck up to cover her nose, giving her the appearance of a baseball fan in a blizzard. Feist, distracted by how cute she looks all bundled up, forgets why people wear eye protection on work sites in the first place and the tidal plume of dust that blindsides him drowns the unfortunate Feline in a feast of filth.

“Bloody hell!”

Feist chokes on a beach’s worth of sand in his lungs as the dust settles around him. Laura flicks her visor back to a resting position on the top of her head, revealing a flat expression that screams, ‘is this dude for real?’

“How's the job site taste?”

Feist smacks his lips. “Of dirt.”

Laura grunts, unamused. “Goggles on next time, bucko. I can tolerate a stupid general contractor, not a blind one.”

Ouch. But also entirely deserved so there’s not much Feist can do to contest her severity on this one. The last straggling chunks of rubble snap into resting positions seconds before once again being disturbed, this time by a ditzy mole punching through the surface and back out into the open air.

“Excellent!”

Shana pairs her toothy grin with a duo of supportive thumbs poking out from her oversized sleeves in a visual indication of her approval. Feist notices a hint of a smile sneak onto Laura’s face as she returns the thumbs-up. In a rare display of self control, he refrains from teasing her over it, confident that doing so would somehow result in him biting his own ass because that’s just how today has gone so far.

“C’mere, Shana!” Laura beckons, zooming out the 3D model on her tablet as she approaches. “I’ve mapped out the remaining placements we’ll need to kick this sucker to the curb. Shouldn’t take too much longer, all things considered.”

Shana pastes another salute to her forehead and burrows off to collect her crew for the next bout of bombing. Having destabilized most of the structure’s foundation in the last few days, blowing out the actual building is an exercise in patience and precision more than anything, since a single misstep could very well take out the adorable little mom and pop pub the next lot over. The final few hours of daylight dissolve rather quickly under Laura’s watchful gaze and Shana’s unthinking, easily-distracted one. With the sun finally retreating behind the towering Londinium skyline, leaving only fiery, painted streaks brushed across the violet sky, Laura officially calls the contractors off.

“Pretty tidy, I’d say,” she gloats, flipping through the pocketbook she keeps in a pouch welded to her shoulder strap. “We’re still easily on pace.”

“Love to hear it!”

Feist doesn’t even bother to look down when a bubbly voice pitches in from the general vicinity of his feet. Shana pops up between him and Laura, completely webbed in a thin membrane of silt, cement residue, plaster, and all kinds of other nonsense that Feist would really rather not think about. Much to his chagrin, he’s forced to when the Zalak shakes her entire body like a wet dog, dousing her victims in a sheet of construction crud. A less tolerant individual with more respect for their appearance may have throttled Shana right there and then but Laura and Feist are - despite their youth - both experienced contractors and thus understand that shit like this is just part of the job. Especially when your demolitionist is a gigantic goofball. Laura lets loose an exhausted sigh.

“I need a shower.”

For as much as Laura doesn’t like it, the offer of free housing is pretty hard to turn down. She’d wanted to just hole up in some nearby motel, but then Feist had gone and offered up his grandmother’s flat (their relationship has improved somewhat since his rebellious, teenage phase) as temporary housing for the two girls and Shana had jumped at the opportunity. Laura didn’t appear to mind initially - she’d never really interacted with Catherine all that much at Rhodes Island - but after spending the last two days dealing with Feist’s antics, she seems to already be regretting her decision.

The trio bursts into the living room, where Catherine is perched atop a velvet armchair with a book in her hands. She’s also balanced a pot of tea atop a little table beside her and holds an intricate, china cup filled with the same. Her silvery gray feline ears flick towards the door as it squeaks open and three, disgusting musketeers dirty the entryway carpet. The contrast between their grotesque hodgepodgery and Catherine’s refined stature is embarrassingly frank.

“Hey, Cathy,” Feist greets his grandmother, silt dribbling onto the carpet with even the most minute movements.

She props one eyebrow a notch higher than the other. “You’ve seen better days, eh? How ‘bout you haul that sorry bum of yours off my rug and bust out the broom?”

At that, Laura’s eyes widen to the size of dinner plates, and she breaks out into a panicked blithering that Catherine quickly silences.

“No, no, sweetie, not you. Feist. Get your rear in gear.”

Feist rolls his eyes, unsurprised at this development. The women in his family bleed hospitality. That’s part of the reason his grandmother had agreed to board two coworkers she barely knows in the first place. If she has her way, these girls won’t so much as lift a finger for the duration of their stay. Laura shifts awkwardly as Feist reaches around her and starts rummaging through the closet for a broom. The poor girl is pretty clearly uncomfortable with the princess treatment she’s receiving but unfortunately for her, Catherine can be dense as a pile of bricks when it comes to extrapersonal situations such as these.

“You should hit the shower, ladies,” she suggests, gesturing towards the mucky clumps clinging to the tips of Shana’s hair. “I’ll get supper going.”

Laura prods her friend with a finger and tilts her head towards the bathroom door, silently imploring her to take the first turn. Shana wastes no time in taking her up on that offer, sauntering through the door with needless zest. Catherine makes her way to the kitchen and starts sifting through the fridge, isolating necessary ingredients with ruthless efficiency. As Feist finally locates the broom and frees it from its prison, Laura shuffles out of his way into an emptier nook in the wall. Feist begins robotically consolidating the thin sheet of dust on the floor into a little pile while simultaneously doing his best to ignore the Perro’s nervous shifting. Unable to tolerate her uselessness any longer, she takes a few hesitant steps towards the kitchen.

“Erm, Miss Catherine?” Laura probes, rubbing her thumbs together in an effort to relieve some uncomfortable tension. “I don’t suppose there’s anything I could do to help?”

Catherine chuckles. “Oh, don’t go worrying yourself with anything. You just make yourself comfortable, sweetheart.”

She’d be more comfortable if you just gave her something to do.

“Well, okay, if you say so,” Laura mumbles with a noise halfway between a laugh and a strained gasp bubbling out of her throat.

Gah, I can’t do this!

“Can you just let her chop the potatoes or something?” Feist demands, putting his sweeping on hold for a few seconds in order to drive his point home. “She’s an engineer, Cathy. She needs something to do.”

Catherine narrows her eyes as she glares over the bar-like counter between her and her grandson but turns to address Laura nonetheless. “You wanna help me with the peeling then?” she asks, sweeping her hand over a sack of bulbous, Dublinn potatoes.

The chihuahua nods vigorously. “As long as I wouldn’t be too much of a bother.”

“Oh of course not. I’d hate to force you but if you want to help, that’ll always be appreciated by me.”

Laura locks eyes with Feist briefly as she slips into the kitchen and her mouth contorts into an adorably awkward squiggle. She mouths a quick thanks before disappearing into the room.

Feist exhales and resumes his tidying which takes longer than it should due to him being a bit of a perfectionist at very select times. Just as he’s sweeping the last of his piles into the dustpan, he’s jumpscared by a familiar face suddenly appearing not three inches in front of him.

“How goes it over here?” Shana inquires, eyeing the crumbs littering the dustpan as if they were candies.

The young woman is noticeably fresh out of the shower, equipped with nothing but a baggy T-shirt and knee-length athletic shorts. Her hair is still damp, and a thin stream of water is pooling at the end of one of her cream-colored bangs, threatening to drip onto the floor as it fattens. Shana shifts her gaze up to Feist’s face, the tip of her tongue playfully peeking out between her lips.

“Stainless, chief househusband,” she mocks with an exaggerated, gruff swagger followed shortly by an illusion-shattering giggle. “You want the shower next or should I grab Laura?”

Feist opts to defer, sending Shana into the already cramped kitchen to sub in for her Perro friend. Having completed his own chore, he follows her into the kitchen adding to the count of cooks of which there are far too many. As Feist slinks past the chefs at work, a sudden BANG reminiscent of the C-4 detonations from earlier today splits his ears. He jumps, nearly spilling the contents of the dustpan onto the tiles.

“Shana, honey, you can be gentler than that. It's a potato, not hardtack.”

“Feist! Just put all of that by the far wall. We’ll deal with it later.”

Laura drags an intimidating mess of concrete scrap across the work site with the miniature hydraulic crane she often totes around on her back. Two weeks after the first blast, the strenuous clean up phase is nearing completion in record time. Everything up to this point has gone off without a hitch which is quite the rarity in this field and that’s thanks primarily to Laura, who has proven to be even more competent than Feist had anticipated. Not only are her organizational skills honed to maximum efficiency, but the tiny Perro is surprisingly useful in practical matters too. Take, for instance, the way she’s slinging the coiled, elastic cord of her crane over the dumpster with seasoned dexterity and effortlessly fashioning a makeshift pulley system to deposit her heavy clump of rubble into the container. In the last few weeks, Feist has found himself routinely forgetting that she’s only in her mid twenties due to her behaviour befitting that of a veteran project manager. He shakes his head, clearing his mind of any impurities and returning his focus to hauling potentially hazardous scrap further out of the way.

“You sure you got all that? I have a free hand if you need,” Shana offers, having spontaneously appeared next to Feist as she somehow always managed to do.

If Laura is pretty closed off about her personal life, then Shana serves as her foil. The girl can and will blab endlessly about whatever she happens to be thinking about at the time, be it her childhood trauma or a concentrated introspective on which types of cheese melt the best on a griddle. As far as Feist can tell, she just likes the sound of her own voice which is probably why he knows her about as well as her own father who, by the way, apparently mixed cement powder into the family pancake mix when she was a child. That anecdote is one that he still hasn’t quite registered in full: Shana was forced to eat cement as a child. It’s so absurd that he initially thought she was joking when she’d told him, but the more he thinks about it, the more sense things begin to make. Stuck in his own head, Feist realizes he’s failed to actually respond to Shana’s question out loud when she cocks her head like a lost puppy and purses her lips in confusion.

“I think I can handle these lugs,” he affirms, giving the shredded, steel crossbeams he’s chauffeuring away on his shoulder a firm pat. “But could you please tell Doggy that the Eastern sector is just about spiffy?”

“Tell her yourself,” Shana smirks with a knowing shrug before once again vanishing from Feist’s line of sight.

“How many times do I have to tell you to stop calling me that?”

At some point, Laura had teleported to his other side and now stood there with her tablet in hand and a sour expression on her face.

“Calling you what, Doggy?”

Her sapphire blue eyes narrow into disapproving slits at the sound of her - quite literally in this case - pet name. Feist had originally started using the nickname as a joke, but after seeing how it got under her skin as much as it did, he’s been having a difficult time stopping. It’s not that he’s actively trying to piss her off or anything, it’s just that Laura happens to be a bit uptight and Feist can’t help but act overly casual with his coworkers by nature. While this dynamic has certainly sown some tension between the two of them, he’s also noticed that she’s been getting gradually less hostile towards the nickname over time almost as if she’s warming up to it, if just a little. Fed up with even this inconsequential interaction, Laura sighs and nudges Feist’s hip with a petite, partially gloved hand.

“When you finish up with that, let’s chat about our direction from here. I have a few errands to run tonight and I was hoping you'd be available.”

“Are you asking me out on a date?” Feist teases, rocking on the balls of his feet.

Laura rolls her eyes but tolerates his tomfoolery nonetheless. “Only if you're down for dinner at the hardware store.”

He snickers. “You jest, but that sounds right nifty to me.”

Laura perks up to her tiptoes, reaching her arm as far up as it is willing to go and jabbing Feist’s unprotected cheek. “Get back to that scrap, yeah?”

Barring a mild hiccup involving a sewage spill and - who else? - Shana, the schedule progresses smoothly for the remainder of the day, and the job site is as bare as it’ll be before the sun can even brush against the skyline. Having made such good time and not having enough remaining to start anything major, Laura shuts down the lot for the night earlier than usual and they head back to Catherine’s flat in order to freshen up before hitting the town. Feist would have preferred to head directly to the store, but a certain someone was smelling less than ideal after puncturing a sewage line and even he couldn’t justify terrorizing the general public with her pungence. As such, they’d opted to delay their departure briefly.

Feist toys with the frayed strings of his hoodie, not the work one, but a more comfortable variant emblazoned with the logo of a local football club. Not that he was particularly into football or anything, but it’s basically a capital offense to be uninterested in the sport in Londinium so everyone is forced to either learn to like it or get really good at faking that they do. He’s draped across the hood of his beaten up work van, kicking his feet like a primary schooler on the playground as he waits for Shana and Laura to finish up with… whatever it is they’re doing. Feist figures they must be preparing in some regard but isn’t exactly sure what preparation would be necessary for a visit to the Carlson Renovation Depot. Just as his tolerance reaches its breaking point, his patience pays off.

“What are you doing?”

Feist perks up at the question, sitting upright on the hood and looking back towards the house where he sees… nothing. Well, he sees the house and the blur of cars speeding by behind him reflected in the windows. He narrows his eyes and widens his field of view, but still fails to locate anyone who could be talking to him.

“Down here, muffinhead.”

Feist glances down - darn near straight down - and locks eyes with Laura, who seems to have actually put some effort into her outfit. She’s swaddled in a cozy, blue blouse lined with subtle rosettes around the seams and a lavender trim. The layered hues create a natural focal bridge between her outfit and the sparkling gleam of her eyes, causing her baby blues to appear far more penetrating than usual. She’s also equipped with a dark, navy skirt that’s creased in regular intervals around its circumference, though it seems she gave up on the charm when it comes to her feet since she’s wearing the same, battered sneakers she’s been traversing the work site in for the last two weeks. Her appearance from the neck up, however, more than makes up for it: her short, cashew blonde locks still proudly bearing her bone-shaped hairpin are tied back into a little pigtail, exposing the nape of her neck to the frosty, nighttime air. With her hair pulled away from her face, her delicate features shine more prominently: the arch of her nose, the curves of her face, the cherry redness of her lips. All together, her surprising appearance prompts Feist to suffer a little bit of a double take and he finds himself quietly blinking like an idiot for a few seconds. As the extended silence becomes uncomfortable, Laura shifts her weight between her feet, a thin blush making its way onto her cheeks. It vanishes rather quickly, however, once Feist opens his stupid mouth.

“Nice shoes.”

She immediately snaps at him, shoulders hunched and brows furrowed in tempered rage.

“I didn’t bring anything else!” she scowls through gritted teeth.

“Hindsight is 20/20,” he mutters, averting his gaze.

Laura punches him in the calf with a weak fist and throws the van’s passenger door open, seating herself inside with a frustrated huff. Feist watches her go from his roost on the hood, mentally kicking himself over his foolishness. He isn’t insensitive on purpose, he just happens to be unfathomably terrible at handling atypical situations. In other words, Laura was so alarmingly attractive just now that it discombobulated the Feline and defaulted him to his basic defense mechanism of turning everything into a bad joke.

Come on, man. What are you even doing?

Feist sighs, sliding back onto the ground and circling the vehicle and cranking the right-hand door open. The drive through town is gorgeous; blurry bubbles of light mingle in a rainbow of overlapping tones that illuminate the knobbly oaks lining the length of the road. This dreamy atmosphere beyond the van’s windows might as well be another dimension, because the temperature within is frosty, to say the least. Laura gazes out the window, refusing to look in Feist’s direction with her chin resting on an upturned palm. It’s just the two of them since Shana had apparently changed her mind about joining them after Catherine busted out a deck of cards. He scrounges the recesses of his brain in search of a macguffin capable of shifting the mood but discovers only misplaced dad jokes which are, of course, super helpful. His mind races even faster than the cars bypassing him on the road outside, eventually managing to convert his feelings into proper words.

“You look good, Laura,” he admits, keeping his eyes trained on the road. “I know I really should have started with that, but you’re just normally so… slovenly- Fuck! Not in a bad way!” Oh boy, this is falling apart quickly. “I’m just not used to seeing you like this. It’s… different.”

She holds her place, refusing to reward him with a response for a strained few seconds. Keeping her gaze fused to the window, she begins quietly toying with the tips of her fingers.

“Well,” she mumbles softly enough that Feist is forced to strain his ears just to hear her. “I’m not used to you using my real name anymore.”

Laura turns her head and peers at him through icy, apprehensive, yet somehow still endearing irises. There’s a thin smile on her face but it’s barely noticeable against the smudged, sour-cream moonlight refracting through the windshield.

“Eyes on the road, mister,” she chastizes, prompting a startled grunt as Feist realizes he’s staring at her. “And just stick with ‘Doggy,’ alright?”

This is ridiculous. She was NOT this cute three weeks ago.

Feist for one doesn’t understand how anyone could possibly trust Shana with a cement mixer but, alas, here she is and there it is. Compared to some of the painstaking processes that go into constructing a building from scratch, foundations aren’t all that bad. It’s yet another category where Feist is less than useful but, fortunately, Shana is proving to be a surprisingly competent cement layer. A month has elapsed since they kicked the job off and so far the team is running ahead of schedule, a status Laura seems dead set on maintaining. Even now, she’s monitoring Shana’s positioning of the cement mixer directly to ensure nothing goes awry. At this pace, the foundations should be finished by the end of the work day, meaning scaffolding can start tomorrow. That’s ideal for Feist because assembling is where he specializes. For the time being, though, he’s stuck loafing around on the clock. Perched atop a stack of spruce two by fours, he catches himself staring at his supervisor and panics, detaching his gaze from the Perro and looking at everything else he possibly can in a thoroughly pointless bid to pretend that Feist hadn’t just caught Feist doing something embarrassing. It’s getting a bit frustrating just how often he’s been through this same song and dance lately. It really does feel like every time Laura is in his field of view he can’t keep his eyes off of her, and that wouldn’t be nearly so irritating if he wasn’t painfully aware of how pathetic it is. He runs a hand through his matted, ochre hair, ruffling the clumps of natural black strands as he goes. An ocean of silt dribbles out onto the ground, though a few larger particles stick in the gaps between his eyelashes.

“What are you doing man?” Feist mutters under his breath, watching the earthy waterfall ebb and flow in the wind.

He may be young, but Feist is far from sexually inexperienced. Though he’s only experienced a true relationship once before, he’s no stranger to the one-night stand. The problem he’s facing at the moment is that he isn’t sure exactly what he feels towards Laura. He’s worked with her before through Rhodes Island but this assignment is the first where he’s actually had the opportunity to get to know her, and doing so has thrown everything he thought he knew about her out the window. The Perro has unknowingly been racing his emotions down quite the vibrant roller coaster in the past month, leaving him with no real idea when the next drop will arrive. Feist upturns his gaze, observing as the source of his stress facilitates the flow of cement from the mixer’s drum and down its unsheathed gangway, verbally keeping Shana updated on its progress.

“Mr. Fletcher,” a deep, accented voice penetrates from the fog in his brain and the Feline looks up, ears twitching, to see a burly, dark-skinned Forte towering over him. “We finished up with the crossbeams. We are good to start carrying them over, yes?”

Feist pushes off his wooden throne, knees folding as he lands solidly on his feet, as cats always do. “Brilliant. Let’s do it, Andor.”

He follows the bull horned man to a roped off section of the site hidden away in a far corner where a slew of laborers are affixing the final few joints on a series of thick, wooden crossbeams thirty feet in length. Construction is a physically demanding field indeed, so most of the contractors on site can carry their own weight and more. By weight alone, Andor could likely hoist two or three beams all by his lonesome but the unwieldiness of the planks necessitates a multi-person job. He takes one end as Feist lifts the other and they begin to transport the material to a more convenient location.

“We have been making pretty good time lately, yes?”

Feist looks up at Andor’s question, still not entirely in a clear headspace.”Erm, yes, we’re cracking ahead of schedule at the moment.”

Andor chuckles, his arctic accent dominating his speech. “It’s nice to have superiors who actually have a clue. Ever since I’ve moved here from Sami it’s been one mess after the next, you know?”

Feist shakes his head. “I haven’t even done anything. It’s Laura keeping this ship afloat.”

Andor squints, thin tracings of confusion accentuating the choppy curves of his face. “We are building a boat?”

“Just a saying. Laura’s been handling most of the busy work.”

The Forte nods in understanding, straining his beefy neck in order to keep the weight of his massive horns from destabilizing him. “Miss Arias has been a gift, yes? It’s good you are familiar with her and Miss Moleman, you know?”

That’s a good point. There exist so many moving parts on a construction site that it can be damn near impossible to facilitate each and every aspect single-handedly, even for someone as logistically competent as Laura. For that reason, it’s exceedingly important to develop sturdy chemistry with other supervisors such as Shana and himself. Government contracting necessitates time-optimization and, as a result, generally employs contractors with the strongest connections. By those standards, it’s clear to see why Laura - dual employed by both Blacksteel Worldwide and Rhodes Island - is a tempting candidate. That being said, Feist was initially surprised she managed to remain in the limelight given her infection status but, as it turns out, hypocrisy is a staple of government: as long as an individual can handle the job, most regional powers ironically have no qualms with employing the very people they oppress. In this field, the most challenging period is the startup. As soon as Laura had managed to land one high caliber job, growth became exponential: with each new task, she bolsters her resume and picks up even more work. That cycle has continued until now, where she’s one of the most sought after project managers in the construction world… and she’s got the chops to prove she’s worth that title too. As Feist and Andor approach the planned location for the building, the Feline unconsciously starts scanning the field for the shortest person out there, finding her conversing with Shana near the last unfilled foundation pillar. Laura’s thin, rat-like tail lashes back and forth as she spastically gestures at the divot in the ground. Because her back is turned, Feist can’t make out the chihuahua’s expression but he does detect a film of guilt secluding Shana’s expression which tells him everything he needs to know. After selecting a relatively flat spot to deposit his lumber, Feist excuses himself from pack mule duty and plods over to inquire about what can only be an error on Shana’s end.

“You know we could avoid mishaps like this if you just bothered to use your earpiece, right?” Laura implores, a touch of exasperation sneaking into her tone.

The Zalak whimpers and sags slightly. “But it feels gross, Laura. It’s like someone is whispering right into my ear.”

Her voice drops and she shudders at that last bit. Feist, realizing Laura has consolidated all of her focus on Shana, sneaks up behind her and brings his mouth inches from her perky Perro ear.

“I think I can understand Shana’s sentiment,” he whispers in a ghostly ASMR, tickling the sensitive, papery skin that lines the interior of her ear.

Laura releases a shuddery choke unlike anything Feist has ever heard out of a Terran mouth as her entire body stiffens into a cardboard cutout of her own likeness. One of her eyes bulges out in alarm while the other squints into a bout of uncontrollable twitching. It takes a few seconds for her to recover after which she whips around, clutching the targeted ear and blushing profusely. Upon concluding that it could only be Feist who is responsible for her flustered state, she lowers her voice into a thorny growl layered with shame.

“What is your problem?!”

Feist shrugs, daring her to answer the question herself with not an ounce of regret visible in his frosty, blue eyes. Shana snickers, prompting Laura to rotate her head back around and shift her glare onto the young demolitionist. Shana wastes no time in clasping her hands behind her back in innocent observation and pretending to stare off into the distance as if she’d done nothing at all.

“You know, I feel like the atmosphere has been getting a wee bit tense lately. I don’t suppose either of you ladies would be interested in joining me for a pint at Cammie’s Pub tonight?” Feist offers in an intentionally abhorrent Londonite accent.

Shana perks up and nods vigorously while Laura glares directly through him, seemingly appalled that he would even suggest something so reckless.

“Absolutely not. I don't need you two hungover on the clock.”

Shana pouts behind her. “But we've been working so hard! Can't we let loose just for a night?”

“No!” Laura shrills, doing her best to keep her eyes trained on the both of them at the same time. “We're not going and that's-”

“-not my fault! It sucks working for these assholes but it's also a really convenient source of intel for Rhodes Island so I’m sorta stuck.”

Laura teases a finger around the tempered rim of her mug as she complains. Her cheek is plastered onto the cold, maple bar, steeped in a dense, alcoholic blush. Beside her, Shana pats her back while downing her ninth pint in an hour and a half. This Herculean feat of hers has garnered the approval of a crowd of plastered, Feline blokes at the far end of the bar, who’ve all started shamelessly trying to hit on her. Normally, Laura would have some opinions about their unsavory use of the Victorian language but she’s pretty solidly fried at the moment despite still only being on her first drink of the night. It’s hard to blame her though, given that she probably has the BMI of a fourth grader. Feist pokes her cheek as her eyes begin to flutter shut.

“Are you alive, Doggy?”

She responds with a tired groan and mumbled reprimands but makes no concentrated effort to change her stance beyond that. If he had known she was this much of a lightweight, he probably wouldn’t have pushed her so hard on joining him even though he isn’t entirely sure why she did ultimately change her mind on the matter. Laura had been religiously against the idea of intoxicating herself until Shana had officially decided to accompany Feist to the pub, causing her to cave. Feist shrugs to no one but himself. She and Shana are longtime friends. It’s only reasonable that Laura would be more comfortable with her rather than a male coworker she’s only really gotten familiar with recently, even if that kind of hurts an unreasonable corner of his heart. As he struggles with his thoughts, he feels someone’s finger prodding his cheek.

“Funny face,” Laura gurgles, gazing in his direction with a dumb smile.

“Oi, you think my face is funny?”

She pouts at his response. “You’re always so irresponsible. If you keep goofing around like that you’re gonna get hurt.”

Uh oh. Laura is showing the telltale signs of a confessional drunk. The rhythmic body language, the innocent eye contact, the hesitant, stilted undertones in her voice - it all points to her being on the verge of spilling her guts. Before Feist can get a word in, however, Shana finishes draining her mug and sends her admirers into a frenzy of applause.

“Whew!” she pants, jumping on her stool to sit closer to Laura and wrapping an arm around the small of her back. “It’s been way too long since I’ve cut loose like this!”

“How the bloody hell are you still functioning, girl?” Feist asks, resting his elbows on the bar as he points out the pile of depleted pints she’s just added to.

“I’m from Rim Billiton, dude. My liver is made of cement.”

Given her earlier story about being force fed that very substance as a child, Feist almost believes it. He shifts his attention back towards Laura, who lays limp on the bar half dead, licking the foamy residue from the edges of her overturned glass. In his peripheral vision, Shana goes for double digits, much to the joy of her little posse of scrungly, middle-aged men who squeal as if they've won the lottery. Another peek at Laura’s lethargic glass licking convinces him it’s probably past time to call it a night, for her sake. 

“Okay Doggy, let’s roll,” Feist demands, sliding her empty mug out of her grasp.

She feebly snatches at it but when it proves to be beyond her reach, she gives up without a fight, sagging back onto the bar and whining. It takes a good bit of effort with her flopping around like a football player, but he’s eventually able to sling her onto his back where she instinctively slips her arms over his shoulders as if she’s a backpack. He hooks his arms around her thighs and hoists her into a more comfortable position before moving towards the exit. Having moderated his own intake, Feist is still mostly sober, enough so to escort Laura the three blocks back to Catherine's home. Normally, he wouldn't be the most comfortable leaving behind a lone woman ten beers deep, but given that Shana is still completely unaffected by the alcohol coursing through her bloodstream and would probably be more of a threat to anyone who tried to assault her than the other way around, he decides she'll be fine on her own for at least a little while. After checking in with Shana about his brief excursion and verifying her sobriety, Feist nudges the door open with the toe of his boot and steps out into the bustling, Londinium nightlife. An Autumnal chill breezes by, ruffling fields of brittle, brown leaves that adorn the sidewalk. Every step he takes crushes a new patch beneath his sole, creating a percussive beat that pursues his direction. Even at this late hour, Londinium never truly achieves silence and a few lonesome automobiles putter by as Feist soaks in his leisurely stroll. Laura shifts on his back with a contented sigh as the wind dies down, plunging the pair into a pleasant hush broken only by the satisfying crunches of leaves underfoot.

“Your back is warm,” Laura purrs quietly enough that Feist may not have heard her if her mouth hadn't been mere inches from his Terran ear. “You're kind of like my dad. Did you know that?”

Of course he didn't. For as much as she yaps on inane topics, Laura has adamantly refused to open up about her history to much of anyone, so this is the first he's heard of her background prior to joining Rhodes Island.

“Your dad, huh? He must be quite the charmer.”

“M’hmm,” Laura mumbles in confirmation. “He was.”

Well that's not a pleasant usage of past tense. That's the kind of bombshell there isn't really a proper response to, so Feist falls back on his rarely used strategy of simply not responding at all and waiting for her to either continue or terminate her anecdote there. The Perro selects the former.

“He was always so positive even though we were struggling. Even when we first emigrated from Bolivar and things got really bad… he never did stop smiling. He was a lot like you, Feist.”

Sounds more like Shana to me.

Laura tightens her hold around his chest, burying her face deeper into his shoulder. Still unsure if his commentary would be welcome, Feist embraces the quiet that follows as he makes his way down the street. The girl on his back begins breathing more evenly as she slips into a light slumber, the gentle breeze toying with the ends of her hair. The reason Feist frequents Cammie's as much as he does is due to the pub's close proximity to his grandmother. He's already nearing her flat which he's surprised to realize disappoints him. It's a rare, pleasant Victorian night, and something about Laura's snoozy presence on his back feels distinctly comforting. It's not like she's anything even close to heavy. Feist is tempted to bypass the approaching house entirely and indulge in a little more insomniatic exploration, but he can't quite justify it after remembering he left Shana alone at the pub. Feist lets out a disappointed sigh and fumbles through a pocket for his key ring, balancing Laura precariously on his one free arm.

“I'm home,” he says as he steps into the entryway and out of his shoes.

It's out of principle more than anything. There's no chance a woman as strict about her beauty sleep as Catherine would actually be awake at this hour, but Feist sees no harm in letting the shadowy living room know anyhow. He blinks a few times, hoping to catalyze his adjustment to the pitch blackness in the room so as to not be forced to turn any lights on. Of course, it's not like he actually needs his sight to navigate a home he's grown up in - it's just insurance. His muscle memory guides him through the familiar walls with the utmost precision until a recently relocated coffee table introduces itself to his big toe, nearly sparking an obscenity-laced rant that he barely manages to repress. Feist limps into the back hall where a stylish, Higashinese carpet deposits him in front of the guest room Laura has taken up residence in for the past month. He slips inside and lowers her onto the bed before standing back up to leave, only to find himself inhibited by a fragile tug at the hem of his shirt. A pair of sleepy, azure eyes peer at him through the darkness, half-lidded but desperate for attention.

“Where are you going?” Laura mumbles, still flopped on her side.

“I left Shana at the pub,” Feist responds.

A rumble emanates from deep within the Perro as she refuses to relax her grip on his shirt. Her eyes slide shut once more for a few, long seconds. Feist tries to work the end of his shirt out from between her fingers, but just as he frees himself she shifts again.

“Stay a little longer.”

Aw, bollocks. Realistically, he should be on his way back to the bar by now but there’s no way he’s going to be able to resist adorable, drunken innocence of this degree. Normally such a yapper, there’s something surreal about how subdued Laura’s been tonight and it’s heating his heart dangerously near to its melting point. Against his better judgement, Feist plops onto the sheets next to her head and the pair sinks into a deep, natural silence. Outside, the wind whistles against the windowsill, white noise within an otherwise muted vacuum. His eyes now fully adjusted, Feist surveys the densely packed room that had, until recently, served as a storage locker. The boundless clutter manifests through stacks of cardboard boxes filled with trinkets, mementos, and memories of a different age, each one packed so densely it threatens to burst. The dull rotation of the ceiling fan provides an anchor of motion that enraptures the Feline along with the grounding feeling of his own breath tunneling into his lungs. A few minutes dribble by before Feist realizes how suspiciously silent Laura has been. He turns towards where she was laying only to be startled by the woman’s face looking up at him not a foot from his own, her frozen, blue eyes boring a hole through him. As soon as they lock eyes, she falls towards him, resting her cheek against the front of his shoulder.

“You have such pretty eyes,” Laura whispers, tracing the smooth protrusions of his cheekbones with the tip of her finger and sending dopamine racing through his veins. 

Feist is no stranger to intimacy but this is going to kill him. He’s not exactly sure what his feelings for Laura are at the moment but with the way his heart is pounding they must be serious. The close contact between the pair is a ticking time bomb fueled by alcohol and anxiety. Feist feels the pepper in his nerves combust in response to his surging heart rate which pulses so loudly through his ears that he’s sure Laura - who’s still glued to his chest - must be feeling it resonating about her own body.

“Feist,” she breathes, capturing his gaze anew with a starved expression of longing as she cups his cheek in a tiny palm. “Can we?”

His breath catches in the crook of his throat and his desire builds, forming a significant bulge in his pants. Laura refuses to break eye contact with him as she begins pushing her way up his body, drawing her face ever closer to his own. She’s only a few inches away from stealing his lips when Feist finally gets a look at her complexion. Her pale skin is flushed a dull red and he can make out individual arteries in the whites of her eyes complementing the harsh stench of alcohol on her breath. His instinct takes over and he pulls his body away while pushing hers back, evidently catching Laura off guard. She rests on her knee for a few seconds, eyes as wide as softballs as she processes his behaviour. Feist very nearly abandons his inhibitions when her face silently falls. Her eyes squint in distress and angle downwards as she bites her lower lip, tilting her head with a confused pout. Recognizing that sticking around would only tempt him further, Feist forces himself to his feet, doing his best to avoid her mopey gaze.

“I can’t. You’re drunk,” he says. “Just… try and get some sleep, okay Doggy?”

His voice breaks a bit on the last word, his resolve wavering. Still, he’s able to shuffle out of the room, glancing back at her just before closing the door. The little Perro is still hunched over on her knees, peering at him through a curtain of her sandy, blonde bangs. Her expression is soaked in calculated desire, and guiding the door shut is the hardest thing Feist has ever had to do.

“Urgh,” he moans, sliding down the length of the door and into a seated position.

Clutching his face, he attempts to refocus his thoughts onto bland, uninteresting things such as PVC pipes or that lousy baking show Catherine can’t stop watching but nothing seems to work. Every thought leads back to that goddamn superior of his and her annoying, yappy voice or her stupid visor that makes her look like a Top Gun character or her hatred for head pats or… oh, man. Feist rakes his fingers down his face, dragging the loose skin around his eyes with them. Every time Laura pops back into his brain, his lower half throbs, meaning his dick is pulsating like a metronome at the moment.

“Dammit, Doggy!”

Feist may be a bit dense, but he's far from stupid (at least in this context). It's been just over two months since he began working on this construction project in collaboration with Rhodes Island, Blacksteel, and the Victorian government and with each passing day he's becoming increasingly aware of his humiliating infatuation with the shrimpy, Bolivarian Perro currently screwing pilot holes into a wooden rafter. His obsession is downright absurd and also happens to be driving him completely insane. Every waking moment he catches himself thinking of Laura, fantasizing or daydreaming even when she's right in front of him. Speaking of, Feist can barely even hold a competent conversation with her anymore since talking to her for any longer than four seconds turns him into an incomprehensible, stuttering mess. It's gotten to the point that he's started actively avoiding her in an effort to stop embarrassing himself, but that's been kind of hard to manage given that they're living in the same house.

Desperate for a distraction, Feist subjects himself to the painstaking process of mortaring bricks for the elevator shaft. He lasts a whopping eight minutes before concluding that he has no idea where he’s actually supposed to put the bricks and needs to inspect the project blueprints… which means he needs to go do precisely the thing he’s been trying to avoid: talk to Laura. With no way around it, Feist sets down his masonry trowel and trudges through the skeletal, concrete structure towards his supervisor who’s still menacing a large log with her impact driver. She’s so focused on the task at hand that she doesn’t notice Feist approaching, so the Feline halts a few yards away to consider whether face-to-face communication is truly, absolutely, completely necessary. As he toys with the idea of wimping out and simply walking away, a sudden, spunky jive from somewhere nearby nearly makes him jump out of his skin.

“Whatcha doing there, buddy?”

His hair standing on end, Feist turns and immediately deflates upon identifying Shana leaning seductively on her oversized drill. Her hard hat has earned a brand new dent, there’s a dark, purpling bruise beneath her right eye, and a trickle of blood navigates her exposed, lower leg. She’s still smiling, of course, giving her the look of a teenage hockey enforcer fresh out of the penalty box.

“What the hell happened to you?” Feist asks, jarred by her slovenly appearance.

“I fell.”

He decides it’s not worth contesting that claim. Knowing Shana, ‘I fell’ could mean anything from ‘I tripped and scraped my knee’ to ‘I slipped off the third floor and broke every bone in my body. How has your day been going?’

“So,” she probes, sliding aside and peeking around Feist’s body. “You plan on actually talking to her or are you just gonna keep muttering and pacing around like a creep?”

Fortunately for him, Shana is about as dense as a block of cement, so he doubts she’s actually put together why he’s so nervous, but it’s still embarrassing to be caught acting like such a doofus.

“Uh, yeah,” Feist stammers, blurting out the first excuse that comes to mind. “She just… seems pretty busy and I didn’t fancy interrupting her.”

Shana snorts and seizes his upper arm before tromping over to Laura with him in tow. “Laura! How are things over here?”

The Perro doesn’t even bother to lift her head at the sound of Shana’s voice, instead shifting further down the beam and marking new screw divots. “We’re progressing pretty nicely. I have Andor and his team working out a few kinks on the edge of the northwestern quadran-”

Her voice sputters out as she finally looks up and notices Feist standing beside her Zalak friend. She tries to resume her update but can’t force the words out, so her mouth just flaps awkwardly like a beached whale. Laura jams her visor over her eyes and chokes out a response.

“-shwings are gwoing ohkay,” she squeaks, tripping over her own words.

“Wow, you are really red,” Shana notices, pointing out the pasty blush that’s emerged on her cheeks. “You okay there?”

Laura pulls the brim of her visor lower over her eyes. “It’s just a bit hot.”

“That it is!” Shana bubbles, ruffling her friend’s exposed hair and pushing Feist towards her in unwelcome support. “By the way, Feist had something he wanted to tell you.”

With Shana - forever the ditzy, well-meaning companion - playing the oblivious wingwoman, Feist manages to get his point across. Noticeably avoiding eye contact, Laura zips her fingers across the screen in her hands and homes in on the specific elevator shaft Feist has started on. A bajillion scrawled notes and measurements mob the blueprint making it impossible for him to determine much of anything, but whatever is sketched there seems to inspire Laura who relays a parade of technical jargon to him. Feist has already decided that he will not be saying anything else for the remainder of this conversation since it would be all but guaranteed to sabotage his self-esteem. Ironically, Laura seems to be making up for his lack of speech with her own. While she's always been talkative, her yapping is currently approaching critical velocity. The Perro gabs incessantly about structural integrity and brick laying techniques as Feist silently squats beside her, nodding occasionally and not comprehending a single word. Eventually, Laura loses the plot and starts lecturing him on the nuances of working a screw gun. Truthfully, Feist already knows most of what she's preaching, but her involuntary gestures and inflections are pretty darn cute so he sees no reason to interrupt. He allows himself to slip into a seated position on the dirt where he remains for the next few minutes until Laura finally remembers to moderate how much she’s talking. When she does, a whimper escapes her throat and the blush welded to her cheeks creeps deeper under her skin as she hangs her head in shame.

“I'm so sorry,” she moans. “I don't know what's wrong with me.”

“Oh, no, no, it's fine! It's cute- NO! It’s not! But it's good, uhh, that you… are so informed!”

For fuck's sake! This is precisely why he was trying to keep his mouth shut! As Feist clutches his head in mortified anguish and Laura buries hers in her arms, Shana watches from a distance, pondering the social ineptitude on display before her. She trots over, snags Feist by his collar, and drags him back to his post by the unfinished elevator shaft.

“I’ll give you a hand with this if you tell me why you guys are being so weird.”

That’s a raw deal. He’d really rather not tell anyone about what he’s going through right now, but one thing he’s learned about Shana over the past few months is that she doesn’t really take no for an answer. She’s also enough of a meathead that there’s a decent chance she’ll misinterpret whatever he says entirely, which could be either a really good thing or the exact opposite of that. Either way, he’s stuck satiating her desire to gossip one way or another.

“I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately,” Feist starts, reading her reaction for any signs of recognition or smugness.

“Oh yeah, I get that!” Shana says, haphazardly sandwiching a layer of mortar between two bricks and splashing a glob of the sludge onto his sleeve. “She’s awesome, isn’t she? Super reliable and everything!”

For once, her dumbassery is a good thing. Feist joins the girl in her brick stacking, swiping away the excess mortar drooling out from between the connective joints with his pie slice trowel. As the two fall into a monotonous tempo, the Feline’s thoughts begin wandering yet again, allowing a certain Perro to invade his mind palace. Feist jolts himself back to reality with a firm smack to the temple with the butt of his tool which hurts a lot more than he’d intended. Shana jumps at his sudden self-assault and stares at him through butterscotch irises as if there’s an orignium slug performing a samba atop his head.

I can’t keep doing this.

Feist sits up in his bed, blinking the sleep from his eyes. His covers fall around him in a wedding shawl, stripping him of the sheath of warmth marinating within. The cool, brackish glow of moonlight leaks through the window, baking the shivering Feline in its frostbitten embrace. He smooths out his bedhead but doesn’t bother to tie the hair up into its usual, quirky pigtail given that he hopes to be back asleep before he can fully wake up anyway. With some effort, Feist hauls himself out of his sanctuary and lands in the kitty cat slippers Rochelle had gotten him for his twenty-first birthday two years ago. With his eyes already well adjusted, he slouches out of his room and starts down the hall towards the kitchen, the desert landscape cosplaying as his tongue growing increasingly stripped of moisture. Intent on scavenging something to quell the cracked aridity in his mouth - maybe an ice cube or a glass of water - Feist stumbles along the carpet, the creak of the floorboards providing a gracious pushback against the piercing silence of the night. As he works his way through the hall, however, he notices that the quiet is being disrupted by a new sound that should be scarcely audible, but within the auditory deprivation of midnight Victoria, it’s deafening. It’s a Terran - at least Feist assumes it is - and whomever they are, their laboured panting comes across as… pained, almost. He directs his attention to the door from which the sound bites are leaking from and his heart drops out of his chest.

The grunts are emanating from the guest room.

Feist’s instincts kick into overdrive. Still conscious of the time and the other people sleeping in the house, he pries the door open stealthily at first on the off chance he’s mistaken on what he’s identified as distress.

The good news is that he was mistaken: nobody is in active danger. The bad news is that nobody is in danger and he’s now stuck watching something he really shouldn’t be. With the door peeled open just a crack, the scene behind is placed in plain view, illuminated by the gentle glimmer of the moon flaring in through the window. Laura is squirming on her bed half occluded by the comforter, but Feist would have to be an idiot not to understand the situation he’s just barged in on. The girl has a hand nestled under the covers and jammed between her legs, pistoning in a syncopated frenzy that mirrors the thrust of her hips. Her free hand is glued to one of her breasts, snatching at a perky, pink bump standing erect atop her cutting board chest. Without a door to muffle her moaning, her quiet gasps are very clearly fueled with pleasure, not pain, a fact Feist wishes he had caught onto earlier. Speaking of, the ragdoll cat is transfixed on the cinema before him. His brain is screaming at him to close the door, go back to sleep, and pretend none of this had ever happened, but that logos is pretty solidly losing out to the cravings of his lower half. It should come as no real surprise that he’s now rock solid and his length is smushing into his sweatpants uncomfortably. Feist feels his breath shallow as the degeneracy of his observation settles in the front of his skull, but he still makes no substantial attempt to pull himself away from the door. His sense of morality continues to slip further into the abyss as Laura’s panting grows even sweeter. Bucking her hips, trying to cram her fingers into herself as far as they’ll go, even biting her lip in a futile attempt to stem the serenade of moans flooding out of her throat; Feist can’t bring himself to look at anything but her. He fails to prevent his hand from slithering into his pants, feeling for his erection. Just as he snakes his fingers around his throbbing member, something happens. Actually, a lot of somethings happen. The catalyst arrives courtesy of Laura who, melting from the inside out, moans Feist’s name in a buttery, strained whine. This obviously catches the man in question by surprise, and he unconsciously tightens his grip on his penis, accidentally squeezing himself enough to release a surprised yelp. He stumbles slightly, immediately catching himself but also tripping into the door and bumping it a few more inches open. Hearing his cry, Laura instinctively flops over onto her side, two fingers still wedged firmly in her cunt. Her pupils shrink into pinpricks the second she locks eyes with Feist as her already flushed face collapses into a shade akin to strawberry puree. She squeaks out an exclamation, wrenching her fingers out from under the covers and scrambling for something to cover herself with, seemingly forgetting that blankets do indeed exist in her panic. As Laura tries to hoist herself to her knees, her palm, slick with her own wetness, slips off the covers, forgoing her balance and sending her crashing to the floor in a sopping mess of skin and shame. A soft sob escapes her throat as she desperately feels for anything that could be used to cover herself. By a miracle, she'd disrupted a pillow after falling off the bed and the fluffy, white sack now lies within reach. Laura seizes it, clutching that salvation to her chest and sandwiching it with her knees. Her face nestles into the fabric as if her being unable to see Feist means he can't see her, which he kind of understands, given the context.

“Are you okay?” he asks, against his better judgement.

There's a sniffle muffled by the pillow Laura's smothering herself with followed by a voice on the verge of tears. “Please just go away.”

Feist briefly considers exactly that. It's probably the morally correct thing to do given how utterly mortified this poor woman must be but, remember, his bloodstream is still rife with raging hormonal desires. On impulse, Feist's one track mind elects to do the exact opposite of what Laura had asked and he finds himself approaching her instead.

“Are you sure that's really what you want? I recall hearing something different a few seconds ago,” he teases, popping down beside her with both their backs against the bedframe.

“No! That was a slip of the tongue! I didn't… uh-” her head shoots up as she pleads with Feist, but she evidently doesn't realize he's relocated because her expression clouds when she doesn't initially spot him where he was last standing.

“Slip of the tongue, huh?”

Laura stiffens, her teary eyes flicking aside and locating Feist checking her out with a casual but lecherous gaze. She squeaks and tries to shuffle away from him but freezes when she feels the familiar tickle of body heat bast against the back of her thigh. She forces herself to look back at Feist, clearly trying - and failing - to prevent her emotions from displaying themselves on her face. Tears ooze out of the corners of her oceanic eyes and her mouth wavers as it struggles to moderate her ragged breaths. Said breathing becomes increasingly stressed as Feist drags his hand up her inner thigh, pausing for a few seconds just before his objective. Laura lets out a truncated mewling sound, averting her gaze and tightening her grip on her pillow. That's a nonverbal green light if Feist has ever seen one. A high pitched shudder manifests in the back of her throat as his fingers brush against her labia, spurring him onward. Wasting no time, Feist forces two fingers into her drenched desire, dragging a shivery moan and a spasm out of her sensitive frame. He immediately begins hunting for sweet spots, poking and prodding her folds in various ways all while gauging her adorable reactions. It’s more than likely just her small stature, but Laura is unbelievably tight. Feist feels another longing pang in his groin as he imagines a different appendage stuffed inside her. It doesn’t take too much more effort before he elicits the response he was looking for: the tips of his fingers punch into a particularly reactive nook in Laura's depths and she gasps, arching her back and biting down on her thumb before hiding her face in the pillow held flush to her chest. Feist pegs her reaction as noteworthy and refocuses his attention on that point of interest. As his fingers mercilessly assault her g-spot, Laura's muscles seize, tightening and unclenching in rapid spurts in an effort to temper the overwhelming sensations branching through her entire being. Even through the pillow, Feist can make out fuzzy cries as his victim struggles not to climax.

“Don't hold back on me,” he taunts with his lips as close to her radio dish ear as they can be without them touching.

A particularly evil move given that he's well aware of how she typically responds to that feeling. Ever since he'd first caught her off guard at work with his sweet nothings, Shana has taken it upon herself to torture Laura whenever she sees the opportunity. Each and every time a whisper graces her ear, the Perro shivers as if someone is itching the back of her brain. Given the fingering she's currently weathering, Feist fully expected his auditory input to affect her as always. He did not, however, anticipate just how severely it would liquify her.

“Nngh!” Laura chokes through the pillow.

One leg shoots out in front of her, strained and quivering while the other clenches further into her body and damn near punches a hole through her pillow. She claws at the fabric with her even nails, trying to rip through the polyester to distract herself from the steam train of an orgasm that's in the process of flattening her under countless cars of crude ecstasy. Feist almost wants to steal Laura's pillow away for denying him access to the album of moans she's publishing, but he resists. He continues to finger her through a flash flood of lust-filled fluid that pours out onto the floor, puddling in a lewd reservoir beneath her quivering legs. After a few seconds, as she begins descending from her peak, the Perro relaxes, her form sagging and instinctively putting a bit more weight on Feist's upper arm. He remains silent, biding his time until the girl is comfortable enough to break the silence. Eventually, she does.

“I… I was already pretty close,” she claims, pulling a few inches back from her pillow but still hanging onto it tightly. Feist can make out her most prominent features in the poor light thanks to the embarrassed flush highlighting them. “I normally last longer than that, okay?”

Feist snickers. “Yeah, I'll bet.”

Laura frowns disapprovingly as her reddening blush reveals her deeper feelings of shame. She mutters, “It's not like you would do any better.”

Oh, that's a bloody challenge. Feist reaches his arm around her petite form and closes the gap between them, holding her against the side of his body under his armpit. Laura is so much shorter than him that he's forced to reach all the way down to his waist just to get a solid grip on her, but once he does, she's trapped in a beartrap of Terran muscle.

“You don't think I'd last any longer, huh? I don't suppose you'd like to put that to the test, eh Doggy?”

It's at this point that Laura clues into the implication of such a statement and nervously looks down at his lap. Feist is making a statement down there too: he's at full mast - even through his pants that much is obvious to Laura whose eyes widen as she audibly gulps. Still, she's not one to back down from a challenge so she stretches a tentative hand out towards his tent. Feist grits his teeth as her palm brushes against his sweatpants, cautiously feeling for a handhold. She navigates nimble fingers towards his hips, snatching at the elastic waistband pulled taught to his flesh and peeling it over his thighs. She moves it just a few inches before Feist's lower half takes control: his erection erupts out into the room, smacking Laura's hand as it goes. She flinches, half pulling her hand away and hesitating as she inspects his member with an unusual (if unsurprising) diligence. The lifelong engineer narrows her eyes and begins angling her head in order to survey the pulsing obelisk before her from every possible vantage. Even when she reaches her hand back towards him and brushes her fingers along his tender flesh, Feist can't help but feel vaguely embarrassed. He wasn't exactly sure what he'd expected from Laura in bed, but he hadn't anticipated her being nearly this analytical, though maybe he should have. She's inspecting him so thoroughly with pursed lips and wispy strokes that Feist almost feels like a science experiment.

“Not bad,” Laura muses while absentmindedly nibbling her thumb, still smushed into his side. “I can probably handle you.”

Before Feist can inquire further on her thought process, he's thrust into paradise without warning. Having completed her once-over, Laura finally makes a legitimate move on him, blanketing the tip of his penis with her palm and massaging it languidly. Feist exhales a stilted breath. After all that edging, he was more than aroused enough to falter at even a seemingly harmless touch. Shifting her focus a bit, Laura works her fingers around his shaft, squeezing it just below the head before sliding her hand down his length in a slow, tantalizing motion. Feist is forced to gulp back a groan as he wills himself not to reveal just how desperate he is right now. Laura, meanwhile, works her tiny hand up and down his shaft at an agonizingly dull pace. Each time her fingers glide down his cock, a truncated chill dazzles up his spine, powerful in a vacuum but nowhere near enough to satisfy the current rampant urges simmering in his loins. Fortunately for him, Laura correctly interprets the need in his expression and turns up the heat, extracting her other hand from the nook where it had been pinned between the pair of seated Rhodes Islanders. Beginning to pump his manhood with a bit more gusto, her extra hand goes to work on the tip. Laura wraps her fingers around Feist's glans, smudging the cap of precum that had emerged atop it and smearing it in as a natural lubricant. With that, Feist officially enters the danger zone. With both of Laura's hands now in play, the sensations flowing into his brain quickly compound to unbearable levels, steeping his entire body in a solution of spastic twitches every time she strokes his throbbing meat. Her palm splays out across his glans, stimulating it uniformly and smoothly as she begins moving her palm in delicate, circular motions. In conjunction with her other hand still jerking him off, Feist senses the telltale signs of his willpower beginning to crumble. He peels his eyes open and glances down, meeting another pair of cool, blue orbs on the way that further interrupt his already derailed train of thought. Laura makes no attempt to temper her assault as she teases him with a pensive expression.

“Still holding out on me?” she whispers, allowing the thinness of her tone to snag on the undisturbed atmosphere in the room. “Why not just give in already~”

“Don't tempt me, dammit!” Feist wants to snap but, in the state he's in, merely holding himself together is demanding all of his concentration. All he's able to muster as a response to her temptation is a gravely groan and, accompanied with his frequent shifting and twitching eyelids, Laura seems to recognize that her handjob is affecting him more than he wants to admit. Her eyes narrow into devilish cracks and the corners of her mouth taper upwards into a devious smirk. Feist holds back a moan as he feels her pace hasten, fingers flying back and forth along his shaft in confident strides as her other hand closes around the tip, toying with his sensitive head as if it's a stick shift.

Too much!

Feist is confident he's dying. So many nervous signals all vying for his brain's attention has him superglued to cloud nine with no way down. With the chaos in his head, he can't hear himself but has to imagine he's failing to keep his voice in check given how he's squirming like a fly caught in a spiderweb. Feist feels another explosive energy priming itself in his depths, ready to surge forth with just… a… little… more - but the push he so craves never does arrive. Feist lets out a surprised squeak as Laura relaxes her stranglehold on his cock and the river of sensations racing up his spine runs dry. Stunned and thoroughly blue-balled, he processes the dissatisfaction flooding his bursting balls for a few moments before scraping his eyes back towards Laura. The woman is red faced and panting heavily, beads of sweat bubbling on her forehead as she rubs her thighs together hungrily. Before Feist can lodge a complaint about her foreplay’s hasty conclusion, he's taken off guard by her hand - still slick with precum - bracing against his shoulder as she stretches up to seal his lips with a kiss. With her head tilted nearly vertical, Laura forces her tongue past his lips and begins playing with his teeth like piano keys until Feist recovers from her ambush and retaliates. He readily accepts her vulnerability, coiling his own tongue around hers with seasoned sensuality. He may be dying for some serious sexual relief, but Feist still finds it next to impossible to reject such genuine intimacy as this. And besides, what both parties are in the process of realizing anyway is that loving kisses can prove dangerously arousing in and of themselves. As his tongue wages war on Laura's, Feist becomes peripherally aware of the way she's crawling on him in an increasingly stimulating way. She drags her legs over his thighs until she's seated on his lap, straddling him like she's atop a saddle. Her hands dance across his baggy, stained T-shirt, trying in vain to colonize his skin, all while maintaining the rigid airlock between their mouths. Feist - well aware of what her position implies - breaks their kiss for air, making sure not to shatter the delicate atmosphere that's condensed in the room. Laura gazes up at him with her hands planted firmly on his breast. Her expression is soaked in an unfiltered, shameful desire that diffuses out of the rashy redness of her cheeks.

“Feist,” she pants, seeming to drift a bit closer to him with an adorably hopeful but still unquestionably horny look drawn on her face. “I… I want to…”

Laura doesn't finish her sentence; she doesn't need to. Feist would have to be denser than a neutron star not to get the message, yet he still manages to maintain his reason and push her away before she can make contact with his penis and dash his sense for good. Laura's expression shifts to one of surprise, then hurt, then shame in the span of a few seconds as Feist holds her at bay. Her ears droop slightly, though they perk back up at the sound of his voice.

“I don't have a condom, Doggy.”

She blinks at him for a second or two before her lips shape into a relieved smile. She cocks her head cutely in one smooth movement that sparks a painful throb in Feist's chest.

“Really? That's it?” Laura jabs, poking his nose with the tip of a finger.

Their current position sees Feist seated on the floor with his back supported by the bedframe. Laura is plopped on top of his semi-extended legs (and is still a head shorter than him) with her bedside table nearby. She strains to finagle the drawer just beyond her reach open without vacating her perch, eventually giving up and allowing Feist to do it for her with his longer arms. She rummages through the drawer's contents until locating her prey: a glossy, silver packet defined by a familiar, circular bulge. Without breaking eye contact, Laura tears the top of the package off with her prominent, Perro canines and seductively removes the condom with her lips. Feist gulps as she takes it in her hands, wondering how long she’d desired this exact situation as she stretches the lubricated latex to a comfortable width and rubs it across the crown of his penis. She refuses to tear her eyes away from his, by the way, and the intensity of her gaze is only fueling his belligerent erection. Laura molests every centimeter of his glans with the condom, evoking a number of pleasured squawks from her victim before finally sheathing his member properly and glancing up at him innocently.

“You're a bloody tease, you know that?”

The regretless smile she offers him seems to indicate that she does. Either way, Feist is sick of the torture he's enduring; torture that has him frustratingly sensitive. Even the insignificant sensations granted by the lubricated condom glancing around his cock feel orgasmic, and when Laura finally guides her waist forward and kisses him with her drenched sex, Feist feels his erection stiffen even further past its limits. He grimaces as she slides up his rod, leaving a trail of her horniness leading to his tip. Propped over his inflamed member, Laura is still forced to tilt her head back in order to peer into his eyes with her own lusty, blue irises. Without warning, her hips drop and he penetrates her. Both their faces contort as most of Feist's entire length is crammed inside of the girl on his lap. He'd anticipated it somewhat due to her small stature, but Laura is absurdly tight and the hazards of that matter are becoming increasingly apparent as she steadily devours more of his meat.

“Fuck,” Feist breathes, his voice wavering as he's enveloped in a muggy blanket of stifling, tingly warmth.

“If it makes you feel any better…” Laura responds, shuddering as she at last manages to squeeze all five or six of his inches into her entrance. “I'm also kinda struggling here.”

That much is rather obvious, actually. As much as Feist is a victim to her tightness, Laura is tortured by his size, and she could definitely be handling it better. Her back is arched slightly and she's buried her face into Feist's chest as she shivers and twitches trying to adjust to the foreign presence invading her snatch. Her deep, laborious panting seems representative of the state she's in: in over her head and under an ocean of pleasure. For a minute or two, the couple silently recovers, getting used to the intimate feeling of connection tangling their red strings into a knot. After all the edging he's endured, Feist welcomes an interlude to cool off a bit. If Laura hadn't conceded a recovery period and had instead gotten right to riding him, it's very possible that he would have blown his load instantly which would have been spectacularly mortifying. He invites a few deep breaths into his lungs in an effort to banish his horny thoughts and temper his sensitivity which is currently jacked up to the moon. His concentration is shattered, however, when Laura shifts around his cock, rubbing it against the moistness of her walls.

“S-sorry,” she gasps, her breath coming in ragged spurts. “It… it's been a while for me.”

For as much overstimulation that's battering Feist's brain as there is, Laura appears to be even worse off in every way, not that he can blame her. Such a tiny girl is basically destined to struggle with even an average sized penis, and the Feline finds himself unconsciously reaching up to pat the top of her head reassuringly. 

“Take your time,” he suggests in a shockingly tender tone that feels unfamiliar even to him.

He strokes her nutty, blonde hair and gently nudges her ears, which twitch in response to his contact. Laura suddenly grabs his wrist as he reaches for another nuzzle, glaring at him with a newfound frozen fury in her eyes.

“Don't patronize me,” the woman growls, directing his hand away from her scalp. “And stop touching my head.”

Before Feist can think of a response, he's plastered with a shockwave of explosive sensation as Laura pulls herself a few inches up his cock and slams herself back down, an action that devastates her own body just as much as it does Feist's. Her face screws up like she's eaten a lemon whole and a strangled wheeze leaks out of her throat. Her lust trumps the overstimulation, however, and Feist grunts as she continues to hump him with a developing rhythm. Their bodies, slick with anticipatory sweat, squelch against each other as Laura grinds on his cock, whimpering softly with each downward motion. Feist grits his teeth and flexes his abs, laboring to repress the overpowering urge to fully submit to this girl two heads shorter than him. Speaking of, that very girl is evidently still adjusting to his stiffness, smushing her cheek into his broad chest in an attempt to dull the spears of pleasure ravaging her mind. Feist unconsciously draws a hand back up to Laura's head, holding her close to his body and playing with her earthy hair as she humps him like a mad burdenbeast in heat. The Perro is too focused on the burning desire pureeing her loins to tell him off. Instead, she subconsciously responds in kind, reaching a hand up to his head and combing her fingers through his graham cracker hair.

“Feist!” Laura moans, her speech barely comprehensible amidst her melting pleasure. “I- I can't… I can't!”

Her movement falters as she stumbles towards the finish line, and Feist slides his free hand down to her waist in order to help guide her along the rigidity of his throbbing cock. “I'm right there with ya, Doggy.”

He cranes his neck and buries his face in her hair, shifting his hand towards one of her twitching ears. The moment his fingers make contact, Laura's entire body spasms and she lets out the loudest sound she's made all night: a high pitched shriek laced with subtle undertones of surprise and fear. She claws at his wrist, trying to peel his fingers away from her sensitive ears and failing spectacularly.

“Shhhh, not too loud now,” Feist teases, feigning confidence as he tries to pretend he isn't rapidly approaching his own limit. “Don't you know how late it is?”

Tears pool in the corners of Laura's eyes as she tries to pull away from his grasp. “Don't! Don't- it's too… much!”

Before she can reach her finale though, Feist somehow manages to embarrass himself instead. As Laura fights her dawning orgasm, her folds tense in unpredictable ways - so unpredictable that it catches him off guard and accelerates his own climax to the forefront. He inhales sharply and squeezes her face tighter to his chest as he finds himself suddenly toppling past the point of no return. Feist orgasms quietly, expressing his ecstasy physically rather than with his voice. He hugs Laura into his body, eyes rolling into the back of his head as his legs involuntarily shoot out in front of him, tensed to the density of stone. His toes curl as the fireworks shooting up his spine cook his brain into seasoned stir fry. With each wave of pleasure that crashes over him, a sticky rope of cum coats the inside of the condom pulled snug around his member. The climax is unreasonably destructive: Feist loses the ability to think for a few minutes after the fact as delightful, electric sparks bolt through his bones. He doesn't even notice as Laura, whom he's still tightly embracing, tries to tap out, jabbing at his side to no avail. Eventually, his grip naturally loosens, and she's able to slip away from his death hold. She initially appears unwilling to part with him, but seeing as he's gone relatively soft, she ultimately concedes and slides his flaccid member out from her depths with a crisp POP. Feist is still dissociating - awash in the aftershocks of his orgasm - prompting Laura to narrow her eyes and begin quietly pouting on his lap. Having been mere seconds from a climax herself when Feist had gone soft, she's thoroughly unsatisfied and still starved for attention. With no way to get through to his face, she shifts her attention to his other head, which is still swaddled in its rubbery, newly painted spacesuit. Freshly lubricated, the condom slides off easily, showering Feist's glistening penis in a cascade of his own gluey, translucent spunk.

“What a mess you made,” Laura says out loud, tracking his expression to determine how mentally present he currently is.

Glazed over eyes and a neglected response suggest that he's still lost in a labyrinth of ecstasy that only Laura can pull him out of. So she gets to work, and it quickly proves to be effective. The girl shifts a few inches back, dropping between his thighs and centering his flaccid cock within striking distance. Laura wastes none of her nerve hesitating, immediately bending forward and wrapping her lips around the tip of his penis. Feist is forced back to the land of the living as she begins hoovering up the viscous gobs of cum left clinging to his meat, spiraling her tongue around the circumference of his glans.

“Whoa! I- uh- guhhh-” Feist stammers, flustered by the unique sensations blooming in light of Laura's sudden agency.

His body forgoes its own refractory period as boiling blood rushes back into his groin to charge a new erection with electric arousal. The more he stiffens, the more area he provides Laura with and she takes full advantage, slathering his engorged organ with a greasy membrane of saliva as she hungrily slurps away at the remnants of his first eruption, fueled by greed and unsatiated lust. Her tongue laps at the base of his shaft, dedicated to letting not a single speck of his love escape her watchful eye. Evidently satisfied with her work, Laura drags her tongue up the back of his penis - pausing only briefly to target his frenulum - before gently taking the tip in her mouth for one final tease. Her tongue circles Feist’s pulsating glans with not only intimidating precision but agonizing lethargy. He’s positive that Laura is fully aware of how good she could be making him feel, confirming the intentionality of her lackluster motion. His cock, now dripping with arousal and spit, slips out from under her tongue with a lewd, wet sound that echoes tellingly about the pertinent silence in the room. Laura licks an escaped strand of Feist’s cum off her lower lip and glares at him, sensually rubbing the tip of his slobber slick penis with a digit.

“You came without me, you asshole,” she complains, applying a bit more pressure to the spongy flesh beneath her finger.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Feist chuckles, massaging the back of his head in regret. “You were just so cute it caught me off guard.”

That does the trick. Laura recoils and averts her eyes, trying to hold back the blush attempting to hijack her emotions. The girl seizes the pillow lying on the carpet beside her and again hugs it to her chest, seemingly taking comfort in squeezing the fluffy fabric with her arms.

“I’m not cute.”

You know, it’s interesting. Feist is a far cry from a dominant individual in bed. Aside from a flirty jab here or there, he generally catches himself lacking in agency when he’s with a woman. It’s not intentional or anything, it’s just how he subconsciously functions. As a man who defaults to bottoming, the feeling pervading his body right now is majorly foreign to him and he’s struggling rather significantly to control its effects because Laura is stupid cute. Stupid. Cute. Rubbing her thirsty thighs together, snatching at the frayed ends of her pillow, staring up at him with the most submissive, needy puppy-dog eyes he’s ever seen. And the killing blow comes when she cocks her head a few inches to the side, brows furrowing as she silently asks for his attention. Stupid. Cute. A pang of longing vibrates through Feist’s cock as she looks up at him with that horny, aqua gaze. Before he can even process his own actions, his hands are fused to Laura's shoulders. Screw the condom. Screw playing nice. He needs to fuck her.

“You asked for this,” he gasps, holding her face inches from his own and sensing the overwhelming desire emanating from her core.

Laura's expression softens into a seductive, buttery look of blissful submission that accompanies a quiet trill of understanding. Feist hoists her into the air as if she weighs no more than a sack of potatoes and ungracefully chucks her onto the bed where she gets comfortable on her side, still clutching the pillow to her chest. Sprawled out on the sheets, the little Perro is bathed in serendipitous moonlight that accentuates the pale tones of her body. Laura is by no means the most curvaceous woman out there but at the moment, Feist can't imagine a more gorgeous partner than her. He sheds the few articles of clothing still clinging to his body as he clambers onto the bed, propping himself up on his knees by her feet.

He flicks a finger upwards in a commanding gesture. “Ass up, Doggy.”

Like a puppet on a string, Laura obliges, squishing her face into her comfort pillow and hoisting her butt into the air. The presentation is perfect: her supple behind frames her leaking slit seductively below her lithe, lashing tail. Thin tributaries of lust ooze down her thighs into a pungent reservoir, flashing starlit sunspots about the room. As Feist admires the view he can only barely make out the shape of Laura’s face in her vulnerable position, but he feels her gaze boring through him, flushed and glassy and starved of affection. The way her rump quakes makes it abundantly clear to Feist just how desperate she is for his regard. The poor girl claws at the pillow supporting her neck, visibly frustrated by his inaction but still unwilling to come across as overly demanding. Trapped in this tantalizing limbo, Laura allows a cracked whine to slip out of her throat.

“Feist,” she moans, so dangerously aroused that her wavering voice sounds on the verge of breaking down into tortured sobs. “Fuck me already!”

There it is. At last she abandons her pride and works up the nerve to ask, and Feist isn’t one to leave such an upfront and honest lady hanging. She squeaks as his hands dig into her buttocks, marking the bouncy flesh with a fingernail’s brand. He massages her pale skin dolefully, drawing little circles that taper inwards towards her twitching nethers and provoke increasingly anticipatory little yips from the shaking chihuahua. Feist inevitably reaches her honeypot and peels it open, stretching the edges of her labia in opposing directions and exposing the sticky cavern hidden behind to the open air. Laura yelps as a freezing chill slips inside of her and again when a calloused finger follows suit. As he warms her up with a relaxed fingering, Feist gently brushes a hand over the glossy, midnight crystals glittering on the back of her thigh, scattered sporadically across her skin. He’s known she was infected for a while now, but this is his first time setting eyes upon the apex of her orignium parasite. It’s a disturbingly beautiful design for such a brutal blade of death’s scythe. Feist shakes his head, refocusing his attention to the matter at hand. Infected or not, Laura is in serious need of some sexual relief and Feist alone holds the key to her climax. He returns to scraping her clenching walls with his fingers, upping the ante by brushing against her inflamed clitoris with his thumb. She exhales a strangled noise as he continues stroking the sensitive nub at the vertex of her slit, weathering the veritable fountain of ectoplasmic ecstasy drenching his hand as it rails her. Anticipating Laura’s coming orgasm, Feist rips his hand back out of her and earns another despairing cry as the Perro is torn away from the pearly gates yet again.

“No!” she groans, tensing her butt in an effort to contain the fleeting waves of pleasure echoing off of her and into the abyss. “You’re such an asshol-”

The final syllable of her sentence shoots up several octaves into an ear-piercing squeal as Feist slides the tip of his penis into her folds. Laura immediately falls slack, collapsing the few inches back onto the bed and landing with an airy BWOOF. Her arms fly out in front of her, fingers cracking and bending in nonsensical gang signs as he wedges himself ever deeper in her cunt. The poor girl edged to her breaking point cums instantly as her innards are ravaged by a cock a smidge too large for her to handle. Laura moans her joy into her pillow as Feist pulls back his hips and jams his member back into her drooling sex. Even through the pillow, her climactic cries are loud enough to convince Feist to lean down and whisper another warning into her ear.

“Careful now, Doggy,” he breathes, tickling her ear with wispy tendrils of chilly, nighttime air. “You don’t want to wake anyone up, do you?”

Across the hall is the living room. Normally, that wouldn’t be particularly problematic, but with every bed in the house occupied, Shana has taken up residence on the foldout couch there and Laura’s stricken voice is more than loud enough to reach her. The moment Feist’s words ricochet off the inside of her sensitive canid ear, she frees a hastily stifled vocalization. He continues thrusting into her, enjoying the Perro’s adorably stiff reactions as she tries desperately to keep her voice under control, her hands grasping blindly at the sheets in a fruitless search for a distraction from the woodchipper of blinding bliss tearing her to pieces. Feist takes notice of her instinctive bids to crawl away and stamps them out without a second thought, folding his body over hers and wrapping a firm hand around both of her wrists at once which effectively pins her in place. If Laura was of comparable height to Feist he would likely find his face buried in her hair, but his partner is so hilariously short that he’s forced to bend his neck almost to the point of balancing the top of his head on the bed just to look into her face. It’s a supremely stimulating - if unique - feeling to stare into a woman’s upside down face while doing her from behind.

“D-don… down’t loowk at me!”

Laura’s face is a blushy, teary mess drowned in a lovestruck vinaigrette. She tries to pull her hands away from his grip to hide her embarrassing demeanor but finds herself unable to overpower the toned Feline staking her wrists to the bed. She lets out a choked sob that mutates into another lust laced squeak as he refuses to hinder his thrusting. Feist feels a painful twinge in his heart as he stares into her misty, blue eyes. Laura’s lips are still mostly obscured by her pillow so Feist, with his scalp parallel to the covers, plants an appreciative kiss on her forehead instead, prompting an embarrassed whimper from the recipient.

“You’re so cute,” he moans, trying to cope with the grinding heartburn in his gut that sparks with each of her adorable noises.

Still unable to cover her face thanks to Feist’s dominance, the blush on Laura’s cheeks grows feverish, creeping across her face in a cherry heatwave as she fails to contain the ecstasy bubbling up to the surface. “Ihm not cuwt!”

Oh, very convincing. Feist's thrusting grows steadily more ravenous as he drinks in Laura's humiliating appearance, admiring the way her body heaves with her breath and her drooping eyelids twitch with each pump; how her sweaty, side-swept bangs are glued to her skin as if they’re coated in rubber cement and a thin tightrope of drool sneaks out of the corner of her mouth. Absolutely everything about her state is profoundly arousing, and that's probably why Feist is the most turned on he's ever been in his life. As it increases in pace, his thrusting becomes noticeably less controlled: the Feline is basically driven by pure, reproductive instinct at this point, and his animalistic domination of Laura is a perfect representation of that. Another example is the overwhelming desire to breed her that's taken root in his cerebellum. With the seeds of a second orgasm beginning to flower, Feist finds his sense of reason slipping away, traded for the brilliant, erotic sensations flashing through his cock. Each pump stacks the pleasure into a linear crescendo that threatens to topple over, spurred on by the capsaicin desire marinating in his balls. All he needs is a push over the edge - something to shatter his psyche… and that's exactly what he’s about to get. For as much as Feist's intensity is reflected back onto himself, still more of it is being injected directly into Laura, who's not handling it very well. The poor girl is all but a puddle of tormented goo, seemingly resigned to her helpless position at Feist's mercy. Her breathing is beyond ragged, coming in dry gasps and repeatedly sidelined by agonized whimpers as her womb is menaced by his sizable cock. Her already tight walls clamp down around the rod like tremors before an earthquake and, as nature demands, the real spectacle follows shortly behind. 

“Doggy!”

Laura's orgasm hits her like a semi-truck. Her tunnel closes in on Feist's member, gripping his stiffened flesh like a vice in an effort to drain him of his seed. Her legs give out almost immediately, and she slumps onto the bed, nearly dislodging Feist who barely manages to maintain his post and continue striving for a climax of his own. That's problematic for Laura because, having just finished, she’s still unfathomably sensitive. As her quivering body slowly catches up to the situation, Feist manages a particularly deep thrust that propels his meat into the heart of her g-spot. What follows is the complete and utter psychological deconstruction of Laura Arias. The sounds that spawn in her throat as two orgasms collide are a collection of alien gurgles, trills, and snarls, impossible to properly describe. Her sapphire eyes glaze over as her brain momentarily shuts down, unable to process the sheer density of unfiltered bliss peppering her spasming frame like a hailstorm of bowling balls. Awash in a spillover of liquid Heaven that gushes out of her abused snatch, Laura falls completely unresponsive for a few seconds as her body reboots. Just as feeling returns to her shaking form, Feist finally succumbs to her milking clenches and a thunderous clap detonates in his skull, subjecting the Feline to a frenzied series of ejaculations. Webs of virile cum shoot from his cock as he mindlessly swings his hips into her, staining her womb a ghostly, transparent white. With each thrust splurting out another string of spunk, his climax feels endless as he fills Laura's tiny body with gallons of his love, his instincts desperate to impregnate the little Bolivarian. She groans as his seed soaks into her walls, still struggling with the aftermath of her own mind-melting experience. At last, Feist's thrusts shoot nothing but blanks, having exhausted the stockpiles of sperm stored in his balls. He feels his arms go wobbly causing his body slumps on top of Laura, though he’s careful not to crush her beneath his bulk. Too tired to even bother pulling out, Feist wraps an arm around her belly and tips over onto the bed, landing on his side and dragging his partner into a natural spoon beside her comfort pillow, still hilted inside her.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, rubbing her exposed tummy as a nervous habit. “I might have lost myself there.”

Laura doesn't respond, evidently still recovering from the violent fucking she's just survived. Feist monitors the even rise and fall of her chest as her breathing stabilizes and she releases the remaining tension held in her muscles with a contented sign. She nestles herself deeper into the crook of his body, relaxed but seriously exhausted.

“I don't think I realized just how badly I needed that dicking,” Laura admits in an airy breath. Then, softer, “I'm glad it was you.”

That irritating twinge in Feist's heart returns with a passion. Somehow, his heartbeat hasn't calmed down at all despite his resting state; if anything, it's pounding even more intensely than before. Doing his best to cope with the silence that saturates the room, Feist tries gently petting the top of Laura's head, which she quietly tolerates until one of his fingers branches out to stroke an ear. Still humiliatingly sensitive, Laura squeals and slaps at his hand which recoils.

“No touching!” she snaps, tilting her head back to glare up at him with those fierce, azure eyes of hers.

“Sorry, sorry,” Feist says, for once legitimate in his apology due in large part to the confusing, painful vibrations in his heart.

Fortunately for him, the observant Laura seems to clue into his uncharacteristically subdued vibe and moves to apologize herself, just not with her words. She pushes through her fatigue and pulls herself away from his flaccid penis which falls loosely to the sheets, drenched in a gooey puddle of cum. Still holding her own body against his, Laura shuffles a foot or two up the bed, stopping only when she can make out the imperfect asymmetry of his face with her head tilted as far back as it's willing to go. Feist locks eyes with her - one arm still wrapped around her middle - and prays she can't hear the Nascar race drifting laps in his chest. Without another word, Laura closes the final few inches between them and locks her lips onto his. It's admittedly a bit awkward at first due to their faces being positioned in opposite directions via their spooning cuddle, but Feist couldn't care less. The rave in his heart grows even more intense as Laura squeezes her eyes shut and makes his tongue her plaything, drinking in the intimacy of their kiss. It seems to last forever, suspended in a universe where nothing else matters to either of them but each other. It's only when she finally breaks away from him - panting adorably with a soft blush reflected by the starlight adorning her face - that Feist begins to understand the wrenching pangs in his chest that refuse to cease their tortures. Laura smiles, sweet and fluffy and Feist releases a stiff, low whine as his brain struggles to comprehend perhaps the simplest fact it's ever known: he’s got the lovebug, and he’s got it bad.

Feist fills his waiting glass with orange juice, pulpless of course. He’s making an effort not to stare at the Perro across the table for fear of self-reporting last night’s… adventures and he’s doing a bloody terrible job at it. Even more embarrassing, every time he slips up and does glance over at her, she’s already peering at him and they’re both forced to awkwardly refocus their attention onto something else nearby. Feist has caught himself fiddling with the salt shaker more than a few times already and he’s only been at the table for a few minutes. Right on cue, his eyes drift across the table and connect with Laura’s, causing them both to avert their gazes in random directions. Feist scrutinizes his murky fruit juice, ensuring that it is indeed free of any straggling bits of citrus. Laura’s attention, meanwhile, is abducted by the peppy Zalak beside her who breaks open a work-related conversation that seems much more attractive than the tired silence that has been strangling these four Terran diners until now.

“Haey Lawra, wur shtiwl on shkedewl, wight?” Shana asks around a mouthful of fluffy pancake.

“Lord, sweetie, finish chewing first!” Catherine chastizes, gesturing towards her chipmunk cheeks with her syrupy fork.

Shana apologizes and swallows her battery bite before readdressing Laura. “We’re still on schedule, right? I finished the first floor girders yesterday. Is there anything else pressing we need to deal with?”

Laura welcomes the question but apparently isn’t quite ready to use her voice yet because she stumbles over her words as she responds, leading to Shana narrowing her eyes and cutting her off. She pokes the Perro’s cheek with a finger and tousles a few beige strands of her hair.

“Are you doing okay? You seem kinda flustered,” Shana notices, an observation that serves only to fluster her even more.

Laura pulls away from her friend’s fondling and busies herself with cutting her pancakes into neat, evenly sized pieces. Her perfectionism bleeds into her frantic slicing as she begins shearing increasingly smaller slices of dough off of her cuts with a butter knife, pointlessly vying to size them exactly by accounting for the lumpy curves that decorate each edge piece. Shana watches her labor with a confused, yet intrigued expression while Catherine cocks an eyebrow in questioning perturbation. The older woman sighs, realizing she’s going to have to intervene.

“Laura, honey, you don’t need to be so jumpy. It’s not your fault these walls are so damn thin.”

That statement brings her frenzied motion to a standstill. Feist inhales sharply as Laura freezes up into a statue. Her eyes expand to the size of frisbees and she sinks her teeth into her lower lip as an abstract, smeared blush emerges under her chalky skin. Metallic utensils clink against her ceramic plate as her hands begin to shake uncontrollably in an involuntary display of mortification. Her unchanging expression refuses to reveal her emotions as she processes the humiliating connotations of Catherine’s latest sentence. Feist, meanwhile, continues to glare at his drink so as to pretend the awkwardness doesn't exist.

“Don't keep me waiting too long for those great grandchildren."

Oh my God.

Laura's face adopts a bloody, crimson hue, glowing like a Seaborne at sunset. She hides her shame with her hands, letting out a miserable squeak as Feist, ever the denier, refuses to react and instead wages war on his pancakes.

“Whoa!” he gasps as an explosion of flavor fills his mouth. “Why are these so good today?”

Catherine shrugs. “Don't ask me. Shana made them.”

Feist turns to look at the dizzy idiot still stuffing her face with breakfast. She grins, revealing bits of batter wedged in the gaps between her teeth. 

“Mowlman fahmiwy rehsipee!”