First Date: The Prequel

Writer's note: this is a sort of prequel to "First Meeting," taking place around a month or so before. There are terms that might be unfamiliar to new readers, so I'll define them here: Arthur is an andyne, which is a person with large bird wings; Rabb is renoige, which is basically a cat-person, and hamans are elf-like people with long pointed ears.

*

Arthur hopped out of the oversized van into the balmy summer evening. He was wearing his nice clothes, a hakama with an aquatic pattern on top; his waist-length, curly dark hair was pulled to the side in his best renoige warrior clip; and his large black-feathered wings were looking a little scruffier than usual, so he tucked them to his sides a little to make it less noticeable. This would be his first date with Rabb, who'd been his best friend since the two of them were teenagers, and who he'd secretly developed a giant crush on over the years. If this were any normal date Arthur would've brought flowers, but for Rabb he'd gotten something he knew she liked better: a traditional renoige dessert called "sanguinaccio dolce" and a bottle of kannar for himself, all neatly stowed in his shoulder bag.

"Thanks, Milly," Arthur said, turning to shut the van's sliding door. "Good luck meeting your hot ex-husband."

Milly, who was already a fairly small person, looked especially tiny sitting in her giant tank of a vehicle. "Oh don't worry about us," she laughed. "Relax and have fun, alright?"

Milly's van pulled away from the curb. Rabb's driveway was dim in the fading daylight, and though he'd walked it thousands of times before, the familiar path to the front door gave him uncomfortable butterflies in his stomach. It didn't help his urgent need to pee -- but that was another renoige tradition-

Rabb's front door opened at the end of the path. Rabb was a renoige: tall with large catlike ears, long fur, and a long ringed tail with a spotty orange and white tabby pattern. The hair on her head was long, straight, and white, trailing halfway down her back, and she was wearing her normal clothing: a traditional patterned one-piece wrap garment that extended from her mid-chest to down just past her knees. Rabb's clear blue eyes reflected eerily in the shadows as she stepped out to greet Arthur.

"Arthur," said Rabb. Arthur leaned in and nuzzled Rabb's face. Rabb sniffed him.

"You've done your homework, huh?" Rabb said almost sheepishly.

Arthur giggled. "You noticed."

After a short pause, Rabb gulped. "Do you need to use the bathroom?"

Arthur shook his head. "This is nothing. I can hold it all night if you need to catch up." He took the bag of pudding containers from his shoulder bag and handed it to Rabb.

"Well, come in! Did you get that chocolate blood pudding from the new renoige place around the corner from your apartment?"

"Yeah, why?" said Arthur. He followed Rabb through the front door, and she waited for his wings to clear the doorframe before she shut it.

"I've heard good things about it," said Rabb cheerfully. Something seemed a little off, but Arthur figured that they were both just nervous; he'd been dreaming of this for a long time, and was nervous himself. "Sit down, I'll take the pudding to the fridge. Dinner should be here in about an hour. In the meantime, pick something to watch."

Arthur nodded. "Alright." He sat down on Rabb's couch and flipped through the available series. The first one on the list was "Quarknado," which Arthur really didn't feel like watching.

"I just got Quarknado in New Releases," Rabb called from the kitchen. Arthur scrolled until he found a series he felt they'd both like: "Atlantis, Draconequis, and the REAL Ancient Aliens."

Rabb seemed disappointed that Arthur didn't want to watch Quarknado, but cuddled up with him on the couch. Half an hour later they were absorbed in the program Arthur had picked, making joking "pew pew pew" noises every time the narrator cut to a bad CG space battle, and laughing so hard that Arthur had to pause the episode to relieve his bladder.

As Arthur's wings rounded the corner to the hallway behind him on his dash to the bathroom, he didn't hear Rabb breathe a small sigh of relief.

Arthur opened the front of his tribal-patterned hakama. There weren't any wet spots on the outside, but the crotch of his underwear was damp. It took Arthur several seconds to fumble with his bottoms, and he pulled aside his underwear as he approached the toilet. His cock was a little swollen from the effort of holding back his notoriously large bladder, with a single drop of clear piss clinging to his long foreskin. Arthur pulled it back and released into the toilet bowl. It felt almost orgasmic after over twenty-four hours of holding, but Arthur went to the tremendous effort of stopping his flow after only a few seconds: Rabb was such a stickler for tradition, especially when it came to her own culture's rituals, and he didn't want to let her down on their first date.

Arthur played with himself a little before zipping up again. He felt a little better when he sat down next to Rabb, who, strangely, seemed a little disappointed.

"Back so soon?" said Rabb. "I thought you had to go."

"Oh don't worry, I let out just enough so I won't wet myself laughing," said Arthur. "I'll be ready whenever you think the time is right. How are you doing on your bladder, anyway? I've been looking forward to you marking me all week."

Rabb squirmed. "I'm um...almost full. I just need a little while longer."

"Alright," said Arthur. "Mind if I crack into the Kannar I brought?"

"Sure," said Rabb. It was her turn to pick the show. She knew how much Arthur didn't want to watch Quarknado, so she turned to another new series: an animated soap opera about manatees who owned feuding fashion empires called "Bays of Our Lives." Predictably, the show was bizarre. There were more sordid love triangles in the first five minutes than either Arthur or Rabb had seen in a whole season of other soap operas.

After four episodes of manatee-related madness, Arthur stretched, leaning back. He'd finished half of his small bottle of Kannar, which came pre-diluted in its single-serve drink form, and the need to relieve his bladder was rapidly becoming urgent again. He looked back up at the television, and realized he had no idea what was going on onscreen.

"What...who are these peop-...I mean manatees?" yawned Arthur.

"They're the kids that got sent off to boarding school three episodes ago," Rabb said sleepily, nuzzling into Arthur's upper arm. She seemed to be dozing off, so Arthur put an arm around her and leaned her in the crook of his shoulder. "They just came back and now they're in their thirties."

"Whoever made this show must've been really high when they wrote it," said Arthur, scratching his head.

"Seems like it," mumbled Rabb. She leaned over, pressing a little into his bladder. Arthur didn't mind though, and glanced up at the clock. It was a quarter after eight, just over an hour after he'd arrived.

"What time was dinner supposed to be here?" Arthur asked.

Rabb sat up. "Sometime between now and now-thirty. Why?"

Arthur took a deep breath. "I might need to mark you now. The Kannar is starting to hit me, and I won't be able to hold it much longer. I don't want to hurry you-"

Rabb sighed. "I know." Since she was renoige, Rabb had an extremely keen sense of smell. Because of their strong olfactory sense, most renoige cultures placed a lot of importance on communication through scent, most commonly through urine. Urine was the most personal and individual method for of "marking" something as one's own, and most renoige were able to at least discern the sex of whoever had marked and that person's rough emotional state at the time. They could also smell it when someone needed to pee. Arthur had always found that particularly fascinating-

"Uurrgh-" Arthur's bladder spasmed. He pawed at the ties on the sides of his bottoms, standing up. Rabb leapt to her feet, untying one side while Arthur clumsily fiddled with the other. His bottoms abruptly dropped to the floor around his ankles and he waddled as fast as he could toward the bathroom. Luckily for him, Rabb's bathroom had a large andyne-style shower bay. He was barely able to pull the shower curtain aside before he lost control, loosing a waterfall of piss at the blue tile floor. It echoed loudly in the bathroom.

"Aaaahhhh," moaned Arthur. Rabb squeezed into the shower bay past his wings and pulled up the hem of his robe-like top, holding it up near his chest and away from the splash zone. Arthur's member started hardening; the fact that Rabb was watching him pee was almost intoxicating. He reached down and pulled back his long foreskin, showing off the blunt, swollen head of his penis.

"Should I mark you now?" asked Arthur. Rabb's furry arm, holding up his shirt against his chest, tensed.

Rabb took a deep breath. She and Arthur had seen each other naked on many occasions in their long friendship, and were weirdly comfortable with it for never having slept together. She watched Arthur's stream slowing with a reluctant expression: he was almost fully hard.

"Is something wrong?" Arthur asked her.

"N-no," Rabb's gaze snapped upward. "I'm fine."

"You can touch if you like," said Arthur, darting his eyes downward. Rabb reached a hand out, but hesitated as one last jet of pee escaped Arthur.

"Heh. Sorry."

Rabb gulped, reaching down to grasp Arthur's cock. Arthur noticed that they were both trembling a little. Rabb's hand was very gentle, but it was too gentle, and wasn't stimulating him much. Arthur took another look at Rabb's face. She was trying to do...something...but clearly had no idea what she was actually doing.

"If you take off your wrap I can start on you first," Arthur purred. "You seem really tense," he added. gently nudging her awkward hands away from his crotch. Rabb couldn't hide the relief on her face. She took a deep breath again, stepping back.

"To tell you the truth, I am really tense," sighed Rabb. "But..." Rabb's blue eyes were stuck to the shower wall, and she made a concerted effort to look Arthur in the eye. "Arthur...I can't...I can't do this with you."

Arthur felt his face prickle unpleasantly, as though all the blood were draining out of it. He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. His eyes dropped to his crotch, and he began to feel a vague sense of embarrassment.

"I'm-..." Rabb said quickly, but winced when Arthur looked back up at her. "I'm sorry, Arthur. It's not that I don't like you-you're my best friend. I'm just asexual."

Arthur swallowed the lump in his throat. His cock was hopelessly hard in his hand, and his bladder was still more than half full.

"I mean...definitely finish up here and everything. I just don't want ...um...engage in-" Rabb squirmed, shook off her confusion and tried to smile. "If you want I can stand behind you and preen your feathers while you...um..."

Arthur's green eyes dropped to the floor. "Yeah," he mumbled. Rabb ducked behind him around his wings and he felt her start shifting his feathers. It felt better than usual; Arthur hadn't had any time for wing maintenance in the past two days. He suddenly felt even hornier than ever after being turned down, and peered over his shoulder at Rabb.

"Is it okay with you if I..." He looked down at his crotch and back up at Rabb.

"Well yeah..." Rabb laughed bashfully. The prickly cold feeling in Arthur's face was replaced with a creeping heat as his freckly olive skin reddened. On Arthur's back, Rabb plucked out a dead feather. It was an unexpected relief: Arthur hadn't realized it had been poking into his back.

"Ooohhhh...that felt good," moaned Arthur.

"Did you just..." Rabb asked awkwardly. "...you know..."

Arthur snorted, and began slowly tugging at himself. "No, no. That feather was stabbing me. Thanks for pulling it."

"What are best friends for? It did bleed a little though," Rabb informed him. By now, the crushing sense of embarrassment wasn't doing anything to dampen his arousal: he kept his strokes slow, because he could already feel himself beginning to come.

"Rabb, you might want to step back," grunted Arthur. "I'm getting close."

"Why? Last I checked your penis didn't face backwards."

Arthur gasped, "No, I meant my wings. They get...mmmph...twitchy-...when I-..." He came suddenly, spattering the shower wall. Arthur spurted what felt like at least two dozen times before the milky fluid finally stopped coming out. He slumped sideways against the wall, panting. Rabb stepped back up behind him and resumed preening his feathers while he stuck his hips out to finish peeing. It took a minute for him to get the flow started again, but once it did he peed for at least a solid minute. Arthur shook himself off with a deep sigh of relief, blushing again when he remembered that Rabb was still there.

"So uh...That was a lot," Rabb floundered. "Feeling better?"

Arthur's knees were still shaking a little from the orgasm, so he held out his arm against the wall to balance, dropping his dress shirt. Its hem fell down to just above his knees. "Do you mind if I'm honest?" he asked breathlessly.

"I'd prefer you were, yes," replied Rabb.

"I don't know yet."

Rabb opened her mouth to say something, but was immediately interrupted by the chime of her doorbell. "Oh! That's dinner. Hang on." She patted Arthur's shoulder and hurried out to the front door. Arthur rinsed the shower wall before exiting the bathroom. When he returned to the living room, Rabb was setting boxes of takeout from a Haman seafood place onto her living room table. The bottom part of his hakama was right where he'd left it, and he started putting it back on right away.

"You're not tying that right," said Rabb, standing up to help him. "Here, let me help-" Arthur shooed her away.

"I can do it myself."

Rabb sighed. "Arthur, please don't take it that way. You're still my best friend and I love you to pieces, I just don't want to mate with you."

Arthur gave Rabb a stony look. "Then why did you wait so long to tell me?"

"I did tell you," said Rabb. "Years ago. You must've thought I was joking because I know you didn't believe me...but you've been crushing on me so long that I thought I'd give it a try this time."

"Oh." said Arthur. "I thought that was just something you said to get guys you didn't like to go away."

"Arthur-...I think you're very attractive-...I mean...you're a great person, you deserve someone who can enjoy you and your sex and...wants to...do sex things with you-" Rabb's voice trailed off. She had no idea what to say, and swished her tail behind her uncomfortably.

Arthur finished tying his hakama and looked out the window. It was only 8:30, and it was still light out. "I should probably go," he said quietly. The crushing sense of embarrassment he'd felt before had gotten much stronger in the short time since he'd climaxed. He'd been so infatuated with Rabb and he'd been friends with her so long, he'd never imagined it would end like this, with him ruining their friendship. Some of the embarrassment mutated into guilt, and he started for the door.

"Don't be sorry," said Rabb as Arthur crossed the living room on his way to the door. "It's my fault for not being clear with you. At least stay for dinner-"

"No thanks, I'm not hungry anymore," said Arthur. Rabb followed him up the hallway.

"Where are you going?" asked Rabb.

"Milly's meeting her ex at the Abominable Spaghetti Monster. She should be out by now, so I'm going to call and ask her for a ride home." Arthur opened the front door to let himself out. "But I'm walking to the bus stop, just in case."

"I can just drive you home if y-" Arthur shut the door between them before Rabb could finish her sentence. It occurred to him that he'd left his shoulder bag behind in the entryway, but he couldn't bring himself to turn around now. Instead, he plucked his small flip phone from his hip pocket and opened it to dial Milly.